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

With all the goblinoids already defeated, the party split up in to groups and searched the castle, finding a few minor sellable art items, a cookbook in goblinoid with a tin marked “Yeggs Magic Spice”, a barrel of quality Brandy, Sildars lost armour, and a small weapons stash (Araloth took a shield for himself, and Karson took a longsword).  This just left the south east tower with its barred door and the sound of deep heavy rhythmic breathing inside.  They decided to investigate as they did not like the idea of leaving anything, man or monster, to just starve to death in a locked room.

Not sure what to expect, the party decided to be ready to run once the door was opened.  Talindra, Ramond, Devere and Bilba went off to get the wagon while the others had a short rest with Gundren, so they could load it up and have Gundren on board before setting the beat loose.  Devere noticed that their stuff had been tampered with.  Everything appeared to be there, but things weren’t quite as they had been left.  Ramond was able to find some footprints heading east.  They were most likely elven.  They did wonder if they were from the druid they had been asked to look for.  They decided it was best not to investigate yet as they didn’t want to get separated from the others.

When they returned to the castle they loaded up their loot and Gundren and told the others.  They then opened doors and removed curtains to create an open pathway from the barred door to the nearest exit, just in case.  Ramond, Thorovir, Talinda and Devere stayed with Gundren at the wagon as it gently started to rain, and the others got in position around the barred door.

Melandrach banged loudly on the door and called out a hello after Karson cast Speak With Animals on himself.  He was answered with a strange loud roar he and Karson could not identify.  There was some debate over how to proceed, but they were brought back to focus when something large started ramming in to the door from the other side.  Melandrach worked the improvised bar loose, then swung the door open and ran away as it opened without looking inside.

As the door crept open, Karson and Bilba could see an irate malnourished Owlbear inside.  The room looked wrecked, as you would expect from a small space with a large animal trapped in it.  Karson threw down some rations and backed up a little.  Everyone held their actions waiting to see what would happen as the Owlbear crept forward, sniffed the rations and carefully ate them, keeping an eye on everyone.  Melandrach ran to an arrow slit and told the others outside what they had found before returning.  Karson threw down another ration pack and backed up, and Melandrach followed his example.  Bilba left through the side door, closing it behind her.  Emboldened, the Owlbear swept up Karsons rations in one bite, and moved forward to eat Melandrachs, along with chunks of the dead Hobgoblin they had landed on.  Comfortable that the Owlbear had a way out and wasn’t going to attack them, the party left the castle without investigating the room behind it.

The party went in to the woods to follow the footprints they had found earlier.  Karson was able to track them a few miles easterly.  As they followed them, the rain worsened, and they discussed who it could be.  Redoith the druid was mentioned.  Araloth also mentioned that he had heard about a Hunter called Falcon who lived in the woods and would help people out.  He’d put you up for free, if you offered him a good bottle of wine.  However, he lived much further north east so this probably wasn’t him.

With the sun setting and the rain really coming down now, the party decided it best to leave the woods so headed south.  By around 8ish they decided to set up camp for the night and continue back to town in the morning.  During a lull in the weather the party gathered for dinner and a chat around the camp fire.

(DM: Ramond and I had a chat between sessions.  We discovered after last session that his god, Tempus, does not tolerate torture at all.  This isn’t made clear in a lot of the books, but it is stated in one or two sources.  As such, we have a little course correcting to do after last week.  I don’t want to punish him because the books he saw weren’t clear, so let’s handle this in character for now, rather than strip away his paladin powers.  Yet.)

Ramond: “I did something very wrong today, very wrong indeed.  I will need to master my rage.  It’s not right that I am this way.  Tempus would not have smiled on what I did today.”

Talindra: “What did you do wrong?”

Ramond: “Torturing and killing that creature was not right.  It brings no glory.  There isn’t any honour in it.  You should treat your enemies with respect.”

Araloth: “Well, I for one think a Doppelganger out of the way is a good thing.”

Ramond: “That is no matter.  Only fate has the right to take life”.  Araloth rolled his eyes and got up to head to his tent

Ramond: “You were all unmoved by this”

Talindra: “No it was disturbing to view but we need information about who this Black Spider is that seems to be hunting us, because of our association with Gundren.”

Karson: “It was a worthy attempt to get the information we needed.  It’s not your fault it didn’t work.”

Melandrach: ”You went too far”

Ramond: “It’s not worthy at all.  No, it was too far.  It will not happen again.  That you can all justify it is for you to decide on, but I will not be doing that again.  The king I treated correctly.  He fought with honour, and I treated him well.  The Doppelganger, for all I hate the deception, and there’s a great deal of deception going on here, and its driving me to rage, I cannot let that rage overtake me.  I cannot follow this god and do these things.”

Bilba: “You should have some brandy, Ramond.  I hear its rather good.  It’ll lift your spirits up”.  Ramond accepts a cup”

Karson: “As a wise man once said, if you do not master your rage, your rage will become your master” (DM: Laughs all round as we all loved Mystery Men)

Ramond: “We got much more information from the king for my treatment of him.”

