Level Up: The Lost Mine of Phandelver

Part 1: Goblin Arrows

1. Its not a couple of days to Phandalin. The move rate for the oxen drawn cart is slow (16 miles per day). They reach where the trail turns off the road on the evening of day three (making camp). You should have rolled for six encounters- day, night, day, night, day, night. The goblin ambush is the 4th day encounter (7th encounter roll). Then there is a night encounter (8th) where you make camp turning from the trail south toward Phandalin and one more day encounter (9th) a few miles from Phandalin.
2. Four goblins is a tough fight for three first level characters. Five PCs, though described as the upper limit are vital just to make the trip in good condition.
3. Its unlikely they will follow the goblins trail to their hideout simply because- they are employed to deliver the cart to Phandalin. They must abandon the cart to do so.
4. If the PCs die in the goblin ambush, you should add their belongings to the treasure stash and let some 'new adventurers' stumble across the adventure. Remember the PCs were Friends of a dwarf in the town of Phandalin. If they are killed, the new PCs would not be friends of the Dwarf, just random PCs stumbling across the scene of an ambush. They might decide to take the cart and the dead to Phandalin or pursue the goblins trail.

The Goblins lair at 'Cragmaw Caves' is a high risk dungeon with 14 goblins (18 if you include the four at the road ambush), 3 wolves and their Bugbear leader.

The game trail takes the PCs through a snare and a pit trap before arriving at location 1. Location 2 Has a couple of lookouts. All it takes is one of them to fire a signal arrow into the cave which carries to a location close to the lookout goblin on the bridge near location 5. 

Whats the easy win solution? Wolvesbane. Since the beginning of D&D Wolvesbane has been available to any PC in the players handbook. Real wolvesbane is a poison. It is always fatal so no constitution checks/save vs poison for the victim. Only magic would cure this before death hits hours later. If you survive the goblins ambush on the road, the best response is to poison food with fresh wolvesbane leaf sap, rub it over a few hams or in a wineskin and leave it for the next goblins as though the previous goblins had managed to stash it before being killed. As DM you should wait for PCs to come up with the plan, and roll a 1d20 to determine population of the cave killed by wolvesbane.

1d20    killed by wolvesbane

01           only the hostage

02           goblin from area 1

03          +1 goblin from area 1

04          +wolf 1

05          +wolf 2

06          +wolf 3

07         +1 goblin area 7

08         +1 goblin area 7

09          +1 goblin area 7

10          +1 goblin area 6

11           +1 goblin area 6

12          +1 goblin area 6

13         +1 goblin area 6

14         +1 goblin area 6

15         +1 goblin area 6

16         + Yeemik the Goblin in area 6

17         +1 goblin in area 8

18         +1 Goblin in area 8

19         +Klarg the Bugbear in area 8

20         everyone in the cave including the hostage

Wolvesbane is also the solution for eliminating the Redbrand hold up in Part 2: Phandalin...and there is a Druid in town who can get you what you need.

Thieving Bastards: An Adventure for Rogues

Runa's Taxes                                                                               
The Halfling Merchant Runa Of Shireton arrives in your Town and having rented a small stone storehouse (20'x20') from the Merchants for a few gold hires four labourers for the week. A visit to the bank to arrange funds in the form of sixteen sealed coin firkins (each capable of containing five hundred coins) branded with the seal of the Bank and a large open urn of one hundred silver coins. With two labouers guarding the store house armed with a club each, Runa proceeds to the bank and has her two remaining labouers and begins shipping the firkins of Bank coin to the storehouse across town. It takes a day but by the evening all the coin firkins and the silver filled urn are safely locked up for the week. Two guards are left to guard the storehouse until dawn, and they swap places with the other two guards in the mornings.

Question to the Players: How do you rob all that gold and get away with it?

For the DM: This is a trap to lure PCs into a crime.

Of course each of the Players interested in robbing this described how they would do it... tunnel in, bribe, murder the guards...



