LMoP DM Blog II: Wave Echo Cave Part II
Wave Echo Cave: Part II
Game happened on 9/25/2019
Today I'm going to continue the DM blog about my starter kit campaign.
Recap
To recap the previous session: my players found Wave Echo Cave and began exploring. They met the Black Spider and agreed to help him in order to save Nundren Rockseekers life. We ended the session after the Flameskull fight. |
| Bold numbers in parenthesis below refer to room numbers on this map. |
This Session
We started in the flameskull room (12). The players seemed to expect that the forge in here was the fabled "Forge of Spells", and asked to do some arcana checks only to find the plane non-magical. They did notice that the fallen skull was still alive with magical energy though, and the Warrior Pheonix decided to cut it in half with his greataxe. I decided to allow this to finally kill the Flameskull.Next, they found the watery portion of the cave (16), and I described this room as the source of the echo they had been hearing the whole time. The water lowered and the cave hummed with an inhalation. Then the water began to rise, the players panicked and decided it best to leave.
Rupert and the Forge of Spells
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| Meet Rupert {i painted this :) } |
As soon as the entered, I described the forge, the magic items in the corner and finally the spectator monster who telepathically welcomed them and asked them in a very menacing voice what they were going in here. The players talked the situation down, and the spectator gained some information about the party; namely that they weren't with the Black Spider, and that they weren't after his forge/items.
I named him Rupert, and he was quite a friendly spectator, as long as you stayed away from the things he was summoned to protect many years ago. He craved for any social activity and wanted to hear any rumors/news the players might have.
Through this conversation they loosened Rupert up and he explained how he can be dismissed with a ritual and a wand. (Side note: Its really fun to act like a spectator and use your hands like eye-stalks!) The players took out the magic missle wand they had found early and confirmed it was the legendary "Wand of Phandelver". The only additional thing they needed was to know about the ritual, and Rupert directed them to the nearby ruined mages quarters. He also warned the group about Mormesk the Wraith ("He's so disrespectful, he just flies right through the wall! Doesn't even use the door!").
Mormesk the dick
The players then went to find Mormesk (14), in hopes of discovering more about the ritual to dismiss their pal Rupert. They opened the stuck-closed door and found a crispy burnt room. Two charred beds, some burnt books, and a good condition chest were in the room. Predictably, the rogue beeline'd for the chest, and as soon as he did, Mormesk came out of the floor. I read his cool textblock from the adventure:"Your presence is offensive to me, your life forfeit. My treasures are mine alone, not yours to plunder!"I ran this encounter with a number representing Mormesks' current mood. If it got to 10, the fight was on, and he started the encounter at a 9. The druid almost immediately called him rude, and he attacked lol.
The fight was on, and since Mormesk was kind of a push-over, I had him summon some additional weaker Spectres on his first turn. The fight went really poorly though; the players didn't take a single hit, even though I gave him an dying attack. During the fight, the noble fighter Pheonix pulled of his fancy new magic missle wand and tried it out, prompting Mormesk to shout "THE WAND! YOU HAVE IT!" and fly directly towards the player for his dying attack. That was a cool moment, regardless of how easy the fight was.
The players made some investigations checks and found an magically protected book that wasn't damaged by the flames. A natural 20 arcana check led them to easily find the ritual in the book.
Avoiding Poison: Comedic Interlude
While exploring, the players found the poison mushroom room (8). The rogue immediately walked up to a mushroom and tried to cut off a piece, but was blasted with poisonous spores! They went through some discussion as to what to do, and eventually came up with something hilarious.
The druid Aeras was reading her racial abilities, and as an Air Genasi, she had an ability called "Endless Breath"
Unending Breath: You can hold your breath indefinitely while you’re not incapacitated.I think the standard reading of this is that the one player can hold their breath forever, but my player read it as "I can generate oxygen inside my lungs to sustain myself because I'm an elemental" and her next logical step was that "I can mouth to mouth give air to the others and ferry them across". The whole table died laughing, and I RP'd Sildar as a toothless old man looking forward to a kiss.
