Aboleth Group - "That's a Bloody Mary!" - LMOP Session 9
7th Aug 2019, 7:30 – 11:15pm
In-game timeline: Start of session, day 8. End of session, day 9. We resume our tale with our “Heroes” back in the town of Phandalin, learning new skills and arguing over loot. After spending considerable time only a couple of days previously having a heated debate whether Derrick should give a large part of his inheritance from his own family’s meagre possessions to the ‘group loot’ of the party, Mallorn’s admission that he was only giving half of the money that he found on an unknown, dead elf in Thundertree to the party was, surprisingly, met with gratitude. Derrick felt aggrieved.
Mallorn decided to use his find familiar spell to call up a new friend. A spider. Who initially was definitely NOT called Geoff. However, since everyone else was calling him Geoff anyway, the name seemed to stick. Geoff the spider became a member of the group.
Inspired at having a new, named, member of the group, Pruni and Derrick decided to go about naming their weapons. And so we now have Bertie the hand axe (a bonded weapon to Derrick), and Derrick’s trusty, but regularly unable to hit anything, great axe was christened Mary, and was also bonded to Derrick. Pruni’s shortsword got a partner, another shortsword, initially named Bert and Ernie, but later re-christened Zippy and George.
Having stocked up on a few essentials, though still only having a single healing potion between them, the party head out towards where they think the secret entrance to the Redbrand hideout is located, pretending to be heading towards Qelline’s farm initially.
Hunting for the entrance in the woods on the slopes leading up to Tresendar Manor, Pruni, whilst sneaking ahead of the others, does spot the entrance, but sees it is guarded by a bugbear wearing a red cloak, and the bugbear seemed to be looking straight at Pruni! Thinking quickly, Pruni pretended to not have seen the bugbear, and went about picking berries, then sauntered back to the group to tell them what she saw.
A rare period of battle planning followed, and it was surprisingly quickly agreed that Pruni would have Mallorn’s invisibility cast on her, and she could sneak up on the bugbear and hopefully take him down with her new assassinate ability. Esme cast aid on the other three members of the group, in case fighting should ensue, and Mallorn buffed himself up with mage armour.
Pruni managed to creep up on the bugbear, who they later discovered was called Giles, and launched an attack. Unfortunately Giles was quick off the mark, so Pruni didn’t get the auto-crit ability of assassinate, but did get her newly-improved sneak attack in, causing a good amount of damage with her first hit, and deciding to stick around to get a second hit in, which also made contact. Despite two good hits, the bugbear was still standing, even after Esme also managed to hit him with a sacred flame from a distance, and the bugbear launched a vicious attack on Pruni, doing considerable damage. Unfortunately the whole party then missed with their attacks, Pruni deciding to run away after her miss. The bugbear chased her, unsurprisingly managed to catch up with the short-legged one, and hit her again with his massive morningstar – Pruni, for the first time, fell unconscious. Another complete round of misses on the bugbear from the rest of the group, and Pruni bled out more, getting closer to death. Giles turned his attention to Derrick, scored a hit and a hefty wound to the fighter. Whilst Pruni continued to move closer to death with a second failed death save, Derrick swung Mary the great axe and cleaved Giles almost in two. “It’s a bloody Mary” was the Schwarzenegger-style one-liner from Mallorn, as Esme quickly ran over to Pruni and cast cure wounds to bring her back to consciousness.
Having become very battered and bruised from their first fight with a single opponent, and having used a decent number of their spells just to survive the encounter, the party decided to press on into the hideout regardless.
Sending Geoff on ahead, with Mallorn seeing through Geoff’s eyes, they ascertain that the tunnel goes on for a good 100’ without any obvious enemies. The group decide to wear the red cloaks they had ‘obtained’ from various Redbrands so far, and they enter the dark tunnel. As Mallorn struts his stuff up front like John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever, hoping he will be “Staying Alive” (see what I did there?), the darkness closed in around them and strange sounds and mysterious whispering voices were heard all around. Mallorn’s strutting became slightly less bold as they pushed on.
