After the near-defeat at Wyvern Tor, the party composed themselves and moved on to Old Owl Well, where they found a necromancer aligned with the Red Wizards of Thay had set up an archaeological expedition, defended by a small horde of zombies. Naeris and the necromancer hit it off, being two creepy weird magical peas in a horrible, horrible pod, and they spent some wine-and-dine time in his tent while the rest of the party uncomfortably hung out outside the tower with zombies. After receiving the Red Wizard's assurance that he would not harm anyone (and that his undead were not responsible for the undead infestation of Thundertree), our heroes returned to Phandalin to rest and resupply. Back in Phandalin, Raynor bought a new shield, Sigrun visited her shrine to Sune, Zaradur bought implements for some sort of horrible, horrible plan, and everyone learned that Gundren Rockseeker, while waiting for his workmen to arrive to open the Wave Echo Mine, had undertaken the restoration of Tresendar Manor with the intent of gifting the estate to the (mostly) grateful party. Zaradur seemed ill at ease with the gift, asking repeatedly about the presence of vermin in and under the manor. The party, in search of diamonds for Sigrun's scroll of revivify, elected not to deal with the Zhentarim-connected guildmaster of the Phandalin Mining Exchange, and decided to set a course for Neverwinter before searching the ruined town of Thundertree. As our wide-eyed heroes arrived in Neverwinter, Elvalur showed them around, helping Sigrun inquire at a bank about her strange receipt. The bank teller was able to tell her that the receipt was a claim slip for an item held in a vault in a city somewhere across the Western Sea. Sigrun also sought Sune's guidance at her temple in Neverwinter, but the goddess seemed faint and muted in her prayers there. Zaradur went shopping and was thrown out. Raynor paid his guild dues at the bowyer's guild. Naeris enhanced her glass staff. Everyone stocked up on healing potions and pooled their gold to help pay for the diamonds for Sigrun's revivify scroll. They sought more information on Thundertree, which attracted the attention of the two kinds of people who skulk around in the dark (criminals and policemen), at which point they left the city for Thundertree. During their search of Thundertree, they found themselves at odds with ash zombies and twig blights, and wondering about the two giant spider corpses at the base of the tower on the north end of town.... ---- No loot to speak of in that session (though the small jeweled box the wizard gave Naeris is worth 25gp), but this was mostly a "prep" session -- we didn't get far into any dungeon crawls, but we took care of a lot of housekeeping stuff that your characters had been meaning to do. We also got some good characterization, including a touching scene where Sigrun prayed to Sune in fear of not being able to save her friends and was comforted by Raynor. YOU GUYS! I can't tell you how excited I am about y'all getting your own manor. I'm a huge fan of base-building and giving a place some character, and I cannot wait to see what you do with it. It's up to you how much you want to invest in it or what you want to do with it, but my hope is that down the line it becomes essentially another character in the campaign. My area of concern this week is phat lewtz. You guys are growing in power quite well and are accumulating some wealth, but I wanted to gauge how you feel about the treasure you're getting. I've been giving out magic items as the adventure dictates, but I wanted to be sure that you guys aren't feeling underserved or neglected in this area. Combats seem to be running pretty well, and I don't feel like you guys are outclassed, so I feel pretty good about the power curve so far. I just want to make sure you guys, as players, feel satisfied. Finally, I want to again reiterate, you guys are awesome players and I greatly enjoy every session we play, even ones like this one, which are a little less on the exciting side. :)
