ADVENTURE 6: DON'T LET THE BASTARDS BRING YOU DOWN
PC Roster:
NPC Roster:
Game Session Date: 27 September 2025
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"What the Hell--?" sputtered Kruz.
Hoppy quickly scooped up the raggedy-looking rat he'd been feeding a piece of bread on the table in the dining area of Mrs. Geshuku's boardinghouse and stuffed him into the sleeve of his robes, a guilty look on his misshapen face. "It's my familiar, Scruffy," the mongrelfolk replied. "I was just feeding him."
"If Mrs. Geshuku sees a rat in her dining area, she's going to freak out!" warned Kruz. "You'd better make sure you keep him well out of sight." A sudden thought crossed the changeling's face. "You usually stay well out of sight, too, Hoppy - what gives?"
Hoppy bowed his head, looking down at the tabletop instead of making eye contact - it was the sinborn way. "Brendan said it would be okay...as long as I wore this new robe and kept the hood up." Kruz hadn't noticed it until now, but Hoppy was wearing a new hooded robe, instead of the ragged, moth-eaten one he normally wore.
"If he's going to hang around with a group of professional adventurers," beamed Brendan, obviously enjoying their new status, "he needs to look the part."
Mrs. Geshuku stormed into the dining area, already steaming mad - and she hadn't even seen Scruffy yet. "That's the third time in as many weeks!" she complained to her son, Kenji. "If this keeps up, I'm going to have to start charging our guests in advance!"
"What seems to be the trouble?" asked Shiroko. Mrs. Geshuku had always been a pleasant sort to deal with; the wu jen couldn't recall ever having seen her angry before, and never as hopping mad as she was at the moment.
"We had another guest sneak out during the night to avoid paying her bill! This is a legitimate business, not a charity!"
"And this has happened before?" Shiroko prompted.
"Yes! Two other times!" The boardinghouse owner explained that two weeks ago, a human male named Elmar snuck out in the middle of the night without paying his bill. Then, a week later, a female elf named Caliatta did the same thing, skipping out without paying. "I'll bet this Kori person snuck out while the maid on duty stepped away," mused Mrs. Geshuku. "Who was on night shift duty last night? Fumiko, wasn't it? Kenji, have Fumiko come here at once!"
"Yes, Mama," the eight-year-old replied, and raced off to go find the maid.
"How did you notice she was gone?" asked Brendan. "Isn't it too early for the maids to start cleaning the guest rooms?"
"Hmm? Oh, Kenji saw her door was open and took a peek inside - saw that her bed had been slept in, but she was gone, her and all of her belongings!" By then Fumiko had arrived at the dining area, bowing nervously to her boss; she apparently had not seen Mrs. Geshuku this angry before, either. "There you are! Kori, in room H, she's gone! But the ledger doesn't show her having checked out, and where's the money she owes us? Explain!"
"I...do not know," Fumiko replied, bowing again nervously. "She did not come by the front door while I was on shift."
"Are there other ways out of the boardinghouse?" asked Brendan. There were: exterior doors from the kitchen and the laundry area, but those were both kept locked and the keys stayed with Mrs. Geshuku or in her desk in the office area. And, as Fumiko hesitantly pointed out, the front door was barred from the inside at ten bells, when she took over the front desk from Mrs. Geshuku herself, so Kori couldn't have snuck out through the main doors and still managed to bar them again from the inside.
Shiroko had a sudden thought. "The other two who snuck out...were they all in the same room?"
"I'd have to check my records," mused Mrs. Geshuku. She headed back over to the office behind the front desk, where Akiko was now on duty. Thumbing through the log book, she announced, "Yes - all three were staying in room H." Room H was situated on the other side of the wall from the stairwell down to the small cellar, which was accessible only from the office.
"That's where the ugly puppy lives," Kenji pointed out.
"Now's not the time to tell us about your imaginary friend," Mrs. Geshuku scolded her son, as she stormed over to room H, the four adventurers and Hoppy in tow. Kenji looked like he wanted to argue about his "imaginary friend." but he could tell his mother was in no mood for that discussion right now. With a sulky expression on his young face, he sullenly followed the group. Fumiko, sensing she was off the hook about allowing Kori to evade her bill, returned to her duties.
Room H was set up like the other rooms, with two single beds against opposite walls and a shared, two-drawer dresser on the back wall between them. Kori had been the only one assigned to her room; during busy seasons, Mrs. Geshuku reduced the daily price for a room if the guest was willing to share with a roommate. But only one bed had ben slept in: the one that shared a wall with the cellar stairs. "I bet there's a secret door along this wall," the monk surmised, tapping against the wall but finding nothing. While Kruz pulled Kori's bed away from the wall, Shiroko asked Mrs. Geshuku how long she'd had the boardinghouse. The spirit folk widow explained she'd bought it about two years ago, when she came over to Armaturia to start a new life with her little son after the death of her husband. But then their discussion was brought short when Kruz called out, "Aha! Got something here."
The changeling rogue indicated a pair of thin, parallel lines, about three feet apart, cutting across the wooden floorboards of an area that had been underneath Kori's bed. "Looks like a trap door," he said, "although there are no handles or any easy way to lift it up, that I can see. Maybe if we pried it with the tip of a blade..."
"Let me," offered Shiroko, casting a mage hand spell. The 3-foot-by-3-foot section of wood came out as one piece and was set aside on the floor, revealing an opening leading down into darkness. They could all see, however, a series of metal rungs embedded in the stone of the wall shared by the cellar steps, forming a crude ladder of sorts.
Brendan pulled his skull mask over his face and peered down the opening with his darkvision-enhanced eyesight. "It goes down about 20 feet," he told the others. "I'll go first." And stepping barefoot onto the top rung, he began his descent.
"There's a very good chance your guests didn't depart on their own," Shiroko informed the widow. "They were likely taken against their will."
"Hrrmph!" snorted Mrs. Geshuku, not entirely convinced. Although none of them had asked to be lodged in that particular room, and she couldn't imagine how they'd have known about this secret passageway, one she herself had never known about. But a sudden thought jolted her brain. "Kenji!" she cried. "Go check the other empty rooms, see if there are other trap doors like this one!"
"Yes, Mama!" Kenji enthusiastically agreed. He raced off to see if he could find other secret trap doors beneath any of the other beds. His mind raced with thoughts about what could be hidden down there: a secret treasure vault, maybe? That would be so cool!
But as Brendan made his way down the rungs, he saw the room below was a long rectangle, with a crocodile down at one end and a closed door down at the other. He leaped off the lower rungs of the ladder and readied his quarterstaff in a defensive posture, well aware crocodiles were quite capable of short bursts of amazing speed. Hoppy looked down the open hole, and saw the crocodile rush forward and snap at Brendan, getting a whack on the head with the monk's quarterstaff for his efforts but thrashing his head back and forth to bump it aside and then snap its serrated teeth across the monk's leg. The mongrelfolk adept's first impulse was to race down the ladder to go heal Brendan, but he knew with his mismatched legs and feet, "racing" down a ladder was not something he could easily do. And he wouldn't want to hold up the other adventurers from being able to climb down the ladder....
Adrielle and Kruz returned to room H at about the same time; they'd run back to their rooms to fetch their adventuring gear. The scout pulled a sunrod out of her pack and tossed it down the hole, where it landed beside the hungry crocodile. Then she started ratcheting up the heavy crossbow she carried, loading a quarrel into the stock, before starting down the rungs, holding her readied crossbow pointed upwards so the quarrel stayed in place while she descended.
Kruz had a light crossbow that was much easier to load; he managed to get a shot off at the crocodile while Adrielle was still only halfway down the ladder. Shiroko moved to the other side of the trap door hole from the changeling, bending forward until she could see the crocodile in heated combat with Brendan and sending a magic missile spell to strike it in the back.
Brendan slammed his quarterstaff into the reptile's head and backed away; Adrielle leaped down into the spot he'd just vacated and shot her bolt at it, hitting it just behind its left foreleg. It rushed her, getting a good grip on her leg and causing her to cry out in pain. The mermaid hadn't even had legs for that long, and now she was afraid she was about to lose one!
Hoppy couldn't wait any longer - his friends needed him! He scrambled down the rungs as quickly as he could, the hoof on his right foot making a clonking sound every time it hit one of the metal rungs. He leaped the rest of the way down once it looked safe to do so, landing beside Adrielle and casting a cure light wounds spell on her as she used her short sword to poke at the reptile until it released her leg from its powerful jaws. Then Kruz shot a second crossbow bolt into its head, and the threat caused by the reptilian beast was no more. Now that it was safe to do so, Shiroko climbed carefully down the rungs of the ladder, going slowly due to the confines of her tightly-wrapped kimono.
