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Day 6 - On to Ulthek

Back at Pine Haven after an uneventful journey back, the team decides that the wine found in Quasqueton has given them their next mission. They head eastward, down to the coast, their packs and pockets full with the bit of treasure they were able to secure from the dungeon. They purchased horses, and traveled through Pine Barrens and Pine Hill on to Ulthek for three days without incident.

Day 9 - The Wharf on Grendep Bay

In Ulthek, the party heads down to the wharf on Grendep Bay and finds a wine merchant. He tells them that the sample wine they have brought to him is fine, and he offers them 100gp per barrel. With some persuasion, he raises the offer to 120gp, but will not go higher. Although the potential loot is compelling, the 3,360gp or so of value would be whittled down to nothing after hiring a ship and oarsmen to go upstream. Otherwise, an expedition of some 170 men plus wagons could do the job as bearers, but would take weeks to put together and return.

While the others figure out what to do about the wine, Nowhere seeks out an armorer to make some adjustments to the armor she found in Quasqueton.

As the party considers its options, Immeral and K'ronk run into a familiar face in the mercantile district, Gundren Rockseeker, a merchant, and his man-at-arms Sildar Hallwinter. Aside from their training at the wizard's guild, Immeral and K'ronk have had several drinks together at the local tavern, and Gundren was helpful in bringing K'ronk to Ulthek, but that is another story.

Gundren asks if your group would be interested in bringing a couple of ox-drawn wagons of mining supplies down to Neverwinter and on to a little town called Phandalin. He has been trying to secure a ship heading south, but nothing is in port, and he is in a hurry. He offers 20gp a piece for the journey, 10gp now, and 10 when they reach Barthen's provisions with the wagons. Meanwhile, Gundren will take care of business with Sildar, and catch up with them along the road. It will be six, maybe seven days down the coast, but the money is good, and this is where the fates have seemed to point the party, so they agree.

Day 10 - 15

The party sets out, and gets to know each other better and better over the course of a week on the road. They laugh together about Immeral's caution and screaming fear, about Nowhere's somewhat barbarian-like rage and lack of caution, they joke about Dain's inability to hit anything with a javelin, and his desire to wield a large battle axe in each hand. They banter about Atlas, and his punching the paralysis-delivering carrion crawler; about Orryn who talks about owlbears all the time, and they talk about K'ronk, who doesn't fit the "traditional" character of a dragonborn, but throws a fire bolt and staff combo-attack that has saved them several times. Seraphina remains strangely aloof, neither engaged with the party, nor gone, a bit of a mystery.

They pass many a strange group, but no incidents arise, although some give Nowhere and K'ronk some strange glances. Gundren and Sildar catch up with the group in Neverwinter a town with many of its own interests, but there is no time to waste. Gundren pushes the group to be on the road early, and that he and Sildar will press ahead to hurry to Phandalin and meet up with the provisioner Barthen. Although Gundren will not specifically say why the rush, you get the idea that for him to come down the coast personally, some big opportunity must be happening, and the good-natured merchant sees the chance to turn a hefty profit.

Day 16 - 18

The last two days of the journey to Phandalin awaits, and the first day goes uneventfully. By the second day though, the winds change. The wagon party has turned off the High Road, traveling on the Triboar Trail leading past Phandalin, when they spot two dead horses sprawled in the road. Each are peppered with arrows. The party approaches cautiously, and luckily spot a squad of goblins off the side of the road, ready to attack from a thicket. The group attacks, and vanquishes the goblins, but leave none alive for questioning. Then they confirm - the horses are Sildar and Gundren's, but they are nowhere to be found. Nowhere the Ranger uses her tracking skills to reveal that the goblins have used this place to launch surprise attacks before, and they seem to have dragged Gundren and Sildar off!

The team hitches the oxen away from the road and starts up the trail. Nowhere leads the way, discovering a snare and pit trap along the way, before they come to a stream, running out from a cave in the shear side of a hill. The party decides to split up. Immeral and ????? head on with the wagons to Phandalin, while the others attempt a rescue of Sildar and Gundren.

They first encounter a pair of goblins again in a thicket, just outside the cave, attack them, and set fire to them and the thicket with K'ronk's Fire Bolt. They enter the goblin hideout to the sound of snarls and rattling chains. There are wolves chained here in a side cavern, and Orryn the gnome speaks to them with his natural ability to communicate with animals. They wolves are pets of a large goblin named Klarg, and he beats them with a club when disobedient. They only wish to be freed if Klarg wants it, because they fear his wrath. As the wolves communicate this, the party hears a deep laughing and high-pitched sobbing from a crevice at the back of the cave. The wolves tell Orryn that Klarg throws them bones and waste down the fissure.

Determined to settle the score for the cruelty to the wolves, Nowhere climbs up the chimney-like opening, and comes up behind a mass of crates and stalagmites. In the open, a greasy fat goblin is kicking a runty little one as the group of goblins surrounding him cackles. Nowhere, unable to contain herself jumps atop a crate and chastises the monster with a booming infernal rebuke. Unaffected, Klarg laughs, and orders the goblins to kill her. Nowhere quickly exits the way she came, down the chimney to the den of wolves. Klarg orders the goblins to run below and kill the intruder, so the party turns the tables by going back up the fissure.

There, the group attacks Klarg, who speaks to them in third person "how dare you attack Klarg, Klarg will destroy you", and in fact Klarg is a formidable opponent, but ultimately K'ronk delivers a powerful electrical breath attack and the group triumphs, ending the battle and decapitating Klarg. They quickly move the body in front of the stairs downward, and when the goblins return, they parlay. Holding his still dripping head out above him, Nowhere offers "Give us our friends and you can live. Battle us and you will die," and they throw his head down the chimney. One of the larger goblins states that if they leave all the provisions, they agree, and they can find their friend in a nearby cavern.

In that cavern, the group finds a bloodied and beaten Sildar. They untie him and he relates that Gundren has been captured and taken to some place called Cragmaw Castle, but he doesn't know where it is - but someone in Phandalin should know. He tells the group that Gundren's brothers Tharden and Nundro found an entrance to the long-lost Wave Echo Cave, site of the Lost Mine of Phandelver. Gundren had a map to the Cave, but Klarg took it and sent it on to someone at Cragmaw Castle called "The Black Spider", who seemed to know they were coming. Finally, Sildar tells you that he must get back to Phandalin to find out what has happened to a wizard named Iarno Albrek, sent there three months ago by the Lord's Alliance, a group both Iarno and Sildar are a part of. The Lord's Alliance is an infamous group, serving prosperity and security by dispatching threats to order. He is concerned because the alliance has not heard from Iarno in weeks, and feels that agents of chaos and evil may be at work, perhaps this Black Spider character. He feels that he and Iarno together can find Cragmaw Castle, save Gundren, and establish the order needed in Phandalin if the mine opens again.

As the party leaves the hideout with a badly wounded Sildar, the goblins release a huge pool of water as they come down the passageway. The torrent knocks most of the party down as the goblins, lead by one called Yeemik, attack. "Yeemik the mighty will destroy you!" he claims, but he his quickly cut down by the party and the rest of the goblins flee back to the room of provisions.

The party finds Sildar dead at the bottom of the passage, his wounds and the torrent of water too much for the old fellow, and they carry off his lifeless body. They also decide to release the wolves, who have eaten the head of Klarg. The party recovers their wagon, and heads the remainder of the way to Phandalin, spending a night uneventfully on the road, and arriving the next evening.

NEXT - Campaign Journal 05 - Reaching Phandelver