Emerging into a large natural cavern, split down the middle by a chasm, the whispering noises get louder, and the group is somewhat freaked out by what they are hearing in their heads. Not wanting to stay here long, the group decide to move quickly across the chasm by the nearby bridge, and head to an exit they can see on the other side, ignoring the exit right next to them for some reason. Still spooked by the continued voices in their heads, no one bothers to check for traps (or in fact, check for anything) and as soon as Esme is half way across, the bridge gives way and she falls. Derrick manages to jump back just in time, but Esme can’t grab hold of anything and she falls to the bottom of the 20’ deep chasm, taking some impact damage in the process.
Before climbing back out, she looks around and seems to see a pile of something further up in the bottom of the chasm. Ignoring the increasingly spooky voices for now, Mallorn zones into Geoff’s vision and sent him into the chasm, only to find a pile of bodies, in a relatively low state of decay, though some with limbs missing. Deciding this was not what they came her for, at least for now, and being increasingly freaked out by the voices in their head, especially Esme, who seemed to have heard something quite disturbing, the group gather again to discuss next steps. No, they don’t actually DO anything, they gather to discuss it.
Derrick suddenly also seems to hear something that scares him, and he decides to run down the tunnel closest to them and kick down a door that Geoff had previously scouted out for them. Esme just about manages to stop him in time, and convince him that rushing into an unknown room, whilst they are in a state of poor health, may not be a great idea. Instead, they send Geoff in, who manages to find a suitable sized crack in the doorway, and he sees a group of four Redbrand humans playing some form of gambling game at a table.
Now that the whisperings in their head have died down, since leaving the cavern, the group plan a little. Derrick volunteers to head into the Redbrand room to pretend he is a new recruit, and maybe get some information from them. What could possibly go wrong?
Esme takes the lead in communicating with the creature, which seems to be able to read their thoughts. It calls itself Ishtar, and seems to be continually hungry, though isn’t overly impressed with the bodies in the chasm which, it appears, Glasstaff gives to Ishtar to keep him friendly to Redbrands. While Esme is trying to find out what Ishtar wants, and what Ishtar knows, Mallorn gets bored and thinks about just killing Ishtar.
Before Mallorn can act, Ishtar turns to Mallorn and stares at him – his one eye seems to burn into Mallorn’s flesh and some of Mallorn’s skin rots and falls away from his body, leaving horrible open wounds. Resisting the urge to engage in battle, Esme smoothes the waters and offers some ration packs, which Ishtar starts eating, bags and all.
Thinking that they won’t get a lot more information out of Ishtar, only that he lives here and Glasstaff keeps him sweet by providing him with food, albeit not very nice food, the group decide they would like to just continue on and get past him. Derrick treats Ishtar like a dog, and throws a food parcel over the other side of the chasm, and Ishtar just looks at Derrick with a certain degree of contempt. When Derrick then considers throwing a javelin at him, Ishtar directs his full gaze at Derrick – Derrick feels a burning sensation in his skin, but manages to throw off the feeling with no damage taken.
Esme once again calms the situation and leaves more food for Ishtar, who gets out of their way and disappears into the shadows, allowing them to continue their journey, though not before telling the group that Derrick may not be a true fighter, is a cheat, and betrays his friends.
And so we leave our “Heroes”, standing before a dead end in a tunnel, leaving behind two groups of Redbrands, and the mysterious Ishtar, low on spells and some low on health, but pressing on regardless, relying on their cunning and guile to make it through the hideout alive. Oh dear.
Having stocked up on a few essentials, though still only having a single healing potion between them, the party head out towards where they think the secret entrance to the Redbrand hideout is located, pretending to be heading towards Qelline’s farm initially.
Hunting for the entrance in the woods on the slopes leading up to Tresendar Manor, Pruni, whilst sneaking ahead of the others, does spot the entrance, but sees it is guarded by a bugbear wearing a red cloak, and the bugbear seemed to be looking straight at Pruni! Thinking quickly, Pruni pretended to not have seen the bugbear, and went about picking berries, then sauntered back to the group to tell them what she saw.
A rare period of battle planning followed, and it was surprisingly quickly agreed that Pruni would have Mallorn’s invisibility cast on her, and she could sneak up on the bugbear and hopefully take him down with her new assassinate ability. Esme cast aid on the other three members of the group, in case fighting should ensue, and Mallorn buffed himself up with mage armour.