Once down on the floor level with the rest of her team, the hengeyokai headed over to the sole visible door, casting a dancing lights spell above her head as a source of illumination. Hoppy bent down and picked up the active sunrod, while Brendan looked for secret doors along the northern wall - by where the crocodile had been waiting - with no luck. Hoppy approached the monk and cast a cure light wounds on him as well.
Adrielle was over by Shiroko and pulled open the door, revealing a nasty stench: they were down in the sewers beneath Port Duralia! Across from the ledge upon which she stood upon exiting the door, a metal grate likely led to the boardinghouse's two bathrooms and shower room. She backed up away from the open door to allow others to come out on the ledge beside her, as she bent down to reload her heavy crossbow.
A sudden shriek erupted from behind and above her, causing her to momentarily freeze in place in shock - and that's when the shriek spider crashed into her back.
The arachnid's body was about the same size as the scout's, but it had thick webbing connecting its back right legs together and likewise with its rearmost left legs, forming a set of primitive "glider wings" that allowed it to leap out and soar horizontally for a bit before succumbing to gravity. It had made a nest up by the sewer's ceiling and had been patiently awaiting prey to appear when Adrielle stepped outside the room with the crocodile and made herself available. However, the spider miscalculated its leap, and instead of landing upon its intended prey and driving her to the floor of the ledge, it bounced off her and fell to the ledge behind her, slightly dazed.
Fortunately, the spider's terrifying shriek had been heard by those inside the room with the dead crocodile, and Kruz came running outside, crossbow at the ready. He shot past Adrielle and hit the arachnid on its abdomen, causing it to flinch back in pain. Shiroko stepped onto the ledge next, made a quick appraisal of the situation, and cast an animate water spell on the murky sewer water, using a wu jen trick to extend the spell for twice its normal duration. The slimy sewage elemental, for lack of a better term, crawled up onto the ledge behind the spider and swatted at it with a damp fist, but the arachnid was already in the midst of a tactical retreat, scampering up the wall out of reach of its intended prey.
Brendan was fairly certain there was a secret door along the northern half of the eastern wall, one that would open into the boardinghouse cellar, but he was unable to find it. Sighing in irritation, he turned and called for Hoppy to come with him to see what all the fuss was about outside; they were in the sewers, that much he'd gathered, and he pulled out a vial of antitoxin and drank it down - there was no telling what all kinds of poisons one might find down here in the dank depths of Port Duralia's sewer system!
But at about that same time, a new combatant entered the field of battle, as a small "wave" of sewer water rose up and slapped at Adrielle's ankle; the scout leaped out of the way at the first sight of movement down by her feet, and she was unable to determine just what it was that had attacked her - if that was indeed what had just happened. "What was that?" she asked the others, and all they could say was that they had seen it as well.
So, dismissing the oddness of having a sewer wavelet try to slap her feet, Adrielle focused on a foe she actually could see: the shriek spider, climbing up the wall. She fired her heavy crossbow, but the quarrel clonked harmlessly off the wall by the spider's rear legs. Kruz, however, fared much better with his next shot, skewering the spider directly in its abdomen, and it fell off the wall to land on its back, dead, on the ledge in front of Adrielle, who was busy ratcheting up her heavy crossbow again.
Another bit of movement caught Shiroko's eye as another "wave" came up over the edge of the ledge to try to swat at Adrielle again. This time, the wu jen was ready for it, and she fired off a charge from her wand of magic missiles, striking the nearly-invisible flotsam ooze as it floated atop the sewer waters. The animated water from her previous spell likewise tried to attack the flotsam ooze, but it missed the hard-to-pinpoint bit of protoplasm.
Brendan stepped out onto the ledge just in time to see a pseudopod rise up out of the water and go swinging at Adrielle, who once again skipped back out of its way. Hoppy saw it, too, and rather than try to fight it - whatever it was - he limped along the ledge until he reached the corpse of the shriek spider, kicking it into the sewer with his lizardfolk foot. It floated along the top of the brackish water, moving slightly to the south with the current; its present course would likely have it bump into the flotsam ooze, thereby providing it with a free meal so that hopefully it would leave the adventurers alone.
Not wanting to take the time to mess with her heavy crossbow, Adrielle pulled the short sword from its scabbard at her hip and stabbed at the flotsam ooze - or at least where she thought it was, for its near-complete translucence made it difficult to determine its precise location while it was waterborne. Kruz likewise fired another crossbow bolt at it and missed; Shiroko had much better luck with her wand of magic missiles, for all she had to do was catch a glimpse of the water sluicing off its pseudopod to pinpoint its current location, and that was all it took to guarantee a hit. And while the force energy of the wu jen's spell was striking the floating ooze from one direction, her animated water-blob successfully attacked it from the other.
