This blog documents our Dungeons & Dragons campaigns.
Our newest campaign generally follows the “Phandelver and Below: The Shattered Obelisk” book.
I use this blog to record the sessions in narrative form. The entries are written after play, based on what I can remember happened at the table. Disclaimer: our sessions are played with beers on the table to loosen up roleplay. This tends to impact record-keeping and memory.
My character is Roux Illomen, a Chthonic tiefling spirit medium who began as a fraud and ended up genuinely haunted. He survives on charm, bad judgment, and the ability to run when necessary. He is not a hero. He lies, avoids responsibility, and has a talent for making powerful enemies. The story is told from his perspective, with all the bias, excuses, and gallows humor that implies.
The story below describes our third DnD session of the new campaign.
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We left Phandalin behind at dawn, just the four of us. Ash’tar and Valandra had taken Sildar’s horse. They seemed to be chatting quite a bit. I couldn’t hear them from where I was riding, but I would have loved to know what they were talking about.
Nox was riding Valandra’s draft horse, with yours truly bringing up the rear on Gundren’s shaggy pony.
We made good time and easily found the chokepoint in the landscape where goblins had first assailed Gundren and later our group. The bags were still there, as were the drag marks. It hadn’t rained, and the goblins hadn’t returned to remove the signs of their ambush.
We left the horses behind and, strangely, fell into a familiar pattern. Nox and Ash’tar scouted ahead, following the drag marks into the woods. Valandra followed at a short distance, a gleaming avatar of retribution and justice.
I just wished she’d wear a cape or cloak, because her swaying glutes in tights were mightily distracting as I brought up the rear.
The forest quickly swallowed us, its thick canopy allowing only narrow beams of light to reach the forest floor. Strange shadows created an atmosphere of danger behind every tree.
We saw Ash’tar and Nox come to a cautious halt. They signaled for us to stop and stay back.
I crouched behind a tree and held my breath as the two of them slunk forward. It couldn’t have been more than a minute before they returned.
Nox reported that they had found the entrance to a cave, partially hidden behind brush and rock. A shallow stream flowed out of the cave, making the approach difficult because of the slick, noisy mud. Farther inside, they had seen a couple of goblin guards arguing.
That sparked an idea. Thorga had this little trick for getting out of trouble—or dealing with difficult clientele.
“I can help. I have just the thing,” I volunteered.
The others’ faces betrayed their doubt, but they didn’t stop me. I did my best to move as silently as Ash’tar. The ground near the mouth of the cave was treacherously slippery, but I managed.
Peeking inside, I saw a larger goblin cursing out two smaller ones. They were no farther away than the audience at the back of a tavern during one of my performances.
I took out my pouch containing a mixture of sand and rose petals. Pouring a handful into my palm, I whispered into my fist:
“Cha ó huth gho soq.”
(Lit. “Do not resist the dark.”)
A faint static vibration pushed against my fingers. Gently blowing on my hand, the sand and petals spiraled toward the goblins.
As the spell struck them, one of the smaller goblins dropped like a sack of potatoes. The other two jerked as though they were about to fall asleep before instantly snapping out of it.
Their surprise lasted only as long as it took them to notice their companion sleeping on the ground. Unwilling to pass up a free hit, both goblins kicked the prone creature awake before showering it with curses for its incompetence.
The wretched thing staggered to its feet, holding its arms over its head in a futile attempt to ward off the abuse.
Nox had seen enough.
An arrow hissed through the dim chamber and punched into the goblin’s throat. The creature dropped where it stood, hands clawing uselessly at the shaft as blood spread across the stone.
The sudden kill startled the others just long enough for Nox and Ash’tar to charge them head-on.
But as they closed the distance, three more goblins emerged from a hidden recess. This raid could go wrong very quickly if the goblins managed to alert the rest of the cave.
Valandra sprinted past me.
“You’re not useful there. Come!”
I’m still not certain whether that was sarcasm or simply Valandra being awkward with… well… words.
So I jogged after her, careful not to slip and land flat on my face in front of the goblins.
Nox and Ash’tar were already in the thick of it. The rogue drove his short sword forward with a sharp, economical thrust. The blade punched through leather and muscle with ease, stopping only when the hilt kissed the goblin’s ribs.
The creature jerked once, a wet cough escaping its throat. Its hands grabbed at Nox’s arm, but he did not linger. He stepped in, planted his boot against the goblin’s chest, and kicked.
The body peeled off the blade with a sickening sucking sound and collapsed into the dirt at his feet.
Ash’tar was having a harder time. He had targeted the leader, a beefy bruiser of a goblin. But with three goblins pouring from the recess, he had to dodge blows from every direction.
Valandra rushed in and easily dispatched one of the vermin attacking our elf from behind.
Her comment still bothered me, so I yelled:
“Hey!”
The goblin leader looked my way. Pointing at him, I said:
“The only risk you pose is that I might injure myself rolling my eyes too hard.”
A moment of uncertainty flashed across his face. For these creatures, dominance was everything. Being seen as weak was deadly.
With a mighty roar, he lashed out at Ash’tar, but the swing was wild and easily avoided.
The elf struck back like a hammer. Fists cracked into green flesh; a knee snapped into a goblin’s jaw with a sound like splitting wood. The creature folded and went down hard.
Ash’tar immediately turned toward the next opponent — but a goblin with rotten teeth and a rusty blade slipped past his guard and stabbed him in the side.
As the blade twisted in the wound, Ash’tar grunted and his knees buckled. As he fell, a second goblin smashed him across the face with a mallet. The blow lifted the pit fighter off his feet and hurled him backwards.
He struck the stone and stayed down.
Valandra surged past him with a shout, planting herself between Ash’tar and the goblins. A blade glanced harmlessly off her armour. She answered with a single crushing blow that turned the goblin’s head into pâté.
Nox reappeared behind another goblin, blade flashing. The strike dropped it, but the leader had recovered and smashed Nox aside with his shield.
Goblins are not gamblers. Facing four opponents with only two left, they panicked.
The leader and his last remaining minion turned and fled deeper into the cave, scrambling over the rocks and screaming for help. Nox calmly put an arrow into the fleeing goblin’s back.
The leader found himself trapped between Valandra and me. He shrieked in frustration.
Faced with a towering, armoured warrior radiating righteous power and a decidedly handsome, unarmoured tiefling, I imagine you can guess which of us he chose to attack.
But I had held his gaze before and taken the measure of him.
With my voice calm and my eyes flashing, I said:
“You will be nothing more than a stain beneath my feet.”
I felt the power in my words as they left my lips. The goblin faltered. His confidence cracked for just an instant.
Valandra seized it.
She drove forward, hammering at the leader’s shield until it shattered, along with the arm holding it. The goblin snarled and swung wildly, but he could not penetrate the paladin’s armour.
He dropped to one knee, breathing raggedly.
Valandra raised her weapon and brought it down with both hands.
The goblin collapsed.
Silence returned to the chamber, broken only by dripping water and ragged breathing. Valandra knelt beside Ash’tar, checking for signs of life.
Nox wiped his blade clean before turning over the corpses in search of valuables.
I said nothing, my eyes fixed on the fallen pit fighter. Battle was a rush, every sense focused on survival.
Now that the immediate danger had passed, I began to notice my surroundings. I could speak of the hides hanging from the walls, or the empty bags, crates, and barrels scattered about.
But above all, my senses were assaulted by the overwhelming stench of goblins living here: urine, excrement, and rotting waste.
The smell was so invasive that I felt as though I would never be clean again.
Valandra managed to revive Ash’tar, soft light glowing from her hands. He sat up and examined the hole in his clothes. There was blood, but no wound beneath it.
I squatted beside him.
“Are you well enough to continue?” I asked.
He nodded. There was no fear or uncertainty on his face. As a pit fighter, he had likely lost fights before. There was no room for doubt.
You picked yourself up and fought again.
Nox had already moved farther into the cave, following the stream.
He was right. The sounds of our fight had almost certainly alerted the goblins deeper inside. We had to move quickly before they could organize a proper defense.
And so, we went on: the two elves up front, Valandra and me following at a distance. We had to tread carefully, as the uneven floor was covered with wet stone and debris.
The chamber we were in narrowed at the back, leading into a tunnel. Two wolves were guarding the passage’s entrance, bound with chains hammered into the wall. The chains were long enough that no one could pass by unassaulted.
Ash’tar tried to inch past them, but the wolves rushed forward, chains snapping taut and stopping slavering jaws from closing on his throat.
I tried a few light and sound tricks in the hope of intimidating these creatures, but to no avail.
“Move out of the way!”
Startled to hear Nox speak, I instantly complied with his command. The elf rushed in with a torch and drove the wolves back against the wall, leaving an opening for us to pass.
The three of us quickly ran past, and Nox brought up the rear, keeping the wolves at bay.
We quickly descended down the tunnel. A constant rhythm of falling drops drew us further onward.
It wasn’t long before the passage opened and the ceiling rose. Ash’tar made a sign for us to halt and signaled that he would scout ahead.
Free of my bumbling and Valandra’s creaking armour, he moved off like a shadow.
Nox must have felt it a slight to his honour to be left behind.
The assassin followed like a specter. He would not have been out of place among the spirits that haunted my mind.
Valandra and I stayed behind, watching tensely into the darkness.
There was a ping, followed by a muffled cry and thud.
My heart froze. Were we discovered?
Two tall figures appeared and waved us forward. I recognized Ash’tar and Nox by their postures.
We followed their lead.
A crude wooden bridge crossed above the main cavern. It looked unstable, uneven, and lashed together with rope and scavenged timber.
Goblin construction.
A crumpled corpse at the bottom of the bridge, with an arrow in its back, told the story of a sentry who had grown careless with boredom.
Ash’tar quickly led us onward to a narrow, rising passage climbing along the cavern wall.
The dripping water was coming from somewhere farther away. From my elevated position, I could see two black surfaces with glittering lights.
My best guess was that these were pools of water from which the stream originated.
At the top of the rise, a path led to a passage between the wall and a megalithic pillar.
Hiding behind the pillar, we reached a natural hall littered with crates, stolen supplies, and the stench of wet fur and goblin urine.
Observing the scene while holding our breaths, nothing moved except for two goblins.
Ash’tar and Nox were keen to rush them.
To me, it seemed like they were trusting their luck a bit too much. But I hadn’t been in a lot of fights, so what did I know?
Another goblin with a wolf on a chain strolled into view.
I wanted to curse, but my companions’ bloodlust had already taken hold, and they charged the enemy position regardless.
A big, bad wolf apparently didn’t scare the others, but I wasn’t going to run up to its jaws naked.
Grabbing a torch from my pack, I lit it with a quiet whisper and rushed out to follow the rest.
The goblins spotted us almost immediately, barking alarms.
From farther back in the cave, a towering, seven-foot-tall monument to brute force padded into view.
A massive frame shrouded in shaggy, matted brown fur, slick with the grease and grime of this goblinoid den. A flat, pygmy snout and tiny, tufted pinkish ears were strangely mismatched against massive, brutal features.
Snarling at the sight of our party, his thick lips curled back to bare a maw of crooked fangs.
A low, guttural growl rumbled from his barrel chest and was answered by another.
As I got a better view of the hall in front of me, I saw a makeshift throne at the back, resting on a raised platform.
A second wolf followed behind his master, bigger and wider than the first.
“Bah! More meat! Now you die for Klarg!” he shouted and slammed his morningstar into the stone floor to make a point.
I won’t lie; I could feel my guts turn to liquid at that.
The entire chamber exploded into violence.
