Aboleth Group - "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times" - Session 21 LMOP

6^th Mar 2020, 8:00 – 11:30pm

In-game timeline: Start of session, day 26 (1489DR Eleint 19). End of session, day 27 (1489DR Eleint 20).

Our “Heroes” are exhausted. Both figuratively and literally. Mallorn is dragging his feet whenever he moves, and both Mallorn and Esme are relatively useless when performing any sort of actions. Esme is also out of favour with her God, due to her inability to act when Derrick defaced the religious statue of Dumathoin. Derrick’s hand seems to be slowly turning black and Derrick has a strong suspicion that the spirit of Lady Tresendar, which partially resides in the ring that he wears on his slowly darkening finger, is equally unhappy at his actions. In an attempt to stop the rot of his fingers he immediately prostrates himself on the ground before the statue and prays to his own God, which happens to be himself. That may or may not have helped the situation, but he does also try to make amends by once again scaling the statue and replacing the emerald eye that he had dug out only minutes earlier. Time will tell if it achieved anything.

The group is feeling healthy, thanks to Esme’s healing powers, but they are all very much out of options when it comes to abilities, spells etc. A rest was suggested. With still-addled brains from their harch battle with bugbears and spiders, they decide to barricade the main doors into the temple with the bodies of their enemies and camp out near to the scene of the carnage, leaving another entrance to the area completely open and unguarded. They do however decide to check out the small room off to the side of the temple room.

The door is locked. They try the Tresendar Manor key, which they have been carrying around for weeks now, in the vain hope that it will unlock something. Derrick has decided to wear it around his neck. It fails to unlock the door of the 400 year old mine. However, the key they found on Nezznar in the nearby room, surprisingly, does unlock the door.

Entering the room, Derrick ignores the unconscious body of the dwarf on the floor and inspects and enthuses about the old, dusty tapestries and coverings hanging around the room. After some minutes of inspection he proudly informs the others that they are indeed, dusty and old. And he mentions an unconscious dwarf too.

Esme rushes in and cries with joy and concern over finding her other cousin, Nundro, unconscious on the floor. After checking that he is stable, and giving him some water, they decide to re-lock the door and take a brief rest here to hopefully recover some abilities.

Resting next to the scene of their slaughter turned out to not be ideal. Before they managed to recover anything, Derrick heard heavy footsteps outside, followed by lots of shouting and mutterings, some of it in the goblin language. Keeping silent in the hope that the enemies would just walk away and ignore the locked room after finding their leader and her minions recently slaughtered, the party were dismayed when the door was attempted to be opened.

Derrick quickly stood ready with his axe by the door, poised to swing at anything that came in. The door crashed open and a large bugbear staggered in, having just broken the door. It was met by a perfect swing from Derrick’s axe which, in one swoop, cut the bugbear’s head clean off. Impressive! Unfortunately that was the last impressive thing that Derrick did that night.

Concerned now that they would be attacked by the 5 (now 4) bugbears that the group previously saw in a previous room, they exited the room to assess the situation. Derrick ran over to another bubgbear that he spotted, but missed. He was then a little surprised, and somewhat discouraged, when 3 other bugbears joined the one he was fighting, from around the corner. Two of them hit Derrick with their morningstars, doing not-inconsiderable damage. As another bugbear appeared from the opposite direction to take a swing at Esme standing in the doorway, the group started to think the fight could be a little one-sided, and not in their favour. It was therefore some relief when they heard a human voice telling them to throw down their weapons and surrender. After some discussion, they decided to do just that – except for Pruni, who, unsurprisingly, hid.

The voice was owned by a human, named Lucian Pick. Lucian seemed to recognise Derrick, and Derrick, with a little regret, seemed to recognise Lucian. It turns out that Derrick had caused Lucian, a star pupil at the time, to get thrown out of Fight School for cheating – cheating that was, in fact, Derrick’s doing and Lucian was entirely innocent. It seems that getting work for an evil Drow was the only career path open to Lucian after this incident – something that he was a little aggrieved about.

As the rest of the party turned on Derrick, Lucian stood by, seemingly enjoying Derrick’s discomfort. He proposes a duel. Lucian vs Derrick, to the death. The alternative was the group undertakes a battle against 7 bubgears and Lucian.

And so the duel commenced. Being already injured, Esme threw a potion towards Derrick, who leapt up with his new boots to catch it and down it quickly. It didn’t help. It turns out that there was a reason why Lucian was a star pupil at fight school. With his rapier flashing faster than Derrick could track, he scored hit after hit on Derrick. Our brave “fighter” did manage to land an impressive blow on Lucian, with help from Mallorn who ‘handed off’ his inspiration to Derrick, but the response was another cut-and-thrust from the rapier, to cut Derrick down and take him into unconsciousness.

