Aboleth Group - IOU My Clothes - LMOP Session 2

Aboleth Group – session 2 summary

24^th April 2019, 7:30 – 11:00pm

In-game timeline: Start of session, day 2. End of session, day 2.

The party stand at the entrance of the cave, discussing the best way to explore the cave system, which they know contains “many” goblins, some wolves and at least one bugbear, Klarg.

Fed up with the discussion, the unstealthy, fully armoured human-without-any-darkvision Derrick “Leeroy Jenkins” Trebuchet decides to wander up to the stone steps and see what is in the cave off to the right. Realising that he would not be able to see anything once he gets out of daylight, Esme decides to cast light. Not on a stick, or torch, or even Derrick’s weapon, but on Derrick himself. Mallorn completed Derrick’s ensemble by casting prestidigitation and caused an odd odour to emanate from Derrick.

And so it was that a smelly, glowing Derrick noisily entered the cave system, alone, to see what was around. He saw three wolves, as expected, chained to the wall, who, unsurprisingly, saw and smelt the glowing human and were pulling at the old, rusty chains to try to, well, eat him. Instead of retreating, Derrick decided to scout around the cave, avoiding the wolves, while the chains still held. He spotted what looked like a garbage chute at the end of the cave, but, in a strange show of uncharacteristic caution, decided not to immediately scramble up the garbage chute and instead returned to the rest of the group waiting outside.

Unfortunately, while they were discussing their next steps, one of the wolves broke free of its chains and ran out to attack. Pruni went first, but decided to see if the vicious, snarling, rampaging beast would ignore them and run away, which it may have done (actually, it almost certainly wouldn’t have done) but Mallorn hit it with a ray of frost anyway. The wolf tore a hole in Derrick’s chain mail and did some nasty damage. Derrick, in return, missed.

Mallorn managed to polish off that wolf (who was called Snarl, not that anyone stopped to ask its name), just as a second wolf appeared, but the party made short work of killing that one, Esme finishing him off with her Sacred Flame, having decided the wolves probably weren’t going to be friendly at that point. Derrick, fed up with missing with every swing of his axe, tried to hit one of the dead wolves. He managed to hit it this time. Derrick “Flogging a Dead Wolf” Trebuchet is back in action. Inspired by his killing-an-already-dead wolf action, Derrick managed to intimidate Mallorn into removing the odd odour spell. I’m not sure everyone noticed the difference.

Ignoring the last wolf, who was still pulling at his chains, the party wandered into the tunnel. Derrick was no longer glowing like an alien, nor smelling any worse than usual, but there were torches lit at the back of the party, and they were not in any way trying to be quiet or remain unseen. It was therefore no great surprise when they heard a goblin shout, followed by some loud, echoing banging sounds. Discovering a narrow, scree-filled path leading upwards, and then hearing the sound of rushing water, the party decide to leap out of the main tunnel, just in time to avoid the rushing mass of water that came downstream. Derrick “goes his own way” Trebuchet dived into the narrow tunnel, the others ran back to the wolf cave, just in time to see the last wolf break free from its chains. Esme had no hesitation in slaughtering it before it could even get an attack.

The party waited for the waters to die down, then wandered back in the tunnel, loudly, boldly, and with torches blazing. Unsurprisingly they heard another cry “Now!” and more banging. Rightly expecting another deluge to come rushing down the stream they all ran into the narrow passageway, avoiding the second torrent of water.

Derrick “Eventually Hit Something” Trebuchet didn’t even wait for a plan of action to be mooted this time, and crawled up the passageway, just managing to avoid sliding back down when the ground gave way. Reaching the top, he walked into the corridor to find 4 goblins with arrows trained on him. Funnily enough, he failed to surprise them.

The rest of the party, initially knowing nothing about this turn of events, tried to scramble up the passage, with Mallorn and Pruni making it up, but Esme sliding back down. Pruni continued on to help Derrick, or, more accurately, to persuade Derrick not to do anything stupid. Somehow, after much debate, which the goblins found quite humorous, despite not understanding the language, Pruni managed to persuade Derrick to surrender.

Mallorn tried to keep out of sight, but when a civilised and well spoken goblin voice addressed them all (in a variety of languages), and pointed out that he knew there were 4 of them, they eventually all made it up into the cave, to be confronted by about 6 goblins, an unconscious Sildar, and a well dressed (for a goblin) and very articulate goblin named Yeemik.

Much discussion ensued, with the party trying to convince Yeemik that they were in a position to bargain, but a deal was struck that if the party managed to kill Klarg, allowing Yeemik to take over the small tribe, AND leaving all of Klarg’s treasure for Yeemik, AND giving him 10gp for his trouble AND agreeing that Yeemik could have Mallorn’s “dress” afterwards (Mallorn managed to convince Yeemik that his robes were part of his magic, and he would need them to defeat Klarg), Yeemik agreed to spare their lives, and would allow them to take Sildar away too. Yeemik also mentioned that a dwarf was recently taken away, probably to Cragmaw Castle, where the main goblin tribe resides.

The deal was struck, an IOU written for Mallorn’s dress, and the party planned how to take out Klarg (and, it turns out, Ripper, his pet wolf. And probably one or two goblins loyal to Klarg). Derrick “Master of Ideas” Trebuchet had the brainwave to pretend they were captured by Yeemik, to try to surprise Klarg.

The plan was carried out, although instead of, when meeting Klarg, surprising him by jumping him straight away, they instead decided to chat to him for a while, before realising he wasn’t quite as sociable as Yeemik, and allowing him to decide to kill them anyway, losing their element of surprise.

The ensuing battle was a tough one, and their longest yet. Derrick “Is My Axe The Right Way Round?” Trebuchet missed on Klarg again, and Pruni took a fair bit of damage from Ripper, but got her own back when, after Esme had first weakened Klarg with Sacred Flame, managed to get a decent hit on him, with Derrick giving her the benefit of sneak attack, and brought him down. All the goblins managed to miss their targets, luckily for the party, since at least two of them were only one-hit away from death/unconsciousness. Ripper then faced the wrath of Derrick’s axe which, with the benefit of inspiration, got a very good hit on Ripper, almost killing him in one blow.... but not quite. Ripper didn’t last much longer though, and when one of the other goblins also fell in one hit, the remaining two goblins fled.

Noticing a bunch of crates, embossed with a blue lion logo, the party raided them, finding them filled with various weapons and pieces of armour, shields etc. About to start a fashion parade of various armour pieces, they hear some goblins heading their way, so focussed on the small chest that they also found. Pruni and Mallorn immediately neck the two potions of healing they find, as they were both almost dead, and they pocket the small amount of gold in the chest, leaving the large bag of silver. They also grab the small, jade statuette of a frog, and some brass, gnomish gadget thing, which looked intricate and clever, but there was no obvious use to it. They spotted Sildar’s sword and armour lying around, but had no time to pocket anything else before Yeemik appeared, with a contingent of goblins, and dragging a semi-conscious Sildar behind him.....