D&D Starter Set Start…Sort of, Part II

In our last post, I wrote about our first session with the D&D Starter Set but the post was long enough after just discussing the first half of our session. During the first half of the session, the players got to be involved in a bunch of roleplaying within the group and with a series of NPCs that they met at Crellar’s Trading Post where the High Road and Triboar Trail converged. These NPCs included Brent (a crude, rude, loudmouth sellsword), Crellar (the friendly owner of the trading post), Gertrude (Crellar’s outwardly judgmental wife), Goddle (a cheery halfling and a regular at the trading post), Kelsey (Crellar’s youngest son and rather interested in adventurer types), Lif (a rather aloof elf that I forgot to mention in the last writeup), Lyons (a shy, naive, young woman heading to Neverwinter to study magic), Mirapesh (the outgoing, dashing, and rather chivalrous Calishite), and Sildar (an old soldier). I wrapped up the last writeup as the last stragglers headed up to their rooms for the night’s rest.

So here is the second part.

As before, there are potential spoilers below the break for the Starter Set adventure, Lost Mine of Phandelver, but they are very minor as we didn’t get too far into it. There are also spoilers for the old Dungeon Magazine (#28) adventure, Night of Fear, but we didn’t get too far into it either. This write-up is from yours truly as I didn’t make sure any of the players would be doing a write-up.

As everyone went to their own rooms and settled down for the night with varying degrees of paranoia (from locking their doors to stacking something up against the door to sleeping against the door), Caelynn asked Valanthe to assist her with something. A something that turned out to be breaking into Brent’s room and stealing some of his money to give money to Crellar (and everyone else) for having to put up with the oaf. Brent’s crude and rude advances to all of the female patrons had certainly (and rightly so) rubbed both Caelynn and Valanthe the wrong way. The pair of elven women headed to his room and, as Valanthe kept a lookout, Caelynn picked the lock on to his door. Hearing the lout snoring loudly, Caelynn crept into the room. She quickly found his coin pouch as all of his belongings (and clothing) was lying scattered about the floor. She took nearly all of his money and his dagger. Before leaving, she sliced up and largely left his pants in shreds. Heading back to her room and Valanthe to hers, Caelynn stashed the dagger in her pack, put the coins into her own pouch, and then dumped Brent’s pouch in the indoor privy before settling down to sleep.

Everyone was woken in the middle of the night by the sound of very loud barking, presumably from Bone Breaker downstairs. And, as suddenly as the barking had started, it stopped. As most of the patrons gathered in the trading post’s upstairs hallway, shaking the sleep from their heads, Crellar’s voice rang out calling all to arms! In various states of half-dress and half-awake, most of the patrons headed downstairs, splitting between the two sets of stairs. Lyons was told to stay in her room with the door locked but it was hard to tell who else might be missing and no one did a head count.

Crellar was standing in the main room holding a lantern and looking around. He started to call out for Bone Breaker as the dog was missing. There was a puddle of blood on the floor and Crellar called out for everyone to be careful as Bone Breaker was the “toughest damn dog he ever had.” A quick check of the doors and windows showed that they were all still secured from the inside but there was no sign of Bone Breaker or any response to Crellar’s call for him.

As everyone continued to look around in various states of concern, confusion, and shock, Lord Corlinn grabbed a torch and took a peek up the flue of the room’s large fireplace. He jumped back immediately as he spotted some vicious beast, fangs bared, leaping down the flue. After a moment of composing himself, he realized it was Bone Breaker. Taking a closer look, he could see that the dog’s head had been smashed in and it had been stuffed up the flue. Whatever had stuffed the poor creature up the flue had done so with considerable strength. Not only was Bone Breaker a large dog but it took quite a bit of effort to extract his body.

As the level of concern overtook the confusion and shock, efforts to find the culprit were redoubled. A more thorough check showed that every single entrance to trading post (at least on the ground level) was still secured from the inside. This meant that the killer had either escaped via some other route or magical means OR was still inside with everyone. This revelation sent Goddle into a near panic! Crellar shouted for his family to stay locked in their rooms and most everyone headed back upstairs to search the empty rooms. Goddle took this opportunity to flee to his room and lock himself inside. The search upstairs came up empty and all the shutters were secured from the inside.

