Curse of the Crimson Throne Recap # 16 [RPG]

 

[14 Desnus, 4708 A.R. continued]

Having stumbled onto the trail of thieves operating from the sewers below the city, the Harrowed Heroes find themselves in the middle of subterranean wererat den!  Although the pack’s outer guards have been subdued, sounds indicate more are on the way.  The Reckoner and Goldcape take up defensive positions alongside one tunnel, only to be blindsided by a veritable swarm of rats that squeeze through a crack in another wall!  Yraelzin hurls a flask of alchemist’s fire to slow the squeaking horde, and The Reckoner manages to disperse the rest with mighty blows from his war maul.  Wererat reinforcements also fall to the mighty weapon, its silvered head sizzling on impact.  Goldcape expresses frustration that she and Rocky’s attacks can’t seem to hurt the monsters.

The group advance to another chamber full of oversized rats’ nests.  When several dog-sized dire rats pour through from the north, with another from a small tunnel to the east, The Reckoner orders Yraelzin to take care of the lone one.  But the priest of Razmir is in for a surprise when that dire rat’s body begins to somehow shift and expand with a sickening crunch of bone and flesh, to reveal the leader of the wererat pack!  The burly wererat shouts about a war for revenge on the surface world for what they’ve done to his kin.  Yraelzin is stabbed and bitten by the foe, but manages to retreat as Goldcape and Rocky rush to his aid.  Once the dire rats to the north are dispatched, The Reckoner arrives as well, forcing the angry foe to shift back to rat form and escape through a crack in the wall.  But they give chase through another tunnel, and The Reckoner is able to put him down for good.  A search of the chambers reveals a stockpile of supplies and a small armory of weapons—it sounds like the wererats’ shouts about a planned war wasn’t just rhetoric!  But what drove them to such desperate measures?

Heavily wounded in the fighting, Goldcape suggests the group backtrack the way they came and exit the sewers as quickly as possible.  But The Reckoner presses for an exploration of the sewer tunnels around the wererats’ den.  They come across a sewer beast trapped between two gates, and despite its protests, attack it with a volley of arrows.  The aberration is easily defeated, though Goldcape shows mercy and uses magic to keep it from dying.

The group continue on through the tunnels and are nearing an exit when they turn a corner and find themselves only a few dozen feet away from an equally-surprised cytillipede.  The ten-foot-long segmented creature with a chitinous body and venomous mandibles looks like a giant centipede, but displays an unusual ability: it begins to glow brightly to stun its prey.  Goldcape jumps on Rocky’s back and charges forward with her new rapier, only to be bitten by the cytillipede!  Goldcape is badly hurt and near death, but Yraelzin rushes forward and saves her life.  With Goldcape out of the fight, Rocky flying around frantically to defend her master, and Yraelzin almost out of spells, the situation looks dire indeed!  But although he bleeds from multiple wounds, The Reckoner perseveres and finally succeeds in breaking through to a vital part in the cytillipede’s anatomy and killing it.

They’ve been victorious in every battle, but the sewers and its denizens are clearly draining the strength of Goldcape, Yraelzin, and The Reckoner.  Can they escape before their endurance gives out?

GM's Commentary

A short recap here, because sessions that are mostly combat don't take nearly as long to recount as ones with lots of role-playing.  We definitely start to see the dynamic of Goldcape urging caution while The Reckoner tends to want to push on further.  The battle against the cytillipede was a random encounter--sometimes those are cakewalks, but this one sure wasn't!