👀30. reconnaissance

session 30 • 06/07/2022 • 1,660 words

🌞 DAY 8 • 📅 ELEINT 29

📌 Reidoth's Cottage, Thundertree

Weed Whacking 2.0

Will goes to investigate the knock by peering through the window, seeing another Awakened Tree and Vine Blight waiting outside. Soren notices multiple smaller movements outside -- the party prepares for an ambush by the awakened plants.

Hugh holds the door shut from the knocking of the tree, as Wlil lands heavy blows on the Vine Blight through the window. Hearing scratching come from the windows in the bedroom, Sildar goes to investigate and mows through several small Twig Blights that have begun to break into the house.

Though the Vine Blight eventually manages to land an entangling attack on the whole room, Will kills it shortly after with a devastating array of attacks bolstered by his Planar Warrior and Hunter's Mark.

As Sildar manages to kill all the four Twig Blights in the bedorom, they begin to break into the dining room from behind Soren and have begun to attack him. Sildar and Hugh rush to take care of those, as Soren struggles to hold his concentration on his supportive spells. The Awakened Tree also breaks through the door that Hugh is holding.

Soren complains that Reidoth, as a druid, should invest in better gardening, before chucking a piece of burning firewood at the Awakened Tree, drawing its attention.

Hugh has been telling... horrendous jokes this whole time to the tree, and so Soren uses one of them to attempt to cast Dissonant Whispers -- it works, and the Awakened Tree recoils, taking an opportunity attack from Hugh and Will.

Hugh, Will and Sildar do enough damage collectively to the burning tree to fell it permanently, but not before it manages to slam-dunk Soren into the fucking ground lmao, leaving him at 5 health in one hit.

Aftermath

Sildar picks up a badly-injured Soren from the ground and sets him on Reidoth's chair. Hugh urges him to drink a health potion, but Soren tries to brush off his injuries to conserve resources. Sildar yells at him. He still doesn't drink one.

Will deliberates this for a moment, before casting Cure Wounds on Soren, helping him significantly. Soren is a little surprised, and sincerely thanks Will.

Soren is made sullen by the near-death experience, and expresses worry that if they couldn't take care of a few awakened shrubs, then fighting a dragon would be a death sentence. Hugh and Will disagree that this is a fair assessment of the party's strength -- since we had been drained of our resources over the several fights over the past few hours.

Soren proposes scouting out the surrounding area and dragon's lair itself in order to gain an advantage if it comes to a fight tomorrow -- though Soren still wants to try to resolve the situation by talking to it.

The rest of the group is hesitant to leave the safety of Reidoth's cottage, given that they've been badly weakened and are all but out of resources. Soren adamantly insists that we need to prepare for the fight, however, and points out that if they were going to scout, they needed to leave now -- while the dragon was still gone.

Sildar agrees with Soren's plan, but is reminded by the group of how loud his armor can be. He proposes staying behind to watch over Gundren, Jharym and Droop while the rest of the group infiltrated the dragon's tower to investigate.

Soren is saddened at the thought of splitting off, but acknowledges this is likely safest for Sildar. Soren quietly asks Sildar to promise that if he doesn't return from this reconnaissance mission, to ensure that the Black Spider dies. Sildar agrees, but tells Soren that "I'll be badly hurt if you don't come back, so you'd better."

Droop is devastated that we, once again, are refusing to bring him along due to the danger. He suggests leaving the area and returning to Phandalin -- when reminded that the dragon might kill everyone in Phandalin and Neverwinter, Droop implies that he's OK with that, as long as the party doesn't die.

Soren private agrees with the sentiment (that he would rather see Neverwinter and Phandalin fall before losing the party), but notes that he knows how much it would hurt Sildar -- and so, the dragon has to die. He firmly tells Droop that he has to stay, and the party -- sans Sildar -- departs.

Hugh fking puts down a bunch of ball bearings in front of the front door.

📌 Venomfang's Lair, Thundertree

The Dragon's Tower

The group all but sprints over to the dragon's tower, and finds several dead giant spiders outside the tower's door as well as several dead dragon cultists and merchants.

We infiltrate the tower and discover the dragon's hoard in the middle.

We find evidence of the dragon having used its breath weapon -- presumably against the spiders -- against the stone walls, leading Soren to roughly gauge how far the breath weapon can go -- 25-30ft, which worries him.

