Aboleth Group - "Can't we just talk about this?" Session 17 LMOP

10^th Jan 2020, 7:45 – 12:00am

In-game timeline: Start of session, day 17 (1489DR Eleint 10). End of session, day 20 (1489DR Eleint 13).

We rejoin our “Heroes” basking in the glory of being returning heroes in Phandalin, now word has got around about their dealing with the Redbrand threat. There is some concern about bandits in surrounding areas finding a renewed interest in the town, now that it no longer has a resident ‘mini-mafia’ force, and Sildar is trying to round up some people to help become a neighbourhood-watch type group to counter the threat, though few people are willing or able to join. A new election is being proposed for Townmaster to replace Harbin. Derrick considers applying.

After visiting Daran at his orchard, scrounging more apples from him and ignoring his tales of derring-do once they find out he does not speak Gnomish, they decide to head out into the woods to find Cragmaw Castle.

After a fairly uneventful journey they arrived at the rough location of the castle. The group were surprised by a loud crashing through the trees and bushes and, after some of the usual dithering, decided to jump out of the way and hide. Unfortunately Derrick and Esme didn’t do so well at this, and ended up crashing and banging and generally running into each other and ended up still standing where they started. A stag ran into their path, saw them, and halted, before running off in another direction. Mallorn spotted some arrows sticking out of its rear end as it ran off and, expecting a hunting party to be following, the group tried to hide again… and once again failed.

Following the deer came two goblins, riding wolves, followed a little while later by two more goblins on foot. No one was really surprised, but as Derrick and Esme had readied attacks, they managed to get their attacks off first. Mallorn cast web at the initial group, managing to catch a wolf and a goblin in his webbing. This enabled the rest of the party to slowly pick off each of the combatants without them really getting much chance to do any real damage – except for the two following goblins who, seeing the spellcaster create a web before their eyes, avoided the sticky threads and took pot-shots at Mallorn, managing to do considerable damage before they were finally taken down.

After checking there was no one following, the group made their way to the castle and Pruni, somewhat reluctantly it has to be said, went scouting around the castle, keeping to the tree-line, to see what was occurring. She spotted nothing untoward, and no movement in the ruined castle, nor any other entrances. After the rest of the group decided there must be a second, or a secret, entrance (not quite sure why), they sent Pruni out again to “have a better look”. It worked this time, and Pruni spotted a possible side entrance to the castle on the south side.

Waiting until nightfall, Mallorn sent in Geoff the spider to scout the room immediately behind the arrow slits overlooking this side entrance, and he usefully spotted a room full of goblins, eating and drinking and paying scant attention to the arrow slits.

In the first of an evening untypically full of intelligent tactical decisions, the party waited until Mallorn-Geoff had confirmed no one was looking out of the arrow slits, and made their way to the side of the castle. Unfortunately at that moment one of the goblins spotted Geoff and threw a saucepan at him, managing to score a hit which unfortunately ended Geoff’s current residency on this plane. After a brief moment of mourning for poor Geoff, the group continued with their master plan.

Finding a locked door, Pruni deftly unlocked it with her thieves tools and Derrick readied himself to push it open. Thinking, correctly, that it may make a loud noise, Esme used Thaumaturgy to create a loud noise inside the room, which surprised, and confused, the goblins in there, but did manage to hide the sound of the door opening. The party, now acting like a well-oiled machine, entered the castle.

And found themselves in a dark room. The human and the Halfling struggled with the lack of light, but the group were reluctant to light a torch and pushed on, guiding the blind members slowly. Avoiding the room they knew was full of goblins, the approached another door instead, and Derrick, still blind, shoved it open in an act of recklessness that was strangely rare in this session. Inside the revealed room was thankfully some dim light from a burning brazier, so at least Derrick was able to see…. the two hobgoblins surprised by the appearance of a group of non-goblins at the door!

Quick-thinking Derrick (not used that phrase very often, I know) winged it (have definitely used that phrase a lot though!) and pretended they were sent to get the prisoner, by Iarno, and name-dropped the Black Spider too. One of the hobgoblins seemed to be taken in by this, and sent his mate, Jake, off to fetch Iarno, who it seemed was actually in the castle. Not wanting to be caught out in this way, Derrick distracted Jake by throwing one of Daran’s apples to him, and then launched a surprise attack on the hobgoblins.