A Chat with the Guildmaster                                                     
Having made off with the Coin firkins you find they are filled with five hundred copper pieces each - barely worth the effort. Soon after you and your three companions are detained by the towns guard and taken before the guildmaster of the thieves guild. In his office are four life sized portraits - one of each of you shown in a scene of the robbery.
"I have a job for you." The Guildmaster looks at a portrait and laughs. "You will sneak into the sewers of the Baron's Castle by the lake."
"Once inside," the guildmaster places what looks like a coin die on the table. "You will steal one of the coin dies he uses to mint new coins and replace it with this."

The PCs have little choice, and their objections will be met with intimidation.

Objections of Rail-roading: If a pc wants to not do what the guildmaster tells them, even though they failed to ask for a wisdom check to percieve the mortal danger your pc is in, your pc gets their legs broken. The world is cruel. Its also built on intimidation and a twisting knife blade to a pc's throat- not what a player thinks is fair. The players can lie, and do a runner, but leg-breakers will come looking.

"Excellent." A bald, seven foot tall leg breaker steps from the shadow behind the guildmaster. "We have an understanding."


Into the sewers                                                                                    
The sewers are a narrow modular ceramic structure which an individual may crawl unarmoured. It enters at the lake edge and services multiple waste disposal locations through the castle.

There are latrines located on various castle levels.
An unarmoured thief can climb though it is inconvenient to combat.

1d6     Encounters
1          1d4 normal rats
2          1 giant rat
3          1 snake
4          yellow mold
5         green slime
6         1 spider

Infiltraiting the castle is easy. Unfortunately the coin mint is heavily guarded by ten soldiers at all times- the barracks serving as a gatekeep. They would need to lure most of them out. An option might be half the party making their way up to the Baron's Lavatory, taking the Baron hostage, and causing the castle to be alerted to their presence so that most of the guard are called to rescue the Baron. Then sneak into the coin mint, swap a coin die, and escape. Meanwhile those who take the Baron hostage will likely be imprisoned or executed depending on how bad it all goes.

Mega Gaming: The Great Migration

The idea of a mega game is to dungeon master a game with ten thousand one million players. This of course requires dungeon masters to manage the game locally with their own players... and of course a shared setting if apparently prefered. Each week they would adventure and need to survive to the next Waypoint.

Time-frame: Fifty Weeks

Setting: Greyhawk

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Background Fluff: Colossal Demons wade from the sea towing great chains pulling barges of black Ice teeming with armies of lesser fiends at Jotsplat obliterating the community. Survivors trickle into the Ice Barbarian Capital of Glot reporting these unexpected and overwhelming Horrors. Scouts soon report colossal Demons moving down the Coast past Sable Wood in huge numbers, the giant horned fiends towing their black ice barges.

Wat, chief of all the Ice Barbarian tribes, orders the population of Glot to flee south and abandon the Ice lands. Boat builders are ordered to take the few boats and supplies south around the Solnor Ocean to spikey forest and build ships... lots and lots of ships.

---

Weeks 1-9

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Week 1: those who do not take the few boats and supplies south (the PCs) must flee south to white dragon pass.

Those are not trees, they are gills of a colossal Ice Wyrm sleeping beneath the snow and ice. The Ice Wyrm erupts from the ice to ravage the PCs...

Week 2: each party must slay a white dragon guarding the pass and journey south to the edge of the Snow Barbarian lands.

Week 3: Waypoint 1- the barbarians must be here at week three to Raid the Snow Barbarian Capital of Soull and flee to the coast.

Week 4-8: follow the edge of the Solnor Ocean around to Spikey Forest.

Week 9: Waypoint 2- the barbarians must be at the spikey forest week nine. The boats carrying boat builders will be here at spikey Forest cutting timber to build longboats to carry everyone down the coast past the frost barbarian lands.

The Black Ice Spreads.

The Demons will come to occupy all barbarian lands of snow, ice, and frost, even stonefist's territory pushing the Barbarians into the Bonemarch and northern shores of the Nyr Dyv..

Unexpected Archeology: so white quartz arrow heads?

