Lost Mine of Phandelver

The Original Group/Party

**Lost Mine of Phandelver** was the first D&D campaign played by the original group from the League of Mothers and attempts to follow the 5th edition starter adventure of the same name. It is the first campaign set in the Velmaverse continuity and is not only responsible for starting it off, but for also ultimately getting almost everyone on the server interested in D&D as a whole. Due to its iconic messed up story and characters (e.g. Vladamira Torunn and the Cragmaw Castle Altercation) it is regarded as both an iconic legendary tale, but also a reminder of the stupidity that new players can make and a prime example of how a dungeon master may "abuse" their power. The game takes place on the Sword Coast within the Forgotten Realms setting. As RoxyVelma put it, it's the "messed up version of how the campaign's supposed to go." Bellow also includes his DM thoughts on each session.

The Dungeon Master for the game was RoxyVelma.

#### List of Players and their Characters

**The Original Group**

*First Session:*

* Shmexi: Skeldar
* Kelloggs: Gogdor
* Rusty: Omniscidor

*Joined during the Second Session:*

* Elyag: Durnehviir
* CrapBag: Seranas

#### **The Story**

*Written originally as a brief summary of the first campaign by RoxyVelma, and heavily edited by Kelloggs to present on this wiki. This is truly where our group's fascination for D&D truly began, and so whilst at times you can be a real pisshead (no-homo), but thanks to RoxyVelma for introducing us to this nerdy ass game, it's actually not too bad.*

**First Session**

In the city of Neverwinter on the Sword Coast, a trio of adventurers which included Skeldar the tiefling warlock, Gogdor the half-orc barbarian and Omniscidor the human cleric, met at the inn of the Hekburn's Arms. There they were hired by the dwarf Gundren Rockseeker to accompany a wagon full of his mining supplies to the frontier town of Phandalin, south-east of the city along the Triboar trail, in exchange for 10 gold pieces. The dwarf informed them that he and his companion Sildar Hallwinter, an elderly looking knight, would set off towards the town ahead of the trio though his reason why was never known. After they set on a payment they set off together with his wagon full of supplies. However, along the Triboar Trail, they were quickly ambushed by a band of goblins. Though the trio was able to swiftly defeat them in combat, It was revealed that during the fight, Omniscidor was either paralytic or just completely incapable of making any physical movement, whilst Gogdor ripped the goblins to pieces, with the survivor eventually committing suicide upon the barbarian's javelin, due to his intimidating presence and believing the half-orc was a living God. Skeldar appeared to just be chilling on the wagon throughout it all. The trio eventually realised that the goblins had ambushed their patron Rockseeker and his companion Hallwinter as their horses had been shot and killed, indicated by the multiple arrows found plunged into them. Furthermore, Omniscidor had uncovered a hidden passageway that the goblins were using to get to the Triboar Trail undetected and decided to use the surviving Goblin before he killed himself to uncover where the Goblin hideout was. After a long journey through the forest littered with various traps, they eventually found the goblin hideout, known as Cragmaw Hideout.

**Second Session**

Gogdor was quick in tearing the guarding sentries apart and thus once inside they cleared out the hideout, killing many goblins and their leader a bugbear. They were also able to find and free their captive, the human knight, Sildar Hallwinter, though Gundren was nowhere in sight. They set off for the town of Phandlin again, with a thankful Sildar with them. Once reaching the town, they were given some compensation by the knight and were given some advice on where to look for their boss Gundren. They decided to take the rest of the day a bit easy and went to a nearby tavern where they gained two new additions to their party, a dragonborn fighter known as Durnehviir and a human (though may have been a half-elf) rogue named Seranas. After becoming acquainted with one another and buying and selling some products, the group were accosted by a band of Redbrand Ruffians, local troublemakers in the town, though were swiftly defeated. The party followed the wounded ruffians to their hideout, a local manor, though looking heavily ruined and abandoned. Once there they found that their base was actually underneath the ruins and so went inside. Once inside they were able to find a couple of cloaks that prevented some undead skeletons from attacking the party, except for poor Durnehviir who couldn't quite get his cloak to fit around his waist (fatass), though he himself was able to defeat them. Once again using his incredibly high perception, the cleric Omniscidor seemed to be able to see through walls and uncovered a secret entrance to a room where a man with a staff appeared to be ready for them. Here the party battled the Redbrand Ruffian leader, a spell caster who almost defeated them, known as 'Glass staff', possibly called this as he carried a glass staff. Accounts of the wizard's demise vary, one iteration is that Durnehviir was able to land the killing blow with his frost breath, the other being that the party knocked him unconscious and planned on interrogating him, though Skeldar couldn't trust him and so stabbed him just to feel safe.

