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13 Mirtul, (Day 49)

Dawn

Stonehill Inn

• The Party leaves Phandalin going east toward the spot that Wave Echo Cave was marked on Gundren Rockseeker and Reidoth's maps. 
• It's a beautiful, clear-sky day. 
  • Rae feels like he’s heading out on the biggest adventure that he’s been on so far and, given the good weather, he feels there's some divine intervention at play.
• The Party travels to the eastern edge of Phandalin, which gives way to hills, and follows the map to where the hills meet the Sword Mountains.
• The climb gets extremely rocky and the party makes a blind for Meilu. Mo also leaves Baby Wolf Friend to protect her. 
  • Over the five days the party spent in Phandalin, it seems that Baby Wolf Friend and Meilu have developed a rapport.

Evening

Foothills of the Sword Mountains

• The party consults their map and finds the wedge in the face of the mountains they were told to look for, but do not see an obvious entrance.
• Mo looks at the map and the mountain more closely, and, with his druidic and cartographer skills, notices a darker area at the edge of some rocks and looks as though it has been recently chipped away. 
• Mo finds an opening in the. It's not very big. 
  • The party thinks it is likely to be the entrance to Wave Echo Cave, as marked on your map. 
• There's broken rocks on the ground and a bunch of footprints. The party thinks this is the likely place that the Rockseeker brothers broke through to Wave Echo Cave.
• The party finds a nearby fortified spot and camps for the night.

14 Mirtul, (Day 50)

Dawn

Foothills of the Sword Mountains

• The party wakes and breaks down their camp.
• Verna enters the chiseled-out hole that the party believes will lead to Wave Echo Cave, with Mo close behind her. 
• Rae casts light on a stone and leads the rest of the party through the hole 40 ft behind Verna and Mo, as the rest of the party does not have darkvision. Vala takes up the rear with Talibund (aka Miss Tra) perched on her shoulder looking backwards.

Wave Echo Cave

• Verna and Mo exit the carved tunnel into a damp and drafty natural cavern with 30 ft high walls. A pillar of stone in the center of the room seems to support the cavern and the walls are unworked stone.
  • They immediately hear the sound of crashing waves, just as Gundren Rockseeker described to them. 
  • Verna notices that there’s a pattern to the crashing of the waves that suggests it’s not just surf. She tells Mo and they further consider the strangeness; just as Gundren said, they’re completely landlocked, so it can’t be surf.
  • Verna notices that the weave is off as soon as they enter the cave and tells Mo.
• Verna and Mo see that along the western wall of the cavern, someone set up, and seemingly abandoned, their camp. There are 3 bedrolls, a heap of supplies, and mining gear. 
  • Verna investigates the campsite and notices an impressive amount of blood around the bedrolls and some other signs of struggle.
• She finds:
  • 10 food rations
  • 1 functional lantern
  • 2 flasks of lamp oil
  • A Dwarven Rope
• Mo peers up at the stalactites hanging from the ceiling, checking for creatures but does not see any. He also peers off the escarpment to the north end of the cavern and down into the pit 20ft beneath it, noticing 2 holes recently dug into the stone that look large enough to crawl through. 
  • The two tunnels go in opposite directions and Mo is unable to tell which direction whoever was bleeding went. 
• Verna ties the dwarven rope around a pillar in the center of the room and climbs down into the pit.
• As the rest of the party enters the room, Vala and Rae notice that the weave feels off. Vala tries to get a sense of the magic and tells the party that the weave is unstable here and she thinks any casting will be more dangerous than it is normally.
• The party climbs down Verna’s dwarven rope into the pit and Verna casts Mage Hand to untie it and pack it up.
• Mo decides to take the party through the northwest tunnel and Verna takes point and leads on with Mo right behind her.
• As they make their way through the tunnel, the party has some discussions.
  • Rig asks Mo if the raw stone passages are just natural passages or if they were dug passages that were just less important. Mo confirms the later, saying these were the passages for less important travel.
    • Rig supposes that if the party is looking for something important, they would likely need to look for the passages with worked walls.
  • Vala asks Rae if he recalls back in Thundertree when the spiders caught him in their webs. He very much does remember that and Vala shows Rae the Web Grenade she invented and tells him she’d like to turn that concept around. Her plan is to web bomb them so Rae can burn them up while they’re stuck and Rae is on board.
• Verna emerges in a worked stone hallway and the crashing wave sound is louder here, echoing off of the walls. Though the hewn stones that make up the walls are well fit together, they are starting to show signs of wear as it's been hundreds of years since anybody's been in here. The hallway branches off into several others, some rough stone and some hallways are completely collapsed. 
  • Mo and Verna immediately investigate the surrounding area, efficiently mapping which hallways are passable. 
  • Vala sends Miss Tra down the longest eastern hallway to help, but wont let her go far after she almost died at Cragmaw Castle. She reports to the group, with some distress, that there’s little down the eastern hallway aside from more cave because when you’re outside it seems that there’s so much more outside around every corner. 
• The party moves north, Mo and Verna in the lead and Rae covers his glowing rock with his hands, dimming the light source and trying to not draw attention to them.
• Vala casts Detect Magic, and the unstable weave responds with a pulse of healing magic, but she doesn’t detect any magic at the moment.
• The party continues north, finding themselves in a small cavern that is mostly filled by a dark, murky pool of water with a thin film growing on the top.  At its shore, there are hundreds of broken mussel shells, but the mussels are really pale and pitted. 
• As Mo and Verna look at the water, they notice a putrid, fishy odor coming off of the pool itself. The water seems to be flowing very slowly to the north.
• Mo and Verna note a door to the west and peek around the corner to find another hallway leading north to a set of stairs.
• The rest of the party enters the cavern with the pool.
• As they do, from the rear of the line, Vala hears a squishy, squelching wet noise coming from behind her. She scrys through Miss Tra’s eyes in the dark and sees a dark mass wrap around herself and pull her in.