Digging drain holes to carry rain into the clay soil. Got two feet down and hit quartz objects.
Two arrowheads of white quartz in varying degrees of work. The bottom is two inches long, nocked at the rear, thin and blade-like tapering to the edges with a symmetrical taper towards the point. The second is thicker in shape though taper is good. Just in need of a flat and smooth polish.

The long piece is mostly a long square quartz block. Ideal for shaping and wearing the arrowheads. Its three and a half inches long.

Only bow and arrow users are the indonesian hobbits with the dj phonetic. That would make this podj-podj archeology. An unexpected find in red gravel clay two feet below a bluemetal garden path. A long way from their point of origin given the high iron content in the red clay the city of Darwin is built on.

Update (2 May 2019): 

Apparently these small arrowheads are 'mid paleo sub-phase' of the fluted point phase with a length to width ratio of 1.26-2.0 putting them at 10,550BC - 10,850BC, but they come with the arrow vice notch at the base of the Arrow characteristic of Clovis sub-phase. Does this indicate a transition period putting them at the older end of the scale? Its fascinating that these White Quartz people whose white quartz arrow-heads in North America are at twenty nine percent of arrowhead types found, and here in Australia with the first two arrows its at one hundred percent and can only decline.

Bad Astronomy: Another look at Planet X

So I went back and analyzed the original image... again.

Planet X

Nightside

• Surface Albedo:                0.16
• Atmosphere Alt:                               Ozone      Ethylene    Xenon
• Boiling Point:                    170 K (-103.15°C)   -103.7°C   -108.099°C
• Distance from Sun (AU): 2.47 AU
• Critical Point:                     275 K
• Critical Dist. from Sun:    0.94 AU

Dayside

• Surface Albedo:                  0.32
• Atmosphere:                       Ozone
• Boiling Point:                      161K
• Distance from Sun (AU): 2.47AU
• Vapour:                               261K
• Vapour Dist. from Sun: 0.94AU

So we are looking at a range of 0.94 AU to 2.47 AU for big blue.

Phet Rok

Nightside

• Surface Albedo: 0.16
• Atmosphere: Flourine or Chlorine
• Boiling Point: 85.03K         239.11K
• Dist. Sun (AU): 9.8AU          1.24AU
• Critical Point: 144.41K        416.9K
• Critical Dist.:   3.45AU         0.41AU

So this time the colour on the dark side came up as chlorine or flourine. So for it to have a flourine atmosphere, Phet Rok is further from the Sun in operational distance than a chlorine atmosphere requires, but only chlorine has an overlap distance that matches with an Ozone atmosphere of Planet X. Between 1.24AU and 0.41AU, and between 0.94AU and 2.47AU respectively. This puts our planets between 0.94AU (the vapour point of Ozone) and 1.24AU (the Boiling point of Chlorine). As the chlorine atmosphere is on the dark side we can assume it is minimal in its required temperature.

Dayside

• Surface Albedo: 0.61
• Surface: Chromium Hydroxide?
• Min. Temperature: 

1. Determining Distance by Atmosphere Chemistry, temperature range, and Albedo.

Planets                                   Atmosphere Ranges (AU)
Phet Rok        0.41---- Cl -----1.24                      3.45------ F ------9.8
Planet X                      0.94----- O3 -----2.47
Overlap                       |<-------->|
Range                     0.94AU - 1.24AU

Temperature 142°C  -12°C  -34°C   -112°C  -129°C           -188°C

Planet X has an ozone Atmosphere and Phet Rok has a chlorine Amosphere. They are between 0.94AU and 1.24AU from the Sun at the time the hubble imaged them at a down angle below -62.667 degrees of Proxima Centauri.

2. Determining Orbital distance from Jupiter
Either jupiter is the same side of the sun or opposite side of the sun from hubble.

M (long)

M (short)

Orbiting Jupiter
                                 ThetaE:   |              -62.667°      |          -177.333°             |
K(sun-x)  thetaS   L(earth-x)  M(long)    P(years)    M(short)      P(years)   
0.94AU    46.414°   0.766AU    5.892AU    464.09     4.562AU        315.50
                  8.252°    0.152AU    6.136AU    492.16     4.267AU        285.40
1.24AU    71.574°   1.324AU    5.719AU   442.84      4.883AU       349.38



And a few strays...
There are two atmosphereless rocks following along.