It was a great situation; the genasi ferried the players one by one and for each I rolled a d20. On a 1 roll, I would make them inhale poison anyways, but overall it was a super interesting solution to the problem!
Bargaining Chip
Most of the group was happy to find the other part of the puzzle to dismiss their pal Rupert, but the druid player "Aeras"'s immediate response was "This is a bargaining chip!". She discussed that maybe they shouldn't perform the ritual right away, and instead use Rupert against the spider through trickery. I really love when my players have cool ideas like this so I rolled with it. Their plan was to leave the rogue Garron in here with Rupert to hide. Once the black spider came in, they were to attack and kill him.This led to a hilarious RP moment where the rest of the group was elsewhere in the dungeon, but I kept cutting back to the scene of the halfing rogue and Spectator hiding under the table, gossiping about local drama and news of ice dragon attacks.
Full Clear
The players wanted to help out Gundren as best they could, and decided to full clear the dungeon. Since the session was running late and we had less than 30 minutes, I truncated a lot of the rooms near the middle of the dungeon (3, 6, 7, 9). They didn't fight a single ghoul. I figured that either the Flameskull or the Wraith were the source of the necromantic energy in here, and so the players found all the other monsters already dead. They also found some cool leaping boots (6), which Garron the Rogue was super-excited about. He also go 5 more feet of movement!Black Spider Deception
The players went back to Nezznar's (The Black Spider) area (outside 19), and talked with his bugbear guards. They invited the players into his office, but the players refused. After some short RP, Nezznar came out and the players proclaimed the dungeon had been cleared. Nezznar decided to send two bugbears with the players: "Show these two the forge, and if what you say is true, your friend will be released to you."The players happily led the bugbears to the Forge of Spells room. Outside, they were very loud in trying to talk about how they DIDN'T have the BLACK SPIDER with them with hopes to make Rupert and Garron relax. I had Garron roll a hidden perception check, and I told him he passed in secret. I gave a few moments, then the bugbears walked into the room. Garron didn't say anything to Rupert though.....
Good Old Rupert
As soon as the bugbears entered the room (15), Rupert blasted both of them with disintegration rays and killed them with a single shot. The players were speechless! It was a really good moment; everyone was like SHIT what do we do now?! The players were a bit stumped, but decided to leave one player here and go back to the Black Spider along with one of the dead bugbears. The plan was to say that something unexpected happened, killing the bugbears and one of their companions. I told them, with a poker face, that this was indeed A plan.The Twist
The players headed back to the area of the dungeon where Nezznar resides (outside 19), but for the first time they found the halls empty. No bugbears stood guard outside. This kinda freaked the players out, and they thought that The Black Spider might be patrolling the dungeon now. They decided to go back and decide on a new plan.Freedom
They decided that they should just free Rupert and use his magic items against the Black Spider. I described the ritual as a circle drawn with chalk surrounded with runes. Rupert had a heartfelt moment, and told the players to look him up if they were ever in the Astral Plane! The players found magic armor that gives advantage on saving throws against dragons, a +1 greataxe that gives advantage on shove checks, and a +1 mace with 1d6 extra damage against undead.Le Fin
I ended the session there as we were out of time, and it was pretty good timing. Next week: THE BOSS FIGHT! The players are looking forward to it!Overall, I was really happy with this session. Things went well and I feel like everyone had fun. The druid player mentioned that the moment where she helped the others cross poison was one of her favorite DnD moments.
NEXT TIME ON!
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| Drider I painted |
Boss fight time! I decided a long time ago that The Black Spider was a very disappointing final boss and decided to use a Drider instead! I'm planning for his normal form to get to low life, then change into a Drider (by the distaste of Lolth!). Since the players are all level 5, koboldfightclub shows the a Drider + one giant spider + a few tiny spiders will be a near-deadly fight, so that is what I'm planning on.
Tune in next week to see how it goes!
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