START COMBAT

Suprise Round

• Vala tries to scream, but her mouth is covered by the creature's pseudopods, hitting her with a concussive force and burning her with the acid coating the creature.

Round 1

• The Ochre Jelly tries to attack Vala again, but she throws up a magical Shield with Glass Staff.
  • The pseudopods bounce off of her shield and the acid sizzles against it, but does not break through. 
• Rig fires her shortbow at the Ochre Jelly, but misses, burying her arrow in Orthanc's asscheek.
• Rae casts Sacred Flame on the ooze, but it splits itself in half to miss the beam, then reforms, dodging the attack.
• Verna fires her crossbow at the ochre jelly, missing and somehow, his arrow lands perfectly in his other butt cheek. Orthanc is bleeding.
• Vala gives Orthanc a healing potion and casts Misty Step, teleporting away toward the cavern with the pool, noticing that the magic she’s detecting is definitely coming from the water. 
• Mo casts Shillelagh, swinging Grew at the ochre jelly and hitting, then ducks out of the way as the jelly swings back with its pseudopod, missing Mo as he dodges back behind Orthanc. 
• Orthanc goes into a rage, then hits the ochre jelly with Orthanc's Meat Tenderizer, breaking it into two separate entities.

Round 2

• The two ochre jellies slide over to Orthanc, surrounding him and attacking, but they both miss.
• Rig shines her lantern down an unexplored hallway and sees only a cave-in and a closed door. Then she turns and fires her crossbow at one of the ochre jellies, which explodes and dies, then the arrow lodges in the other ochre jelly right beside it.
• Rae moves over to Mo and casts Sacred Flame on the remaining ochre jelly, but misses again.
• Verna fires her crossbow at the ochre jelly, but misses.
• Vala prepares to cast Healing Word on Orthanc if anyone else hits him on accident.
• Mo casts Starry Wisp at the ochre jelly, hitting it with radiant damage and killing it.

