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

Gerry, in the uHH you said you thought I’d already had a Golden Button for this project.  I haven’t.  Do with that information what you will….

No Melandrach this week so his character is busy dealing with laughing fits and is keeping away from the party while he does so.  Everyone else turned up though, even if that was an hour late in some cases.  Grrr!

They headed towards the last unopened door in the sub-basement and explained the plan to Araloth, who they had pick the lock and open the door.  Once he opened it he shouted out that he could see enemies inside and Talindra cast Web over the doorway and in to the room with her readied action.  Inside the room there were about a dozen people in loose fitting straitjackets with their hands unavailable (DM: Maniacs according to the module).  Their hair was wild, they were filthy, and they had no shoes on.  Towards the back of the room was another nurse, stood still.  When the door opened all every Maniac eye in the room snapped to attention on Araloth, before he backed out of the way of the incoming web.  They then executed their plan masterfully.  As the Maniacs struggled with the web everyone held back and only attacked what they could reach without going in to the room.  One Maniac made it as far as attacking Thorivor once.  He threw himself at him and managed to hook his arm loop around him so he could hang on.  He then proceeded to bite him until Talindra pumped two Eldritch Blasts in to it.  With the Maniacs all dead, the web dropped and they pelted the Nurse with ranged attacks and readied attacks when she drew near.  She didn’t get an attack in. (DM: It’s taken 44 sessions but they’ve finally come up with an excellent plan and executed it properly.  Let’s hope that doesn’t happen again.  I am regretting giving them that Spider Staff a little)

With the room cleared, they had a look around inside.  What furniture had been in here had been mostly destroyed and the parts were scattered around this filthy room.  Amongst the dirt Karson caught a glimpse of a corner of paper with some crayon on it.  He called over Ramond who pulled it free, shook the dirt off and carefully looked at it, before spacing out and going limp briefly.

His vision began to blur and everything felt both immediate and far away as he become aware of a horrific wailing, like the pained cries of childbirth. As he looked around, his surroundings began crumbling to ash, the ashes were pulled up into the sky and revealed Carol Anne strapped to a bed in the Sanitarium, her crystal blue eyes wide in pain.  A nurse stood on either side of her, shoving various medical implements and arcane devices into her arms, legs, and chest.  Gertrude stepped up to the foot of the bed, carrying the lifeless and limp Evil Doll.

“Don’t struggle, Carol Anne,” Gertrude whispered. “This is for the best. You like to play, yes? This will let us play together forever! Don’t you want to play with us… forever?”

As she finished the last sentence, Gertrude’s attractive face melted away, revealing her true form, that of a twisted hag.

Carol Anne’s face turned motionless as she stopped struggling.

“Now you can play forever … in your new body” the hag cackled.

The doll in Gertrude’s arms slowly began to move as its head swivelled around to look directly at Ramond with cold crystal blue eyes. A murderous and evil grin adorned her face as she began to sing a haunting lullaby before Raymond’s vision blurred and filled with a blood-red light, rendering him blinded temporarily, before his sight returned to normal and he find yourself back in the room with his allies.

The party discussed this and the other visions and felt like they had the whole story now.  Carol Anne Montarthas is the Evil Doll, although they’ve no clue how that information might be useful.  While Ramond regained his composure, Karson went to check out the previous Nurses room to make sure all was still quite.  As he wandered in to the corridor he noticed the stars had changed.  The stairs had flattened, becoming a very steep ramp. Ectoplasm and blood were flowing down the ramp, pooling on the floor.

He went back in to the room and told the others.  They had a chat about how to proceed, given the hospital appeared to be changing.  They needed to go back upstairs, but couldn’t guarantee anything was safe up there anymore.  Everyone was running low on resources and exhausted, even though it was only nearing 4pm.  They could go upstairs and find any more drawings in the areas they didn’t search and then rest to recover after but risk facing a fight they aren’t ready for, or sleep first but then not be at full strength when they deal with whatever force is behind events.

Reidoth summoned his familiar as an owl and had her fly up the stairs.  He has not been upstairs yet so doesn’t know what to expect.  He looked through the owl’s eyes and relayed everything to the others.  The blood and slime appeared to be oozing out of the flagstone sat the top of the stairs but didn’t spread much further.  The room with the 6 beds that had the limbless zombie-thing in it remained unchanged.  The corridor towards the main entrance was a different story though.  Thick blood was seeping out of the walls and soaked the floor.  The walls seemed to have a slow rhythmic pulse to them too, and as Reidoth looked on he found his breathing synced up with this pulse, as if the walls were breathing too.  It was very disturbing, but his resolve held.  He did not send the owl down that was but through the other side door through the room with the baths and in to the room where the mutant baby things had attacked.  They were as they’d been left.  He had the owl hop down through the hole in the floor to look at himself and the others.

It’s at this point that Araloth remembered he was wearing Boots of Spider Climbing and decided he was going to walk up the walls and along the ceiling to the hole and try and pass a rope through.  He was a little careless, and the damage was less evident on this side.  He put his full weight on the rotten part of the ceiling and with nothing to grab on to, fell, taking damage and widening the hole above.

The party decided to rest the night in the Nurses room.  They had a restless night and woke up a little after midnight.  With no means to forage, they were dependant on their rations and water skins, and some Goodberries from Karson for their breakfast.  Araloth ran in to a problem here.  He’d emptied out his waterskin and filled it with rusty water yesterday.  He had nothing to drink and no one had a spare waterskin.  After some discussion, Reidoth came up with a plan and said he’d take care of him later.  Whole everyone else ate some breakfast and got ready for the day, Araloth went out to the stairs.  Using his Slippers he walked up the walls and put a few pitons in to the walls and fed a rope through so everyone else could pull themselves up.  When they were ready Karson was the one brave enough to go first.  The blood and slime soaked up to his ankles as he climbed up the slope, but with the rope in place he made it up fine.  Everyone else followed after and now everyone has gore soaked in to their shoes and socks and is leaving bloody footprints.  Karson lead the search as they went through each room, looking for anything they’d missed.  Their original plan was to clear the place and then do the looting and investigating later, and later has arrived.  They avoided the bloody corridor and checked everyone this side of it first.  They didn’t find new, although most of this was new to Karson, Bilba, and Reidoth as they had been missing when the party came here last.  In the evil mutant baby room, Araloth noticed that there was a body missing.  The first baby, the one that had screamed calling the others, was no longer there.  Reidoth ritually cast Purify Water on the copper bath and Araloth filled his waterskin (DM: And I assume everyone else topped up theirs although no one said it.  People gonna get thirsty soon otherwise!)  They then opened the door from the bath room in to the newly bloody corridor.  As they stepped out, half the party freaked out and had full blown panic attacks.  This was too much for them.  Talindra, who was looking a little tired and clammy this morning, burst out laughing and just stood there in the blood until she could bring herself to move again. Melandrach had a case of the chuckles but kept it together enough to back out of the hallway.  They all backed up in to the bath room, and after about a minute they regained their composure and were ready to face the horror.

DM: It was about 11.30pm so we ended it there, ankle deep in thick blood.