Early in the morning they went to the Manor on the east edge of town.
Plenty of tracks were leading to a stone staircase on the side of the ruins.. At the bottom of the stairs they found an unlocked door with a cellar beyond. The door opened onto a short landing above a large cellar, with stone steps descending to the floor in two short flights. Another door was beneath the stairs to the north. A large stone cistern filled with water occupied the western part of the room. Along the walls there were lots of kegs and barrels. This seemed to just be a storage room and the barrels were full of food and supplies like salted beef, flour, sugar, apples.
Exploring the first door on the north, they found what seemed to be barracks, with three ruffians that started battle as soon as the door was opened. The party killed them quickly and got some nice gold out of them.
A thorough exploration of the room with the water cistern revealed a secret door. They went through that door to find a corridor. Some of them started hearing an undefined voice inside their head, then they arrived at a large natural cavern, filled with cold breeze and smelling of rotten flesh. A crevasse divided the cavern and two arched wooden bridges spanned the crevasse.
A glimpse of something shiny in a corner and some member of the party saw a creature lurching in a corner. This creature was an one-eyed creepy monster that could have been human in a past life but was reduced to a this aberrant shell craving treasures and maybe knowledge. The voices in the adventurer’s heads became clearer: the creature was asking for food.
The paladin, not thinking about consequences, just grabbed the little thief by the scruff, offering her as food. Serafina was heard from miles yelling <<Hey! What the hell!>> The scene was quite hilarious but the creature, that they later discovered was a Nothic, was not amused. <<Food! Give me food!>>. Everybody sacrificed a few rations until the Nothic was satisfied and gave out information. He pointed out of the cavern and revealed that there are more people and one of them is Glasstaff, the boss of the Redbrands.
Smippeth had to sacrifice her little precious golden frog previously found in order to pass the cavern without fighting. She did so reluctantly but it was a small price to pay.
Following the direction pointed out by the creature, they arrived at a closed door. They could hear bubbling and dripping of some kind. The door was not locked and they opened it, to find a wizard’s shop. The boss of the Redbrands was a wizard! No one was in there but they found lots of potions and equipment for making potions. On a table there were books and also a note about a potion of invisibility. One of the books was the Dwarvish Compendium on the Lost Mines of Phandelver. They found three small bottles with rare reagents: mercury, dragon bile, and powdered nightshade.
The room adjacent to the wizard’s shop looked like an office and a bedroom. The walls of this room were covered with drapes of scarlet cloth. There was a small writing desk, a bed, and a wooden chest at the foot of the bed.
There was a note on the desk, signed with a black spider.The note read: “Lord Albrek,
My spies in Neverwinter tell me that strangers are due to arrive in Phandalin. They could be working for the dwarves. Capture them if you can, kill them if you must, but don't allow them to upset our plans. See that any dwarven maps in their possession are delivered to me with haste. I'm counting on you, larno. Don't disappoint me.”
The rogue decided to open the chest and tried to get his content without being seen, without success. Everybody noticed and, frowning upon the rogue, the findings were equally divided. In the chest they found gold coins, a few precious stones and 2 scrolls that could be useful, a scroll of charm (that promptly went to the bard) and a Fireball spell (that went to Thyas, the warlock).
Another door lead to some kind of storage room. They found barrels full of beaver’s pelts. For some reason Thyas decided to put them on fire.
They discovered another secret door on the other side of the room, leading to a corridor. 2 different doors were opening from the corridor. One of them led to an armory. The weapon racks had spears, shortswords, longswords, light crossbows, and quivers holding twenty crossbow bolts each. They grabbed what they could from the armory. A few red cloaks were hanging from hooks by the door, and they took one each to wear, to disguise themselves.
The other door led to a crypt, where they found three large stone sarcophagi. Propped up against each sarcophagus was a human skeleton clad in bits of rusty mail. The place was creepy and the ground decided to pass without touching anything or disturb the dead. On the other side of the crypt there were 2 other doors, one small in a corner and a double door on the other corner.
They opened the small doors first, to find a jail. This long room was divided into three areas with iron bars, making two cells for holding prisoners, with hinged doors secured by chains. Dirty straw was on the floors of those cells. Two human women were held prisoner in the cell to the south, while a human boy was confined to the north. All were dressed in plain gray tunics.
Two ruffians were standing guard there but they were easily defeated. Serafina picked the cell locks to free the prisoners.
The oldest woman introduced herself: <<Hi, my name is Mirna Dendrar. Thank you, thank you very much for saving us. These two are my children>>
<<What happened?>>
<<A few day ago the Redbrands murdered my husband for defying them and abducted us from our house. We have been kept here for few days, I heard the Redbrands were planning to sell us out as slaves somewhere. We know their boss is a wizard but we haven't seen him. We have see the tall, furry monsters with big ears that work for him though>>
<<They are bugbears>> Somebody explained.
Then they asked the woman if she knew anything about a map. They knew nothing.
<<We don’t have anything to give you but when I was a young girl my family and I fled from the town of Thundertree after an invasion. My family had an herb and alchemy shop in the southeast part of the city. A case containing an emerald necklace was hidden on a storage shelf in the shop. I never dared to return there but I bet the necklace is still there if you ever stop by>>.
Mirna and the two teenagers ran away to get out of the Manor and the adventurers went back to the crypt room. They opened the double door to find a hallway. The hallway was decorate with fake columns, They started walking but they fell in the trap pit that was hidden in the middle. The scrambled out of it and kept walking towards the other end, to find themselves back to the storeroom with the big water tank. Morgan decided to look into the water tank to find an empty pouch hidden inside it. SHe was pretty sure that there was some kind of potion in there, maybe an invisibility potion since they saw the note in the studio. They went out the Manor to try and find some tracks in an attempt to see where the wizard could have gone and maybe follow and capture him but they had no luck.
They went back inside to finish exploring the place. They went back through the wizard’s shop. Thyas decided to try one of the unknown potions and upon drinking it he felt sick for a short while. They never found out what that thing was.
They kept exploring until they arrived at a common room with a big table and chairs and wooden benches. Several ale kegs are grouped along the walls. Four Redbrand ruffians are gathered around the big table drinking and playing cards. They were all drunk and easily defeatable; Smippeth transformed herself again into a bear and the paladin instantly massacred one ruffin with his Smite power. A couple of them fell asleep under the bard’s spell song and, after killing the other three, one of them was kept alive to question him about the whereabouts of his boss. He talked about the Cragmaw Castle and that his boss has a patron there so he’s probably just going there and that’s the place to go to find out more. Then he also was killed.
On the table there were lots of coins that were used to play the game and that were promptly shared between the party members.
The plan was to go back to the Nothic and kill him and find out if he were hiding a treasure and retrieve Smippeth’s frog. But in one of her stupidest moments, the bard went back to the wizard’s shop and set it all on fire. Flames started coming out of the room and potions started exploding. They all rushed out of the hideout while things kept exploding and walls crumbling behind them.
It was night outside and everybody was super tired. They headed back to the city of Phandalin to go to sleep at the Inn.