September 3rd, 2019
Players
- Maardaar the Warlock (Matt)
- Morgana the Druid (Liz)
- Ender the Rogue (Steven)
BACK TO LIFE
Ender & Maardaar together drag Morgana & Gundren back to Phandalin in the dead of night. They make it back without incident. As they enter town before dawn, they burst into the Stonehill Inn and yell for help. Toblin & his wife Trilena run downstairs in their nightgowns and quickly take charge of the situation: Gundren is taken upstairs to have his wounds tended & they advise the party to take Morgana over to the shrine across the street.
They go to the Shrine of Tymora, tended by the half-elven cleric Sister Gaerele. The Sister fumbles with some spell scrolls and finally pulls one out for Greater Restoration: it works. Morgana is brought back to life.
The Sister asks for a donation for the temple to cover the spell cost, and Morgana presents her with a druidcraft flower. The party tells Gaerele they are willing to help whenever needed.
BUTTERSKULL SHORTAGE
Morgana, now revived, his very hungry so the party goes over to have breakfast in the Stonehill Inn where miners are beginning to filter in before the day’s work. Trilena serves them and notes that they’re down to the very last butterskull – the two riders from the Triboar Twelve have scared off the merchant caravans with their warnings of goblin raids. No supplies have come in this week. She offers them 200g to pick up their usual delivery directly from Darren Edermath, the retired ranger who runs Butterskull Ranch.
GREGORIO’S TRAVELING EMPORIUM
The road is uneventful until the party comes across a brightly colored merchant caravan set up along the trail. Gregorio, the flamboyantly dressed merchant in a purple cap and red cloak, makes his best pitch. He has gained a bag of mysterious trinkets from a lost monastery, from another merchant he met down in Waterdeep. The merchant he bought them from told some story about a guy named Kwalish. He lets the party draw a random item for 10g. They all do, gaining some weird and strange items they’ve never seen before.
Gregorio also pulls out his (obviously fake, mechanical) flea circus. At this the party is unimpressed and leaves him to hawk his wares, as he continues down the road on his donkey Abigail.
Continuing down the road the sun sets after their long chat with Gregorio. The night passes without incident, but when the party awakens all their trinkets they bought the day before are gone. Morgana notices some very small and faint drag marks, and they realize they have been cheated. Nothing else seems to be missing though.
They debate pursuing the trickster Gregorio, but decide they need to get to Butterskull Ranch to complete the job. Morgana sends a letter back to Phandalin via crow warning the townspeople of the dishonest man.
BUTTERSKULL RANCH
As they approach the farm everything seems fine – smoke coming from the chimney, windows open in the farmhouse. A scarecrow stands in a field, a cow grazes, and the property is a little ramshackle but obviously cared for.
The enter through the stone gate and knock on the door: no response. They decide to enter and call out inside: no response. In the kitchen, they find the embers of yesterday’s fire smoldering and two cold tea cups on the table. They cannot discern anything strange about the tea cups, other than they are old.
Continuing through the house they find a staircase leading down to a basement, but avoid it. Next is the dining room with a wall lined with trophy skulls: deer, orc, and goblins. A spiral staircase leads upstairs – they go up and find a small office full of ledgers and bills for butterskulls, two empty bedrooms for ranch hands, a master bedroom, and a large common room. All empty with no signs of life.
They go back downstairs and decide to go into the dark basement. Morgana leads with her darkvision and discovers the walls covered in butterskulls wrapped for delivery, a butter press made from a goblin skull, and a man bound, gagged, with a bag over his head.
They call out “Darren?” and the man begins kicking and struggling against his ropes. Maardaar casts light on the support beam of the basement so that everyone can see.
They free Darren, an old human ranger covered in scars. He says he has been tied up since yesterday – a merchant with a purple hat came through, and just as he was about to pack him an order and send him on his way… that’s the last he remembers. Then he woke up down here in the basement.
EVIL FORCES APPROACH
They go back upstairs. The crows begin cawing – Morgana translates as “THEY ARE COMING, THE MAGIC IS COMING”. They notice that in the cornfield, the scarecrow appears to be blowing in the wind… except there is no wind on this evening.
The scarecrow, animated, begins to climb down from his perch and attack the party. They light him on fire but find that their weapons are not much use against a bag of straw. After his defeat the straw blows away in the wind and the clothes crumble to the ground. Darren says, “What is this meaning of all this? I have seen monsters in the hills and forest around this area, but they would never come this close to my farm.”
At this moment, they see a zombie stumbling through the cornstalks. Then another. And another. And another.
ZOMBIE SHOWDOWN
Darren runs for the house – he says he has spell scrolls hidden away. The rest of the party confronts the zombies as even more appear. They realize that even when dropping them with solid hits, they still pop up back up.
Darren appears in the doorway of the house and begins to cast from a sroll ‘Bless’. The party all gains more strength against the undead attacks. Darren goes upstairs to take pot shots at the zombies with his crossbow.
The party continues to fight an ever increasing onslaught of zombies through the night. Maardaar casts light on a bush which scares some of them away, but they keep coming. They start to storm both doors of the house and begin to beat it down. Ender defends the back while the zombies manage to break through the front, where Darren takes two down with his longsword.
Soon the rest of the party makes a run for the house and a fight indoors ensues.
THE NECROMANCER
As the sun finally begins to break the long, dark night a necromancer appears at the gate – wearing a purple hat and red cloak. He begins to chant as the party fights.
Suddenly the necromancer’s form splits into 4, encircling the farmhouse with the party inside. They all simultaneously cast ‘Create Bonfire’ on the house, catching the party in the flames which drops their health considerably. They run out leaving 2 zombies behind to burn.
As they attack the necromancer’s they realize that not all the forms before them are real. The necromancers all begin to revive the downed zombies. As the dawn finally breaks, the true necromancer casts a giant orb of negative energy at the party, and is then absorbed into it himself.
The party is left with the smoldering ruins of the farmhouse and the farm yard littered with the corpses of the undead.