OAWYM: What's In The Box? What's In The Box?

Game Date: 6/25/2016
Location: The Game Keep
Campaign: OAWYM, Session 1
System: D&D 5e
DM: Rusty

The Party:
Addamon (Gary) - Human Druid
Malcer (Graham) - Human Warlock
Thokk (Daniel) - Half-Orc Barbarian
Val Ravensword (Matt) - Half-Orc Paladin
Dene Ledford (NPC) - Val's Companion
Tatio (NPC) - Malcer's Companion

The Session:

To start off this new campaign, our characters were hired by a merchant to accompany his cart to Fallcrest.  As the sun started going down, Addamon heard footsteps in the trees.  Goblins!  Twelve of the little monsters burst from the trees, surrounding us.  Only Addamon beat the goblins' initiative, and he missed on his first roll, so our enemies got in the first hits.  Not off to a great start.

But things got better.  Malcer critted on his next attack roll, and Thokk pulverized a goblin with a crit of his own.  Then Val... got the first fumble of the campaign.  She continued to miss a lot throughout the encounter.  Addamon managed to hit three with a Thunderwave spell, killing one of them.  Then he took a hit which brought him down to zero.  Val brought him back up on her turn.

During the battle, one of the goblins climbed up into the cart, grabbed a box, and started to run off.  The remaining goblins also began to flee.  We pursued, killing off all but the box thief, who disappeared into the trees.  Thokk managed to find his trail, but the merchant called us back to him.  He gave us each a Cure potion, and implored us to get back that box.  It seemed very important to him.  We agreed to follow the trail.  We asked our NPC companions, Dene and Tatio, to stay behind to protect our employer.

The treeline finally broke and we saw the goblins running through the hills.  In the distance we saw a human mounted on a dark horse, watching us.  The goblins ran past him, and the rider rode off in their direction.  We tracked them to a cave.  There were two visible entrances: one open, and one blocked by a boulder.  We decided to see how difficult it would be to move the boulder, in the hopes of attacking the goblins from behind.  We only moved it a couple of inches, noisily, and gave up.  So we headed for the open entrance.

There were several goblins inside.  While we entered the opening, a few goblins squeezed out through the boulder entrance and attacked us from behind.  Thokk killed one with a single hit, and Malcer took two out with Burning Hands.  After a bit more fighting, Val dropped the final one.  We kept this last goblin alive for questioning.

Our captive told us he worked for a human wizard named Malareth.  We asked him a few more questions about the area, but he wasn't very forthcoming because he wasn't afraid of death.  But he did mention something about a large white dragon.  We tied him up and promised to release him on our way out.  There were two sets of doors leading farther into the caverns.  We took a long rest, picked a doorway, and opened it.

In the next room we met a pair of goblins who asked us to leave.  There was a horse tied up on the far wall, but it looked well cared for.  We couldn't reason with the goblins, so we fought.  The battle was immediately joined by a guard drake and a third goblin, this one a hexer.  The hexer kept trying to cast Command on us, but kept failing.  Thokk and Val ganged up on the drake, though Val kept missing.

After several misses, the hexer finally got one good hit in - an "Inflict Wounds" spell on Malcer.  This did enough damage to kill the Warlock outright, but since Malcer was born on the the Plane of Positive Energy (something that came up when we were rolling character backgrounds using Central Casting), the DM gave him a break and ruled that the Negative Energy spell didn't do the full damage.  Instead, Malcer was stricken with a fear of goblins.  From now on he will have to make a Wisdom save at the beginning of every goblin fight.

When the battle was finally over, all four party members had exactly 1 hit point left.  We explored the area.  In one alcove we found an eternal flame, connected somehow to the Elemental Plane of Fire.  In the drake's room we found some water that functioned like a Cure spell, and we each recovered some hit points.  Once we felt ready, we opened some more doors.

In one room we found an altar to Bahamut.  A pair of kobolds stared at us, and Thokk and Val growled at them.  Thokk critted with his first hit, killing his kobold.  The other one fled around the corner, where another pair of kobolds waited.  Malcer killed two with Burning Hands, and Thokk killed the last one.  Then we opened some more doors, and fought four more.  We took them out quickly, Addamon delivering the final blow.

In this series of connected rooms, there were several altars to various gods.  Instead of heading deeper into this half of the dungeon, we went back to the horse and tried out some of the unopened doors there.  In one room we saw a giant rat, which Thokk took out quickly.  After that was a room with three goblins.  Thokk, Val, and Malcer each killed one, and we kept going.

In yet another room we faced a goblin and another rat.  Thokk killed the rat, but the goblin brought Val down to zero.  Addamon healed her.  Thokk and the final goblin attacked each other simultaneously, and both went down together.  We healed Thokk, looked around a bit more, and decided to take a long rest.  We went back to the drake's room as it seemed the most defensible, rested, and leveled up.

We ended the session there.  Here is what we have explored so far: