We were back in action of 4/5 of the players present for this game, no Aaron (Avaros the bard) for this one...it may have proven costly. Fresh off the heals rescuing Raeynar Neverember from the clutches of the Xanathar guild, the group decided to call it a night, rest, regroup and set off to find Floon in the morning.
They played this part pretty cautiously, recruiting help from the Street Sweepers guild of Waterdeep, thinking they may have better information as to where Xanathar sewer hideout would. Thanks to some quick NPC random rolling, I had a crippled dwarf lead them down into the sewers and get them going in the right direction.
The first noted encounter is with a solo gazer prior to reaching the hideout. I'm not really sure what the point of this encounter is...maybe to ahold to the fact that Xanathar is a beholder....regardless, the group blew right through this, the only drama was them making checks to leap over the sewage channel to the other side, which some promptly failed. I took my time to describe the smell and just pure awfulness of this....fecal matter hanging on their robes, bits of torn and stained cloth wrapped around their legs, make it gross!
Reaching the hideout, things got interesting....first encounter is with some goblins behind arrow slits, with the hopes of catching the unwary in a crossfire. Some impressive rolls and Amber the cleric "getting her hands dirty" made this encounter trivial.....she through shit at them. Moving into the hideout, the next scripted encounter turned the evening sour for the group. A duergar and Xanathar thug waited to ambush the party. Invisibility and surprise attacks can wreck a low level party....case in point: Moving deeper into the hideout, when suddenly the duergar strikes the sorcerer from behind...I crit....one down. Initiative and the thug moves in engaging Brian's character Paul, the duergar, now enlarged, cuts down Amber the cleric....the thug is dispatched, but the party is seriously hurting and my dice were hot. Have I mentioned I make all of my rolls out in the open, I don't fudge the dice rolls at least. It's now 2 versus 1, the rogue goes down next....I'm really sorry guys. Paul managed to score a hit on the duergar and I had him drop, perhaps a little before his HP total said he would.
Death saves and Paul trying to stabilize those who he could was high drama with everyone watching the rolls...I love these moments at the table, there is no talking, just the sound of the dice spinning. They all lived, but Cody's was on 2/3 death saves with the last roll, sealing his fate...he lived. My hands were tied for a couple of hours in-game as Paul barricaded and hid the recovery party and himself...some random noises deeper in the hideout, could I possibly through a random encounter at the one upright party member....maybe not this time.
Now recovered they move deeper into the hideout, a quick detour to check out a hastily barricaded closet door...surprise, it's a slime! Amber goes down and is nearly pulled into the pit....barely spared. Which leads to the final encounter...
So let me pause for a second and state, I'm really not a fan of the recent WoTC releases and this encounter is pretty poor in my opinion. If I had to do it over again, I'd change a lot...especially the whole mindflayer part. I get they are trying to allude to more danger and sinister things at work with the Xanathar guild, but it's just kinda poorly done.
OK, back to it...Bloth the rouge sneaks ahead and sees a red-headed man being tortured by a robed half-orc while this otherworldly, almost alien like creature looks on, its tentacled mouth twitching in perceived boredom. The group did pretty well, not to meta this encounter and proceeded ahead despite the quite obvious danger. As the group enters, I had the mindflayer exit with a dismissive hand...deal with these...The group had no issues here and Floon...beaten and scared was saved. I have to admit, I modeled my NPC Floon from Adam Koebel's stream of this same adventure on the Roll20 broadcast of their games. In fact I model a lot of my NPC's from him, fantastic DM.
That about wrapped it up....the party headed back, Floon in-hand, to collect their reward from Volo.....surprise it's Trollskull Manor. We'll pick up from here when I run the next session. If I could change anything about this session it would definitely be to remove the mindflayer from all of this..its is just a little much and awkward. I'd also make some more consequences for delaying in getting to Floon...perhaps they just find him dead, I don't think this really impacts anything. The group is still going to get the house. Anyways, stay tuned, I've got some good things planned heading into the next session as I start to deviate a lot from the book.
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