Oh, at one point, Brent (who had not come down yet) did come down to the main room wearing nothing but his sword belt. Goddle accused Brent of being the killer which did not sit well with the boor. Brent threateningly stood over the halfling and demanded that he make that accusation to his face. Poor Goddle got a full and close-up view of Brent’s “manhood” before Brent bent over to actually be face to face with the halfling and mooned the entire room as a result. [I never said that I wasn’t juvenile…besides, the moans and groans from around the table were more than worth it. Plus, it wasn’t like I’m the one who left Brent’s trousers in tatters. 😀 ]

Various individuals began to take charge and split up the patrons into groups to accomplish various activities. Feran volunteered to guard the downstairs hallway off of the chambers in which Crellar’s family was hiding. [This was as much for RJ to not have to be playing two active characters as anything…sheesh! It also meant that Feran was all alone in the hallway.] The priest (of Ilmater) whose name the PCs did not yet know and Rudvarien volunteered to go upstairs and guard the hallway (and Lyons). Someone, I forget who but I think Mirapesh, volunteered to stay in the bar to keep watch. Pretty much everyone else headed outside to search the premises and the stables.

A quick tour around the perimeter turned up nothing suspicious (which, itself, might be suspicious)…no tracks, no sign of forced entry, pretty much nothing. Before the group could enter the stables, there was a scream from upstairs…Lyons. Sildar yelled that not everyone should go running up as it might be intended as a distraction. He quickly split up the searchers between those who would remain outside on watch and those who would go back inside. I’m pretty sure that Lif and Caelynn were part of the outside group plus one other.

As the rest of the group got upstairs, they found Mirapesh in the hallway standing over the priest with bloody sword in hand…a priest lying on the floor with blood pooling around his body…and Lyons standing in shock. Mirapesh quickly explained that he came running up after Lyons screamed to find the priest touching her in a rather inappropriate manner and did what any gentleman would do under the circumstances. Lyons confirmed that this is what had happened. It was noticed that Rudvarien was missing and he didn’t respond to any calls for him.

Another search was conducted of the upstairs. Goddle refused to come out or unlock his door. Lyons also locked herself back in her room. [The latter turns out to be rather important later on.] The shutters in Rudvarien’s room were now open (they had not been before) and it looked like someone had began to tie the sheets and blankets on the bed together for a possible way of climbing out the window. There was, however, no sign of Rudvarien. The outside group came around and looked in the area below Rudvarien’s room. There were no tracks or signs of anyone having been moving about here but Caelynn did find a dagger that looked like it may have been dropped out of the window.

Goddle refused to come out and stopped responding to questions. Crellar decided that he was just going to lock himself in with his family and, hopefully, wait out the night. Lyons was also taken into the same room as the family so there would be fewer areas to guard. Feran and Beran stationed themselves outside of this room along with Mirapesh. Others stationed themselves in other key points and additional searching was undertaken by yet others.
There was a loud thud from inside the room that Crellar et al had locked themselves inside. Then other. Feran tried to break down the door but failed. He tried again. I think it was on the third try that the door gave way. The lights inside had been extinguished but Feran’s torch illuminated a gruesome scene. Lyons was crouched in a corner hugging her knees to her chest. Kellen, Kelsey, and Kelly (Crellar’s children) were all lying on the floor with their heads smashed in. Crellar and Gertude, upon seeing this, collapsed to their knees. Lyons ran for the door screaming and Feran let her pass. Mirapesh ran after her.

When asked what happened, Crellar explained, between sobs, that Lyons had smashed the lantern and plunged the room into darkness. He had no idea what happened next except for the sounds…the sickening sound of his children having their skulls smashed. Mirapesh had not gotten very far and was found standing alone with his sword again bloody. When asked what had happened, he explained that Lyons had turned on him and tried to attack him with great big claws. In self-defense, he had stabbed her and she simply disappeared. He was clearly distraught and said that he needed some air and headed out of the trading post into the cool night’s air. Lif followed him but pretty much everyone else had again gathered inside.

As the shock of the tragedy sunk in (along with even more confusion), additional searches were undertaken. Caelynn and Valanthe led the searches upstairs. This time, they did search Lyon’s room although they didn’t need to look too carefully. A small pool of blood had seeped out from under the bed. Looking under it, they found Lyon’s body! At first they thought she had magically “poofed” from where Mirapesh had stabbed her to wind up here. They then realized that her body had no stab wound but her skull had been smashed in. It was also clear that she hadn’t just died. Something was clearly not right!

In the meantime, Lif came back inside a few moments after Mirapesh had run out and said that the Calishite had run off into the nearby woods. Lord Corlinn and Lif quickly ran off after him while Sildar went and gathered others to head out as well. Feran and Beran rushed outside after turning over the consoling duties to Sildar. Lif and Corlinn were a good distance ahead of them and were just entering the woods.

Back upstairs, Caelynn and Valanthe were starting to believe that maybe Mirapesh wasn’t more than he seemed to be and had begun searching his room. Inside the small foot locker, they found a small metal box about a foot long, eight inches wide, and four or five inches deep. Both got a bad feeling that nothing good was inside.

