Aboleth Group - The Intimidated Ox - LMOP Session 1
Aboleth Group – session 1 summary
In-game timeline: Start of session, day 0. End of session,
day 2.
Esme, Pruni, Derrick and Mallorn met each other in the back
of the Neverwinter Tavern, also being introduced to Gundren Rockseeker (“Rockseekers!”),
their employer for this simple escort mission, and a middle-aged, well-spoken
gent who introduced himself as Sildar Hallwinter. He looked to be quite handy
with the longsword that he carried. At least, he probably was in his day,
before he took an arrow to the knee.
Everyone has their own reasons to go to the small town of Phandalin, some 2-3 days travel away, and Gundren has offered to pay the group to escort him and his wagonload of goods to the town.
After a chat, which turned more into an interrogation, with Esme, everyone retired for the night, and gathered again the following morning for breakfast. Gundren appeared, looking quite flustered, and explained that he had just heard from his brothers and needed to head off quickly. He didn’t give many details, but agreed to meet everyone in Phandalin, and said that payment would be left with Elmar at Barthen’s Provisions in the town, and an initial night’s accommodation at Stonehill Inn would be paid for already. He and Sildar then sped off on a couple of horses, leaving the party to prepare the wagon, headed by two oxen, and head off slowly on the trail.
Derrick showed his animal handling skills by leaping on to
an ox, planning to ride up front in a manner more fitting with his noble station. He
promptly fell off, and only managed to avoid the scorn of the oxen by
intimidating them with his menacing manner and large greataxe. He didn’t manage
to avoid the scorn of the rest of the party in the same way, however.After an uneventful and somewhat boring first day on the road, everyone rested for the night before turning off of the High Road onto the Triboar Trail towards the town of Phandalin. The party was making good time, and was looking likely to reach Phandalin before the following evening.
Setting off the next morning, the group soon came to a
sudden halt, when Derrick “Ox-intimidator” Trebuchet spotted something lying in
the road ahead. His keen eyes also spotted something moving on whatever it was.
Pruni volunteered to take a closer look, hiding in the bushes around the road and approaching the obstruction. She spotted that the road block was a couple of horses, lying motionless, with a goblin atop one of them, seemingly hacking off chunks of horse meat and putting them into its satchel. Pruni also spotted some movement in the nearby bushes, but luckily she seemed to be well hidden herself and managed to return to the party without incident.
Scouting the other side of the road, she didn’t see anything else of note, and tried to see if she recognised the horses. Her keen animal knowledge told her that they were indeed....horses. Dead horses.
After much discussion, and some level of frustration from Derrick, who seemed keen to progress from his “ox-botherer” status, a vague consensus was reached that the two most intimidating people, Derrick and Esme, should march down the open road, brandishing their weapons, to see if the small, unthreatening goblin was up for negotiating, whilst Pruni and Mallorn flanked the poor fellow by hiding in the surrounding bushes. Esme unselfishly Blessed the other members of the party, excluding herself.
Pruni
and Mallorn managed to stay hidden, but unsurprisingly the goblin ran off at
the sight of Esme and Derrick. You were not completely surprised when two more
goblins appeared from the undergrowth at the side of the trail, but were a
little surprised when a fourth appeared on the opposite side of the road, and
all three of them attacked Derrick and Esme, one of them scoring a hit on
Derrick. All the goblins then tried to hide, but it turned out that three of
them were particularly rubbish at it.Their first battle ensued, and Mallorn managed to take two of the goblins out with his Burning Hands and Ray of Frost attacks, and Pruni managed to take another down with her shortbow. The fourth goblin fled, chased by Mallorn and Derrick, who by now was getting very frustrated that none of the others had witnessed any of his still-only-rumoured magnificent fighting skills. It didn’t help that soon after starting the chase, he tripped and fell, but luckily so did both Mallorn and the fleeing goblin.
Mallorn spotted the goblin dodge at some point, and tried to copy the dodge, which did help him not get caught in the snare trap that had been laid, though he did trigger the trap. Soon after, both Mallorn and Derrick fell again on the rough terrain, allowing the goblin to escape into the distance.
Returning back to the others, everyone investigated the
area, ascertaining that the horses were indeed the ones taken by Sildar and
Gundren the previous morning. There was no sign of either Sildar or Gundren,
though you did find the empty map case which Derrick recognised as being
carried by Gundren. Esme found signs that something had earlier been dragged
off down the trail that the goblin had escaped along earlier.
A decision was made to take a short rest, allowing Derrick to recover some health and Mallorn to recover a spell slot, before they hid the wagon and then set off along the trail after the goblin, in search of Gundren (no one seems to care much about poor old Sildar).
Despite
being super-careful, Esme didn’t manage to spot the pit trap that had been laid
further down the trail, but remarkably managed to acrobatically leap back as
the ground fell away, even though she was fully clad in mail armour and lugging
around a shield and warhammer. It was quite an impressive move, and prevented
her from falling into the deep pit. It did, however, make her quite jumpy after
that, as evidenced by her scaring a small, innocent bunny rabbit by making the
ground tremor beneath it. Just in case it was also a trap. It wasn’t.
Reaching the entrance to the cave, Pruni once again showed
great stealth skills and scouted out the area, spotting a couple more goblins
who were engrossed in a card game in a clearing behind trees. Hoping to flush
them out and prevent them running into the cave, a pincer movement was
designed, which, though didn’t come off exactly to plan, did work pretty well.
Mallorn, despite his lack of armour, piled in and used his shortsword to knock
one of the goblins unconscious, while the other fled into the trees, but, in an
uncharacteristically goblin way, failed to hide well, and allowed Derrick to
take a swing at him with his great axe. He missed. Again. Esme also missed with
her warhammer, and the goblin headed back for the cave, not realising that
Pruni and Mallorn were waiting near to the entrance. Unfortunately everyone missed
on their attacks, allowing the goblin to escape into the cave.The group set about interrogating the unconscious goblin, who was called Pob, with Mallorn trying his persuasive techniques whilst Esme and Derrick tried, but generally failed, to be intimidating nearby. With some good persuasion, Mallorn managed to get a few bits of information out of Pob.
You are not sure to what degree they are true:
- There are “many” goblins in the cave
-
There is more than one cave in there
-
Klarg seems to be their leader – he is a
bugbear, and Pob, and at least some of the other goblins, don’t like him very
much, but are scared of him
-
Klarg is somewhere off to the right in the caves
-
Someone higher up than Pob (you don’t think that
narrows it down much!) called Yeemik (pronounced “YEEEEmik”, remember), who is
also a goblin, would probably like you to get rid of Klarg, though Pob said you
need to talk to Yeemik to find out more.
-
A dwarf was brought to the cave, but has since
been taken somewhere else. Pob didn’t know where, but Klarg might know
-
There are (according to Pob) three wolves in the
area just off to the right, near the entrance – Snarl (who likes Pob), Grunt
(who doesn’t) and Fang (who you didn’t get more information on)
Pob managed to ‘buy’ his freedom by promising to tell you how to get past the wolves. As he ran off, away from the caves, he shouted that the wolves were chained up.
The party is now at the entrance to the cave system, debating whether, and how, to tackle it.