We played our tenth session of The Shattered Obelisk on Monday, December 11, 2023. This was our first session comprised entirely of new material, as we continued through Chapter 5: Paths of Peril.

The party had found a long tunnel leading away from Phandalin that some of the goblins had used to flee, but they quickly abandoned their idea of following the tunnel when I worked out how long it was – many, many miles! – and instead kept investigating.

The Miner’s Exchange

They next went to the Miner’s Exchange. The artwork depicting the missing foundation stone from the base of the exchange is truly terrible. One of my players, the son of a carpenter, looked at it and said, “there’s no way that missing stone makes it unstable.” I’m the son of a person who learnt stonemasonry to build a bluestone house. I agreed. Sigh.

But at least I could play Halia, the leader of the Miner’s Exchange. There’s nothing like role-playing a Zhentarim! And she wanted to know what the goblins were up to and what the characters knew. By now it was obvious that they’d been stealing stones, and obsidian ones at that. Which was weird, but that’s how it goes at times. They players couldn’t tell her that much, but she and her workers had driven off the goblins, who had escaped southwards. The party picked up the trail and followed.

While there’s no check mentioned in the text, I allowed everyone to make Survival checks to follow the trail, because I like making skill-based characters feel useful. Except, of course, the tempest cleric with a +7 bonus rolled terribly… again! (She’s famous at rolling well for skills she’s not proficient in, contrariwise). But others in the party were able to find the trail.

They found a camp with three wounded goblins – but not normal goblins! Psionic ones! The fight was sort of tough, but once one was knocked unconscious, the rest surrendered. (Yes, the party were looking for captives, not kills!)

They learned two pieces of information from the captives: The approximate location of the goblin lair, which turned out to be near where the long tunnel ended, and the name of the goblin chief!

Note: The goblins are in a camp where it looks like several more goblins were present, given the tents left behind. So, it really looks like the goblins used this as a staging point to attack the town, after approaching overland. Meanwhile, a second group of goblins went through an 18-mile tunnel that just happened to end under the well and used that? Because, otherwise, how would they know that they could escape through the well? Suspension of disbelief is hard at this point.

The Sleeping Giant

Back to Phandalin, and time to investigate the Sleeping Giant. Where Grista the orc has mysteriously become Grista the dwarf. Just as well the party never met her the first time, right? (The adventure changed her race from Lost Mine in the revised material, then when it got to the new material, forgot it changed her). Anyway, the goblins had torn apart her bar retrieving a spherical stone someone had imbedded in it.

Apparently, this “good luck” stone actually brought sickness to those who touched it. This is not a good idea. If people who go to the Sleeping Giant get ill, who ends up visiting? Also, it’s spherical. Which brings to mind Obelisks, cause they’re spherical. Oh wait, no they aren’t. (I guess it’s a decorative bit?)

But there turned out to be goblins on top of the tavern! (This is a very nice touch – they dropped a bag of loot and are recovering it. I appreciate things like this). Very quickly noticed by the characters as they returned outside, it was time for a fight.

Text of the adventure: “During the ensuing combat, the goblins do their best to stay on the roof of the two-story tavern, using the high ground to their advantage.” Also note that two of the three goblins do NOT have ranged attacks.

Attention to detail is often not a strength of this adventure.

This turned out to be a tricky fight, because the goblin who can attack at range can also incapacitate characters for a round. And, let me tell you, the Intelligence saves of this group are terrible.

They killed one goblin, and the other two ran off – but it wasn’t that easy. And returned the bag of treasure to Griska, who was grateful, offering a week of free food. (Another lovely touch: it mentions the food isn’t great! My players and I were amused).

Meeting Gwyn Oresong

It was time to meet up with the person in town who knew a lot about history and hidden lore, Sister Garaele, and discuss what they’d found. Oh wait, SIster Garaele is strangely sidelined in this adventure. There’s a new character, a dwarven woman named Gwyn Oresong, who just happens to turn up and be helpful. (I’d be a lot less salty about this if they were also using the lots and lots of NPCs that were established in the original adventure, but they aren’t. We have now seen the last mention of the townmaster, Harbin, and a lot of the other established NPCs.)

The players already knew most of it of what Gwyn could tell them, but Gwyn was able to identify the partial mentions of the goblin hideout as an old Duergar Stronghold.

So, off to the goblin stronghold they went!

Zorzula’s Rest

The goblin stronghold has three entrances: the main gate, a vent, and a tunnel leading to the pantry made by the goblin’s pet.

More editing fuck-ups were swiftly apparent. Look, this is still the same chapter as the goblin raid, and we get this text: “The characters also might know about the pantry tunnel entry from their investigations in Phandalin.” If anyone can tell me what this is referring to, I’d love to know, because there’s nothing the party can learn in Phandalin that tells them about the tunnel.

The party took a tunnel dug by the goblin’s pet badger into the abandoned pantry. And from the pantry, they exited into the… bedroom.

What the hell?

Z8=Kitchen; Z9=Pantry; Z10=Bedroom

Did no-one proof this adventure?

I changed it so Z9 entered into Z8, which made SO MUCH MORE SENSE. (Especially as the giant badger who dug the tunnel from Z9 to the outside is in Z8). Unfortunately for the characters, the goblins in the hall outside could see them through, the window in the west wall. A massive battle erupted.

Soon, the party were fighting regular goblins plus three CR 4 psi commanders. (Two are standing guard on a parapet nearby; there’s no way they wouldn’t hear the disturbance and come to investigate).

I did have a nice moment where one of the commanders didn’t use his area of effect attack because it’d hit their pet badger! Which saved the characters for a round. But the badger ran for it, and he didn’t miss with his next attack – that was every character staggered. Even with a bunch of rerolls due to the variant inspiration rules I employ.

(Yes, the commander got himself in the blast. He survived).

From there, things went very badly, with two characters unconscious, including Simeon, the frontline fighter. One of the commanders dragged him away as a prisoner, and the artificer used a fog cloud to help take the unconscious sorcerer to safety. Back down the tunnel!

And that was it for the session. The fighter had been captured, and the other characters went back to Phandalin where they’d try to hire help to help them rescue him. I rather enjoyed the session, but there’s a lot of truly terrible writing and editing to get through here.