Update (12 April 2019): something I missed...

I just noticed this very dark object also in the image...

Its brightness albedo is 0.1-0.2 which is odd for something very white. Albedo 0.2-0.1, 1AU, actual colour is white cloud/snow, equator 263K (-10°C), pole 271K(-2°C). Its potentially snow, with the albedo of frozen equatorial dirt and polar conifers. A planet/moon of Black Ice at 1AU?

  Planet          Semi-major    Temperature by Albedo   

                            Axis                       0.12             0.2            

  Black Ice          1AU                270K (-3°C)  263K (-10°C)  

Dice Drop: The Worm Pit

The Worm Pit
Villagers are concerned about Cultists who have taken of the nearby caves. Though they farm the worm pit for its various lower lifeforms and sell them to wizards in search of spell ingredients, breaking no laws, the locals just dont like them.
There is considerable paranoia amongst the villagers about the intentions of the Cultists. The Village Elder will offer a rewaed to get rid of the cultists. The village doesnt have those funds necessary, but can pull together a collection of goods close in value to the reward.

There are twenty villagers but only six of them will speak to strangers. Anyone other than the six will vanish into a hut and close the door if spoken too.

The Cultists are constructing a heavy timber hall with chapel, and a wall around their monastary encompassing the hill with the caves. The Cultists by comparison ar a bit more sociable.

Speaking with the Villagers
1d6    Comment                                                                         
1         "I saw that red headed bastard sucking juices 
            from the butt of a dead locust." -Farier Mkutton
2         "They are devil worshipers... and no. good. will 
            come of them." -Milicent Putny
3         "Dont suck on a Locust Rectum, Give me Dioreah 
            somethin terrible." -Tavern-keeper Hull
4          "Felt a strange Tremor the other day. Its them 
            damn cultists I say."  -Karl Midden
5          "Missa Hull has joined their cult. I saw him with 
            one of them." -Luov Stark
6          "We want them Cultists gone. You look like God 
             fearing folks. Hunnit Gold." -Elder Gummun.         

Speaking with the Cultists
1d6    Comment                                                                         
1         "Here! Try some Locust Juice." -Brother Tkud
2         "There is something wrong with these villagers. 
            Cant put my finger on it." -Brother Zarku
3          "Been thinking of exploring the deep caves 
            myself...There might be some interesting spell 
            ingredients down there." -Brother Fararnku
4          "Let me guess... the locals hired you to kick 
             us out?" -Brother Darn                                               
5          "Villagers want us gone? I'll have to pass that to 
            the Abbott." -Brother Marku
6          "Superstitious Villagers. Still, I'll warn my 
             Monks to tread lightly." - Abbott Skuvku                 

Exploring the Caves...
Investigating the caves down to the Deepest level will reveal the true villain. Cultists dont delve past the shaft in Cave 16, though Brother Fararnku will help the party out with a rope.

Linguistic Archaeology: Roman Names

Here is a bunch of Roman names...

Length of name

Sex    3        %     4        %      5       %      6       %      7       %     8        %     9       %    10     %

M       0/25  0%  1/25  4%    5/25 20% 8/25 32% 7/25 28% 3/25 12% 0/25 0% 0/25 0%

F        1/25  4%   5/25 20%  4/25 16% 3/25 12% 5/25 20% 4/25 16% 2/25 8% 1/25 4%

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Popularity of use

Vowels

Sex   A        %       E         %        I          %         O         %       U         %

M     13/25 52%  7/25   28%   11/25 44%    5/25   20%   20/25 80%

F       22/25 88% 11/25 44%   13/25 52%    8/25   32%   6/25   24%

Consonants

Sex B        %       C       %        D        %       F        %        G        %

M    1/25  4%     3/25 12%   2/25  8%     1/25 4%       0/25  0%

F     1/25  4%     6/25  24%  5/25  20%   2/25 8%       0/25  0%

Sex  H       %      J         %       K        %       L        %         M        %

