Session 0/1: Unlucky Goblins

After prepping characters and a brief discussion about where the campaign would go, we agreed for the moment to play it by ear. I reiterated that this is a collaborative story building game, so I want the players to have as much input as possible on the style and direction of the campaign. As someone currently working with an editor on the third draft of a thriller novel, I have a basic storyline laid out with a lot of surprise twists and turns, secret agendas and shadowy figures. But I won't railroad players into that playstyle.

We started with *Lost Mines of Phandelver* because for a beginning group with new players, it tick a lot of boxes: There's a dungeon, and a dragon, a cave full of goblins, a troubled town in need of heroes, a mystery to solve, a shadowy organization to defeat, a hidden villain pulling the strings, and most of all a big ticking clock that makes sure that if the players spend their sessions messing around and not getting things done, the bad guys win. However, the group was arned this is a heavily modified version of LMOP so if you have been through the adventure before or read it, you would find a lot has changed.

We agreed again that once *LMOP* is completed, we would regroup, decide where to go from there, and give everyone a chance to change up their characters (or roll new ones).

Since two players were missing and the first encounter in *LMOP* can be deadly with a full group, I offered to let the party travel with an NPC until the rest of the group catches up. They had the option of a tanky front-line character (Hastur) or a healer/blaster (Aristedes). They chose tank, so I added a leveled down version of Hastur to the party.

With that, we started the first session.

**Session 1 - Unlucky Goblins**

In an opening narrative, we established that the players had recently completed the trials of initiation for the Ellurian Adventurer's Guild at the lakeside town of Oleira. Most legitimate adventurers in Elluria are guild members; in addition to setting rates for services (which go up as your renown in the guild increases), there are additional perks such as discounts on equipment, expense accounts, etc. The players have accepted their first job: to escort a delivery to the town of Phandalin, located in the mountains to the northeast. The roads around Phandalin have been harassed by bandits and your client, Gundren Rockseeker, urgently needs the supplies to be dropped off for him at Barthen's provisions. The rumor is that Gundren has found something big-- really big-- and he needs to act on his lead as quickly as possible, before any rivals or competitors can beat him to it. As Phandalin is a mining area, rumors say he may have struck a major deposit of gold, or even possibly Mithril, which would make him and any of his business associates extremely rich.

As the curtain rose, our band of adventurers were riding in an open-air wooden cart, pulled by two oxen. It was early Autumn, and the trees had begun to change color, their canopies dappled with reds and golds along with the lingering greens of summer. It was early morning, and a slight chill was in the air in the foothills of the mountain range. Dark clouds moved overhead, threatening rain at any moment.

The party consisted of:

***Craddock***, a Dwarf cleric with a questionable reputation. Once a fixture in the criminal world, he has now found religion... whether he wants to or not.

***Valmorra***, a quiet Elven mage with fair skin whose short auburn hair hints at the fires that burn within her soul.

***Hastur the Incorrigible***, a lanky, swarthy fighter with a cynical and reckless attitude.

***Gabo,*** a goblin fighter with a mysterious past. And by "Mysterious past" we mean "His player hasn't written a backstory yet that we know of."

Two more party members, ***Jist'Chuck*** and ***Phaedra***, were expected to arrive in a second cart half a day after the first.

As a cold rain began to fall, Craddock, Valmorra, Hastur and Gabo were having a conversation when Craddock, driving the cart, pulled it to a stop. Ahead, the bodies of two horses blocked the road. Gabo stepped up to the blockade to inspect it while Hastur and Valmorra, anticipating an ambush, slipped into the wooded thicket lining the road. As Gabo began to inspect the horses, he began the theme that would set the tone for the night: *Goblins Rolling Badly*.

After rolling a 2 for perception and barely noticing the horses, the DM threw him a bone and let him notice that the horses had been slain with black-fletched arrows-- the type normally used by Goblins. At that point two more black fletched arrows came whizzing at him from the thicket, narrowly missing him. Luckily, Valmorra and Hastur were already in the thicket and thanks to a few lucky perception rolls on their part (and horrible stealth rolls from the Goblins) they were able to catch up with the Goblins in cover and quickly dispatch them. In the process, Valmorra noticed a path leading uphill through the thicket, with tracks showing the passage of multiple humanoids and signs two more had been dragged up the hill.

Two more Goblins in cover on the other side of the road broke and ran, seeing they were out numbered. The party tried unsuccessfully to follow them, hoping to catch them before they alerted any others, but lost them in the undergrowth. Believing they had lost the trail, the team considered trudging on to Phandalin. But the pair of Goblins had seen the party give up the chase and stopped running to instead spy on the group and ascertain their plan. They didn't want to report back that an attack was coming if the adventurers were in fact retreating to Phandalin. But because they were Goblins in this episode of *Goblins Rolling Badly*, they rolled a natural 1 on their stealth check and gave away their position. In the skirmish that followed, one of the Goblins was killed, and the second one was captured.

Their new captive told the party he wouldn't tell them anything. But when the party threatened extreme violence, being a Goblin, he immediately told them everything he knew:

He was part of a group of Goblins called the ***Cragmaw Tribe***.  Their signature mark is to file their teeth into points, hence the name.

Their leader was a Goblin named ***King Grol,*** who resided in ***Cragmaw castle.***

He worked with a group of Goblins under the command of ***Klaarg***, who was the Biggest Boi. (Gabo assumed, because of Goblin culture, that Klaarg was likely either a Hobgoblin or a Bugbear-- two races related to Goblins, but larger and deadlier). There were around 12 Goblins in their hideout, at the top of the trail.