END COMBAT

• Rig investigates the water, dropping a pebble in it to see if anything reacts, but nothing happens. 
• The party notices that the direction the water is flowing leads to a hole large enough for them to fit through, but almost everyone seems hesitant to get in the water.
• Rig then patches up Orthanc with her Healers Kit, pulling the arrows out of his ass. While she does, Orthanc’s torch gutters out.
• Vala ritual casts Find Familiar, dismissing Miss Tra and summoning an Octopus. She apologizes to the octopus, but still drops it in the stinky pool.
  • Scrying through its eyes, Vala sees the water is extremely murky. It feels around for a while, though it seems really uncomfortable, then finds a robed skeleton at the bottom of the pool. While Vala tries to telepathically convey the concept of pockets to the octopus, the water starts to burn its skin and the octopus dies while trying, and failing, to rub off the burning substance.
• Vala points to where the octopus died and Verna casts Mage Hand and tosses her grappling hook in. 
• Her mage hand attaches the body to the hook and Verna begins to pull the body from the water, but something catches and Verna falls into the fishy water.
  • Verna notices that besides being extremely fishy, it is odd that this cave water is warm. She would have expected it to be cold.
• Orthanc runs over and grabs both Verna and the rope attached to the grappling hook, pulling them from the water along with the skeleton.
• Verna immediately changes out of her disgusting armor and tries to clean herself, Rig giving her water from her waterskin to wash her hair.
• The party starts looking over the skeleton, noting that it is pincushioned with arrows and it seems very old. They find:
  • 2 platinum rings 
• Vala still detects magic coming from the water, so Verna changes back into her wet, disgusting clothes to dive back in
• While she does, Rig slips her lucky coin in Verna’s back pocket without her noticing.
  • Verna feels that, while disgusting, she’s put on worse, recalling a time she had to wear clothing covered in the blood and viscera of the family she had stolen from. This is a bit easier than that.
• Verna takes the glowing stone from Rae and dives into the pool. Looking around the area the body was in, she sees a long skinny thing out of the corner of her eye, grabs it, and swims for the surface.
• Verna climbs out of the water, stinky and holding a wizard wand that does not speak to her. It's very well carved and has iconography of tiny explosions.
• Vala asks Verna if she could look at it. Verna tells Vala it doesn’t talk to her and to take it away. Turning it over, Vala identifies it as a Wand of Magic Missiles and holds it up to her fellow mages in the party in offering.
• Rae takes the Wand of Magic Missiles
  • This wand has 7 charges. While holding it, you can use an action to expend 1 or more of its charges to cast the magic missile spell from it. For 1 charge, you cast the 1st-level version of the spell. You can increase the spell slot level by one for each additional charge you expend.
  • The wand regains 1d6 + 1 expended charges daily at dawn. If you expend the wand's last charge, roll a d20. On a 1, the wand crumbles into ashes and is destroyed.
• Verna changes her clothes again, trying to wash her hair, but she definitely smells fishy. She casts druidcraft to make herself smell like flowers, but it does not mask the other smells. 
• Mo thinks she smells like compost, but the party all agrees she smells like a lot of things.
  • Verna responds by telling the party that she’s led a rich and cultured life. 
• Rig arranges the bones of the wizard respectfully, and Vala, somewhat surprised, thanks Rig for being nice to a wizard.
• Rig replies that he’s just a dead guy now, his magic is gone and Vala finds that this makes a lot more sense.
• While respectfully arranging the wizard’s remains, Rig finds a small silver flask completely untarnished and it has a screw off top that is sealed.
• Rig chucks the item, which is clearly magic, and Vala catches it and casts Detect Magic again, looking it over. 
  • She finds that whatever is inside contains enchantment magic or the enchantment magic is preserving whatever is inside, but she does not succeed in identifying it. 
  • She does not open the vial.
• Mo and Verna investigate the thick-cut stone,  iron-banded door to the west of the cavern with the pool. 
• As they check the door for traps Rig approaches to apply some of her lamp oil to the hinges and finds them already very well oiled given the state of the mine.
  • Vala informs the party that dwarven hinge oil is remarkably long-lasting.
• Verna tries to open the door, but it doesn’t budge.
• Verna steps out of the way, gesturing to the stone door while telling Orthanc “You’re up, kid.”
• Orthanc throws his bulk behind the door and barely budges it; the door holds firm. He tells the party he thinks it may be barricaded from the other side. 

Next Session →  Session 026: Ghouls in the Darkness