Aboleth Group - The Ditherers - LMOP Session 5
12th June
2019, 7:30 – 10:45pm
In-game timeline:
Start of session, day 5. End of session, day 5.
We find our “Heroes” outside the town of Thundertree, where
they are hoping to find a druid named Ride-On, Rudolf or Raider, or something
like that. How quickly they forget important information. The druid hopefully
will tell them where Cragmaw Castle is. But possibly only if they get his name
correct. Derrick would also like to recover his family’s “meagre possessions” –
by which the rest of the group thinks he means “treasure hoard”.
At this point the party begins to earn its new title, of
“The Ditherers”. They spend about half an hour discussing whether Mallorn
should cast his “Find Familiar” spell, with a view to getting something to
scout ahead in the town. Half an hour! They were tempted to create an octopus.
In the end, after much discussion, they decided against
casting it at this time. And so they pressed on, tying up their horses, which
had been given the names “Mrs Nibbly” and “Mrs February”. Completely ignoring
the names they already had when they borrowed them.
Being cautious of the rumoured zombies and plant monsters in
the town, the party crept into Thundertree and took a while to decide to look
round a corner. When they didn’t see anything, they took a while to decide to
approach the house which looked as if it had been ‘toughened up’ a little, and
was potentially occupied. After some discussion, they knocked quietly on the
door. So quietly, in fact, that no one heard them, so they knocked louder.
Reidoth (as that was his real name, not Rudolf) the druid
answered – an elderly, human male who tended to be a little distracted and was
keen on making tea – and, after finding out that they had come from Phandalin,
invited them in to his makeshift, temporary home.
The kindly gentleman offered them tea, which Derrick drank
and felt invigorated. The rest of the party only pretended to drink it, so
mistrusting they were of this gentle, friendly, old man. When, after much
discussion, the rest of the party did sip the tea, they found it had some minor
restorative properties. They were still unsure whether to trust Reidoth,
though. Quite mistrusting, this group.
Reidoth explained that he could indeed tell them where
Cragmaw Castle was, and could even explain a little about the background to the
Lost Mine of Phandelver. But he would like them to help him in a ritual first,
to rid the town of the zombies and plant monsters. The group of “heroes” were
keen to help him out, not least because all this “discussion” was draining and,
for Derrick at least, a fight would give some light relief. Reidoth explained
that all the creatures would need to be killed within a 4 hour period, while he
performed a ritual to prevent them from respawning. If this was done
successfully, they would not reappear and the town would be free of them.
Simple.
Reidoth then mentioned the minor inconvenience that to
perform the ritual he needed a bronze seal that he had created. Unfortunately
this was stolen a week or so ago by some Redbrands who had come to the town for
some reason. He saw them heading off to the tower and thinks they were going to
use his seal to maybe trade with the dragon that lived there. He didn’t see
them return. So the dragon is likely to have the seal. Yep, the dragon.
Undeterred (well, maybe a little deterred), the group was
still determined to help with the ritual, and recover the seal from the dragon.
They found out as much as possible about this particular dragon, and did at
least come away with the fact that trying to fight it would be A VERY BAD IDEA.
Setting out from Reidoth’s with a spring in their step and a
purpose in mind they came to an intersection in the road. They could go left,
on a clear path, but which went away from the tower. Or plough through the
trees, going cross country to the tower, or to the right – directly into a
large expanse of seemingly fresh cobwebs that criss-crossed the path in front
of them.
So what did our “Heroes” do? The same “Heroes” who, not 15
minutes previously had been too afraid to drink a cup of tea given to them by a
kindly old man? They ploughed straight into the cobwebs. Derrick, Mallorn and
Pruni managed to run through the webs without getting stuck. Just as Esme was
about to do the same, unsurprisingly the creators of the webs appeared – two rather
large (larger than any of the group, at any rate), dangerous looking, black spiders.
