Tuesday, November 19, 2019

Ratpack – Session 03

[The ratfolk adventurers continue to clear out the siege castle.  Will it ever end?]

[This game uses the Pathfinder 1E roleplaying game.  Game sessions happen once a week.  This session happened November 11, 2019.]

Player Characters
Marativy – female ratfolk 1st level Ninja
Templeton von Trapp – male ratfolk 1st level Summoner (Synthesist)
Roscuro – male ratfolk 1st level Monk
Zitch Grimreaper – male 1st level Witch with a donkey rat (capybara) familiar

Missed the Session
Winston – male 1st level Gunslinger

Non-Player Character
Balenar Foresend – male human bard, member of the Pathfinder Society and freed hostage


Day 1
Later, after Noon
Having freed the capture bard, Balenar, the ratfolk adventurers were aware there was a spell-casting troglodyte shaman still unaccounted for.  Marativy checked the door to the ruins of the east tower.  Instead of the sight of the horizon through ruins she found a closed off room the trogs had been using as their latrine.  Ugh!  And we thought they smelled bad on the outside…

The adventuring party reversed course.  We went through the troglodyte barracks [the west tower] and to the north tower.  Marativy and Roscuro stealthily approached the door the three trog reinforcements entered [Session 2] and peeked in.  The room had cracks in the outer walls that apparently let water in when it rained and the room was covered in a couple inches of reddish water with pieces of broken and moldy furniture sitting in the water.  Against the far wall was a giant toad that appeared to be asleep.  Appeared.

The ratfolk looked around for anything they could use to make a barricade to shoot over with and found nothing useful.  They instead took up firing positions at the door and attacked the giant frog with ranged weapons.  Marativy hit the frog once and missed once. and Roscuro missed twice before the frog hopped forward and grabbed Roscuro with its tongue, slowly dragging the monk towards it!  Templeton advanced on the frog to attack it while Balenar sung The Ballad of the Plucky Chicken to inspire the ratfolk in their fight.

Marativy drew her wakizashi and advanced on the frog.  Roscuro attacked the creature’s tongue with a flurry of blows to slight effect before the frog yanked him forward and swallowed the monk.  Templeton was able to get a solid claw attack in while Balenar continued singing.

Roscuro was attacked the creature from inside with another flurry of blows, one of which ruptured the frogs stomach, killing the frog and saving the ratfolk from being digested.

While Roscuro cleaned off as best he could, Marativy, Zitch, and Templeton searched the room for anything of value.  They located a small jade statue under some debris.  It appeared to Roscuro to have some religious significance, so it was put into the loot bag to sell to the group’s patron.

Marativy opened the door to the east tower and found the expected vista to the horizon.  She could see the walls around the room the trogs used as their latrine.  There was some extant flooring just beyond that and she investigated.  There she found the shocker lizard from the second floor sleeping while sunning itself.  She left it alone.

Still looking for the last troglodyte, Marativy and Roscuro stealthily ascended the central stairs to the fifth floor.  The door to the fifth floor was on the stairs before the fifth floor instead of on a landing.  Marativy picked the lock [on her second try] and the two cautiously finished climbing most of the way up the stairs.  The top floor appeared to be all one, cross-shaped room with the stairs appearing in the center.  Marativy and Roscuro stopped short of the lip and peeked over to see what was there.  Down the east arm of the room was a stone throne, upon which sat the trog shaman, waiting.

Suspicious, Roscuro tried to pantomime a message to Marativy and failed to convey his meaning entirely [I rolled another 1].  Unable to interpret Roscuro’s instructions to “steal second” into something useful, Marativy just shrugged at the monk.  Defeated by his poor pantomime skills, Roscuro descended the stairs and Marativy followed.

Back down on the fourth floor where the others had waited, Roscuro asked Zitch to cast detect magic and then climb the stairs to see if the shaman waiting there was an illusion or not.  Zitch agreed and he, Roscuro, and Marativy quietly snuck back up to the fifth floor.  Zitch looked around and verified there were no illusions.  Roscuro shrugged and then quietly asked Zitch to ask the shaman to surrender in Draconic [the language troglodytes speak].

Zitch did this.  Instead of surrendering, the shaman started monologued and started casting a spell.  Roscuro shrugged, recognizing a spell being cast, popped up over the stair lip and shot at the shaman with his crossbow.  He missed.  Marativy bolted out into the room, so when the shaman’s spell completed, she was not in the area of effect of the spider swarm!

The following fight was hard and a close thing.  Balenar used a sleep spell to stop the spider swarm.  The shaman had an albino alligator hiding behind the stone throne, which was called out to attack the ratfolk.  The albino alligator eventually dropped due to Templeton’s bleed attacks.  In response, the shaman summoned a giant centipede, which poisoned Templeton.  Roscuro got in a solid flurry of blows near the end and was taken to 0 hit points by a flame weapon in response.  Roscuro attempted to end the shaman but missed and slumped unconscious and started bleeding to death.  Marativy instead got the final blow in, killing the shaman after 8 rounds of combat.

Zitch immediately did a heal check on Roscuro to stop his bleeding.  The witch then gave the monk the last healing potion, which revives the monk nearly to full health [I finally rolled well].
End of Session


Rat Whispers
[A short session in writing, but the fight with the troglodyte druid was tough and lasted a while.  For 1st-level characters it was pretty epic and most of us were close to dying, my character closest, although I pushed my luck there.  Once again, Templeton's bleed effect on his claw attacks saved us by dropping the alligator.]

[Other GM is not keeping strict time, so I’m not entirely certain how late in the afternoon it is in-game.  Might be 1:00, might be 3:00.  Either way, after this we need to camp and rest.  We are out of spells, healing, and healing potions and many of us are still down some hit points.  Time to pick a room to secure and camp.]


Ratpack
Session 01
Session 02


Session 04

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