Sorry for taking so long to post, I just haven’t been feeling up to it of late.
But the last session of Ghosts of Saltmarsh (Session 5) went really well, so much so it’s invigorated me.
So let’s get to recapping what happened in last weeks session.
Here are the other posts on Saltmarsh:
Session 0 | Session 1 | Session 2 | Session 3
Having discovered a bound and gagged man in his undergarments in one of the rooms at the end of the last session, the party goes to where Ned says his clothes should be.
Finding them there, the man dons his attire and he’s ready to go.
But the party has other ideas, as they make him go to the chest at the end of the room to open it.
As Ned Shakeshaft slowly and cautiously opened the chest at the end of the room, everyone help their breath…
Ned winced as he opened the chest to find… a soiled bag of old clothes.
The party wasn’t too happy about that, so did their own investigation, not having any better results.
Moving on to the next room, they find it to be a bedroom, as opposed to a storage room like the last one.
The bed has been cut open and the stuffing mostly removed.
Another chest is at the end of this room too, and once again Ned is tasked with opening it.
This time it’s completely empty.
They only have 2 more rooms to check, rooms 11 and 12.
In Room 11 they find that it’s a guest bedroom, with a wardrobe on their right and a fireplace on their left.
Revan and Valrax enter the room, as Erdan starts telling Ned his life story.
Revan opens the wardrobe and finds a fancy looking coat in there, which Valrax immediately opens.
Which… is a terrible idea!
The inside of the coat is filled with yellow mold, which explodes out in a 10 foot radius.
It catches both Revan and Valrax off guard, and they breathe in a huge amount of the poison!
Knocking both of them unconscious!
So the yellow mold does 2d10 damage on a failed DC 15 Constitution save.
They both failed, and Valrax took 19 damage and Revan took 17!
I rolled stupidly high for that, and really should have just taken the default 11 damage instead.
If Valrax was a few hit points lower he would have been instantly killed.
Maestro ran in and used his last spell slot to cast Cure Wounds on Valrax, then spent 2 Sorcery points to get another spell slot, which he immediately used on Revan.
This left the group fairly downhearted, as they were almost out of healing and now Maestro was out of spell slots.
Erdan had cast Good Berry earlier in the adventure, and still had 5 of the berries left.
Each one restores 1 HP and feeds you for a full day, so with Siege not existing for this session (Paolo couldn’t make it.) that meant everyone got 1 berry to hold onto in case of emergency.
But they still had one more room to check.
This was another bedroom, with a fairly tattered but usable 4 poster bed.
But with nothing else of value there, they decided to leave via the front door.
Which is where they got ambushed by some bandits!
As two of them were Scouts with longbows, they stayed in the hallways, one between rooms 2 and 3 and one just in front of room 5.
A bandit with a scimitar rushed the group.
Both Scouts decided that Erdan was the one to target, but were poor shots for the most part.
The bandit didn’t fair much better.
Erdan crash tackles the scout on the room 5 hallway to the ground.
Jordan flanks the bandit and cuts him straight in half from head to toe with an impressive critical.
Revan then stabs the pinned scout in the face with both of his swords, to Erdans objection.
A firebolt from Maestro sends the other Scout fleeing for his life.
The party then makes the genius plan of splitting the party!
Which, honestly wasn’t a horrible plan if they had the time to coordinate a bit better.
So Jordan and Valrax follow the scout as he has obviously headed downstairs to the Cellar.
The others loop around and head down the stairs in the Scullery.
It’s a shame that Valrax and Jordan get there early enough to be focus fired upon by the 2 bandits and 2 scouts down there.
The 2 scouts were having an argument, as the one who was injured was shouting something and the female scout at the back of the room wasn’t having any of it.
Some more poor aim didn’t help the bad guys as eventually the party managed to rush in and take down the 2 bandits and the injured scout.
But the female scout ran away into a hidden doorway at the bottom left of the room!
It turns out that the only room the players didn’t investigate was this one, so they never found the secret doorway.
This leads into a natural cave structure.
This freaked everyone out a bit, as they had no idea how many more bandits could still be alive.
The path to their left, toward room 27 was lit by torches, but to their right, room 25 was dark.
After healing Revan up to full, now that she had taken the spare shield from the corpse she got her full plate from, she was the tank.
The decided to check the dark first…
Which was a bad idea, as green slime immediately falls on top of Revan and starts eating away at her armour and flesh.
What should have been 2d8 damage was instead just 1d8 when I rolled a 7 and then another 7…
Taking 14 HP away would have been the end of the adventure, and there was no way they would have gone on.
They burning the slime away with a Firebolt from Maestro.
Sadly the slime did damage her armour, so now she only has AC of 19 instead of 20.
That’s when they hear a voice call out to them from the end of the illuminated path.