Nox was among the first to feel the wolves’ fangs, suffering a vicious bite that nearly drove him to the cave floor. Ash’tar answered by throwing himself into the thickest part of the fighting, forcing the goblins to deal with him instead.
Steel rang against stone while growls, shouted orders, and goblin curses echoed through the cavern.
I cried:
“Valandra. Stand fast! You are the barrier between us and the dark.”
The reverberation of my words struck Valandra’s armour, and a note of pure sound rang out as she set herself against the charging wolf unleashed by the leader.
The goblins fell first.
Nox rose from the ground, nearly decapitating the goblin holding the wolf. Ash’tar snapped a goblin’s neck with a kick like a strike of thunder.
But the wolves proved relentless, fighting with desperate ferocity.
Valandra and the massive wolf wrestled over the shield. The wolf had caught the edge between its slavering jaws and was trying to pull it away from the ferocious warrior.
The first wolf barged aside the lone surviving goblin. It jumped at Ash’tar, clamped its jaws around his throat, and savaged him while dragging the falling elf to the ground.
Not thinking it through, I rushed at the wolf, waving my torch like a madman. Putting a bit of power into my vocal cords, I let out a deafening roar like an apex predator.
The wolf flinched, taking two steps back from the prone Ash’tar. But it held its ground after that.
Showing me its fangs and raising its hackles, it looked like it would pounce on me next.
The leader announced his arrival in the fray with a gargantuan swing of his morningstar against Valandra’s shield, pushing back our holy woman.
His presence threatened to turn the fight against us.
The wolf in front of me started to snarl. Emboldened by its overlord, it looked ready to go for my throat.
I could snarl as well.
“Hurgh Da Qwa jah!”
(Lit. “The Darkness will swallow you.”)
In my mind, black tendrils lashed onto the wolf’s mind. Its resolve left it. The wolf shook its head as if trying to clear fog from its thoughts.
The wraith that was Nox had drifted around the skirmish like fog. Seeing an opening he could exploit, he descended on the wolf’s turned back.
The elf’s dagger stabbed down into the wolf again and again, blood splattering through the air.
In the corner of my eye, I saw Valandra drop her shield and strike her bestial opponent with a mighty, two-handed swing of her hammer.
A blinding white flash of light heralded the opening of a rift of divine retribution.
The wolf was hurled aside, white flames and smoke trailing behind it as it landed far off between the crates.
Time slowed around me.
The leader’s wide visage, dominated by small, deep-set eyes gleaming with cruel, manic intensity, snapped into focus.
In his oversized hands, he shifted the weight of his heavy, rust-pitted morningstar, its wicked spikes permanently stained with dried, dark blood.
As he lashed out at me, I felt a power rush upward.
The power was familiar. It had been a part of me since the first time I had used the crystal skull in my pack.
It was the power of the Veil, of the Elder Dead.
I felt my spirit swarm push into the mortal realm, flaring up to protect me. They battered the towering figure, flying into and through his face and body.
As he jerked back, the morningstar swished past my nose, missing me by a hair.
My victory was short-lived.
Tricks did not faze this monster.
A massive, clawed hand almost encircled my neck and lifted me off the ground.
Foul breath, the stink of rotten meat, washed over me as beady eyes looked into mine.
“You do magic.”
With that simple statement, he started to squeeze, and breathing became difficult.
As my flailing hands sought purchase, they slipped off crudely stitched hide and mismatched leather scales.
In desperation, I clawed at his face, and as my hand touched his cheek, a connection snapped shut in my mind.
I felt his flesh. His life force. This was not the power of the dead. This came from within. This was the infernal power that burned within me.
The power to corrupt life.
Like a drunk finding a keg of ale, I drank in his life force. Black veins began to spread from where my skin touched his.
An involuntary gasp escaped his throat.
My knees hit the ground.
As I looked up, our gazes met, and I was doused in a shower of blood and brain matter. The giant toppled over, and as he hit the ground, the contents of his head spilled across the floor.
