Dungeons & DiSers Part two: Big Cave and The Bad Deeds

Next instalment for those wanting recaps. Apologies to the team for any errors and big, big thanks to them for another great session. :slight_smile:

The cast

Sir Curtis Sulazar (@keith) Human Fighter
Fannloy Roade (@anon67149139) Human Cleric
GelanĂșr (@songs_about_ducking) Half-Elf Bard
Gloran Hopback (@grievoustim) Dwarf Monk
Sir Kelross (@anon42112221) Half-elf Ranger
Zana Dalanthan (@anon75298087) Wood Elf Druid

We left our heroes in a cave, looking for their mate and his bodyguard, having killed some wolves and altered a lookout.

Part one here: Dungeons & DiSers Part one: Don’t know who you are, pal

Part two: Big Cave and The Bad Deeds

After carefully and quietly discussing what to do, the party heard the distant sound of a goblin teasing “Little elf, are you lost little elf?”.

Ready for a battle and in no mood to wait, Sir Curtas walked to the main walkway of the cave and began to yell a threat, but Gloren swiftly leapt and covered his mouth. Sir Curtas was affronted by this, but also silenced.

Gelanur tried to trick the goblins with a wolf impression but ended up sounding like a small dog, with a cold.

As the goblins drew closer, they saw the size of the squad and legged it. Shortly afterward, there was the sound of hammering and the cave suddenly became flooded with a torrent of water. Most of the party managed to hold their ground, but Sir Kelross (not famed for his grace) found himself barrelled over and hurt.

The team drew back into the wolf den and decided to rest. Fannloy and Zana took watch as the rest tended to wounds and had a bite to eat.

After little more than an hour, Zana heard the approach of more goblins. The team were rested now and ready. Gloren rushed the goblins, killing one with a swift axe strike. Fannloy ran up, placed his hand to the next goblin in line and cast a spell that turned it to pulpy remains in an instant. Gloren took down a third goblin after the flame Zana tried to throw at it missed widely and caused a small fire on the bridge overhead.

As a fourth goblin rounded the corner, Gelanur attacked it with a vicious mockery, calling it a “fleshy little worm”. The goblin wasn’t bothered and actually seemed to take this as a boost to his ego - until Gloren killed him.

With the group of goblins cleared, Zana scouted a small path to the west, which led to a room with goblins playing dice and seemingly having a nice night of it. She carefully crept back to tell the others.

Deciding to avoid a room full of more enemies, they followed the cave round to the North East. In a TLC medley, they had a creep to a waterfall and saw the dam that the goblins had busted in order to flood the cave. Zana was particularly taken by a rock that seemed to tremor occasionally.

There were two exits from this room, after scouting they saw one led to a room with more goblins, a Bugbear (google it, I can’t be arsed to upload a pic) and his pet wolf.

The team decided to go the other way, correctly guessing this would lead to the bridge they’d walked under a moment ago. Sir Curtas had no patience left to creep. He wondered out loud what the hell they were doing there and if they belonged there and stomped off over the bridge. This led to the room where the goblins were hanging out (the same one Zana had seen earlier). Without pause, he charged in. Some people said it was brave, some people said it was foolish, one of the goblins said nothing because Sir Curtas killed it with a single swing of his greatsword. One down, four to go.

Zana called on her nature powers. Vines and roots sprouted from the ground and ensnared three of the remaining goblins. Gloren ran in next, taking advantage of the tangles to punch one of them to death and badly wound another.

Gelanur badly stabbed one of the goblins, almost killing it but everyone was distracted by a scream from a large ledge in the room (not Gloren, an actual ledge).

Above them on the ledge, they saw a meaner looking goblin holding the battered body of Sildar (you mean Sildar the bodyguard of Gundren? Their mate who got ambushed last time? Yes, that Sildar).

He told the party to stop the fight or he’d end Sildar by pushing him off - the drop would certainly finish Sildar off. He tried to reason with the dashing adventurers who’d just killed his friends, offering to release Sildar if they killed the Bugbear. This goblin, Yeenik, wanted to be in charge and if the Bugbear was dead, he would be.

Fannloy’s killer instinct kicked in and he went to cast a sacred flame, but it blew up in his hand. Sir Curtas moved to a position where he could catch Sildar or at least try to break his fall.

Yeenik repeated his offer, loudly and more slowly. Fannloy extinguished the fire in his hand and did a running jumping high five to touch Sildar’s leg. As he made contact, he cast Healing Word. Yeenik angrily pushed Sildar over the edge and Sir Curtas did indeed catch him. The combo of the heal and the catch proved life-saving, this was a pretty ace move. :slight_smile:

Wasting no time, Zana and Gelanur cut down two more goblin. After dragging Sildar to safety, Sir Curtas ran back in to behead the last goblin, leaving only Yeenik who was being rushed by Gloren.

Gloren punched him and Fannloy set him alight, but Yeenik struck back and badly hurt Gloren. Gelanur attacked with his second vicious mockery of the evening, calling the goblin an “oversized maggot sperm”. Yeenik’s face contorted as he processed this, his expression turning to regret and agreement. Adding injury to insult, blood poured from his nose and ears as he dropped dead.

After finding another rock that seemed to tremble when prodded, they made sure Sildar was safe and set off to kill the Bugbear.

The party readied themselves outside the room. They saw two goblins sat by a large fire pit, while the Bugbear and his wolf stood nearby. The plan was simple: Fannloy would make a bright illusion in the fire pit to distract them all, as the others rushed in to ambush them to death.

