Murder Hobo Squad: A Lost Mine of Phandelver/Dragon of Icespire Peak & Beyond D&D 5E record (Beware Spoilers!)

(Talindra is still currently guest DMing for us and I am playing Reginald the Bard)

With our short rest over, we had a quick chat about the trinkets on the wagons.  Apparently the mercenaries had been told they could keep such things as part of their payment, as the Stronghold was only interested in the supplies so we took the loot.  Karson and Ramond took a heal potion each, meaning everyone has one each and the front line melee characters mostly have two.

We got back on the road and a while later we passed a ruined guard tower.  We could see two Hobgoblins and a large horn on the top.  We acted casual and 10 minutes up the road we ducked in to the woods, ditched the wagons and doubled back.  A few archers stayed at ground level ready to fire while everyone else stealthed up the 100 foot tower.  The two goblins died quite easily and didn’t get the chance to sound the alarm and I learned to ask what armour the enemy is wearing instead of assuming Hobgoblins would be easy to hit.  Chainmail with shields with partial cover means I wasn’t going to shoot them from ground level and should never have tried!  As the last Hobgoblin fell some sort of black slime creature oozed out of the cracks and attacked, but Araloth landed a critical blow early on and the creature wasn’t able to pose any kind of threat.

We took the enemies chainmail to sell later and propped them up to look like they might be alive and lazy from ground level and smashed the mouthpiece of the horn so it would be useless but look fine to those below, and then got on our way back to the wagon.

15 minutes after we got back on the wagons we arrived at the gateway to the Stronghold.  As we saw this we had a brief chat about what we were actually going to do inside.  We discussed starting a fire but we were afraid of it catching the trees alight.  Some nature etc checks revealed that the corruption had made the forest dryer and more flammable than usual and it wouldn’t take much for things to go very wrong.   Hobgoblin archers on the walls had the gates opened for us as we drew near, and we nonchalantly rolled in.   One of the Hobgoblins had us stop before we entered.  He asked how the raid went and Reginald said, “It went like a charm.  You know these villager types.  They’ve no real fight in ‘em.”  He said he wished he could see some action too and ushered us through.

As we rolled inside we were approached by a Hobgoblin we would soon discover was the Quartermaster.  He was looking for a spy amongst our numbers he had been told about.  Reginald quickly spoke up and insisted they had killed him in the woods earlier that day when he tried to run away with our loot.  He thanked us and let us park properly before having his men unload the wagons.  As we pulled up I noticed the same golden orb I had seen before floating in the air above us.  It instantly vanished and I failed my roll to work out what it was.  I chose not to react as we were being supervised by the enemy at this point.

As we looked around we could see that this Stronghold was still heavily under construction.  Near the unloading area we could see a large domed building that looked recently completed.  It had no windows but inside we could hear sounds of Hobgoblin revelry.  This was apparently some kind of barracks/bar/recreation area and a large source of reinforcements for the gate.  One of our primary goals would be to delay their response to any invasion.

We slunk off to a corner to talk in private and survey our surroundings.  Over time it became apparent that only Hobgoblins entered the domed building so human infiltration might be difficult.  Hobgoblins would come and go through the area occasionally (10-15 in the area at any given time) and the tents around the gate all appeared to contain more Hobgoblins.  We have a hand drawn map of the area that the spy Yalek gave us earlier.  It pointed us towards the area the leadership would be gathering in.  We went around and had a casual look.  It was a small courtyard with a central tower with raised rope bridges 20 feet in the air.  We also saw our first full fledges cultists in the area.  We were not going to get much of a look around without risking triggering a fight or getting caught so we backed out to discuss our plans.  After a good long chat discussing infiltrating the barracks, nailing that door shut, and trying to trigger fights between groups of mercenaries we settled on our plan and used the sending stones to call the army, who would arrive around an hour later.

55 minutes later we approached the Quartermaster to ask for our wagons back as we wanted to go on another raid.  He got grumpy because nothing was planned and told us to get them ourselves.  We parked the wagon in the courtyard and loaded it up with lots of empty boxes to put captured goods in and a barrel or two of nails from the nearby construction supplies.  We hitched up the horses badly at the front.  When we could hear the army nearby Ramond freed the horses and him and Thorovir pushed the wagon straight through the doors to the barracks, wedging them in the middle.  The rest of us then smashed in the wheels so it would not move.  We hoped that the barrels of nails would break on impact making it harder for people to climb through without getting hurt.  We then ran towards the leadership to end any chance of an alliance there.

Thorivor had an early start and Devere had been unavailable tonight and this was going to be a long fight so we called it there.  This should be the final combat before we return to camp and end this adventure, but we will see.