SPOILER WARNING: I will describe the adventures of my PCs as they sought to discover the mysteries of The Lost Mine of Phandelver. Reading this will give away some of the secrets and surprises found in this module. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.
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Some explanation and character creation can be found in my previous post, here.
Part 1 describes how the PCs discovered there was something sinister going on near Phandalin and what they did about it.
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While Olva, Carlita, and Inigo were following the goblin's trail, Nissa was conscientiously watching the cart. After a short time, a rider appeared, introducing himself as Barthen of Barthen's Provisions. He had been worried when Gundren didn't show up as expected and had set out to look for him on the trail to Phandalin. He offered to take the cart and urged Nissa to follow her companions in rescuing Gundren, giving her a map of Phandalin so that she could find her way to Barthen's Provisions afterward. Nissa, however, refused to leave Barthen in the dangerous woods and rode with him all the way to Phandalin before borrowing a horse and setting off after her friends.
Meanwhile, Olva, Carlita, and Inigo had followed the goblin's trail to the mouth of a cave. Olva quietly proceeded to scout out the cave entrance. Inigo stealthily crossed the stream issuing from the cave and began checking out the bushes on the other side. Carlita decided to noisily follow Inigo, completely negating his stealth, and was rewarded with two arrows suddenly flying at her from over the hedge followed shortly by the appearance of two goblins from around the end near the cave mouth. Inigo and Olva, rushing back to the group, made short work of them, and everyone proceeded together into the cave. Carlita cast light on her shield, but then persisted in hanging back, so no one could really use it to see ahead. Olva, with her darkvision though, perceived a chamber leading off to the east in which she found three ravenous wolves barking and howling.
Olva pulled out some rations and tossed them to the wolves (or perhaps big dogs) who gobbled them up and calmed down. Whereupon, she unchained them. They jumped on Olva, knocking her down, and began to tear her pack apart looking for more food. Inigo and Carlita were at a bit of a loss as to how to help. Inigo tried distracting the wolves by throwing some food down the tunnel for them to chase, but forgot to get the wolves attention first, so his action went largely unseen. Luckily, Nissa arrived at this time and, with a bit more skill than the others, was able to calm one of the wolves down enough to lead it away from Olva which allowed her to get up off the floor. With a bit more food, Olva was able to get two of the wolves back onto their chains, while the third wolf had taken a liking to Nissa due to her kindness and chose to calmly follow her further into the caverns.
Choosing not to further investigate the steep fissure at the back of the wolves' chamber, the party went back into the entrance tunnel and continued deeper into the caves. A short distance further, they found a steep slope that Olva tried to climb. However her weight caused part of the slope to collapse and tumbled her back to the bottom. Having learned her lesson, she decided to lasso a stalagmite at the top of the slope and prepared to try the climb again.
In the mean time, Inigo scouted further ahead and spied a bridge 20 ft. up in the air. As he and the others were debating what to do next, a rushing was heard and a wall of water came rushing down the cavern tunnel. Olva and the wolf, now named Keno, quickly scrambled up the incline, but Nissa, Carlita, and Inigo were less fortunate. The water tumbled and battered them along, back to the entrance of the caves. Bruised and battered, but not seriously injured, the three picked themselves up and trudged back to the bottom of the incline where they again began discussing what they should do next. They decided to climb the incline, with a rope harness being made for Keno, and everyone had lined up for the ascent, when another wall of water came rushing down the tunnel. Everyone quickly scrambled up the rope that Olva had prepared, though Carlita waited until the last moment, having gone to see if she could coax another wolf to join them. Though nearly swept away by the flood, Carlita barely managed to hang on to the rope and pull herself to safety.
At the top of the rope, the party discovered a stinking cavern filled with blankets and cooking fires and six startled goblins. Battle immediately commenced.
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This session presented several humorous moments. Among them were Foghorn rolling a 2 on a stealth check when she tried to follow Gamer in investigating the bushes. We could all imagine Carlita happily jingling along behind the slinking rogue, completely frustrating all his efforts to move quietly. Another incident was when Goldfish unexpectedly had her character release the wolves from their chains after calming them down. I didn't want them to outright attack her, but I thought that having them smother her as they tried to get more food would be appropriate. She and the others spent ten minutes trying to get those dogs off of Olva, which gave me plenty of time to get Nissa onto the scene to help. She rolled high on her animal handling check and so was allowed to lead one away and "tame" it, as it were. This gave Reader another player character which I ruled could understand basic commands like "stay," "attack," etc.
It took a lot of shoehorning to get Reader to have her character go back and join the others. She was very determined to make sure that Nissa fulfilled her contract completely before she went to find Gundren. No matter what outs i presented nor how much the NPC plead with her to go rescue Gundren, Nissa was determine to see this cart delivered. I fudged distances and retconned some times so that I could eventually have Nissa join up with her party after a decently short interval.
There were a lot of unexpected developments, but they were all fun. The ramifications will have to be worked out later. I don't think I want the party to easily tame the other two. I'll have to figure out a good way of avoiding this.
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