Session 13 - The Goons Break Out

General Summary

Date: 25th & 26th Day of Mirtul 1491 DR

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The Party:
Aether – Level 4 Human, Circle of the Moon Druid
Duncun – Level 4 Human, Champion Fighter
Kailo - Level 4 Wood Elf, Kensei Monk
Xavien - Level 4 High Elf, Necromancer Wizard

Report:

The party awakens in a room, which contains a bed and a brazier, the walls are adorned with dusty draperies. A badly disheveled dwarf lies bound on the cold stone floor. They notice that you have been stripped of all their gear and that they are bound as well in webbing. The dwarf is Nundro, younger brother to Gundren. The gang introduces themselves as Gundren's Goons and Nundro's response is "So your the rescuing party huh? A fine job of it you're doing." Nundro explains to the party that Nezznar, The Black Spider and his henchmen entered the cave, killed their older brother Tharden and took Nundro as a prisoner. He explains that Nezznar would torture and beats him into unconsciousness once or twice a day, that is until he woke up and saw the four of them in the room as well. Nundro isn't sure what's going on but The Black Spider hasn't returned to torture him and he's sure its past time for Nezznar to have paid him a visit. Kailo breaks out of his webbing and helps the rest of the party break out of theirs. Duncun's web seems to be especially troublesome, so Aether goes into a primal savagery, using her acid dripping claws to break the web. The party decides it best to search the walls for a secret door. None exist, however, Aether finds a hidden cubby hole behind one of the draperies. Inside she finds a lock pick and a lock of hair that when she picks it up changes colors as she moves it around. Kailo uses the lockpick to open the door to their improvised prison and the party debates on what to do. They decide the best course of action is to recover their gear and stop Nezznar as soon as possible not wanting to give him any more time to get a stronger foothold in the lost mine of Phandelver.

Aether casts pass without a trace and decides to wild shape into a wolf to try and pick up the scent of the groups' gear. She catches the scent going both east and west. They head down the hallway to the west first and finds the temple that Nezznar has used as a basecamp and sees their packs and some gear among the camp gear. She also notices two of the giant spiders sitting the ceiling corners and the group decides not to try and get the gear, being weaponless. They turn back and head eastward sown the hall and see and find their way back to the large cavern with the 20-foot deep rift. Kailo notices that the passageway that they had come out of when they first came this way now have ropes out of the ravine leading up to it. They see two bugbears searching through the rubble at the bottom of the rift searching for something while another bugbear stands up top supervising. In his hand is a glowing Lightbringer, over his shoulder one of the party's longbows. With their magically enhanced stealth, the goons decide to rush and attack the supervising bugbear. Kailo runs up and delivers a flurry of blows, wolf Aether bites, Xavien casts toll the dead and for Duncun grabs a rock and throws it right in the temple of the bugbear, killing the goblinoid. As the bugbears at the bottom of the ravine take notice, Aether jumps on top one of the bugbears, Kailo grabs Lightbringer and jumps down and attacks, while Duncun retrieves the longbow and shoots down from above. The gang easily dispatches the two bugbears, and Aether digs up what they were looking for in the rubble, the crushed skeleton of a dwarf wearing gauntlets of ogre power. Kailo rips the arms off the skeleton, takes the gauntlets off the bony hands and puts them on. With some gear and feeling more confident the party decides to go back and take out the giant spiders and reclaim more of their gear.

The goons slay Nezznar's pets and are able to reclaim most of their gear. While gearing up the party admires the nine-foot statue of a dwarf with emeralds for eyes, and wonder who it is. Nundro explains to them that it is the dwarven god of buried secrets - Dumathoin - deity of mining and underground exploration, protector of the dwarven dead. The group decides to explore down the southern hallway into unknown territory. They come across a door to their east and a cavern filled with a dark pool. Kailo swings open the eastern door and sees a chamber with old stone bunks lining the walls, a glowing iron brazier in the middle of the room heating the chamber, as well as another door, which has been barricaded with the remains of a wooden table across the room. Residing in the chamber are four bugbears, one is smoking the pipe Xavien had just acquired, while another is wearing his bejeweled eyepatch. The party slay the bugbears and reclaim the treasure and money they had and found in the chamber. The party deduces that the barricaded door leads to the smelter where the flameskull resides and turns around to go explore the pool cavern. The pool is still, the water dark, hiding whatever might lie within. The shore of the pool consists of a thin layer of broken shells from strange, pale mussels, and a fishy odor hangs in the air. The party is hesitant, but Kailo is curious at to what the waters might be hiding. He ties a rope around his torso and hands the other end to Duncun & Aether to hold, before beginning to wade into the pool. Eventually, he gets to a point where the depth of the pool is too much to keep his head above water standing, and Kailo dives in to see how deep the pool goes. He notices an old skeleton lying on the bottom, several arrows lodged in its ribcage and a wand in the clutches of the skeletons bony fingers. Kailo swims back up and out of the pool informs the party what he saw and asks Aether if she is able to transform into anything to go down there and grab the wand. Aether wild shapes into a sea lion and dives into the pool she bites down on the arm and rips it off the skeleton, bringing the arm and the wand back up to the surface. The gang now having recovered the wand of magic missile from the pool make their way down the south passage of the cavern.

With Kailo in the lead and scouting ahead the party makes its way down the long tunnel finding numerous intersecting passages of mine tunnels. Kailo eventually finds a passage that leads up some stairs, however, a ghoul at the top notices him howls in excitement at some fresh meat and alerts seven other ghouls as it rushes down the stairs to ravenously attack Kailo. Luckily the rest of the party is able to come to Kailos aid they slay each of the hungry ghouls. After the skirmish, the goons make their way up the stairs and find a great cavern, with steep escarpments dividing the cavern into three sections. High ledges at the eastern and western sides and a lower section in the middle with carved stone stairs climbing up to the ledges. Two large tables stand in the middle section, along with a pair of old braziers, while a smaller table stands on the eastern ledge. The skeletal remains of dozens of dead dwarves, gnomes, orcs, and ogres attest to the fierceness of fighting that took place here centuries ago. With a faint, flickering, green light being seen from the northern passages the group make for the southern hallway. Down the hallway they come across an eastern opening to a chamber, its eastern wall collapsed into a mass of rubble, to the north of this chamber a door stands ajar, Kailo opens it all the way to find another chamber, this one filled with dusty kegs that have all cracked and split open from age. The gang decides that this will be an excellent place to hold up, rest and get some sleep and so barricade the door from the inside and call it a day. After a long rest feeling refreshed the party heads back out and continues going south down the hallway where they find the old entranceway where they were attacked by stirges as well as a door to the north. Kailo just opens the door, not caring what can be on the other side and sees three ghouls in the middle of a chamber of old stone bucks in orderly rows, gnawing on the ancient bones of the half dozen fallen dwarves and orcs that lie strewn about. The starving grey, hunched, ghouls rush to attack the party eager for a fresh meal. The goons defend themselves and execute the ravenous undead, afterwards Kailo goes on ahead back into the mine tunnel network to explore, he turns a corner and comes face to face with an ochre jelly he takes the longsword he borrowed from Xavien and slices the ooze in half and immediately runs back to the rest of the party. He returns and informs them of the ooze and asks for them to help him dispatch of it at range. They make their way a bit down a tunnel and see a smaller ooze coming at them as they make short work of it a second small ooze comes around the corner managing to catch them off guard and gets a hit on Aether. Duncun is able to finish the the oozes off by stating you just gotta "shoot em in the globs."

Character(s) interacted with

Nundro Rockseeker

Report Date

13 Jan 2020

Primary Location

Wave Echo Cave