The Side Quest Session 4

Due to scheduling issues where we’ll be missing at least one player for the next few sessions, it looks like The Side Quest is going to be our regular game for a bit. We picked up with it again in our last session after taking a couple of weeks off. When we last left our heroes, they had gained employment with Rowena Greyraven, a mysterious woman seeking a topaz that was beyond one of the valley’s magical doors. She had provided a key to the “Moon Door” and the party had found the door. Passed through it, they found themselves in a whole new place (presumably a different plane) and discovered a town, albeit with no one on the streets. At the Silvery Eel Inn, they learned a little about this town and new place and acquired rooms for the night. As we ended the last session, they were settling down for the night.

For this session, we had all but one of the same players from the last session. Unfortunately, Jeremy’s schedule is going to keep him from playing anymore. So Muse, Rachel, and RJ picked up where they had left off with Callie and Grim, Morgraen and Riordan, and Ander and Lavinia respectively. There are potential spoilers for the adventure, “Rats in the Walls,” from Knockspell #4 but, to be honest, it was more inspirational for this session than run by the book so to speak. Of course, not having really looked at the adventure in almost a month was a big contributor to that. My GM comments, as usual, are in [italics and brackets].

The party split up into pairs and took three of the inn’s rooms. They were the only patrons. Ander and Lavinia shared one room while Callie and Morgraen took another, leaving Grim and Riordan in the last room. Everyone settled down to sleep except for Ander. He decided to stay up for a bit and study his spellbook. As he was reviewing the book, sitting at the room’s small table opposite of the beds, he heard a small scratching sound from behind him. Thinking something was scratching at the shutters, he turned to investigate and was a bit surprised by the sight he saw. A rather large rat, about eighteen inches in length, was climbing up onto Lavinia’s bed!

Ander shouted for Lavinia to wake up. At the noise, the rat leapt off of the halfling, hissed at Ander, and scurried under the other bed in the room. Ander moved his bed away from the wall to find a rather large mousehole in the wall (and some small bones on the floor under the bed). Worried about their companions, the pair headed out into the hallway to knock on their doors.

The knocking woke three of the four companions (Morgraen was not roused from her slumber). Each felt something large jump from their chest as they woke and each felt something warm and sticky running down their neck. They all had small puncture wounds on their necks! Although Morgraen was not woken by the knocking, a good shake did wake her from a deep slumber. Each of the rooms had at least three large holes in the walls. Concerned about infection, some of the characters headed to the upper floor’s washroom to clean their wounds. They quickly changed their minds when they spotted rats in the small room, splashing about in the wash basin and rat droppings all over the place.

Now concerned about the innkeep and his daughter, the party headed back downstairs. As they came into the common room, quite a few rats scurried away. Heading into the kitchen, even more rats scurried off. There were a couple of doors leading out of the kitchen. Picking one, they headed into the hallway beyond where four additional doors were found. They only got a response from one of the four doors when they knocked. It was the innkeep and he was clearly drunk and not interested in being very cooperative even though he claims that he is, in fact, being bitten by one of the rats.

Lavinia picked the lock on one of the other doors in the hopes of finding Elena, the innkeep’s daughter. In the room beyond, Elena was lying on the bed with a look of absolute terror on her face. A VERY large rat, nearly the size of a halfling, was atop her and licking blood off her. She had numerous bite marks, new and old, on her arms and legs. This rat did not take kindly to being interrupted and it did not run off. Instead, it ended up attacking.

The party was able to retrieve Elena and get her back to the relative “safety” of the kitchen. In the process of rescuing her and defeating not just one but two rats, tragedy struck. As the party yelled for the innkeep to come out, he misinterpreted their shouts as saying that they were hurting his daughter. He came out, drunk and angry and armed with a club, and headed into Elena’s room. Unfortunately, the rest of the party was in the kitchen at that point and they were cut off from him by one of the rats. The other one killed the innkeep in Elena’s room.

Exhausted by the recent events, the party needed a moment to catch their breath and wrap their heads around all that has happened. They headed back upstairs and blocked up the rat holes in one of the rooms with tables gathered from multiple rooms. Lavinia and Callie kept watch in the hallway and setup their own barricades by blocking off the hallway with beds from the rooms. It wasn’t long before scratching could be heard at the tables but the heroes put their body weight against the tables and that was sufficient to keep the rats out. The scratching, however, did not stop. Scurrying could also be heard on the ceiling above and even on the shutter of the window and from the other doors in the hallway. One of the “dire” rats even peeked over one of the barricade beds. It later came back and dropped an arm (one of the innkeep’s) over the barricade bed but it never attacked. By the time the party was ready to press on, the rats had started chewing through the ceiling!

It was becoming clear that this wasn’t just some rat infestation…something had to be directing the rats.

Although Elena was distraught at the loss of her father, she answered the party’s questions as best she could. Both her mother and little sister had been taken by the rats days before. The rats had been a problem at the inn for weeks. It was clear that the inn was cursed! She claimed that the rats had taken her mother and sister to the cellar and the center of the curse must be down there.

Riordan took the lead as they party (plus Elena) started back downstairs. The stairs, to their horror, held the other limbs and head of the innkeeper! There was nothing much else to do except press on and just push the carnage to the side. Surprisingly, Elena kept her nerve as she went down. Although they expected to be swarmed and overrun by rats, both large and small, they all made it to the kitchen without facing any opposition.

