The Shattered Obelisk, session 9

We played our ninth session of The Shattered Obelisk on December 4, 2023. We’d left the session on a cliff-hanger as ash zombies rose in the building the party were exploring in Thundertree and moved towards them. Now, the thrilling continuation!

They slaughtered the ash zombies! Did you expect anything else?

A shatter spell from Vel’rari, a thunderwave from Nymia – it turned into a noisy encounter! Three rounds in total – around 16 minutes of play time. The zombies got a few hits in, but not to any great extent (certainly not with Syzoth’s eldritch cannon in its protector mode giving out temporary hit points each round). Nymia drank a potion of healing, and that was the extent of their recuperation.

The Dragon in the Tower

But now they were aware that the nearby tower contained the dragon – a young green dragon, to be precise. Syzoth was prepared and handed out antitoxins to everyone.

There are two basic ways I run fights against dragons. In the first, I use every trick in the book to make things as horrible as possible for the players. The dragon flies above, breathes when it can, uses lair effects, and so on and so forth. That gives memorable battles and, quite likely, dead characters.

The other way keeps the dragon on the ground, using its attacks, but otherwise as a tough monster – and makes the battle significantly easier.

Which I use depends a lot on the situation. For this game, this wasn’t a big boss monster. It was a side quest. And I wanted those who used melee attacks a chance to fight it.

We rolled initiative and got to it! (8:09 pm)

Round 1

Simeon charged into battle and attacked twice with his longsword with rolls of 16 and 17 – against its AC of 18! Two misses! (He used Action Surge for the second strike).
Syzoth cast magic missile by using a wand and struck for 12 force damage. His eldritch cannon gave everyone 11 temporary hit points.
The dragon breathed poison gas for 44 damage on Nymia and Vel’rari. Nymia failed her save – thankfully, antitoxin and temporary hit points reduced it to 11 real damage.
Vel’rari cast a guiding bolt and rolled a 17 to hit – missing by one!
Nymia cast inflict wounds and rolled a 12 to hit. She used inspiration to reroll and managed a 15. This was not a good start by the party.

Round 2

Simeon missed again
Syzoth resummoned his eldritch cannon and gave everyone 6 temporary hit points.
The dragon rolled a 5, and recharged its breath weapon, and breathed for 42 poison damage this time around. Nymia failed her save, Syzoth succeeded.
Vel’rari cast cure wounds to restore 15 hit points to Nymia
Nymia cast bless on the party

Round 3

Simeon finally struck with his longsword, for 13 damage.
Syzoth cast magic missile for 8 damage, and the eldritch cannon gave 6 temporary hit points.
The dragon rolled another 5, and recharged its breath weapon. This time, 44 poison damage hit Nymia (who finally saved) and Syzoth (also saved).
Vel’rari struck it with a guiding bolt for 9 damage.
Nymia took advantage of the advantage it gave her to hit the dragon with an upcast inflict wounds for 22 damage

Round 4

Simeon struck for 9 damage
Syzoth cast magic missile for 13 damage, and his eldritch cannon gave 11 temporary hit points
For once, the dragon didn’t get back its breath weapon, and struck at Simeon with its claws, missing twice, but getting a critical hit with its bite attack! 30 piercing plus 13 poison.
Vel’rari cast cure wounds for five points on Simeon.
Nymia missed with another inflict wounds

Round 5

Simeon struck for 9 damage
Syzoth resummoned his cannon, and it gave 11 temporary hit points
The dragon hit Simeon with a single claw attack, for 12 damage.
Vel’rari missed with a guiding bolt.
Nymia hit with her mace for 9 damage.

Round 6

Simeon critically hit for 14 damage!
Syzoth used another magic missile for 12 damage.
At this point the dragon, sick of all of this, flew away. The cannon had just absorbed too much damage.

In all, the battle took 25 minutes.

Then they went and dealt with the nearby dragon cultists, who were really annoyed that the characters had driven off the dragon. The cultists were incredibly weak, though, and didn’t survive the experience. The party gained nice loot from those two encounters, though! In particular, Simeon gained the battleaxe Hew, which would become his main weapon going forward. (It dealt more damage to plant creatures. As of writing this, it hasn’t been relevant).

The Shattered Obelisk Begins

The party now returned to Phandalin, and discovered that when they had been away, there had been a goblin attack on Phandalin! Yes, we’d finally reached the new material in The Shattered Obelisk!

None of those rubbish Cragmaw goblins – this was a new band.

There were a lot of very angry citizens. Harbin, the townmaster, quickly found the returning heroes and explained the situation. He wanted them to investigate! How could they say no?

The adventure-as-written has Harbin pulling the party inside his house while the house is surrounded by angry citizens, who are also hammering on his door. That really doesn’t make that much sense! So I altered the details a little.

In the remainer of the session, the party investigated two of the four sites the goblins had attacked.

The Shrine of Luck

It was nice to reconnect with Sister Garaele (to my mind, the most interesting of the town’s inhabitants). I showed the party the book’s artwork (right) of the partly collapsed shrine, and we laughed a lot. While I think a lot of the art in The Shattered Obelisk is stunning, this isn’t the case for the locations the goblins attacked.

Sister Garaele had someone helping her clean up after all the damage the goblins had done: the young daughter of the innkeeper. None of us remembered her from earlier, so I went looking. This is, in fact, the first time she appears. Her mother is also there. This is also her first appearance. For all the adventure says “make sure the party connects with the NPCs so they want to save Phandalin”, it doesn’t do that well in reusing the ones that did appear. At least there’s Sister Garaele!

The party quickly realised that goblins had taken the keystone of the shrine’s arch, causing it to collapse. They’d left behind a duergar axe. The party helped repair the shrine, puzzling over these details.

Barthen’s Well

At Barthen’s Well, the party discovered a key component of the winch was missing: another piece of obsidian. The goblins had taken it and disappeared down the well. What is any band of adventurers to do? That’s right! Descend into the well. In which they found an Otyugh.

It was a fun fight, but it didn’t take that long. (2 rounds, 10 minutes). Simeon needed lesser restoration cast on him after, however.

Now they could see that the goblins had collapsed a tunnel behind them, blocking the underground river’s path into the well, which explained why the well was now dry. With a lot of effort, they cleared the running and found a long, long tunnel leading onwards. It was too long to investigate fully, especially with goblin attack sites still to investigate, so they returned to the surface. And that was what we had time for this session!

Here’s a note: There’s no mention of how long the tunnel actually is in the text, only that it leads to a mountainous outcropping near the goblin lair. How far is that? Over 18 miles.

Where the goblins came from and how they returned home is something that doesn’t quite make sense in this adventure. The goblins block off a tunnel which has a river in it, and coincidentally starts near their lair. And they run along the tunnel to escape, while the water rises behind them? And let’s not forget that the goblins didn’t use this tunnel to attack the town, nor did most use it to escape?

There’s a lot of things that I enjoy about The Shattered Obelisk, but there is some very poor thinking through of situations at times.