M     0/25 0%    2/25   8%    0/25   0%    8/25  32%     6/25  24%

F      2/25 8%    2/25   8%    0/25   0%    9/25  36%     2/25   8%

Sex  N         %      P         %      Q         %       R        %         S          %

M     12/25 48% 5/25   20%  1/25   4%     8/25  32%    16/25  64%

F       11/25 44% 2/25   8%    0/25   0%    10/25 40%    6/25    24%

Sex  T          %      V         %       W        %       X         %        Y          %    Z       %

M     6/25   24% 4/25   16%   0/25   0%    1/25    4%     0/25    0%   0/25  0%

F      4/25   16% 7/25    28%   0/25   0%   1/25    4%     0/25     0%   0/25 0%

---

Name name occurance by Popularity

Female names

88% {A}

52% {I, a} Ai

44% {N, e, i, a} Anna, Anne

40% {R, n, e, i, a}

36% {L, r, n, e, i, a}

32% {O, l, r, n, e, i, a} Nona,

28% {V, o, l, r, n, e, i, a} Lavinia,

24% {U, c, s, v, o, l, r, n, e, i, a} Sean, Connor, Aurora, Venus, Silvia, Salacia,

20% {D, u, c, s, v, o, l, r, n, e, i, a} Cardea, Larunda, Concordia, Diana, Dido,

16% {T, u, c, s, v, o, l, r, n, e, i, a} Victoria, Vesta, Lucretia,

8% {F, h, j, m, p, t, u, c, s, v, o, l, r, n, e, i, a} Proserpina, Maia, Juventas, Hersilia, Flora, Felicitas, Juno, Rhea, Minerva,

4% {B, x, f, h, j, m, p, t, u, c, s, v, o, l, r, n, e, i, a} Bellona, Pax,

Male names

80% {U}

64% {S, u} Su (PIE: Swine)

52% {A, s, u}

48% {N, a, s, u} Anna, Ansu (PIE: Demon(An: old woman/Ancestor, Su: Swine))

44% {I, n, a, s, u}

32% {L, r, i, n, a, s, u} Aries,

28% {E, l, r, i, n, a, s, u} Sean, Aeneas,

24% {M, t, e, l, r, i, n, a, s, u} Amulius, Saturn, Remus, Tatius, Summanus, Mars, Italus,

20% {O, p, m, t, e, l, r, i, n, a, s, u} Otar, Romulus, Pluto, Numitor, Neptune,

16% {V, o, p, m, t, e, l, r, i, n, a, s, u} Silvius, Silvanus,

12% {C, v, o, p, m, t, e, l, r, i, n, a, s, u} Connor, Consus, Vulcan,

8% {D, j, c, v, o, p, m, t, e, l, r, i, n, a, s, u} Janus, Jupiter, Evander, Cupid,

4% {F, b, q, x, d, j, c, v, o, p, m, t, e, l, r, i, n, a, s, u} Alexander, Quirinus, Pollux, Liber, Faunus

---

So these are roman gods names and the popularity of these gods based on alphabet is at an all time 32% amongst men and women. We can see that Sean would be a common and popular (28%) male god name just by random chance. That it wasnt is determined by other factors. Julius Caesar is by comparison 8%. Is it any wonder he got stabbed by his fellows? Maximus by comparison scores 4%... and you wonder why Russel Crowe's character got poisoned at the end. For the love of god, name your Son Susan... and let him be popular with the masses at 48%. Its fascinating that 'P', which is exclusivly a male only letter amongst Australian Aboriginal names, is shared by Women and men amongst Romans.

You might wonder who Su and Ai were... in Sumerian Apsu is a being who begat the earth and heavens... only *Su remains to begat the core of the Roman Male Language. The other looks like Gaia the greek goddess of earth from whom we get *Ai* or *ia. The origin of Roman is suddenly a Sumerian-Greek marriage between the earth mother and the waters from deep within the earth (personified by springs and aquifers).