The cellar was largely what was expected. It was filled with crates, sacks, and casks that would be found in an inn’s cellar. However, as as expected at this point, it was all befouled by rat droppings and urine. So good that they all had dinner here earlier that night. Bits of relatively fresh intestine also led down the stairs and towards the middle of the cellar…almost like breadcrumbs. One final bit of intestine was actually standing straight up instead of lying on the floor. One end of it was lodged between two of the floor’s flagstones.

Prying up the flagstone, the party found a staircase leading down. The room below had four stone pillars supporting its ceiling. Crates and casks were stacked in the corners of the room near these stairs. Faded and moldered tapestries hung on the far walls and halfway down the walls to the side. A spiral staircase in the middle of the room led deeper down. However, it was a dais and a large statue that dominated the room…that and all the rat droppings. The statue was of about twelve feet tall and made of green soapstone. The lower portion were robes that hid most of the woman’s body. The robes came all the way up to her head which had three indifferent faces, one facing forward and one facing to each side. Oh, and there were also two chains with manacles attached to the floor in front of the dias with the status…clearly so someone could be bound in front of the statue.

The party started to spread out throughout the room to examine various locations. As one group stated looking at the crates, two of the “dire” rats emerged and attacked. The fight was short and the party was victorious.

As the examination of the room continued, it was found that the tapestries had definitely seen better days. They crumbled as touched…indicating significant age. One part of a wall behind the tapestries was found to be partially pushed in. In another location, the crumbling tapestry revealed a short hallway. Before it could be explored, however, a large skeleton came out of the hallway and attacked. It was nearly seven feet tall, dressed in a black robe, had a great helm with a red plume, and carried a rusty halberd. After this one was defeated, a second emerged and attacked…this one bore a nice, shiny halberd instead.

Down the hallway was a small room that looked like it had not been disturbed in quite some time. A bed, bookshelf, and a small alcove were within. The bookshelf had a single large leather-bound book and a wooden box. The book, when examined, was found to be in a script that no one recognized. The interior of the box was lined with velvet and held three stoppered glass vials–one with a light blue liquid, one with a pulpy green liquid, and one with a clear, oily liquid. The alcove held two long robes…about the size to fit the skeletons…and were edged in gold thread and had small bits of precious stones sewn into them. All of these things were stowed into various backpacks. Each of the vials and the non-rusted halberd were magical but the other items were not.

Heading back to the “indented” wall, they found that the wall could be pushed in to give entry to yet another room. This room had a large cage, the bars going from floor to ceiling, in the middle of the room. A large skeleton of some strange creature was held within. It had large horns, a misshapen skull, shoulder blades that might indicate it once had wings, and it was kneeling and gripping the bars of the cage. Beyond the cage was a large alcove with a summoning circle on the floor, lumps of wax sitting at cardinal points. A silver dagger was lying in the middle of the circle.

Riordan used his mace to reach the dagger and drag it out of the circle. As he did so, Grim (who was standing directly in front of the cage skeleton) saw the skeletons eye-sockets glow red and a sultry, female voice spoke saying, “You’ve failed sorcerer. I’ve taken another host in your absence and soon I will take another.” This was followed by a mocking laughter as the glowing eyes faded.

In the hopes of making the circle unusable for summoning anything in the future, Riordan chipped the stone it was engraved upon, breaking it.

The only other location to explore was the spiral staircase leading down. Many were quite concerned about pressing deeper into the unknown but they agreed that they didn’t really have much choice. The staircase was thick with droppings and urine and went down about forty feet. Near the bottom, it was also thick with bones. It ended in a hallway lined with cells. The bars that once blocked the cells were corroded and broken. Each cell was littered with bones. As Riordan, once more in the lead, stepped off the stairway, the same female voice spoke again…”How divine! My children never bring me enough blood but I will drink yours, you sanguine mortal pigs!”

A massive rat came from out of one of the far cells. It was easily eight feet long with blood and gore dripping from its muzzle. Blind pups hung from its teats and it charged forward. Needless to say, the party was in a very poor tactical position with all but Riordan on the narrow spiral staircase. The party quickly backed up the stairs in the hopes that the monstrosity would follow up to the larger room where they would have a better chance to gang up on the thing. It did follow but before the last party member, Riordan, could get off the stairs, it grabbed him and dragged him partway back down the stairs.

To make things worse, two more “dire” rats came out of the section of crates that had not yet been examined by the party and attacked. Both were quickly dispatched but Riordan simply couldn’t get free from the massive rat and continued to be dragged farther down. Both Grim and Callie hurried down the stairs to try and save the elf. It was quite difficult to strike at the beast on the stairs with Riordan in the way but they succeeded a number of times, with the female voice laughing mockingly on each strike.

As the situation on the spiral stairs was getting desperate, those still up in the larger room found their own situation growing to be the same. It started with a skittering and was followed by a flood of hundreds and hundreds of rats coming down from the stairway to the cellar above. This flood was about to completely wash over all in the room. Below on the staircase, the trio desperately fought against the rat and, just as the flood was about to break against their allies above, a final attack dropped the monstrosity!

As it fell, the mocking laughter echoed in the chamber below one final time. The flood of rats above simply died. Each just squeaked and fell as it ran…just before they swarmed over the party!

[And as we had already run about thirty minutes over, that’s pretty much where we stopped. It didn’t exactly meet the requirements of Rule #1 of The Side Quest (finish the session in a place of safety) but the inn was now safe enough. Everyone got some XP for the session (with some leveling up as a result) but there won’t be any XP from the treasure that they’ll eventually leave with. Yes, I’m a rat bastard.