• 2018.03.13
• Present: Drey, Ryan, Alex, Chris O., Chris B. Corey, James
• Summary: You've traveled down the High Road from Neverwinter to the Triboar Trail towards Phandalin, helping a runaway Cragmaw Goblin down on his luck and enjoying some ale and games with a group of brigands fleeing the Redbrand Gang's terrible grasp on the town. On the Trail you discovered the horses Gundren Rockseeker and Sildar Hallwinter slain and stretched across the path. A group of Goblins, Bugbears, and Wolves ambushed the group, and you managed to defeat them and Charm the remaining Goblin.
• Party
  • 🤹‍♂️ Buldrick, Eladrin Swashbuckler
  • 😈 Fisty, Tiefling Tome Pact Warlock
  • 🦎 Mayonez, Lizardfolk Drunken Master
  • 🐲 Hiro, Dragonborn Samurai
  • 🦆 Ducky, Gnome Wizard
  • 🛡 Tumutch, Human Paladin of the Silver Flame
  • 🛠 Dug, Dwarf Forge Cleric.

• Hiro suddenly changes professions and is now a Samurai.
• Thatso suddenly changes form and is now an owl.

tl;dr: The gang successfully interrogates and then murders their hostage and learn that their employers, Gundren and Sildar, have been taken to Cragmaw Castle and Cragmaw Hideout, respectively. The gang fights their way to the entrance of the Hideout and meet Mayo.

1. Interrogation
2. Ambush?
3. Mouth of the Cave

Our scene opens with the party making painfully awkward attempts to be pals and chums with the Lone Goblin, recently charmed by Fisty. Somehow, amidst the freshly fallen bodies of the goblin's former friends, they fall into a friendly rapport.

The conversation and the tone of the friendly interrogation is complicated by Fisty's teammates:

1. Buldrick attempts, several times, to either seduce or intimidate the goblin (actual motives unclear) by making continued references to the handful of ball bearings he is rolling around in his palm. Nobody is sure whether there's some kind of innuendo going on here, or if he's about to go off the deep end and somehow physically torture the goblin. Later he explains he was going to "insert the bearings" into the goblin, which clarifies nothing. Buldrick then attempts to casually thread a string through the center of the ball bearings which, predictably, is not something one can do with tiny, solid, metal objects. He becomes somewhat flustered and abandons the entire line of inquiry, but not before thoroughly creeping out the goblin and the other members of his own party.

2. After a long-ish spell of discussion and no discernible action, Hiro goes all Stereotypical Fighter and decides to execute the Lone Goblin. Frantic, panicked gesturing from Fisty stops Hiro from delivering the killing blow, but now the Lone Goblin is starting to buckle under the struggle of trying to hold two conflicting beliefs in its mind simultaneously:

   1. Totally BFFs with Fisty
   2. Fisty and his friends just killed all of my friends and are now trying to murder me.

Lone Goblin starts to hightail it to the tree line, and the party, realizing they have no way to walk this one back, reluctantly kill the Lone Goblin. (During this scuffle, Tumutch casts Hunters Mark on the Lone Goblin and offers the group one final opportunity to let the creature live, so that he could track it back to its lair. The group decisively rejects said opportunity.)

Group character defining moment: tries to peacefully resolve a conflict. Ends up all kinds of murder-y anyway.

Stuff we learned from the botched yet somehow also fairly successful interrogation:

1. Buldrick: comic relief or dark and scary as hell?
2. Hiro can only tolerate so much time without smashing something, and needs to be explicitly told which prisoners of war can and cannot be smited indiscriminately.
3. The Cragmaw captured Gundren and sent him off to Cragmaw Castle, which is what King Grol ordered Klarg to do. (Klarg is commander of the local Cragmaw hideout.)
4. Sildar is being held in the Eatin' Cave, and will be held there until the appropriate time. At which point he will obviously be eaten.

Armed with this knowledge, the group agreed it would be bad to simply allow Sildar to be eaten by goblins, but also agreed that they had an obligation to complete their job and to deliver their goods to Phandalin. So they all kind of shuffled their feet until it was pointed out that the people who hired them to do the job were A) dead, or B) prisoner in the Eatin' Cave, and their only hope of getting paid for the job would be to rescue Sildar, at which point they all sprang into action and set out to save the prisoner.

Group character defining moment: more motivated by money than by morality.

Ducky not-stealthily stashes a few corpses in the wagon.

The groups sets off to Cragmaw Caves. They know where to go because the Lone Goblin kind of told them where to go?

And then because they left piles of corpses in the middle of the road, they are alerted to some kind of a patrol, and there's another mini ambush followed by a minor scuffle?

Memory hazy. Details unclear.

There were bugbears.

Then there was a short rest.

The party takes off through the woods toward the caves. Again. There are a handful of traps along the way, but Thatso, flying ahead and scouting the trail, spots them all and the group handily sidesteps them. DM appears slightly dejected.

They arrive at the mouth of the cave. Mayonez pops out from somewhere and befriends the group.

Then another skirmish ensues with a bunch of hobgoblins at a sharp bend of the river they had been following. The terrain proves challenging, Ducky can't cast a spell to save her life, Thatso provides a lot of encouragement to the front line, Tumutch and Buldrick do a lot of smashing, Fisty finally starts to get the hang of flying, and the group emerges victorious once again.

the end?

• debut of Mayonez the Slav, Drunken Master Lizard Person
• debut of Drey's foam katanas, a gift from Alex Boyd
• First occurance of somebody drinking an actual Steel Reserve: achievement for Alex