What followed was a slight comedy of errors, as the adventurers (other than Shiroko) tried hitting the ooze with their various weapons, to no avail, while the ooze likewise was unsuccessful in its attempts to latch its pseudopod onto any of the potential meals standing there on the ledge. Eventually, the shriek spider's corpse floated into the ooze and it latched onto that meal, which made it a bit easier for the heroes to detect its exact location, and their attacks started having a much higher rate of success. However, Brendan then made the mistake of moving past the ooze and it, detecting the movement, automatically lashed out at him and solidly connected with his leg, adhering itself to the monk's limb and preventing him from moving any further away.
"What the--?" sputtered the monk, as the flotsam ooze slammed his leg again with a newly-grown appendage. Hoppy came up behind the monk and applied a healing spell from his wand, and now that it was halfway out of the sewer water, Adrielle was able to shoot it with her crossbow. Shiroko sent another magic missile at it and then moved south down the ledge, turning the corner to make sure their noisy combat wasn't attracting the attention of anything else that might be living down there. She saw another door to her left and approached it.
Brendan slammed his quarterstaff into the ooze's center of mass, trying to pry it off his leg, but all that did was get his main weapon almost stuck into its adhesive body; it took all his effort to pull it away in time before it was stuck fast. Kruz shot at it again, while Shiroko pushed open the door and got quite a shock, for standing there along in a small room was a hideous, hunched-over creature, humanoid in build but with a distinctively insectoid appearance. Not sure what exactly she was looking at but not liking what she saw, she instinctively cast a sleep spell at it and was relieved when the meenlock collapsed in a heap to the floor. Not seeing anything else in the room but an open doorway to the north, Shiroko went back around the corner to go fetch Kruz, who she figured could dispatch the thing before it woke up.
As Shiroko turned the corner to rejoin her adventuring partners, Brendan was just finishing off the flotsam ooze with a solid stab with the tip of his quarterstaff deep into the creature's protoplasmic center, piercing whatever near-invisible organs kept it alive. It lost its adhesive properties in death, and the monk was able to scrape it off the ledge and into the sewer waters with his staff, where it slowly floated away, along with the shriek spider's dead body. Their battle with the strange ooze over with, the group joined up with Shiroko, who led them to the sleeping meenlock, where a single blow from Kruz's blade nearly severed its head from its neck.
Shiroko forged on ahead, entering the next room to the north, a square chamber 15 feet to a side with another open doorway to the north. From this distance, the wu jen's dancing lights spell whirling around her head illuminated the interior of the next chamber to the north, which turned out to be a similarly-sized room containing three more meenlocks, and the bound form of an unconscious spirit folk woman on the ground before them. This, no doubt, was the missing Kori from room H, and the fact she lay in the middle of a magic circle with arcane runes scratched into the stone floor all around it indicated she was in the midst of having some horrible ritual performed on her.
Of course, as soon as Shiroko could see the three meenlocks, they in turn could see the intruders into their lair and, more importantly, approaching their transformation ritual room, where they created more of their kind from the victims they stole from the overworld above. This would not stand! Sending waves of energy from their minds, they encompassed all but Hoppy and Kruz in waves of all-encompassing fear. Shiroko fell sway to this powerful mental attack and felt her body seize up in a catatonic stupor, as her mind similarly froze up. Fortunately for the others, they were able to overcome the mental attack, leaving them open to making attacks of a more physical nature of their own.
Kruz raced up and shot the farthest-away meenlock with a crossbow bolt, as he was directly facing the open doorway to the south and the changeling could see him the easiest. Adrielle moved up to the side of the open doorway and fired her heavy crossbow at the same meenlock, the northernmost of the three. Brendan ran into the doorway, seeing the other two meenlocks, one on either side, and slammed his quarterstaff into the one on his right. Hoppy held his wand at the ready, monitoring the battle and ready to leap forward and apply healing to whichever of his friends needed it.
In retaliation, the two meenlocks by the doorway both went after Brendan with their wicked claws, and the monk was hard-pressed to fend off all of the attacks with his staff. Two sets of claws tore into his legs - the meenlocks were not even half his height - but he fought off the paralytic effect caused by a meenlock's claws.