As Derrick slowly bled out on the floor, Lucian cleaned the blood from his rapier and told the others that they’d better leave, before he changed his mind. He allowed them to take Derrick’s body with them, but they had to leave Nundro behind. Realising that carrying Derrick’s body out quickly was the only way of potentially getting him back from the brink of death, the group did as they were told. As they were escorted from the mine by the bugbears, Esme managed to discretely get a potion of healing down Derrick’s neck, but told his now-conscious body to still pretend to be dead until they got out of the mine.

The party sensibly decided to exit the mine and spend the rest of the night recovering from their ordeals. They told Gundren, who was camped outside, of their battles, though didn’t mention their finding of Nundro. He wasn’t sure he believed them, but the night otherwise passed uneventfully.

The following morning, the group, without Gundren who reluctantly agreed to stay behind…. for now, headed back into the mine. Esme gave herself, Mallorn and Derrick some improved health with her Aid spell, and Mallorn did his usual ‘buffing up’ with Mage Armour, this time from Iarno’s glass staff, rather than expending one of his own spell slots.

They decided this time to follow a different path, to avoid the bugbears and Lucian for the time being, so instead headed east. Sending Geoff on ahead, they scouted out a large hall, that was once bedecked with ornate carvings and statues, but was now covered with old, dusty bones. Figuring that the way was safe they headed in.

Only to be attacked by a group of stirges. With Derrick “Cannon Fodder” Trebuchet in his usual position at the front of the group, he was targeted first, and ended up with three of the stirges on him, sucking his blood. Pruni took out the stirge that was flying around, whilst Mallorn used a charge from his new wand of magic missiles to take out all of the stirges attached to Derrick. Unfortunately that was not the last of the stirges, however. As the rest of the party entered the hallway, and Mallorn and Esme were distracted at seeing visions in their head of a long-past battle, stirges once again descended and attached to Mallorn and, yet again, Derrick. Pruni responded with taking out another flying stirge, and Mallorn used another magic missile charge to remove the two stirges from himself and Derrick. With a single stirge remaining, Esme tried to sacred flame it from a distance, but it managed to dodge. Pruni finished it off before it could do any more damage.

Somewhat shaken by what should have been a simple bat-removal encounter, the party sent Geoff a-scouting again, then followed him down to what looked like the once-impressive main entrance to the mine. It was now blocked by a rockfall. One of the doors to the side of the entranceway seemed to be some sort of assayer’s office, but contained an animated skull and boney arm, which seemed to be trying to get out, but their way was blocked by the door. The group decided to open the door and see where the head and arm went – it turns out it was trying to return to its skeletal owner who stood, with its friend, at the entrance to another cavern filled with green moss-like stuff. They decided to leave that room, and the two boney guards for now.

Instead they checked out the room opposite the assayer’s office (which contained only a lockbox with some gold and silver inside). As they entered, Mallorn and Esme were once again struck by visions of past battles here, and realised that the blackened room was long ago the scene of a fireball, that not only killed the rampaging orcs, but also two protectors of the mine, who set off the fireball in a suicide action, an elf and a dwarf. As they related the vision that they saw to the others, from the corner of the room rose up the ghost of a dwarf.

“Intruders! Protect the mine!” it shouted, as it rushed towards the group. Quick as a flash, Esme tried to calm the ghost down, talking to it in dwarvish and explaining that they were here to protect the mine, not ransack it. The tactic worked, and the ghost calmed down enough to have a tea and a chat with the group.

It turns out the ghost is called Griff, and he was the dwarf responsible, with his friend Aliel the elf, for killing all the orcs in this room, and collapsing the entrance to the mine to prevent more orcs from entering, over 400 years ago. He has been trapped in this room ever since, and is unable to leave the room, or for his ghost to depart the plane, until the mine has been cleared of all evil. He has heard about some of the goings on in the mine, through his chats with the various small beasts (rats, stirges etc) who roam around the corridors, and informs the group that Mormesk, an arrogant, evil wizard who happened to be visiting the mine at the time of the orc attack, lives on in some form of undead, and who has spent the centuries building up some form of undead army from the various forms that manage to find their way into the mine. He has also heard recently of a young troll who has been captured somewhere in the mine.

As the party prepare to head further into the mine in the search for the Forge, and to recover Nundro if possible (and maybe to get revenge on Lucian), Griff asks them if they wouldn’t mind finding the bones of his friend Aliel and burying them outside in the open. Esme quickly agrees to this and manages to find some elven bones amongst the charred remains littering the room, as the others take a short rest to recover some health following the stirge fight.

And so we leave our “Heroes”, a little despondent after taking a beating and being forced to retreat, but still alive. Armed with more knowledge of what they may face further into the mine, they wonder if this will be enough to ensure their survival?