We also see several large gashes across the wall. Soren roughly maps out the surrounding rooms and cottage, as well as the dimensions of the tower, before the group leaves the tower.

Soren points out that the dragon might be able to smell their presence here. In response, Hugh takes a chunk of giant spider corpse and rubs it all over everything we've touched. We rush back to Reidoth's house.

🌞 NIGHT 8 • 📅 ELEINT 29

📌 Reidoth's Cottage, Thundertree

Mushroom Soup

Droop welcomes the party back eagerly and asks again to go with them to fight the dragon -- the answer is still no. Droop gets really sad and asks the group to promise him that they'll come back from fighting the dragon.

Hugh promises that he'll return, but Will hesitates to make a promise he's not 100% sure he can keep. Soren, already sullen about having to fight the dragon against his wishes, bluntly tells Droop that he cannot keep that promise.

Soren takes out his notes and begins sketching a rough layout of the lair to show Sildar. He attempts to make contingency plans with the party, but not much solid ends up getting decided on.

Soren points out that the dragon seemed arrogant in its speech towards us, and that we may be able to take advantage of it. He suggests acting as though we were wide-eyed, new and weak adventurers seeking a quest from it.

Will isn't too happy with the idea of talking to the dragon, citing its untrustworthiness and wondering if it would be able to easily see through our guise. Soren grins at Will deliberately and says "don't worry, I'm a good liar", which makes Will VERY very uncomfortable. Hugh points out that Soren is just as good at telling the truth, which Soren acknowledges.

This makes Will feel better in no way at all.

Droop starts asking everyone for their sleeping bag sadly. Soren gives him his and Sildar's without thinking much of it. Will finishes cooking his mushroom soup and portions it out for everyone -- it's good! Soren compliments the food.

Carpenter Droop

Will and Hugh muse over the entirely-broken-down front door. Will wants to attempt to fix it, but doesn't quite have the tools to do it. He and Hugh depart from the cottage and wrench a fucking door right off its hinges from the blacksmith place.

They come back, and there's briefly chaos as Hugh and Will attempt to replace the broken door with the blacksmith door. Soren produces Tinker Tools from the Bag of Holding. Eventually, Hugh and Will ask Droop to come help.

Droop rolls like a fkin God and snaps that door into the doorframe like a master carpenter. Everyone is impressed, Droop doesn't even know he did good and was just like :3 and went back to his business of setting out everyones' bedrolls in Reidoth's bedroom LMAO

We regretfully inform him that we're sleeping outside so as to not disturb Will and Reidoth anymore than we already have. Droop is devastated.

To Live Forever

Reidoth returns from his scouting expedition. Soren immediately gets up from the chair to offer to take him to his room -- wanting to speak to Reidoth privately.

Reidoth fkin takes his chair LMAOO and ignores Soren.

Eventually, Soren manages to "escort" Reidoth to his bedroom. Alone, he asks Reidoth if Reidoth has any of that good kush pipeweed. Reidoth, of course, does, and gives Soren five uses of pipeweed for free -- in exchange for their promising to kill the dragon tomorrow.

Soren attempts to beat around the bush by asking Reidoth for his age, then about the difficulties that come with humans aging.

Eventually, Soren asks Reidoth about extending human lifespans, because of Sildar. Soren admits that he was lying to Sildar about being OK seeing him wither away and die centuries before Soren's own time.

Reidoth considers this, then tells Soren that some adventurers, after achieving certain feats and milestones in their career, tend to live longer than others. Other than that, there are no spells accessible to either Reidoth nor Soren at the moment that can help extend Sildar's lifespan.

Reidoth gently tries to dissuade Soren from the idea by encouraging him to enjoy the present moment, instead of fixating on the future.

Soren agrees with that thought, and turns to leave, only to find that WIll has been listening in at the door this whole time. Aghast, Soren pushes past Will, and warns him against speaking about this to Sildar.

Outside, Hugh and Droop set up the tent in the living room. We speak about taking watches, and Droop insists on staying up all night so we can get a better rest. Watch order goes as such:

First: Will, Droop

Second: Hugh, Droop

Third: Soren, Jharym, Droop

Fourth: Soren, Sildar, Droop

We settle into bed as Will and Droop take their watch.