The fire pit roared, getting everyone’s attention and the team sped in. Gloren, the killing machine, punched another goblin to death while Zana threw a flame that instantly barbequed the other. So far, so great.

The next round of blows against Klarg (the Bugbear) and his wolf all missed. Arrows flew wide, rapiers missed their mark, and spells were dodged. Eventually, Gloren and Sir Kelross both dealt strong blows to Klarg, but he was still standing and very angry.

More misses followed and Sir Curtas swung so wide he almost hit Gelanur. Fannloy’s crossbow bolt, however, landed neatly between the shoulders in Klarg’s back. What would it take to kill this beast?

Defending it’s master, the wolf leapt forward and bit Gelanur, tearing a chunk from his shoulder. As the wolf pulled away, Gelanur crumpled to the floor and stopped moving.

Eventually, Gloren’s fists landed a solid blow to Klarg the Bugbear’s ribs and the beast fell, bleeding from the mouth.

Zana rushed forward and stood on the bugbear’s corpse to attack the wolf. The wiley creature dodged and swung round showing the freshly torn chunk of Gelanur in it’s jaw. Sir Kelross hacked the wolf with two solid strikes from his swords. It snarled and whined but was not yet beaten.

Fannloy had a choice. He could tend to the comrade that lay dying at his feet, a simple moment to put pressure on the wound and stop him from bleeding out. It was life or death for Gelanur at this moment and one simple action could save him. Or he could try shooting the wolf, I guess, if he wanted to do that instead.

The shot hit and killed the wolf. Gelanur was eventually spared death by Zana and the party went back and fetched Sildar.

Sildar pointed out that some of the goods in Klarg’s room were branded with the blue lion markings of the Lion Shield Coster in Phandalin and they would probably be rewarded for returning them. As they settled round the fire pit, ready to spend the night resting in the cleared cave, Zana questioned Sildar and he told them some backstory.

Years ago, some dwarves and gnomes worked together to mine in a place called Wave Echo Cave. As they did, they found the ore there had a magical quality when smelted. They allied with some human spellcasters to create The Spell Forge: a place where magical weapons could be created.

Sadly word got out and a particularly brutal tribe of orcs teamed up with some less honourable wizards and stormed the cave to claim it for themselves. The magical battle that followed caused the cave to collapse, killing everyone inside.

No one else knew where the cave was, so it became myth to most people. But not dwarves. Dwarves live a long time and have long memories. Gundren and his two brothers were sure the cave existed and they’d recently found a map that claimed to show the location of the great Wave Echo Cave.

Sadly Gundren couldn’t keep a secret if he tried, so he loudly talked about the map a lot.

The night they left Neverwinter ahead of our heroes, SIldar was hoping to meet an old friend in Phandalin, a wizard named Iarno who’d stopped replying to his letters. Maybe he could help uncover the lost cave.

As we know, Gundren and Sildar were ambushed on the way. Sildar heard the goblins talk about taking the dwarf for The Black Spider. They found a letter in Klarg’s pockets, but it was written in Goblin. Sildar could only make out the name ‘Cragmaw’ and the next word which he thought meant castle or fort, possibly village, maybe apples.

Who or what is The Black Spider? Where or what is Cragmore? Will they ever get the cart to Phandalin? One thing’s for sure, there probably isn’t much this team won’t slaughter to find out.

12 Likes

Amazing thread title

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Great fun again - I had some very lucky rolls this week

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The Universe evens things out with @anon42112221’s string of single figures.

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Never want to roll a 5 again in my life. Fucking bridge.

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Very interesting roll, and some very interesting rocks.

I love Monday night DnD club. Great write-up! :mage::wolf:

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I love the way the rolls can act like random personality generators.

Like Sir Kelross wants to be an archer, but he’s more effective with swords. His aim with a bow is seemingly hampered by fate.

Sir Curtas misses quite a bit, but whenever he hits, it’s an instant kill. To me, that’s him swinging his sword without much precision, but swinging it so damn hard with so much self belief that it’s going to kill anything it hits.

Gloren was just on a roll in this cave. Like his confidence was snowballing from each death punch. This fits so nicely with the character Tim has created.

The recklessness of drunken Fannloy meaning he casually used his most powerful attack to obliterate a goblin at least three times over, but his risky sacred flame shot at Yeenik just blew up in his hand. Is there a sober voice in there somewhere that knew it would be a bad move?

Fuck, I love this nonsense. :slight_smile:

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So much this!

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Really enjoying these write ups, thanks for taking the time to do them @sadpunk :+1:

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Oh amazing.

I didn’t come into these threads before as I thought you were all playing the game in real time in them and didn’t want to post random stuff in between important game things!

A lot to process in this RSI-fest

You what?

Zana Dalanthan (@anon75298087) Wood Elf Druid

Oh okay, as you were.

Few things I love more than a death by Vicious Mockery. (Even better if it’s not even a creature that can’t understand speech TBH.)

image
Frozen cross-over is nailed on, TBH

WTF, Fannl-

Fannloy Roade (@anon67149139)

Oh right. Fair enough :smiley:

This is such a Rockstar Games NPC punk move of a conversational drop-in :smiley:

(Obviously I love using NPCs to do this sort of thing.)

The clue is in the name, FFS. CLEARLY a goddamn :spider:

Anyway, fantastic teamwork all round, guys.

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