Pruni managed to creep up on the bugbear, who they later discovered was called Giles, and launched an attack. Unfortunately Giles was quick off the mark, so Pruni didn’t get the auto-crit ability of assassinate, but did get her newly-improved sneak attack in, causing a good amount of damage with her first hit, and deciding to stick around to get a second hit in, which also made contact. Despite two good hits, the bugbear was still standing, even after Esme also managed to hit him with a sacred flame from a distance, and the bugbear launched a vicious attack on Pruni, doing considerable damage. Unfortunately the whole party then missed with their attacks, Pruni deciding to run away after her miss. The bugbear chased her, unsurprisingly managed to catch up with the short-legged one, and hit her again with his massive morningstar – Pruni, for the first time, fell unconscious. Another complete round of misses on the bugbear from the rest of the group, and Pruni bled out more, getting closer to death. Giles turned his attention to Derrick, scored a hit and a hefty wound to the fighter. Whilst Pruni continued to move closer to death with a second failed death save, Derrick swung Mary the great axe and cleaved Giles almost in two. “It’s a bloody Mary” was the Schwarzenegger-style one-liner from Mallorn, as Esme quickly ran over to Pruni and cast cure wounds to bring her back to consciousness.
Having become very battered and bruised from their first fight with a single opponent, and having used a decent number of their spells just to survive the encounter, the party decided to press on into the hideout regardless.
Sending Geoff on ahead, with Mallorn seeing through Geoff’s eyes, they ascertain that the tunnel goes on for a good 100’ without any obvious enemies. The group decide to wear the red cloaks they had ‘obtained’ from various Redbrands so far, and they enter the dark tunnel. As Mallorn struts his stuff up front like John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever, hoping he will be “Staying Alive” (see what I did there?), the darkness closed in around them and strange sounds and mysterious whispering voices were heard all around. Mallorn’s strutting became slightly less bold as they pushed on.
Emerging into a large natural cavern, split down the middle by a chasm, the whispering noises get louder, and the group is somewhat freaked out by what they are hearing in their heads. Not wanting to stay here long, the group decide to move quickly across the chasm by the nearby bridge, and head to an exit they can see on the other side, ignoring the exit right next to them for some reason. Still spooked by the continued voices in their heads, no one bothers to check for traps (or in fact, check for anything) and as soon as Esme is half way across, the bridge gives way and she falls. Derrick manages to jump back just in time, but Esme can’t grab hold of anything and she falls to the bottom of the 20’ deep chasm, taking some impact damage in the process.
Before climbing back out, she looks around and seems to see a pile of something further up in the bottom of the chasm. Ignoring the increasingly spooky voices for now, Mallorn zones into Geoff’s vision and sent him into the chasm, only to find a pile of bodies, in a relatively low state of decay, though some with limbs missing. Deciding this was not what they came her for, at least for now, and being increasingly freaked out by the voices in their head, especially Esme, who seemed to have heard something quite disturbing, the group gather again to discuss next steps. No, they don’t actually DO anything, they gather to discuss it.
Derrick suddenly also seems to hear something that scares him, and he decides to run down the tunnel closest to them and kick down a door that Geoff had previously scouted out for them. Esme just about manages to stop him in time, and convince him that rushing into an unknown room, whilst they are in a state of poor health, may not be a great idea. Instead, they send Geoff in, who manages to find a suitable sized crack in the doorway, and he sees a group of four Redbrand humans playing some form of gambling game at a table.
Now that the whisperings in their head have died down, since leaving the cavern, the group plan a little. Derrick volunteers to head into the Redbrand room to pretend he is a new recruit, and maybe get some information from them. What could possibly go wrong?
Well, the plan worked. In an inspired period of deceiving and persuading, Derrick does seem to manage to convince the group that he is a ‘bungling’ new recruit, who doesn’t know his way around, and has been sent to fetch one of the prisoners. His deception seems to be solidified by his willingness to take part in the gambling game, which he manages to win – not only getting some basic information about the layout of the hideout, but winning 5gp in the process! Result!