Outside, as Lif and Corlinn had gone a short distance into the woods following the “trail” left by Mirapesh, Lif began to laugh and then transform into something neither elf nor human. It swung a large bony fist and Corlinn and caught him with a glancing blow. Perhaps it was the adrenaline from the night’s events or perhaps Corlinn is simply quick, but he was not taken by surprise by the attack. As this creature began gloating about how easy it was to take human prey and lure away a lone victim as well as its plans to take over the trading post as a nice larder, Corlinn hit not once, not twice, but thrice with his axe to defeat the thing. As Feran and Beran reached him, Corlinn pointed at the body and said it had been Lif. The body was decapitated for good measure and the head and body were carried back to the trading post.

Upstairs, Caelynn attempted to pick the lock on the box. As she did so, a purple fog-like cloud oozed out of the lock to surround her arm. She felt a soul-chilling cold (and took a good amount of damage) before she jerked back and the cloud returned back into the lock. The pair decided that nothing good could be in the box and elected to leave it alone for now and head downstairs.

Sildar identified the creature as a doppelganger…a shapeshifter who could also read your surface thoughts. A short search turned up Lif’s body outside and just around the corner of the stables. The body of Mirapesh was found stuffed up the flue in the room that “he” claimed to have killed Lyons. And that’s pretty much where we stopped for the night…the killer found, numerous victims throughout the trading post, and the PCs having had an experience that meant they had to come together as opposed to just reading some boxed text that tells them so.

I’m sure I probably left out some details and got the order of events mixed up a bit. In my defense, it is a bit hard to be playing a dozen plus NPCs, winging it all, and keep up with the notes. 😉

[So what exactly happened here. Rudvarien was a doppelganger. He had come downstairs with the hope of replacing Crellar. He ran into Bone Breaker who could smell that the doppleganger wasn’t actually Crellar and so started barking. Rudvarien killed the dog and quickly stuffed it up the flue. In all the confusion that resulted, he was able to slip back into the group of patrons. As the search began, he went upstairs with the priest to keep watch. When the priest went into his quarters, Rudvarien shifted to Mirapesh and got Lyons to let him into her room. He quickly slew her, shoved the body under the bed, and took her form. With “her” ESP like powers, Rudvarien knew that “she” could seduce the priest. After waiting for the search party outside to pass by, she opened the shutter in Rudvarien’s room and dropped the dagger…in the hopes of it looking like the merchant had fled. The priest, however, spotted her in the room but succumbed to dopple-Lyons’ advances. As they retired back to Lyons’ room, she screamed and then held the priest tight until someone came running up the stairs…making it look like the priest was attacking the young woman. Rudvarien wanted the priest removed as he had seen him–in the form of Lyons–acting suspiciously in Rudvarien’s room. The dopple-Lyons then convinced Mirepesh that she would feel safer with others and so she was taken to the room with Crellar’s family. With things already moving quickly and the original plans shot (i.e., simply taking Crellar’s place), Rudvarien switched gears. Dopple-Lyons doused the light and, in the darkness, killed the three children (Rudvarien planned on killing everyone and then telling some story about Gertrude and the children leaving Crellar). When the door was opened, Rudvarien played on Lyons innocence and ran out. When “she” and Mirapesh reached a room by themselves, dopple-Lyons slew him…he never saw it coming…and stuffed the body in the flue before taking his form. Dopple-Mirapesh then got outside with Lif following and slew Lif and stashed the body around the corner as wholesale slaughter was now the plan. Running back inside in Lif’s form, he got Lord Corlinn to run out to the woods with him. The plan was to slay Corlinn and then use his form to take others by surprise. Corlinn didn’t fall quite as easily and slew Rudvarien…with the doppleganger’s arrogance making it a bit vulnerable. It should have just taken Corlinn by surprise but had to start gloating a little too soon. So that’s how events went behind the scenes so to speak.

Oh, I almost forgot…so the new Basic D&D. How is it? To be honest, I can’t really say much about it. This session ran just like pretty much any other game I’ve run where it was primarily “roleplaying” and exploration. The only time that anything came up that wasn’t the same as it would be pretty much in the same vein as Savage Worlds or older editions of D&D or even the more recent editions was the combat at the end. The very first attack roll in the session was the doppleganger attacking Lord Corlinn and he scored a critical. The damage left Corlinn with, I think, one hit point. As a bonus action, he used his Second Wind ability to recover some Hit Points. I simply narrated it much like I would have if someone had soaked Wounds in Savage Worlds: although the attack looked to have done a lots of damage, it was really only a flesh wound that looked much worse than it truly was. It made sense to me to do it that way. On the other hand, I always have had a hard time wrapping a narrative around Hit Points in every edition of D&D and usually don’t bother.]