*DM NOTES: If anyone reading this decides to play D&D, while min-maxing can be fun, incredibly stupid stats like a 24 in passive perception can make a DM hate themselves and wish to either read 'War and Peace' in the original Russian text or straight up kill your character.*

**Third Session**

After coming out of the hideout everyone decided to split up and shop or follow potential leads before meeting up once more at the town’s main inn and tavern. Whilst eating and drinking there, they were approached by a suspicious half-elf, who while talking to them was shot and instantly killed by an arrow. The brave adventurers went off in pursuit of the assassin, who escaped only after Omniscidor rendered himself unconscious (not too great with physical movement as stated before). While investigating the murder they found that the Half-elf, Porico Cophaxath was a double agent working for both the goblins and the humans in the town. The group then attempted to figure out who had hired the assassin, was it the humans of the town covering something up, or the goblins? While investigating the murder, due to Seranas’ brutal interrogation methods, she managed to annoy a mysterious lady (with a peculiar Russian accent) named Vladamira Torunn, a famous pit-fighter. After the rogue had tried to stab the pit fighter through the hand, she brutally beat the entire group into submission and left them for dead inside the tavern, though luckily they eventually woke up. After recovering from that mess, while working the case, Seranas came under the payroll of a guild mistress of the local miner's exchange, the human Halia Thornton, who secretly worked for the Zhentarim, a shadow organisation. It was revealed that Halia killed the high-elf Porico Cophaxath, but Seranas was able to throw off the scent effectively due to now working for her. The group ended up deciding that the goblins had paid the assassin to kill Porico. Then decideding to find the main goblin base that was known to be close to the town itself and so asked around. Upon knowing roughly where it was they went on their way, fighting off a myriad of creatures such as Owlbears.

*DM NOTES: Once again we return to a DM having to change things up due to mentally impaired players. In this instance not only did I have to try and deter repeat Murder-hobos but someone was... ahem meta-gaming. So if any of you have actually read the Phandelver book, I thought this murder mystery would inject some interesting dynamics in the party and switch up the story for those who were secretly enjoying the errr... DM literature.*

**Fourth Session**

###### **For a more detailed description of this chapter read the Cragmaw Castle Altercation.**

Once the group reached the goblin fortress, known as Cragmaw Castle, they had a short skirmish battle outside of the keep and then infiltrated it and destroyed many goblins and hobgoblins inside. However the party had taken much damage through the fighting and so upon finding some beds, they decided to rest. Seranas and Gogdor had other plans though and wanted to make sure they were safe where they were camping and so investigated the northern tower. Whilst checking this area out, Gogdor got a bit cheeky and tried to get "busy" with Seranas and lunged for the rogue's hand. Seranas wasn't having any of this however and so lunged at the half-orc, attacking him. Gogdor didn't want to fight back after knowing he had messed up. So the rogue stormed off back to the southern end of the castle, where she got the help of the dragonborn, Durnehviir, to follow her back to Gogdor to take him down. Whilst there is some more to this story, simply put, Seranas, aided by Durnehviir, cut off Gogdor's genitals, with it eventually reaching a point at which Omniscidor’s god had to intervene and force Gogdor to switch his gender to a female or die and Seranas to pick from the Deck of Many Things, choosing 'Demon'. This iconic event would become known as the Cragmaw Castle Altercation. After that absolute shitstorm of an event, in the end, they uncovered that the dwarf Gundren Rockseeker was actually being held captive there and returned to Phandalin once he was secured. The party (and even the players themselves) would never really recover from what had happened in those ruins.

