Session 79

The party helps Keera Andromeda with a dubiously canon experiment, going on an adventure in their dreams. 
== Summary ==
The party arrived safely in Alibrook and found Keera Andromeda quickly. She had create a machine that was intended to replace the starter dungeon, but it needed to be calibrated based on people who had experience adventuring. They were put in special pods and the simulation ran. 
They had been given an assignment to transport a merchant's supplies to their destination. They were joined by several other adventurers: Bumble, some sort of stuffed animal bard; Esteem, a dragonborn fighter; and Bellerophon, a skyforged druid. After everyone had introduced themselves, they hopped in the cart of supplies and began their journey down the road. Along the way, they encountered a small group of dead horses, goblins hiding just off the path in ambush. Esteem, greatsword in hand, roared, intimidating most of the goblins into running away. One, however, ran toward him, and was almost instantly destroyed. The goblin then exploded rather violently, injuring him somewhat. Keera Andromeda informed them that she had ramped up the difficulty for them as they were seasoned adventurers. 
They inspected the horses, but they exploded as well. They were able to determine that they had belonged to the people who had "hired" them to escort the wares. Leaving the cart and oxen on the side of the road, they pursued the goblins. They eventually came upon a small stream coming out of a cave. Two goblins hid nearby, quietly speaking to each other. Bumble approached, attempting to reconcile the situation peacefully, but the goblins attacked. The goblins were simple to take down, but one of them, instead of exploding, instead sprouted three heads and continued attacking. This strange goblin was ultimately taken down, and the group proceeded stealthily into the cave. 
Upon entering the cave, they encountered a group of wolves. The wolves, rather than barking or howling, simply said "bark bark" using Cornelius' voice. Bellerophon attempted to speak with the wolves to ask them politely to not have to fight them. Cornelius, glad to not have to play the wolves any more, simply removed them from in front of the group. Finding a small opening in the back of the wolves' cave, Kiono used her familiar to climb up it to see where it went. She spotted a fully armored hogoblin, a creature that appeared to be several goblins smooshed together, a wolf, and some sort of spindly-armed creature. The spindly-armed creature killed the tressym. 
They returned to the main tunnel and attempted to traverse the path. Because of the loose gravel of the ground, a guard was alerted. Though he was killed before he could raise the alarm, he exploded into confetti and created a party popper noise. Goblins in the next room as well as the omni-goblin and hobgonlin, alerted anyway by the party goblin, attacked. The spindly-armed creature, called a vrock, sneaked up on the party from behind using the stone chimney. In the midst of the chaos, Teer discovered a human tied up in an adjacent room. The enemies were all killed and the man, Sildar Hallwinter, was rescued. Hallwinter, using the voice of Kaafiye, instructed the party to return to the nearby town of Phandalin to prepare for the rescue of their employer, Gundren Rockseeker. 
The world began to glitch out slightly. Phandalin was a town that used to be larger, having been slowly abandoned over the years. Hallwinter recommended the party to an inn, and went to speak with one of his contacts, Iarno Albrek. In the inn, Bumble and Esteem approached a shadowy figure in the corner, who simply quoted literature to them rather than respond to them directly. 
Teer was approached by a youth who expressed concern about not being able to hear Teer's thoughts. The world then glitched out, and the youth disappeared. Concerned, the party questioned Keera Andromeda about their safety and the stability of the world. She told them that pulling people out before the simulation had completed had resulted in other adventurers going insane. She offered to create a checkpoint to pull them out early. The party received a quest to deal with the Redbrands beneath the mansion in town, so they headed out to deal with the ruffians. 
As they traveled, they were ambushed by some of the Redbrands. Kiono easily killed all but one of them, who was captured by Belle. He explained that Gundren Rockseeker had obtained a map to a long lost mine, and that a number of groups were in search of the dwarf and his map. Their quest log updated, they proceeded on to the mansion. Inside, the building appeared to have been mostly gutted. A single Redbrand guard asked for the password. He accepted the first password they provided, which was Bumble's suggested "friendship." 
They gained access to the basement, where they began looking for signs of Keera Andromeda's checkpoint. The first door they opened contained three Redbrands. They were supposed to be asleep, snoring loudly, but they stood beside their beds in a T-pose position. They party quietly closed the door. The youth appeared again. They said they knew that they knew what the NPCs were supposed to do and control them. They couldn't hear the party's thoughts, though, and that frustrated them. They vanished again, and the world around them became glitchy again. The party realized that whatever base Keera Andromeda had used for the program seemed to have gained sentience, or perhaps had already possessed it upon creation. 
After finding a bag in the fountain in the room containing a set of clothes, some gold, and two potions, they proceeded through a secret passage. The passage led to a large cavern with a crevice running along the middle of it. A nothic there explained that the creature in charge of the world was powerful, but that if it were to realize the nature of the world it inhabited, everyone there would be doomed. It then allowed the party to continue forward. 
In the next room they found three bugbears and a goblin, the latter of which fainted immediately. Bumble cast Hypnotic Pattern in the room, nullifying the bugbears and allowing the party to continue unaccosted. Finding a large group of ruffians in the next room, Bumble created a truly ridiculous number of cupcakes, and he and Belle proceeded forward, claiming to be caterers. Despite most of them not believing the pair, one did, believing their boss to have remembered his birthday. Not wishing to hurt his feelings, the others allowed it. As the party proceeded past the impromptu birthday celebrations, the ruffians froze. The youth appeared once more among the group, complaining about how the party wasn't doing things the way they were supposed to. The party explained that they were from somewhere else and wanted to help, though they could not explain precisely who they are or what is going on. Frustrated by the nonanswers, the youth once again disappeared, taking the ruffians with them. 
In the next room they found a mage. Using the voice of Vidh Zadh, he explained that he was aware of what Keera Andromeda had planned for the encounter. He transformed into a skeletal lich and attacked the party. After combating him for a short while, the lich declared that they had succeeded and vanished. In the next room, a door appeared, Keera Andromeda standing in it. The party escaped through the doorway, waking in their pods in reality. Keera Andromeda that there had been an encounter nearby involving mind flayers. One of them had barely survived, so she had taken advantage of the situation and was using it to run the simulation. Opposing this usage of the mind flayer's brain, the party advocated to allow it to die in peace. She reluctantly complied, flipping a switch and causing a bright green flash of light, disintegrating the brain and erasing their memories of the day. 
== NPCs ==
=== Introduced ===
* Bumble (played by Sam)
* Esteem (played by Mish)
* Bellerophon (played by Kris)
* "Gundrun Rockseeker" 
* "Sildar Hallwinter" 
* "Iarno Albrek" (played by Vidh Zadh)
=== Returning ===
* Keera Andromeda
* Cornelius (voice only)
* Kaafiye (voice only) 
* Vidh Zadh (voice only) 
== Trivia ==
* The adventure played was a slightly modified version of the Mines of Phandelver.
* This session was played as an audition session to bring more players into the game. The contents of the session are dubiously canon as a result. 
* The maps for the game were animated, periodically glitching out to represent the simulation being unstable.