August 13th, 2019
Players
- Ender the Rogue (Steven)
- Morgana the Druid (Liz)
- Maardaar the Warlock (Matt)
Town Meeting
Ender & Maardaar marched their captive wizard Iarno straight up main street from the manor. The town was oddly quiet in this twilight hour, but the Townmaster’s Hall – where the jail was located – was well lit. As they approach they can hear loud yelling and arguing inside.
As our heroes opened the door, the room went silent and all eyes turned toward them. Most of the town seemed to be in attendance, with the halfling townmaster Halbin Wester standing on a chair in the center of the room. Morgana is in attendance, but the townspeople give her a wide berth.
Sildar breaks the awkward silence, greets the party and says “Just a little town meeting.” He takes custody of Iarno, leading him down the stairwell in the rear of the building. He says he will seal the jail with a spell of Silence, and keep watch until he is transported back to Neverwinter for trial. As soon as he leaves the room, the townspeople erupt into bitter argument again.
Halvin Graingle, the drunk farmer the adventurers met previously, jumps in (drunkenly) to blame the death of his cows on faeries, saying his neighbor Bob the wood carver had ventured into the woods and doomed them all. Bob was a bit of an outcast, a recent transplant from the mostly ruined town of Conyberry to the east. Halbin’s tiny wife made the rounds calming people & pouring tea. She explained that Bob had gone missing, presumably into Neverwinter Wood. The town’s Night Watch had sent 6 young men after him in a search and rescue mission. That was 2 weeks ago – and none had returned. Ender, Maardaar, and Morgana whisper among themselves, and volunteer to look into it. Halbin passes his conical hat around the room and comes up with some gold to pay the party. The crowd, subdued for the night, filters out the door.
The party picked up some supplies from Barthen’s Provisions & turned in to the Stonehill Inn, where Toblin the barkeep was returning from the meeting himself. He took their dinner orders and packed them a lunch to go for the next day’s journey. Halvin, now relocated to the bar with some glog, regaled them with tales of the supernatural forces at work in the wood – banshees, faeries, pixies, and all sorts of fey creatures.
He also explained that Phandelver’s Pact had kept peace in the region by giving the dwarves control of the mine, humans control of trade in town, and the elves dominion over the wood. This gave everyone a stake in the region’s future, and it’s common defense. The elves only asked that no one ever step foot in their domain, and Bob’s trespass had violated this ancient agreement.
A Gruesome Message
The next morning the party’s breakfast is interrupted by a scream: the body of a teenager named Rerk from the Night Watch is hanging from a tree in the town’s square. His eyes have been removed, flies swarm his body, and he appears to be dead. The townspeople gather in the square, very distraught. A note is stuck into his chest with a long gold pin, which Ender removes.
After taking his body down Rerk lets out a gasp – he’s not quite dead yet. Morgana attempts to revive Rerk with her magic to ask him what happened, but he just screams in agony – too far gone to save. The note pinned to his chest reads: “We the townspeople of Phandalin seek our lost resident, who does not understand the meaning of his trespass.” and is signed by Halbin, Toblin Stonehill, the Sister of the Shrine, Elmar Barthen & other prominent townspeople.
It begins to rain.
Long Lost Bob Dabbledob
The party sets out to investigate Bob’s farm on the edge of Phandalin. The overgrown property has a menagerie of carved animals in wood outside among the weeds and piles of sawdust. After a cursory search of his dwelling, Maardaar uncovers a journal stamped with the sign of a spider. The journal contains messages in Elvish addressed to an ‘Agatha’, and a map to a place deep in the Wood called ‘Sharandar’.
The leaning barn out back is covered in kudzu vines. Inside, the party hears the snoring of what turns out to be a small black imp with a grossly distended belly. He wakes and asks: “What time is it?” Maardaar feeds the imp part of the lunch Toblin packed, and he becomes quite talkative. The imp explains that Bob went into the woods, but the imp was not nearly dumb enough to follow him. So he got bored and ate the cows next door. The imp doesn’t really know what Bob was up to, other than attempting to make contact with beings in the woods. The imp isn’t sure who – since he never bothered to deliver the letters for Bob.