The party waded in, and Mallorn, unusually quick off the mark, successfully hit Jake with a Ray of Frost, not only causing him damage, but also slowing him down, effectively stopping him from getting help. Pruni finished him off, and the group focussed on the leader, who was by now shouting for help, and laying into the party, managing to get a decent hit on Esme. With the rest of the group all missing their mark, Mallorn did all the work with this one and blasted him with a magic missile, and followed up with a further hit, to kill the hobgoblin, though not before the creature had made quite a racket shouting.

Expecting trouble from the room of goblins to the south, the party quickly headed north, towards where Jake was headed. As they entered the next area they were confronted by a wolf, and a bugbear, emerging from a room to further north, obviously alerted by the shouting. The wolf and the bugbear, who they later found out was actually King Grol, both got attacks in, Grol launching a particularly nasty javelin at Derrick whilst telling the group to drop their weapons and surrender. Derrick did so, and the rest of the group lowered their weapons, allowing Esme to step in with some negotiation and deception, and halting the fighting for a while. Esme claimed to be friends of Iarno and they are here on his request. Grol called out, and very quickly Iarno appeared from the same room Grol and his wolf had come from. Iarno denied knowing them and when Derrick told him his name, in fact realised that this was the group who invaded his Redbrand hideout, and told Grol he could just kill them. Oops. Grol told Iarno to run for help and resumed the attack.

Mallorn got in quickly with another good use of his web spell, making the entire area difficult to move in. Iarno managed to break free and run off west, whilst Derrick was caught in the we himself. Esme and Pruni take out the wolf between them with some ranged attacks, whilst Grol, unable to get past Derrick, retreats back into his room to escape the webbing. With Grol and the wolf out of the picture, and the web preventing them from heading after Grol, the group focus on trying to cut off Iarno’s escape – correctly guessing that he was heading round to the room of goblins, and managing to get to him before he got there.

Iarno blasted Derrick and Mallorn with a shatter spell, but the damage was not too severe, especially when Derrick absorbed some of the damage with his Absorb Elements reaction, and then, after Mallorn had hit, and slowed, Iarno with another Ray of Frost, Derrick smashed Iarno with his axe and imparted extra damage from his action surge, and his absorbed thunder damage, managing to kill Iarno before he could let of another spell or escape. The party is managing to work together effectively, after 3 weeks travelling together (and 50 hours of playing the game together!).

Hearing Grol back in the previous area, they head back to see Grol, holding the unmoving body of Esme’s cousin, Gundren, with a knife to his throat threatening to kill him unless they surrender now, and remove this bloody web from in front of his room!

The party enter another tactical session, managing to cut off both directions with Derrick approaching from the west, holding Iarno’s body, and the rest approaching from the south. Esme does the talking, and Derrick once again lays down his weapons. Grol does not appeared to be all that bothered that Iarno is now dead, and offers to give them Gundren in exchange for 200gp. Mallorn conjures up a pouch, seemingly containing gold, and, removing the web, throws it in front of Grol who tells them to pick it up and give it to him. This Derrick does, and approaches Grol handing him the ‘pouch of gold’, but dropping it as Grol reaches out for it. Grol manages to catch the ‘pouch’ and throws Gundren’s body aside and makes a run past Derrick, giving Derrick an opportunity to make an attack as he is able to recall his weapons to his hand at will. Unfortunately he misses Grol and Grol manages to run past and head west, the web no longer blocking his path.

We leave our ‘Heroes’, having searched Iarno’s body and recoving his staff and his spellbook, retreating into Grol’s room, expecting trouble as Grol has managed to get away from them (the DM is unsure why the rest of the group didn’t cut off Grol’s escape in the same way as they did Iarno, but hey, one poor tactical decision amongst a session of good ones can be excused!), This room seems to have no other exits so the group consider their options, whilst awaiting whatever reinforcements Grol may have roused….