The battle was tough on the party. One of the spiders caught
Esme in its web and although she broke free the same turn, she was unable to
get a hit on the spider. The other spider took a fair bit of damage from
Derrick and Mallorn, but refused to go down, and managed to hit Derrick for a
lot of damage, injecting him with potent poison too, taking him to
near-unconsciousness. In the end Pruni stepped in and with another sneak attack
blow, she managed to take out the spider with a shortsword right in the
backside (as close to its guessed-at groin as she could manage) – emptying out
its insides all over the floor in a display of brutality that belied her small
stature, but which we are coming to expect from Pruni. As Derrick noted, “every
session there’s groin action”.
With one spider dispatched, they focussed on the other,
which was fighting Esme on the other side of the web. Before they could damage
it, it took a mighty bite out of Esme, and even her resistance to poison didn’t
help too much. She managed to damage the spider, as did the others, but in its
last attack it scored another bite on Esme and, for the first time for this
group, a party member fell unconscious and started to bleed out. With a
vengeful shout, Mallorn blasted it with his ray
of frost and it went down, a bolt of ice hitting it between its many eyes.
Pruni ran over to stop Esme from bleeding out, but managed
to get stuck in the web. Esme failed a death saving throw, getting nearer to
death. Derrick tried to run across too, and he made it, managing to stop the
bleeding. They then dragged Esme’s unconscious body back to Reidoth’s house,
which they had left mere minutes before.
Reidoth was surprised to see them again so soon, but
welcomed them in. He didn’t have any healing potions or spells, but managed to
restore Esme to consciousness with a restorative tea. The party sensibly
decided to have a short rest, allowing some restoration to take place to Esme
and Derrick before once again heading out. They are starting to realise the value
in keeping the only member of the party with healing spells as conscious as possible.
Especially when you have no healing potions. Or the value in not quaffing healing
potions as soon as you find them, which is what, in fact, they did a few days previously.
This time the party headed directly to the tower, walking
cross country, in case there were more spiders about. Our “Heroes” method of clearing
out a path of nasty monsters, and then taking a completely different route is certainly
an interesting one. However, they got to the tower without problems, but did
pass two fairly-long-dead giant spiders that seemed to have been savaged to
death, and found four dead Redbrands in the cottage adjoining the tower – three
of them had been viciously clawed/bitten to death. One looked untouched, but
was definitely dead (more ‘groin action’ with Derrick checking he wasn’t
playing dead by stamping on his groin. Nice.)
Just as the party were heading into the tower, the dragon’s
booming voice spoke to them, inviting them in to parley, which took them a little
by surprise. He made it clear that he
could kill them, easily, but preferred not to.... at least for now. The party, obviously
still a little shocked and not thinking straight, elected Derrick as their
spokesperson to dialogue with the dragon. A risky move, based on his past
success, or lack of it, talking with villagers in Phandalin.
But the move paid off. The discussion took a while, with the
large, green dragon creeping and crawling around his tower, trying to convince
the party that he means them no harm, and that they should leave their weapons
at the door and come in. Which they did. Surprisingly.
And so the entire party entered the dragon’s lair, unarmed,
and with only a very small, jade statue of a frog as a bargaining chip. You
would think that was not a good plan, but Derrick did a good job in grovelling,
and emphasising the lovely green colour of the frog, and even switching to the
dragon’s native tongue (draconic) during the negotiation. The dragon, somewhat astonishingly,
believed them when they offered a pitiful amount of ‘treasure’ in exchange,
claiming that that was all they had. (DM note – use a different dice next time
for the dragon’s insight checks!). The dragon had a small hoard of gold and
silver, plus some scrolls and a nice looking battleaxe, plus TWO bronze seals.
The party did not know which one Reidoth needed, so needed to bargain for both
of them. They also would have liked the scrolls, though they didn’t know what
was on them.
In the end, with some lucky/skilful persuasion and
deception, Derrick “Dragon Whisperer” Trebuchet managed to get just the two
bronze seals, in exchange for the jade frog, Derrick’s ‘jaunty’ hat (the dragon
liked its green colouring, and pheasant feather), a couple of crappy swords and
just 10gp. However, another part of the bargain was that the party agreed to
kill Reidoth the druid.
Bargain struck, seals obtained, the party withdrew from the
dragon’s lair, somehow still alive, and headed back to Reidoth to consider
their next move.
And so we leave our “Heroes” just about to re-enter
Reidoth’s house – the person they have just struck a dragon’s bargain to kill.