Valrax shouts about a Parley, and it’s agreed upon.
Maestro is sent ahead, as he has the highest Charisma by far.
They all head toward area 27, Ned moves to the little outcropping, while Revan moves to block anything coming up from area 28 or beyond, and the rest spread out behind.
As Maestro makes his way into the room, he sees a strange area in the middle encircled by smoke.
A dark humanoid shape resides in the middle, and a voice comes from its direction.
He introduces himself as Sanbalet and he’s in charge of the smuggling going on.
He offers the players a chance to join him.
Some of the players agree and some disagree in the background.
Maestro then tries to do a power play to make it seem like the group has a little more power over the smugglers.
I’m not sure he meant to do it that way, but he made it seem like the Smugglers were screwed if the players didn’t agree to work -with- them.
This annoyed Sanbalet who changed his request: “Join or die!”
To which Maestro replied “Yeah, that doesn’t really work for me.”
Which Sanbalet took to mean “We choose to die.”
Sanbalet emerges from the front of the smoke and unleashes the 3 bolts of a Scorching Ray at Maestro, sadly only 1 hits.
Maestro being a Tiefling means he takes half damage from fire anyway, but it leaves him with only 4 HP anyway.
A scout and bandit also pop out from behind the smoke and take shots.
A Hobgoblin them comes up the pathway in area 28 to engage with Revan.
Valrax then makes the smart move of calling for a retreat!
And as he turns to run the injured female scout tries to cut him off.
A shocking grasp pauses her advance though.
As Erdan then turns to flee, he feels a swipe against his cloak as Ned attacks!
Erdan keeps moving and finishes off the female scout.
… So… there’s a reason I keep pointing out that it’s a female…
Because as soon as Jordan saw that she was a female he wanted her.
So while he couldn’t see that she died, he did see that Ned attacked Erdan.
So he starts to attack Ned to keep him away from everyone else.
Maestro makes a break for it and so does Revan.
Sanbalet skulks back into the shadows of the magical smoke.
It’s there that Maestro notices that the shadow doesn’t seem to match what Sanbalet is doing… curious.
Ned finally gets taken down, much to Erdans dismay, as they had become best friends… according to Erdan.
Revan picks up the corpse of the dead female scout (DFS from now on,) so that Jordan would finally be able to disengage to run away.
Revan does use the corpse as meat shield though, granting him half cover!
As bolts and arrows are flying towards Revan, they end up embedding themselves into the DFS as Revan can only move at half speed.
Jordan takes the corpse so Revan can move freely again, and she crits the hobgoblin in front of her.
It’s at this point, as most of them are getting to the stairs back to the house that Sanbalet realises it’s turning against him and rushes to join the fray.
Now Jordan is moving at half speed, and more slashes are hitting the DFS, but he just won’t let her go…
Even when one of her legs gets cut off!
The mages are at the top of the stairs to the first floor by now and waiting to unleash spells on the smugglers that come through.
Sanbalet starts to cast Magic Missile on the tanks, knocking them even lower.
Every else just decides to book it and runs.
Jordan finally flings the DFS corpse at the bandit and scout in melee with him.
But he only just makes it to the top of the stairs.
With everyone else outside heading towards the front entrance, they see Jordan take a full blast of Magic Missile and drop!
Revan jumps back inside and forces a good berry down Jordans throat, and as his eyes open, he vanishes!
The scout drags him back down to the bottom of the stairs as the bandit goes to find some rope to tie him up with.
But Jordan springs up and flees.
His armour takes the blow and he manages to make it out.
The scout tries to follow, but he’s too late to stop them.
But while that was happening Erdan and Maestro got into a tussle.
Erdan blamed Maestro for turning Ned against them!
He tries to slap him but whiffs.
Maestro just ignores him and walks away, but Erdan uses that opening to slip a boot onto his hand and smack him in the back of the head with it.
Maestro got hit by a magic missile bolt, and only had 1 HP left at this point, and so he drops unconscious!
Erdan then feeds him a good berry on his turn and makes a break for the gate.
With everyone fleeing for their lives, the group runs as fast as they can back to Saltmarsh, and that’s where we ended the session.
So this was was pretty damn intense, it could have gone either sides way at any point.
There were a lot of bad rolls on both sides, and if they hadn’t fallen for the dungeon traps they would have been in a much safer state.
I didn’t expect it to go this way, and so I had to think really hard about what happens next.
There’s nothing in the book about what happens if they fail to take out the smugglers.
So I spent much of the time thinking about what would happen.
I felt like it would be a bit boring and silly for the last 4 members of the smugglers (there was a hobgoblin they didn’t find) to just stay at the hideout, knowing the adventurers would come back fully rested.
What will happen?
Find out next time!