Flushed with success, Derrick heads back out to where the rest of the group are hiding, and, before heading back into the whispering cave to find their way to the prisoners, they send Geoff into the lower room – he manages to find a way in again – and see it contains not only three red-cloaked bugbears - later dubbed “Rod, Jane and Freddy” – but also a downtrodden goblin who Mallorn recognises as the one and only Pob – who they captured and then set free outside the goblin cave over a week ago. Pob spots Geoff in the room and quickly rushes to get rid of the spider, but Geoff manages to escape before Pob can reach him.
Resisting Esme’s wish to rush in a rescue Pob (who they were happy to almost kill not so long ago), the party head back into the cavern to once again be besieged by whisperings in their head and go north to find the other bridge across the cavern. Finding a room off of the main cavern, they decide to stop and search the barrels and crates there, finding nothing of value, and Mallorn once again zones into Geoff to check out the eastern side of the cavern room.
With all this weird behaviour of searching crates, going into trances etc, the whisperings get louder and more suspicious. The party start to think that whatever is making these whisperings is starting to suspect they are not actually Redbrands despite their complex and detailed disguises of wearing red cloaks. When both Mallorn and Pruni seem to hear things in their head that surprise and concern them, they abandon their searching of the small store room and head south, but are stopped in their tracks when they catch sight of a weird, gangly, one-eyed creature that stares at them from the shadows.
Flushed with success, Derrick heads back out to where the rest of the group are hiding, and, before heading back into the whispering cave to find their way to the prisoners, they send Geoff into the lower room – he manages to find a way in again – and see it contains not only three red-cloaked bugbears - later dubbed “Rod, Jane and Freddy” – but also a downtrodden goblin who Mallorn recognises as the one and only Pob – who they captured and then set free outside the goblin cave over a week ago. Pob spots Geoff in the room and quickly rushes to get rid of the spider, but Geoff manages to escape before Pob can reach him.
Resisting Esme’s wish to rush in a rescue Pob (who they were happy to almost kill not so long ago), the party head back into the cavern to once again be besieged by whisperings in their head and go north to find the other bridge across the cavern. Finding a room off of the main cavern, they decide to stop and search the barrels and crates there, finding nothing of value, and Mallorn once again zones into Geoff to check out the eastern side of the cavern room.
With all this weird behaviour of searching crates, going into trances etc, the whisperings get louder and more suspicious. The party start to think that whatever is making these whisperings is starting to suspect they are not actually Redbrands despite their complex and detailed disguises of wearing red cloaks. When both Mallorn and Pruni seem to hear things in their head that surprise and concern them, they abandon their searching of the small store room and head south, but are stopped in their tracks when they catch sight of a weird, gangly, one-eyed creature that stares at them from the shadows.
Esme takes the lead in communicating with the creature, which seems to be able to read their thoughts. It calls itself Ishtar, and seems to be continually hungry, though isn’t overly impressed with the bodies in the chasm which, it appears, Glasstaff gives to Ishtar to keep him friendly to Redbrands. While Esme is trying to find out what Ishtar wants, and what Ishtar knows, Mallorn gets bored and thinks about just killing Ishtar.
Before Mallorn can act, Ishtar turns to Mallorn and stares at him – his one eye seems to burn into Mallorn’s flesh and some of Mallorn’s skin rots and falls away from his body, leaving horrible open wounds. Resisting the urge to engage in battle, Esme smoothes the waters and offers some ration packs, which Ishtar starts eating, bags and all.
Thinking that they won’t get a lot more information out of Ishtar, only that he lives here and Glasstaff keeps him sweet by providing him with food, albeit not very nice food, the group decide they would like to just continue on and get past him. Derrick treats Ishtar like a dog, and throws a food parcel over the other side of the chasm, and Ishtar just looks at Derrick with a certain degree of contempt. When Derrick then considers throwing a javelin at him, Ishtar directs his full gaze at Derrick – Derrick feels a burning sensation in his skin, but manages to throw off the feeling with no damage taken.
Esme once again calms the situation and leaves more food for Ishtar, who gets out of their way and disappears into the shadows, allowing them to continue their journey, though not before telling the group that Derrick may not be a true fighter, is a cheat, and betrays his friends.
And so we leave our “Heroes”, standing before a dead end in a tunnel, leaving behind two groups of Redbrands, and the mysterious Ishtar, low on spells and some low on health, but pressing on regardless, relying on their cunning and guile to make it through the hideout alive. Oh dear.