The party decides to attempt to follow the map they found in Bob’s house into the woods. They make it about 15 miles out of town, down the Triboar Trail, before breaking camp for night by the side of the road.
As they bed down and take shelter from the rain, they hear the wail of a banshee carried on the wind.
Neverwinter Wood
Into the misty, dark wood the canopy is so thick the rain becomes just wet drips. A day’s travel over difficult terrain is met with a shadowy Displacer Beast, who almost kills Maardaar in one tentacle strike.
It retreats after a successful fire spell dispels it’s shadowy defense, and it runs back into the forest leaving a path behind it of trampled vegetation.
The adventurers rest for the day. During the night watch, a group of squirrels arrives, staring and watching while they sleep and chattering. Morgana uses her animal magic to translate and it appears they are talking about “steal their nuts… the fearies told us to fuck with them! lol lol they are funny! get the nutz dudes”
Maardaar’s thunder clap sends them running away. But he discovers his brand new cloak now smells very strongly of dank cheese. Ender’s lockpicking kit is now emitting a light so bright it can be plainly seen coming out of his backpack. Shrill voices in the forest giggle.
The next day they come across the dismembered corpse of a member of the town’s Night Watch. The body is torn in two, probably by Displacer tentacles. Ender finds a glass dagger of elven make in the man’s satchel, which Morgana takes.
They continue through difficult terrain and make camp again. Again, weird things happen to them in the night. Maardaar wakes up scowling – his facial expressions have been reversed from his actual feelings. Morgana finds bugs in all her clothes. In the predawn light, the sleeping party is ambushed by a Giant Spider and her minions.
During a long battle with the Spider, Morgana escaped from it’s sticky web by wild shaping into a squirrel and Maardaar repeatedly shot Eldritch Blast into the trees. But the poisonous beast was defeated and it’s children stomped. The injured party has to seek more rest and healing.
Agatha
The party continues and emerges into a clearing – the first daylight or glimpse of the sky they had seen in days. In the center is a neat little cabin house, a well kept garden, and a stack of firewood piled nearby. Smoke and the smell of cooking meat waft from the chimney. The rain has stopped. Next to the house is a cage holding 3 members of the Night Watch, all silently standing.
They examine the 3 men but their catatonic state seems magic induced and they decide against freeing them. An old grandmotherly woman then opens the door, and greets them kindly, asking them to come in – surely the travelers would like some of the soup she’s cooking.
The party notices her hair is held in place by a large gold pin as she turns to let them in and begins setting the table.
The party discusses many things with Agatha. Regarding Bob, she says he was a nuisance who “just wanted to cause trouble” but wouldn’t be specific. Sharandar was an “old elven kingdom, long gone and best forgotten.” When asked what happened to Bob, Morgana uses her resistance to magical charm & sees through Agatha’s illusion for a split second: the undead banshee before her is a rotted husk of an elf, stirring a pot of human finger soup.
Agatha continues her old mother act even after hostilities increase. After all, she says sweetly: shouldn’t you think of the Pact, and not long lost Bob Dabbledob? Even though undead, she is “elven”, and party to the Pact.
The players begin a delicate negotiation [aka Jenga + dice rolling]. Do they save the pact and keep the peace, or do they try to save the men outside in the cage? Ender is very persuasive, and Agatha relents…
She will honor the Pact and trade the lives of the 3 remaining men for one thing: the third death save of one of the characters. Their 3 lives now, one of yours later in return.
Whenever you start your turn with 0 hit points, you must make a special saving throw, called a death saving throw, to determine whether you creep closer to death or hang onto life. Unlike other saving throws, this one isn’t tied to any ability score. You are in the hands of fate now, aided only by spells and features that improve your chances of succeeding on a saving throw.
Roll a d20. If the roll is 10 or higher, you succeed. Otherwise, you fail. A success or failure has no effect by itself. On your third success, you become stable. On your third failure, you die.
– PHB 197
Maardaar steps forward: “I am over 700 years old and have lived many lives. Take mine.”
Agatha frees the 3 men outside, who slowly come to their senses. She promises safe passage out of the forest. The party departs.