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

Araloth was a maybe this week so I kept thinking he could turn up mid-session, but he never did, so we just kinda ignore his existence this week.  Reidoth and Bilba had to back out at short notice too, so once again, they have no dedicated healer.

There are some effects that can happen that trigger mechanical and RP changes that I don’t want the players knowing about until any advance warning can’t affect their behaviour.  There are times I’m rolling saves for them and not telling them.  There are times I’m tracking effects and not telling them.  There are times I’m whispering individuals with partial information about what their character is aware of and asking them to RP it as they see fit and apply any rules without tipping off the others so they have to figure stuff out in character.  When the visions happen, I sent them and the pics to only the relevant player and asked them to not share the text, but feel free to relay it in their own words.  The character wouldn’t have it written down, after all.

With the Brown mould moved out of the way the party went back down to the sub-basement and met back up with Melandrach.  They discussed which way to go, reasoning the northern doors at the far end of the corridor likely opened in to the room Melandrach almost fell in to before.  They know this room contains lots of enemies so they chose to ignore it for now and focus on the open corridor ahead first.  Around the corner there appeared to be an oil stain on the floor.  The corner beyond that seemed to be getting darker still, despite night vision.  Melandrach and Ramond advanced cautiously towards the stain as the others gathered at the corner.  Ramond went to poke it with his spear.  As he reached out it rose up and started to take form and grow.  As it did so, its colour faded from oily black to a grey.  A short fight ensued as it tried to lash out with pseudopods and psychic attacks with little effect.  Melandrach attacked it with his longsword, which is now showing evidence of corrosion.  No other weapons show damage.

As the oil creature dissolved and evaporated, a single piece of folded paper appeared out of its remains.  Ramond unfolded it and looked at it.  The life appeared to leave him as his eyes went blank and his body went limp, but didn’t fall.  Melandrach went over, took the paper from his hand and asked him if he was OK, getting no answer right away.  After a few moments, Ramond appeared to wake up, but couldn’t see at first.  When he recovered he relayed what had happened:

His vision had blurred and everything felt both immediate and far away as he become aware of a horrific wailing, like the pained cries of childbirth. As he look around, his surroundings begin crumbling to ash, the ashes being pulled up into the sky and revealing Carol Anne, the girl from Montartha Manor who had been killed by the Evil Doll.  She was playing with the lifeless, limp doll in the main hall of Montarthas Manor. Hearing the sound of splashing water come from the second floor, Carol Anne picked up the doll and slowly crept up the stairs, towards the Guest Wash Room. As she crept toward the slightly ajar door, the only sounds were her tiny footfalls and her increasingly deep breathing.

When she reached the door, Carol Anne paused in fear, hugging the Evil Doll close for comfort. After a beat, she pushed the door open, revealing her mother, the woman from the delivery room, lying in a bloody bathtub with slashed wrists. Her eyes, now drained of life, coldly stare back at Ramond.

His vision had blurred and filled with a blood-red light, rendering him blinded temporarily, before his sight returned to normal and he found himself back in the room with his allies.  (DM: He took some psychic damage too)

No one else inspected the page, but Melandrach kept hold of it.

With the oil monster defeated and Ramond recovered, they carried on down the corridor.  Around this new corner everything grew darker.  Even Darkvision and magical light sources seemed to be affected, like something was sucking the light out of the room.  In the darkness they could see half a dozen cat sized maggots with human faces that seemed to be sliming their way over a prone figure.  They reacted to the new people and most of them hungrily started to inch their way towards the new food.  Once again, Ramond and Melandrach blocked the corridor and led the fight.  Before the maggots could get close, Melandrach blasted one with four Sunbolts, nearly killing it, and called out a battle cry.  This seemed to wake the prone figure at the back.  As it started to move and most of the Maggots got off of it, they recognised it as Karson.  He picked himself up slowly, a little confused, and between the group they killed the maggots in a couple of rounds, taking a some damage between them.  With everyone wounded and sore and no sign of their missing healer, they decided to retreat back to the ground floor room with the couches and take a short rest.  Besides, this corridor was making them feel uneasy.  The darkness seemed to be sucking their motivation along with the light.

They went upstairs and Talindra cast Leomund’s Tiny Hut to keep everyone safe.  Karson revealed he had no memory of what had happened to him since they last saw him.  They had a long chat about how to proceed and what they thought might be going on, referencing Montarthas manor.  They agreed that a greater presence must be in the place somewhere, that had yet to reveal itself and they needed to be prepared to deal with whatever appeared.  Melandrach produced the child’s drawing and had a look at it.  He had a similar experience to Ramonds, and they all agreed not to look at it again, instead of passing it around as they were about to.

With the rest over, they went back down to the area of darkness and headed towards the double doors at the end of the corridor.  Ramond tried to open them but they were locked.  Karson told him to stand aside, and two good swings from his magical axe, Hew, had the doors open.  Inside the room, it was immediately obvious this was once a beautiful chapel. Now, however, the room contained broken pews and shreds of rotten tapestries were scattered across the floor. At the southern end of the old chapel sat a broken altar. In front of the altar were shattered holy symbols and tools of divine ritual splayed out across the floor. Sat in the centre of the shattered altar was a badly beaten and bloodied humanoid winged creature.

The group held back in the doorway and Ramond approached.  The figure appeared to be breathing, but otherwise not aware of his surroundings.  Ramond cast Divine Sense, but it didn’t register anything beyond the latent background evil of this place.  No celestial presence, which it should have registered.  The angel turned to face him while Ramond processed this.  It reached out its hand slowly towards him.  The hand morphed it to a slick red cudgel and hit him.

Karson ran in to flank the false angel and laid in to it.  It lashed out at him, but then something red began to rise and bubble up through the pew near the door.  A big red slime like creature engulfed the pew and attacked Melandrach.  One swipe from a gloopy limb, hit hard and his response was to fall over maniacally laughing.  The creature also lashed out psychically, hurting him further, and then split itself in two, with its new self becoming a perfect replica of Melandrach.  The Angel did not appear to be taking any damage so Ramond moved over to attack the red blob, taking a free strike in the process.  Talindra took one look at what was going on and panicked.  She backed slowly away from the combat doing nothing, mumbling about how it was all hopeless and they needed to get out.  Everyone took their shots at the red blob, and it attacked Ramond, also cloning him.  The Angel hit at Karson and the Melandrach clone attacked Ramond too, having taken a few swing at the retreating Talindra.  Shortly after Ramond was able to Smite the blob to death, and its clones dissolved in to little red pools.

Melandrach and Talindra regained their composure and rejoined the group .  They were badly hurt so she summoned the Tiny Hut and they had a rest here.  While she was casting Karson had a good look around the room.  The holy symbols appeared to have been broken intentionally and seemed to relate to Ilmater.  The other doors would lead back to near the stairs.  They were broken though.  They had fallen on their hinges and were likely wedged in place, but had created a small gap at their bottom through which someone could crawl.  They had a short rest and discussed all the information they had.  They decided that something bad had happened to the Montarthas family, and that this had once been a hospital and that someone had abused it to cause as much pain and suffering as possible.  They also decided that they wanted to deal with the room Melandrach almost fell in to next and expected a big fight.  Talindra was creeped out by the stationary nurse figure in there and expected bad things to come.

DM: They reasoned it’d be a long fight next and we were looking at the clock.  It wasn’t too late just yet but it would be after a long fight so we ended things there.  Hopefully next week we’ll at least have out healer back.  They’ve used up all their hit dice for healing and what little they have left they’d rather save for bringing people back from death saves rather than combat healing.