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

The newly assembled group of strangers follow the road south from Neverwinter for two uneventful days and nights.  On the third day they head east on to the Triboar Trail.  10-15 miles later they encounter two dead horses lying in a bottleneck in the road (*cough*obviousambush*cough*).

Being suspicious people, they stop the wagons and head out to investigate the surrounding bushes rather than the horses and encounter two goblins hiding either side of the road.  The two farthest goblins start pelting the approaching characters with arrows while the other two draw their swords.  The Hobos make quick work of the first three goblins.  The fourth and a hidden fifth try to bolt to the north west.  One doesn’t make it a few steps, the other at least requires a bow to take down.

While fulfilling their murder hobo duty of looting all the the corpses (A few arrows to replace those used) they discover a worn trail behind the northern bush leading north west.  The ranger spent a few minutes studying the trail and said it looks like goblins have been back and forth down here and lurking in the bushes on a regular basis.  There is also evidence of two human-like creatures being dragged along the trail in the last few days.

Inspection of the horses revealed them to belong to Gundren and Sildar (Those who know Gundren of old recognised his horse, and there were a few scraps of paper with names, familiar handwriting and other identifying marks.  The module wasn’t clear on how the party are supposed to identify the horses, just that the were supposed to).

They party spent a few minutes trying to decide whether they should give chase, or deliver the goods and come back later (While the monk tried to fix his internet, which his cat had just disabled) and thought it best to recover Gundren and Sildar.  They followed the footprints north west for around 10 miles, avoiding a few goblin traps along the way and found a cave entrance in the side of a hill, with a small river running out of it.

The decided to hide the wagons amongst some trees away from the trail and return to the cave.  Being a newly formed group who had just destroyed their only encounter they were overconfident and disorganised and everyone did their own thing, which drew fire from two more goblins hiding off to one side of the entrance.  Arrows came flying, taking the group by surprise and hurting them, but two goblins do not last long against eight murder hobos.

Then came the real threat.  The cave was in darkness and three of the party would need a light source.  The paladin sparked up a torch and started to walk towards the cave.  I then enabled an aura of light in Roll20 and they could see how far the light went and just how big a problem that would become.  The torch was thrown on the floor outside and the party braved the darkness while trying to figure out what to do once they left its light behind.  As the entered they found the sounds of the river increased, echoing around the cave enough to hide their novice fumblings.

As the scouts entered the cave the found a small set of stairs leading to a side chamber to the right of the main passage.  Two wolves could be seen inside.  Araloth, the thief (I think.  I should write these sooner in the future), decided to try and befriend the creatures, but they were suspicious of strangers (Failed animal handling check) and they got aggressive.  A third wolf appeared from behind a rock as the rest of the party came to his aid.  The doorway was narrow and the room was small so people remained in the passageway, moving in and out to attack as opportunity presented itself.

While fighting the wolves there was a surge in the river and the passageway filled with water, washing 2 hobos out the cave, a third being lucky enough to get out of the way in time.  The picked themselves up and went to rejoin their allies in time to end the wolves.  At this time Talindra the warlock cast light on a couple of stones and handed them out, as fighting in the darkness was showing its challenges.  This revealed a natural chimney at the back of the wolves chamber, leading upwards about 30 feet.

While Karson went on to investigate this, a few of the party went out to scout the main passageway.  As they spread out another wave made its way through, but thankfully everyone was able to move out of the way in time, or were strong enough to brace against the waters.

Melandrach and Araloth stealthed ahead and found another side passage rising up they could see light coming along.  They paused to deicde how to proceed.  As our hobos dried themselves off our players realised it was gone 11pm on Sunday night and we all had work in the morning so we saved our progress and called it a night.