Aboleth Group - Cover Your Groin! - LMOP Session 4

29^th May 2019, 7:30 – 10:30pm

In-game timeline: Start of session, day 3. End of session, day 5.

Our “Heroes” are now level 2, and, confident and positive - having received more health and new powers, they stride off to talk to Halia, the owner of the Miner’s Exchange. Halia, a late middle aged human female who looks like she doesn’t suffer fools, seems to know who they are and had possibly even been expecting them. Derrick was pushed to the front to initiate the conversation. That has worked so well for the group so far.

Unsurprisingly Derrick tries to hit on Halia. When that seems to fail, badly, the rest of the group step in to actually try to get some information. They discover that Halia is pretty tough, and she thinks that is why the Redbrands haven’t hassled her yet, but suspects that it is only a matter of time before they send the heavies round, and she would like it if their boss, someone by the name of Glasstaff, was taken out. If the party manage to do this, and bring Halia any correspondence, notes etc from wherever Glasstaff’s quarters are, Halia did mention that a reward may be on offer. The group were a little concerned about her possible motives, but seemed to accept the possible task at face value. Halia had no idea who Glassstaff was, but noted that the Redbrands seemed to be based at the Tresendar Manor.

They asked about Iarno, who Halia confirmed seemed to be doing an ok job of setting up the Redbrands originally as a town guard, before he disappeared, and the Redbrands seemed to turn ‘bad’ after that. She also thought that the Townmaster, Harbin, was not really doing his job very well.

Somewhat fed up with Derrick’s rather blatant attempts to chat her up, Halia agreed to meet him in the Sleeping Giant tap house in an hour, provided he turned up unclothed and unarmed. The date never happened – we’ll never know if she turned up or not.

Heading to the Sleeping Giant tap house, to try to take a peek on whether there were any Redbrands about, the group discovered an out of the way shop, Maude’s Milliners. It turned out that Maude was a kindly, but rather slow, old lady, who ran a shop that looked like it hadn’t seen business for a long while. Possibly not surprising as a hat shop in a mining town. Derrick gave her the runaround, and she ended up having to head to the back of the shop a number of times, each time taking a long while, to fetch different hats for him to try. He settled initially on a tall, blue, wizards hat, haggling down her already meagre price, and complemented it with a jaunty lincoln green hat, complete with pheasant’s feather. Mallorn took the wizard’s hat off his hands (it matched his current outfit of leather jerkin and cloth trousers in no way whatsoever), and the party paid a decent price for the jaunty hat, so in the end, everyone, including Maude, went away happy.

The party decided to enter the Sleeping Giant, which they knew had at least 4 Redbrands in, without Pruni, as they were worried she would be recognised. James had not managed to oil the door of this place before passing out from exhaustion the night before, so they entered very noisily, and the Redbrands immediately stood up and challenged them. Even without Pruni, the ruffians seemed to know who they were, and that they had been asking around town about the Redbrands. Negotiation was not really on the cards, and fighting soon broke out.

This was a tough fight, especially as the group started without Pruni. The ruffians were tougher than they looked, and it wasn’t long before Mallorn was almost dead (though not before using magic missile effectively), and Derrick not far away from death either. Pruni’s arrival was fortuitous, and her sneak attacks to the groin managed to take out two of them before they managed to do further damage. All the rest of the group managed to score hits too, even Derrick who finally, and with great fanfare, not only hit one of them, but also killed him, taking the ruffian’s head almost clean off with his great axe. Esme almost killed the last one, Roger, but settled on keeping him alive and questioning him. Her intimidation (along with Derrick mentioning that he wanted to kill him, and Mallorn conjuring up a big pointy finger to point in Roger's face) worked so well that they found out all about the Redbrand hideout at the Manor – it is in the cellar; Glasstaff is a man; bugbears are there too; there are maybe 15 or so Redbrands. However, when they spot a pool of warm, yellow liquid beneath poor Roger’s legs they realise that they have scared him so much that he was possibly telling them what he thought they wanted to hear, rather than the whole truth. He promised not to return to the Redbrands when they let him go.

Before resting, Mallorn had a go at casting a ritual spell – detect magic. The party sensibly decided against performing a magic ritual in the middle of the bar at the Stonehill Inn, and instead retired to their room. Unsurprisingly, both of the hats that they bought from a 98 year old Milliner in a mining town for a grand total of 11 silver pieces, were not at all magic. However, the gnomish gadget did show up as faintly magic.

After a short rest to regain some health, they wandered around town looking for a horse or two to hire. After previously spending a while discussing where to go next, and settling on a battle with Orcs at Wyvern Tor, after their ordeal at the hands of 4 ruffians they decided instead to avoid the more obvious battle, and head to Thundertree to find Reidoth the druid, who apparently knows where Cragmaw Castle is.

At this point, under no pressure whatsoever, Derrick cracks and reveals his entire backstory (or maybe it wasn’t his ENTIRE backstory....?). He is apparently not of noble birth at all (who’d have guessed it?), but instead comes from humble beginnings, originally in the town of Thundertree, and he’s keen to recover his late parents’ meagre (the rest of the party don’t believe they are “meagre” at all) keepsakes and heirlooms from their old house in the ruined town. There is mention of a dragon who has apparently settled in the town recently. The party starts to wonder if the Orcs may have been an easier bet after all.

They visit Daran, the old adventurer who had to stop when he took an arrow to the knee (though he doesn’t like to talk about that). He happily lends them his horse, and manages to get his neighbour to lend them a second one. So their journey to Thundertree is quicker and easier than it would otherwise have been.

We leave our “Heroes”, Derrick “Jaunty Hat” Trebuchet, Pruni “Groin Killer” Sackville, Esme “Scare ‘Em Till They Wee” Panklepot and Mallorn “Clash Of Styles” Elmsong, after they stopped for the night just outside the ruined town of Thundertree. An unnatural mist seems to be settled over the area of the town, obscuring what is within. A sign posted by the side of the road reads “DANGER! Plant monsters and zombies! Turn back now!”. Oh dear.