We completed Chapter 6 in this session of Phandelver and Below: The Shattered Obelisk, which was run on Monday, February 19, 2023.
The current characters in the campaign are:
- Syzoth, yuan-ti artificer (artillerist)
- Killin, earth genasi paladin (oath of the ancients)
- Vel’rari, tiefling sorcerer (divine soul)
- Simeon, human fighter (champion)
- Jake, human rogue (assassin henchman)
Syzoth’s player controls the rogue henchman, I control Simeon. (Simeon stays out of discussion for the most part, though I occasionally employ him to aid roleplaying between characters).
When we left off our previous session, the characters had just defeated a group of grimlocks in a flooded chamber and were proceeding northwards after a pair of them who had fled the encounter.
We now came to one of the most baffling encounters of the adventure.
Arrowslits, no Arrows
The corridor leading north went to a drow vault. To protect the vault, the drow had constructed a guardroom on one side of the corridor with arrowslits allowing the drow guards to attack any potential intruders moving towards the vault.
Those drow were long dead. Now the guard room was inhabited by a mind flayer and his grimlock servants. The servants were able to detect the party moving along but… they had no missile weapons.
As a result, the mind flayer could (partially) attack the party, but more of the party could attack back. Sure, there might be a penalty for ranged attack rolls through the arrowslits, but they could do it. More to the point, spells like shatter and fireball could be cast at the mind flayer and grimlocks with no penalty.
I managed to get the mind flayer to dominate Syzoth, as Simeon and Killin fought their way up the corridor. But it wasn’t all that long before the party broke the concentration of the mind flayer and defeated the grimlocks.
Poor Mind Flayer. It dominated Syzoth, the least effective member of the group as an artificer – when looking as his offensive options (as an 8th level artificer), its best option was casting shatter. Syzoth helps the party greatly through his temporary-hit-point granting eldritch cannon, but he doesn’t have a lot of active options.
The Dreadful Truth
Once they’d defeated the mind flayer, they could examine the guard room that he’d made into a base – including hauling in a stone throne. At least, I hope the mind flayer brought in the throne. It seems an odd furnishing for a guard room, unless one of the guards was seriously high rank and wanted to remind the other drow guards of their rank!
The important feature of the room was the charcoal drawing the mind flayer had made on the southern wall, depicting the goals of the mind flayers: to reassemble the Shattered Obelisk and use it to transform the people of Phandalin into mind flayers! An operation that calculations on the wall showed would be less than 100% successful, but this wasn’t a concern to the mind flayers.
The characters had learned what was going on! Now all they had to do was stop the mind flayers.
The Final Shard
The last thing they needed to do was recover the third shard of the Shattered Obelisk. The path to the vault was blocked by the mudslick tower the group had discovered in session 14. They had also discovered a piece of paper last session with the tower’s command word – but no-one knew Terran or Primordial, so they couldn’t pronounce it.
Then Syzoth was struck by inspiration: He’d take the paper to the xorn and earth elementals they’d met and get them to say the word aloud!
This worked! I was wondering if they’d have to return to Phanadlin to do research, but Syzoth mimed out what he wanted, and soon the word was stated, the elementals took possession of the tower, and the party made their way into the vault.
There, sitting undisturbed, was the treasure of the drow. And the final obelisk fragment. It was quite a substantial treasure hoard as well, making the second that the party had found recently. All were pleased. They carted the fragment back to Phandalin, where they put it in storage with the other two. Somewhere. We didn’t worry about the details too much.
Trouble in Phandalin
The party quickly learnt that gaining three of the seven shards of the obelisk had not stopped the mind flayer’s plans. When they arrived home, they discovered once more there was a crowd of villagers – and this time the crowd wasn’t berating the townmaster. Instead, they were watching Sister Garaele, Halia Thornton, and the young general store clerk, Ander, all fighting each other, a crazed look in their eyes.
Harbin begged the players to subdue the trio. They thought would be easy, but the three fought with unnatural strength. (One of the players commented that they though the trio would have commoner stat blocks. They didn’t).
I reminded my players that ranged attacks had the potential to kill them, and also that shocking grasp and other melee spells could be used to subdue. The party managed not to kill anyone, and the townsfolk took the three into custody.
During their discussions with the townsmaster and Gwyn, they realised that all three of those affected had close connections with one of the obelisk shards. (Ander’s doesn’t work that well, in my opinion – having access to the store’s well should affect more people). But there had been four shards in Phandalin! They went to the Sleeping Giant, where the fourth shard had once been placed in the bar top.
There they found Wheel of Fortune, the tiefling bartender, looking greatly changed – the process to turn him into a mind flayer certainly underway. He was able to tell the group that goblins and humans had been seen sneaking into the tavern’s cellar and descending through a sinkhole that had opened up into the Underdark. Well, the party had to follow, didn’t they?
(I note that there’s nothing in the descriptive text that says the humans were prisoners, but some of the ancillary text implies they were. I’d much prefer that it was “a group of goblins escorted humans into the cellar and downwards” or something similar, rather than implying that the humans went willingly).
Into the Depths
After resting (and becoming level 9), the party went on the trail of the goblins, descending through a winding passage into the Underdark. This is a 12-mile long tunnel, and the adventure expects a random encounter check every hour the party spend traversing it – with the entire trip taking 14 hours. All well and good, but there’s a 45% chance of an encounter! That’s a lot of encounters. (After a long section with no encounter checks, suddenly the party are showered with random encounters!)
The first encounter they had was with a group of three hook horrors. I found a nice battlemap, and let the party have fun.
After that, they reached the first of the keyed areas – a small side-complex where some of the goblins and human prisoners had been waylaid by grell. The goblins were dead, the humans still alive – but potentially dinner.
The party managed to navigate a chasm (poorly – lots of failed Strength checks) and reach the three villagers. They learnt that they were prisoners abducted by the goblins, and then the grell had come as they lagged behind the bulk of the convoy. The route that didn’t go through the chasm led through the grell lair, and with one having a poor leg, the chasm was no escape.
So, the adventurers slew the grell, and escorted the prisoners out.
More of the depths beckon – but that will have to wait for the next session. I’ll likely reduce the number of random encounters on the way, though.