We played our seventh session of The Shattered Obelisk on Monday, November 6, 2023. You may notice that this is three weeks after the last; we were about to go through an erratic patch of play. The party had obviously had a very long rest!

Nothing disturbed them during their rest, and the party returned to where they left off – the cavern with the human size areas. I occasionally roll wandering monster checks to see if there’s any obstacles on the way, but not this time. Let’s get back into the play!

There they discovered the legendary Forge of Spells, the magical forge that had been used centuries past to forge many enchanted weapons. But it – of course – was not unguarded. The wizards of the mine had summoned a Spectator to guard it. What’s a spectator? It is a mini-beholder: a small floating orb with a few eye stalks. Spectators are intelligent and can cast magical spells from its eyes. This one had been guarding the forge for far too many years and was a little confused.

It was also quite chatty, and the party were happy to talk to it, trying to determine what it was doing there and how to get past it. It described the mine and forge as if it were still active. (Obviously, everyone was just having a very long lunch). As it described its master, I accidentally described someone quite similar to what the fighter looked like, which Nymia, our Satyr Cleric, took advantage of. She quickly befuddled it into thinking Simeon was its master! Simeon praised it and said it could go home back to its own plane. It happily vanished, and the party walked up to the Forge.

The Forge of Spells was much diminished from its legend. Most of its magic had waned, and Syzoth determined that it would never again forge magical weapons. However, it could temporarily enchant weapons, and a few of the last weapons it had created lay nearby. The party took possession of them, then left it, after marking its position on their map.

Continuing around the edge of the map, anticlockwise, they came to a watery cavern, where waves crashing against the shore provided the mine with its name: Wave Echo Cave. And they were surprised by the Giant Octopus that lurked below! In the battle that followed, the octopus rolled poorly, they did not. Note: The Octopus is a new addition to the adventure.

As they headed west, they finally encountered the Spider’s forces – a group of bugbears and a drow excavating a cave. They surprised them, but the multileveled terrain, with many a cliff and chasm, meant that they couldn’t overwhelm the foes. Syzoth used an entangle spell but could not stop the drow from fleeing to warn the Spider. The bugbears were dealt with swiftly. Note: One extra bugbear is on guard.

Following the trail of the drow, they came to the chamber of the Spider. Two bugbears attempted to hide behind pillars (Simeon saw them), and the Spider stood proud and defiant. Pleasantries and insults were exchanged as the foes tried to gauge each others’ mettle. The Spider did try to gain them as allies, but the party weren’t willing to compromise. Nor was the Spider willing to follow Nymia’s goddess, Sune! Eventually combat started… and it went very bad for the spider. Velrari (divine sorcerer) won initiative and struck the Spider with a guiding bolt spell for 20 damage. Simeon acted next, ran into melee and scored a critical hit to kill the Spider! The other forces (the bugbears and the wounded drow) tried to flee, but the party caught and slew them as well. Not to anyone’s surprise, the drow minion was a doppelganger like the one in Cragmaw castle. The surprise was that the Spider was a drow! Note: The original version of this room had 4 giant spiders instead of 2 bugbears – the new art for this room still depicts the giant spiders! I was always amused when the massive (large) spiders tried to hide behind the thin columns of the original.

Taking a key and a magical spider staff from the Spider, the party returned east to a locked room where they found the last of the Rockseeker brothers. And he was alive! Hooray!

The party then returned to Phandelver with the two brothers (one alive, one dead), and celebrations and a funeral ensued.

Gundren still needed the rest of the mine cleared, so we did that during the rest of the session. I adjudged the rest of the Spider’s bugbears fled, so that just left various undead – including one of the most difficult encounters, the fight against the flameskull.

They knew where it was, as it was in the notes the Spider had kept, and so Syzoth the artificer was able to have his construct provide everyone with 12 temporary hit points before combat began. Just as well, as the flameskull won initiative and fireballed the group for 36 damage! A couple of characters who failed their saves would have been down.

The flameskull survived into a second round (hitting Simeon with a pair of fire rays), before the incredibly accurate guiding bolts of the divine sorcerer took him down. (In my experience, guiding bolts typically miss. But the divine sorcerer is uncannily accurate with them!) The zombies in the chamber took a couple more rounds to defeat.

One final encounter for the evening was a fight with 5 ghouls in the great hall. Note: This is against seven in the original. The ghouls surprised some of the characters and managed to paralyse Simeon with their attacks! Nymia had lesser restoration prepared, though, and unparalysed him before a lethal attack was made. Area of effect spells from the sorcerer helped finish them off.

Looking over the notes, there were two encounter areas left – a giant snake in a pool, and an ochre jelly. It was late in the evening, however, so I chose to remove those encounters – the party would be able to deal with them easily, so no problem skipping them. Wave Echo Cave had been reclaimed! Hooray!

XP-wise, the group is about 1400 away from level 5; there are a couple of Chapter 3 sidequests left, which they’ll deal with next time.

I’ve no problem with the changes to the adventure this time around. The Spider is still an incredibly weak villain, but I don’t think that’s a bad thing – especially as he’s no longer the final boss of the adventure. We’re very close to starting the new material. Next session or the session after! But with players going overseas, falling ill, or doing Christmassy things, we were about to have a lot of weeks where we couldn’t play regularly. As I’m writing these reports a couple of months late, we should catch up to current events quickly. Until next time!