*DM NOTES: I... never mind the party, I will never recover from that evening. Due to the IRL conditions of the tight and hot room we were playing in, I can only assume that tensions were running high that night. It might not be the best DM move but as a new DM divine intervention was the first thing that came to mind to prevent entire party dissolution. I think however that we all find it funny now years later.*

**Fifth Session**

Once they got back to Phandalin, they participated in some well-deserved downtime. Gogdor and Durnehviir were invited to a brothel that had just recently opened up and so travelled there. After some "business", it was revealed later that Gogdor became impregnated by a male half-elf prostitute. Meanwhile, Seranas was hired once again by Halia Thornton to investigate the new brothel. While there, Seranas was apprehended by a powerful warlock who had a demonic appearance and who had great illusionary magic. After Seranas was removed forcefully from the establishment, the three individuals who had just visited the establishment returned, killed all the prostitutes and patrons and burned it to the ground. In response, the female warlock cursed them with intense pain in the form of a mark on their skin for an extended period of time but it soon disappeared. However, once they had burned this brothel to the ground, much of the business in the town appeared to dry up and soon the prices for simple supplies inflated. In the tavern, Gogdor had gotten himself into a large-scale brawl after loudly requesting for a fight. This however is when he came up with an idea to set up a fighting business where patrons would place bets on who'd win. Seranas caught wind of his idea and planned to develop it further and so the OG's decided that they'd set up their own business and brothel, named something along the lines of 'The Bearly Men's Club'. It appeared to be a mixture of a brothel, a bathhouse, a casino, a cage fighting arena and the secret headquarters of an enterprising drug operation, with Gogdor and Seranas (strangely okay with each other at the moment) working as joint CEOs and with Durnehviir as the bouncer and Skeldar coming in and out whenever he pleases free of charge as he was an honoured guest. Omniscidor however wouldn't have anything to do with this, urging the party to continue on with what they were supposed to be doing, though none of the party listened to him. Over a period of several years, the group's business seemed to be very successful and made them very rich, but soon they had Gogdor’s child to look after, named Danielle. Seranas, still a bit salty about what the half-orc had tried to do with her in the castle, persuaded his daughter to be more mischievous and turn on her mother/father, with the rogue eventually advising her to run away to become a thief. However, it appeared that the OG's had completely forgotten about their mission and had just become insanely rich (and even more morally ambiguous).

*DM NOTES: What a turn, the warlock in the brothel was another improvised plot point that the party seemed to find entertaining and once again was set upon by violence and murder-hobo behavior. Also in terms of the business most of the logistics were worked out by me, their errrrrrrrrrrr... accountant. I can't lie I really enjoyed doing projected spending and profit margins for a 10 year period and working out expansion while taking into account risk and storms and that sorta shit. If I ever find my pages of notes I made in the 3 days after this session I will share them.*

**Sixth Session**

Around ten years later from where the last session left off, the party had become incredibly lazy (bar Omniscidor still looking for heroic jobs). A teenage Danielle returned to Phandlain and to her mother/father's business just as a massive group of goblins attacked their HQ. After fending them off, they decided to hunt down those who were responsible for this terror attack and so returned to their adventuring life with Gogdor’s daughter, now a bard by their side. They successfully received information from a nearby banshee that the culprits were a nomadic band of orcs who hired the goblins to scare the OG's away from Phandalin. After the party tracked them down in a nearby forest, the group had an intense fight, with the OG's ultimately being successful, but their luck was not to last. While travelling back through the forest towards Phandalin, the pit fighter Vladamira Torunn returned via a thick cloud of red mist and quickly killed every member of the OG's, except for Gogdor’s child Danielle, sparing her and looking after her, after feeling slightly bad for killing her mother/father. It is unclear as to why the Russian Lady returned but she had her reasons (*RoxyVelma wanted to end the campaign*), thus their adventures came to a gruesome end, with the lost mine of Phandelver remaining lost to this day.

*DM NOTES: I did in reality think that the adventure had reached its natural end, but in my heart I really just didn't want their characters to have a rich and long life as they were not good characters and I kinda wanted to just kill them because it felt good. Other things to note is I did come up with reasons for what occurred. The party as business owners had gained notoriety and they made easy targets being they owned an extensive business and yet still operated out of headquarters in a frontier town? Although as their business manager, accountant and lawyer that might be my fault. Vladamira was by this point working as a powerful operative for the Lords Alliance and she was manipulated by corrupt courtiers to eliminate the party as they threatened some city businesses. Vladamira found this out which is why she ended up taking care of Danielle for a while. Overall, this was a good first campaign for a group of friends, I had a few years experience playing but this was my first outing DMing and despite my players almost giving me an aneurysm, I want to thank them for some great memories.*