[Day 20, still. Much paranoia and is that…ANOTHER sub-level!? Clearly the gods are laughing at the Ratpack. Possibly just Roscuro.]
[This game uses the Pathfinder 1E roleplaying game. Game sessions happen once a week. This session happened June 1, 2020.]
[SPOILERS! If you are likely to adventure through the Shattered Star Adventure Path from Paizo, this campaign will be spoilers all the way down.]
Player Characters
Marativy – female ratfolk 4th level Ninja
Roscuro – male ratfolk 4th level Monk
Zitch Grimreaper – male ratfolk 4th level Witch with a donkey rat (capybara) familiar
Via Roll20
Templeton von Trapp – male ratfolk 4th level Summoner (Synthesist)
Winston – male ratfolk 4th level Gunslinger
NPCs
Auto – a clockwork servant fixated on Winston
Day 20, Midday-ish?
Having done their best to seal away a portal to the Nine Hells, the Ratpack backtracked to the original passage going south off the long lab room, closing all the doors behind them. Going around the corner to the west at the end of the corridor, the door on the south wall was investigated for locks and traps. It was neither locked nor trapped. [I need to do a better job noting who examines the doors and who assists so I can get rid of all this passive voice – I’m pretty sure it was Marativy, possibly with help from Winston.] Roscuro opened the door.
Beyond the door was a short passage with a side passage to the west halfway down and a turn to the east at the end. The ratfolk adventurers advanced carefully to the side passage and peeked down it. It went 10 feet and opened into an apparently empty room with stairs up on the west wall in the southwest corner. Roscuro quietly padded south to investigate the corner at the end of the passage. It went 10 feet and then turned south. After a short discussion on which way to go, this east then south passage was chosen.
The group went around the two corners to the south-going passage. It went 40 feet and ended with a pair of double doors on the west wall. Marativy checked for traps and found none, but the door was locked and noticeably damp. Zitch cast detect magic and found none. Marativy picked the lock on the doors, which took some effort due to the lock’s corroded state.
Roscuro pushed the right door open and light emanated from the room! The humid chamber beyond was large, at least 70 feet in length and 40 feet in width. 10 feet in, the floor became steps that went down into a submerged central area. Steps rising up on the far side could be seen as was a passage heading further west. The feature that gave the ratfolk the most pause was the way the supporting pillars were carved to resemble writhing tentacles, from water surface to ceiling. Creepy!
Quite naturally, the ratfolk paused here to discuss what they were going to do next. Did they need to cross this water-filled room? Templeton volunteered to use his clinging ability to walk along the walls and go ahead to scout. Before he left, Zitch cast his ward on Templeton – if it dropped after failing to protect Templeton, Zitch would feel it and know Templeton was under attack.
Templeton made his way to the far side of the room, climbing along the ceiling to avoid the water and the tentacle-covered columns. Once on the far side and back on the floor, he advanced down the western corridor. It turned south 30 feet down. Looking around the corner, the passage went south as far as Templeton could see [60 feet]. It also appeared to slope downward.
Templeton walked south, attempting to determine where the passage went. He picked a spot at the edge of his vision and walked to it three times [so approximately 180 feet] before he found the end of the passage and stairs down. The stairs descended another 40 feet to a square room with exit passages in the center of the other three walls. The center of the room was lower than the edges and full of water. There were channels from the center pool that followed the exit passages. The channels had wooden planks resting across them at the walls to allow someone to walk around the central pool without having to leap across the channels. The room was lit by several everburning torches. Except for the torches, the room very much looked like part of a sewer system. Listening carefully, Templeton could hear the faint sound of singing in a language he could not understand nor identify.
Templeton backed up a ways in the long tunnel until he felt safe casting whisper to explain what he’d found to the other ratfolk. Not ready to explore a whole new sub-level, the group recalled Templeton.
Once Templeton was back, the group backtracked again to the small room with the stairs up in the southwest corner. These stairs went up to an irregularly shaped cavern with a shallow pool of water in the far corner, near a passage to another cavern to the north. There was fungus on the walls and in a pile in one area and the smell of saltwater in the air. The group entered the cavern and cautiously made their way to the entrance to the northern cave [there was a gradual slope downward]. In this cavern were the bones of some large animal in the northwestern corner. There was a passage east that clearly connected with a passage the group had not explored yet. The exit area was completely covered by another shallow pool.
With no obvious threats, the ratfolk broke up into groups and searched different areas and things in the caverns. Marativy searched the pile of bones, Zitch searched the pool blocking the exit, Roscuro and Templeton carefully searched the pile of fungus using poles, and Winston kept watch at the stairs in case something tried to sneak up on the group. Zitch found something first – a very large grey ooze hidden in the pool of water!
Zitch quickly retreated, calling out what he’d found and what not to attack it with: no organics and no metals, which was most of the group’s attacks. The ensuing fight was a mix of ranged combat and weird spell castings. Marativy attacked with her short bow, Winston his musket, and Zitch with the wand of lightning bolt. Templeton found a unique method of attack by summoning celestial ponies and ordering them to attack the ooze. [Yes, they had cutie marks: a crystal heart, a Norse rune, and a pair of mints. I used a random cutie mark generator to come up with them.] Roscuro had no safe attacks to make and so stayed out of the fight until the end. Auto made several big hits at the cost of being partially dissolved by the acidic surface of the ooze and then targeted for direct attack by the ooze. Winston dealt a great deal of damage with his musket, but Templeton finished it off with a simple acid cantrip of all things. Auto immediately started its auto-heal functions.
While Auto self-repaired, the ratfolk finished their searches. Marativy found nothing of interest among the bones, but Templeton and Roscuro found a small box behind a sheet of fungus. After carefully cleaning the fungus away from the box, they could see the box had an inscription [“L.J.”] and was locked. Marativy unlocked the box and handed it back to Roscuro to open. Inside were three potions that Zitch identified as enlarge person, lesser restoration, and invisibility. All very useful.
Done searching the caverns, the Ratpack consulted their map. The were finished searching all of Sub-level 3 except the long tunnel past the tentacle pillar room. They made their way to the tentacle pillar room. The group had Templeton walk the walls to the other side carrying one end of a rope. He drove a spike into the wall and tied the rope off to it. The rope was drawn taut and the other end tied off to another spike driven into the doorway. The ratfolk climbed across the water using the suspended rope. Auto walked under Winston and trough the water, but nothing happened. [We suspected that it took something living in the water to set off the room somehow. Or we were being paranoid - hard to say.]
Past that obstacle, the ratfolk proceeded down the long tunnel to Sub-level 4. Entering the sewer junction at the end of the long tunnel, everyone could hear the singing. It seemed to be coming from the eastern passage. Able to hear it better now, Templeton recognized the language as Necril, the language of the undead.
End of Session
Rat Whispers
[I just realized while writing this – all the directions I’ve been using to describe the locations of things inside and under The Crow are reversed. The Crow is the northern most of the Irespan support pillars, just off the shore of Magnimar. The sublevels extend further away from Magnimar and under the bay, meaning they go NORTH not SOUTH. It didn’t really matter until we discovered the underwater observatory and the water stairs out into the bay waters. Damn. That’s very surprising. Down on the page always being south is so ingrained that we made assumptions. It’s much too late to fix now, but it is a lesson in paying attention to the compass rose on a map.]
Ratpack
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