Karson: “On the other hand, I don’t know that we should have let him go. Goblins like that cannot be trusted.”

Ramond: “My god calls me to battle.  Once it’s over, that is all.  Everything is decided.”

Araloth: “Speculate to accumulate with the goblin king.  We let him go.  Maybe in the future he will help us.  The Doppelganger?  Killing her helped us with the king.  You win some, you lose some.  Maybe the king we’ll never see again, maybe he’ll come back as an enemy, maybe he’ll end up our best help?  We’ll see in the long run.”

Karson: “We could not have let the Doppelganger go because it could have hidden anywhere and come back at any time as one of us.  It would have imitated us and it could have infiltrated the party.  There was no way you could have let it go.”

Araloth: “And it was imitating a Drow, so you know.  It should be killed anyway.”

Ramond: “Who have the imitated before?  The Black Spider knows we are coming.  How does it know?  We can’t believe those goblins we let go have run all the way to him, after the terror we put in to them.  Something else is going on here

Araloth: “Would Detect Evil pick them up?  Is there a way of detecting them?”

Karson: “We don’t know”

Talindra: “Let’s not forget that that thing was trying to escape with the information we needed, and tried to end the life of our employer whilst he was unconscious and bound.  Ending it was a good thing.  But, the treatment it received up to that point, I can agree with you.  I can understand your point.  If you want, I’m sure all of us here will help point out if you seem to be straying down that path again.”

Ramond: “I think that is important.  Torture is not to be condoned and it will absolutely not happen again.  What happens when we capture enemies, well, I will need to think on it more.  Thank you.”  Ramond then took a big swig of his brandy.

Karson: “Make what amends you need with your god when we get back to town, but for now it’s time for us to get some sleep.” And with that they all drifted off to sleep, or take there turns in the watch on this rain soaked night.

(DM: When they rested everyone levelled up.  They are now level 4.  Despite me warning them this would happen a week ago, no one was prepared for this and two players are going to level up between sessions)

As they awoke the next morning they discovered the rain had not eased off.  They sky was black with storm clouds and all was dark.  Their tents and wagon had sunk a few inches in to the mud.  The fire was out and refused to light up again.  Damp and cold, everyone had breakfast and headed out through the woods towards town.  However the magic of Neverwinter Woods got the better of their navigator (DM: Natural 1 on survival and exactly when I needed it!  Thank you, Dice Gods!) , and as the rain turned to hail, stinging their flesh, they found themselves many miles off course and lost deeper within the woods.  With the hail seemingly getting worse, they decided to find a suitable spot to set up camp again and wait it out.  They found an area of the woods where the trees seemed to thin out a bit and went there to camp, but found a path, which lead up towards an old isolated house the wood seemed to be encroaching on.  They parked the horse under a large tree to provide it what shelter they could from the growing hail (DM: I was warning them that if they stayed outside much longer they were going to start taking damage as the hail stones were getting bigger.  Thorovir couldn’t make it this week).  Thorovir stayed with Gundren and the horse for now while the others approached the front door.

DM: SPOILER ALERT!: From this point we are entering the standalone DMs Guild module, “The Haunt”.  If you think you might ever want to play through this, you should probably skip my next session or two.  One of my players has been asking after Curse of Strahd next and always used to ask about Ravenloft back in the day so I thought I’d try a short horror module to see if I can work well with it and see how everyone feels about it.  The Haunt is supposed to be good so I’ve inserted it here and done my best to work it in to events.  I even started mentioning aspects of it a few sessions back.  We will see if they took notes or not.

Melandrach used the heavy iron knocker and as they waited for a response, a pair of crystal blue eyes could be seen for a moment through the dirty old tinted window beside the door.   There was no response.  He knocked again, and Talindra used Minor Illusion to call out a hello just inside the door.  With the hail hurting, and patience wearing thin, the party started looking for other ways out of the rain; window, other doors, the 10 foot wall behind them (DM: They party kept saying they can do a standing jump over a 10 foot wall and wouldn’t even need to climb.  Thanks, D&D.  What were you thinking?).  Behind them they heard a click, and a slow creak as the door slowly swung open, seemingly by itself.

As they stepped out of the hail they found themselves in a large open foyer area with a demonic looking statue to either side of them.  As they shook themselves dry, Ramond had Talindra cast Light on his Greatsword, and moved to peek in to the next room.  As he stepped past one of the statues, they both started to move and went for an attack.  The group found themselves engaged by two Gargoyles, and without a full set of magic weapons they took longer to defeat than they should have.

DM: With the Gargoyles dispatched and the clock running late, we decided to call it a night here.  It’s New Year’s weekend next session.  I’ve no idea how many players I’ll have.  I’ve got 4 yesses so far but we will see.  There were originally only 4 players for this Christmas session, but I ended up with 7 for most of it.