The Lost Mines of Phandelver

Dean (Jared), Matt (Spinter Paw), Mariel (Ragash), Coby (Azza), Jeff (Ford), Chris (Creeper), and James (Kraygen) are returning cast members.

We left the group during a brief lull in the action at Cragmaw Keep. Action resumes as the party engages in running battles with a variety of goblins and hobgoblins. Creeper scouted ahead to the northwest area of the castle, finding the next room empty, but hearing the sound of hobgoblins putting on armor from behind a door. He returned to the group to warn them, only to be ambushed by the tentacle creature and knocked unconscious again. Seeing Creeper fall, Ragash rushed to attack the tentacled monstrosity, but it fled before his attack. Goblins and hobgoblins trampled Creeper’s helpless body on their way to attack Ragash, driving the half-orc back to his tabaxi charge.

Meanwhile, to the south, a bugbear and his pet wolf attacked the rest of the group. He opened with a javalin to Kraygen’s chest, then charged with his morningstar before the bard knocked him back with a thundering musical chord. The wolf followed, but fell quickly. The bugbear dropped his morningstar while trying to finish off Kraygen as Jared, Ford, and Azza moved to engage. Between the three of them, with the majority of the damage coming from Kraygen’s rapier, they whittled him down gradually.

Meanwhile, Ragash and Splinter Paw played defense against two hobgoblins with occasional support from goblins. Splinter Paw blasted both hobgoblins with a thunderwave, driving them back and wounding both. Ragash blocked both of them and finished them off, but a goblin snuck around to take out Splinter Paw with an arrow. The goblin succeeded, and Splinter Paw died dramatically – and continued dying even more dramatically after Kraygen used a Cure Wounds to bring him back. Ragash was distracted by the dramatics and rushed to check on Splinter, allowing the goblin to escape.

After the excitement of killing the bugbear leader, Azza slipped away to explore further, despite the rest of the party calling for him to wait and regroup. He opened the door to the hobgoblin guard room, finding it empty. Then he entered the next room, the king’s quarters… emerging shortly thereafter, dragging an unconscious dwarf. When the party regrouped near the exit, Creeper, Jared, and Ford recognized the dwarf as Gundren Rockseeker, their original employer. Kraygen brought the dwarf back to consciousness with his last healing ability. Despite some suspicions from Splinter Paw, the group accepted Azza back.

After a short rest the party began to explore the rest of the keep. Kraygen was leading most of the group towards the bugbear’s living quarters when Azza noticed goblins outside the keep and left to chase them down. A few moments later, Kraygen found Azza’s corpse in a closet! The rest of the party belatedly ran after whatever creature was pretending to be Azza, at which point we fade to black…