A new shadow rose above me.
Divine retribution, covered in blood.
Valandra lowered her hammer, now covered in blood and tissue, studying me with an unreadable look.
“Can you still stand?” she asked, her voice calm and measured despite the battle we had just fought. “Your body appears sound. I cannot heal your mind, Roux of Illomen.”
“What was that thing?” I rasped.
“Bugbear.”
If I could ask questions, I must have been fine.
With that, she turned her attention to the fallen Ash’tar.
All I managed were a few wheezes, which were far too high-pitched for my liking. My throat hurt. Blood was dripping into my eyes. No one, including myself, could tell whether my eyes were watering from the blood or the stress of battle.
I pushed myself upright. My hands slipped. Not on water. More blood, warm, thick. “Spirits, preserve me…”
I needed to be clean.
Thorga had taught me a trick to look my best on stage. A few short words in rhyme to create a melody and focus the mind, reshaping my image.
I had never tried it before, but it worked on blood just as it did on dirt and grime.
The cavern fell strangely quiet. Not the quiet after battle. I could see the others moving about.
No, this was the other kind. The Veil had thinned. I knew the feeling too well. A pressure gathered behind me. The air grew heavy.
Footsteps. Large ones. I closed my eyes.
“You have got to be joking.”
A deep voice rumbled from somewhere just over my shoulder.
“…Klarg?”
I sighed.
“Yes.”
A pause.
“Klarg dead.”
The bugbear looked at his own translucent hands.
“Klarg remembers little man. Klarg crushed little man.”
“You nearly did.”
“Klarg remembers pain…”
He frowned.
“…Then nothing.”
“That tends to happen when one acquires a new ventilation hole. Look!” I said, pointing at his corpse.
“Oh…”
I could feel the timber of his deep voice vibrating in my chest. The bugbear turned, taking in the pale figures already gathered around me.
The little girl. Brother Seamus. Elise. Maribel and Walt.
The others watched their newest companion with the weary resignation of regular patrons seeing another drunk stumble into the tavern.
Klarg scowled.
“What place this?”
“My curse.”
“Klarg not understand.”
“You and I have that in common.”
He took a step back. Then another. On the third, he stopped. His foot simply refused to continue. He growled and shoved against an invisible resistance.
Nothing. He looked back at me.
“What trick?”
“No trick.”
“Klarg leave.”
“You can’t.”
“Klarg decides where Klarg goes.”
“Not anymore.”
His expression hardened.
“You chain Klarg?”
I laughed. A short, tired laugh that hurt far more than it should have.
“If I possessed that kind of power, do you honestly think I’d use it to collect dead bugbears?”
He considered this.
“…Yes.”
“No.”
Another attempt. Another failure. Something held him fast. For the first time since his death, uncertainty crept across his broad face.
“Klarg… trapped?”
I leaned against a crate before my legs betrayed me again.
“So am I.”
He looked at me.
“I hear them every day.”
I gestured vaguely toward the gathering of spirits.
“I see what they saw. Feel what they felt. Wherever I go…”
I looked him in the eye.
“…they go.”
Silence settled between us.
Finally, Klarg spoke.
“Klarg was chief.”
“So, I’ve gathered.”
“Klarg was strong.”
“You were.”
Another long silence. I let out a slow breath.
“I don’t know. I’ve stopped pretending there is a purpose to any of this.”
Klarg grunted.
Then, to my astonishment, he folded his massive arms and sat cross-legged beside the others.
“If Klarg cannot leave…”
“You can’t.”
“…Then Klarg watches.”
“Sure. Join the club.”
The sound of the world around me returned.
Valandra had healed a visibly shaken Ash’tar. Nox had hunted down the lone goblin that had made a break for it.
Bruised, bloodied, and running low on spells, we searched the chamber. Among the spoils, we found goblin weapons, stolen provisions, and supplies abandoned by the Cragmaw raiders. Two healing potions.
But no sign of Gundren or Sildar.
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