Session 3

Our party walked to the southeast and arrived at Gnomengarde without incident.  While all seemed in order, Tiam Skeggi Styrkarsson had a sense that the Weave was more present here than elsewhere.  They entered the caverns and wandered through the maze, first coming upon Facktore, a gnome experimenting with a giant crossbow device used to protect the whole complex.  Proceeding deeper we entered a room and began talking to Pog and Ulla.  They mentioned Fibblestib and Dabbledod were across the bridge and recommended that we talk to them.  We crossed the rope bridge over the waterfall to find another gnome defensive contraption.  Deactivating these whirling blades, we found Fibblestib and Dabbledod.  They reported to us that their leaders, Gnerkly and Korboz, have been acting strangely recently.  Also, some gnomes in their conclave have been going missing.

We entered the throne room of Gnerkly and Korboz but it was empty.  Instead, we went to the King’s door and began a difficult parley.  They asked that we vanquish the “shapechanger”.  While we parleyed, Atticus Catullus attempted to detect magic and turned blue.  The gnome guards explained the strange situation with Weave has caused odd effects like this.

We returned to the king’s chambers and Tiam teleported into their room.  Gnerkly was glued to a chair so Tiam took the room key.  Iarqirelle exhaustively examined everything in the caverns looking for the shapechanger by stabbing them.

In the beer barrel room, the party began hitting things to find the mystery monster.  Tiam changed into a brown bear and was able to smell it just as Topaz found it.  This Mimic revealed, it savagely attached us.  Iarqirelle struck it with fire and singed the brewing stock.  Suddenly the Mimic grabbed Atticus to pull into its mouth to eat him.  Tiam charged in and bit the monster’s tongue off, freeing his friend and killing the monster.  We returned to the kings and presented proof of its death.  They gifted us a hat of wizardry, pole of collapsing, clockwork amulet and a wand of pyrotechnics.  We returned to Phandalin, received our payments from the Townmaster and settled into the Stone Inn for the evening.

The next day we escorted Don-Jon Raskin, Mountain's Toe Gold Mine's overseer to his site.  The first day we found a squad of dead orc, apparently killed by the white dragon.  From there, we reached the mine to find it occupied by were rats.  They said they had been displaced from their old home, an abandoned temple.  We left the mine and began investigating the area.  To the north-west, we found a circle of buried dwarves, murdered viscously by the wererats.  We found a back entrance to the mine and proceeded inside.  Immediate inside we were attacked by a carrion crawler.  We killed it without much effort and proceeded deeper inside. Amongst the caverns and tunnels, we found the sights and signs of the industriousness of those fallen dwarves:  their offices, storerooms and barracks.  Now it was only a broken pattern of their lives.  We isolated the guardroom and prepared to ambush it and to begin the scourging.