King Grol had given Klaarg instructions to raid any caravans on the road, and in particular to look for a Diggy Dwarf named ***Gundren Rockseeker***. Gundren was to be brought to King Grol if he is captured.

He overheard King Grol talk about someone called "The Black Spider" that Grol took orders from, even though he was a king.

Klaarg's team had completed their mission, but raiding caravans was so much fun that they had kept on doing it.

The group then tied their captive to a tree. The Goblin asked them to rough him up a bit, to at least give him an excuse to give Klaarg. He said Klaarg was smart enough to know if he showed up without a scratch, he had spilled the beans and would be executed.

Making their way up the path, The group found a cave entrance with a stream flowing through it.  An attempt at stealth was made by Hastur and Gabo, both wearing Chain Mail. Hastur rolled a natural 1, which resulted in Hastur and Gabo having a loud argument in front of the cave entrance over who was making more noise while they were trying to sneak in. The sound of the argument woke up the two Goblin guards in the nearby brush, who had fallen asleep at their post. A quick skirmish resulted again in one casualty and one captive, tied to a tree. The second captive corroborated the first one's information, except he said their were only eight Goblins. an Insight check revealed that the Goblin could only count as high as eight, the number of fingers he had, so his number was suspect. He did say there were no *deadly* traps in the cavern.

After a huddle, Craddock came up with a plan: Gabo would put on the cloak of one of the dead goblins to cover his armor, then walk in pretending to be a new recruit. He would scout out the tunnels and report back so they could come up with a plan. Gabo agreed, and made his way in.

The interior cavern tunnel was dark and humid. A stream ran through it, with a five foot wide passage along the right side. After passing by a room with three chained up wolves and convincing them he was not an intruder, he ventured further up the tunnel as it climbed upward. There, he found a rickety Goblin-built bridge above the passageway, with a sentry on post.

"Halt! Who goes there?"

"It's, uh, me! I'm a new recruit."

"I don't know nothin' 'bout any new Gobbos joining our crew."

"Yeah, It's true. I just need to check in with the boss."

"Oh, yeah? what's his name?"

This was Gabo's moment, where as a Goblin he could prove his worth to the party and be the hero. He would give this guard the name of the cave boss he had learned from the captured Goblin, make his way in, and gather the intelligence needed. It was his time to shine.

But unfortunately for poor Gabo, his player hadn't taken any notes during the entire session.

"Kl...Clarence? Clumpy? Clambake?"

With an evil grin, the sentry sent a signal further up the tunnel. He then ran to the left, into a side tunnel, presumably to warn the others of an intruder. Before he disappeared, he waved to Gabo and yelled, "Have a nice trip, sucker!"

As Gabo wondered what that meant, he heard a tremendous sound like rushing water from further up the cavern.

Further down the tunnel, just inside the cave entrance, the rest of the party was wondering what was taking so long when Craddock heard the sound of rushing water. Everyone dove for cover. Valmorra and Hastur were lucky, but the stocky, armored Dwarf didn't make it in time. The wall of water rushing down the tunnel hit him dead on, washing him clear out of the tunnel. As he tumbled end over end, his head popped up just in time to see the second captive Goblin, still tied to the tree, laughing hysterically at him. "You got flushed, ya moron!"

A few moments earlier, Gabo, seeing the wall of water washing towards him, leapt across the stream and with one of the few lucky rolls for a Goblin the entire evening, managed to land in an alcove as the flood poured past him. He saw the alcove ended in a pile of loose rock and gravel, with a cavern hole at the top. So, separated from the rest of the party in a cave full of hostile Goblins alerted to his presence, he made the only logical decision: to loudly scrabble up the gravel pile in Chain Mail and jump into an unexplored part of the cavern complex on his own.

Scrambling his way to the top, he crested the peak, to find himself staring at the boots of Yeemik, the Brainy Boi lieutenant of Klaarg, accompanied by the main Goblin Fighting force, that had been listening to the noise he was making and calmly waiting for him at the top...

Meanwhile, Hastur retrieved a soggy Craddock from downstream and the three remaining party members made their way into the complex. Moving rapidly, they passed the bridge and dispatched the Goblins guarding the water trap. Craddock noted there was enough water to set the trap off one more time, and began formulating a plan to use the trap against the Goblins, should the opportunity arise. They cut across the cavern, carefully traversing the rickety Goblin bridge, and found themselves facing Yeemik and his Goblins. Yeemik stood behind two captives: ***Sildar Halwinter***, Gundren's traveling companion, and Gabo. Yeemik, not being a fool, knew a party of adventurers was cutting through his troops like tissue paper and had kept Gabo alive as a bargaining chip.

The Goblin Lieutenant made them a deal: Yeemik, being a Brainy Boi, felt that he, not Klaarg, should be leader of the warband. If the party would agree to kill Klaarg for him, he would let the captives go.

Sildar spoke up: "Don't take the deal! don't even think about trusting a Goblin!"

"Hey! I'm right here", protested Gabo.

Craddock considered his options for a moment. Then he remembered that the Goblins hadn't rolled above a 10 all night long. As an answer, he hefted his warhammer and started walking towards Yeemik.

A few minutes later, Yeemik had been skewered to the wall by Hastur and the remaining Goblins were dead or surrendered. Gabo was unconscious, having taken several hits during the fight, and was rolling death saves. As the group prepared to lick their wounds and make their way out, they heard a voice from behind them.

"Klaarg gave you time to kill Yeemik. Yeemik was trouble. But Klaarg did not expect you to kill so many of Klaarg's Goblins. Now Klaarg must punish you!"

Before them stood the biggest bugbear they had ever seen, handling a dire wolf on a chain and flanked by another force of Goblins ready to fight...