Then the northernmost meenlock, clutching the two different-sized crossbow bolts sticking out of his chest and shoulder, silently called forth a mental summons. Beneath their nesting area, one chamber back, there was an inches-high crawlspace of sorts, with numerous holes along the edges of the walls, and it was through these numerous holes that literally hundreds of rats came swarming out. The meenlocks and the rats had come to an understanding of sorts: the rats were allowed to lair in the safe space beneath the meenlock nesting area, and in return the meenlocks called them forth when prey was available. (On occasion, they also lured a single rat or two from the swarm and killed them to keep their crocodile lair guardian well fed, but the rat swarm as a whole didn't seem to notice.)
Kruz shot at the meenlock leader and Brendan attacked the one to this right with a flurry of martial attacks while Adrielle was ratcheting up her heavy crossbow when the rats suddenly burst forth from their hiding places, swarming all over Adrielle and Brendan, the two closest to the ritual room. Shrieking in surprise, Adrielle backed away and dropped a new quarrel into her weapon, readying it for firing, but she knew she couldn't very well use it against the literally hundreds of rats that now shared he chamber with them. Brendan was surprised enough by the sudden rat attack he was unable to fend off the claw attacks of the two closest meenlocks, but he once again managed to stave off the paralysis that so often accompanied the gouges formed by meenlock claws. Hoppy, however, saw the monk's predicament and bravely waded through the sea of rats until he was close enough to use his wand, sending a blast of healing energy into Brendan's poorly-used body and closing up the worst of his wounds.
The meenlock leader, unable or unwilling to stand between the other two and attack Brendan with his own claws, dimension doored himself to the sentry room, beside the cooling corpse of the fourth member of their little nest. He looked over at a catatonic Shiroko and dismissed her as a non-threat, focusing his attention on Kruz, the nearest hero to his present location.
Kruz, however, was unaware of the leader's sudden shift in location; he'd looked away for a moment to reload a new bolt into his light crossbow, and when he looked back, the leader was gone, but he could easily have simply shifted positions somewhere inside the ritual chamber. As such, Kriz shifted his own stance a bit and fired off a shot at the meenlock to the left of the doorway, as Brendan had been concentrating on whittle down the other one. Brendan, opting to cut his losses, hopped - barefoot - away from the open doorway through the sea of rats, until he was up against the eastern wall of the nesting area. He brushed off a few rats that had been climbing up his clothing as he did so, as he gathered up his sling and sent a stone flying into the meenlock Kruz had just targeted. But his brief respite was just that, as the swarm shifted with him, with individual rats once again leaping at him and biting at him with their wicked-sharp incisors, this time catching up Hoppy in their midst as well.
Hoppy ignored the many bites he was taking as he touched his wand of cure light wounds to the monk's shoulder and activated another charge, before awkwardly hopping away out of the mass of rats, trying to get himself free from their numerous biting mouths. Adrielle, just out of range of most of the rats, shot her heavy crossbow at the meenlock to the right of the doorway, catching him in the head and slaying him instantly. That left only two of the little buggers, one in the ritual room and one back in the sentry station, with the bulk of the heroes sandwiched between them along with a swarm of hungry, disease-ridden rodents.
The meenlock leader focused a different type of mental blast at Kruz, and the changeling felt his mind go woozy for a moment, making it difficult to think - but he had enough presence of mind to fire his crossbow at the offending insectoid. The other meenlock leaped out at Adrielle, catching her up with its claws and paralyzing her in place, unable to move. Brendan raced out from the swarm of rats to slam the scout's attacker with the tip of his quarterstaff, catching it in the throat. But then the rat swarm, in chasing after Brendan again, discovered the unmoving form of Adrielle, frozen fixed in place by the meenlock's wicked claws with their paralytic venom. Adrielle, unable to move - and thus unable to scream - was nonetheless able to feel the dozens of rat bodies climb up her body, gnawing through her armor to get to her tender flesh. "Get off her!" hollered Hoppy, wading through the rats to apply a charge from his wand to the scout, doing his best to undo the wounds the rats were making as fast as they could make them.
Then the meenlock leader struck at the mentally sluggish Kruz, and his venom-laced claws froze the young rogue in place, as helpless as both Adrielle and Shiroko. Brendan dodged an attack from the other meenlock, and spared a look behind him to see he and Hoppy were the only ones left in the fight for now. "Keep Adrielle alive!" he called to the mongrelfolk adept, swinging his quarterstaff at the meenlock in an attempt to kill him before the rats and the hunched insectoids could take down Hoppy and him, for he knew if the two of them fell, there would be nothing stopping the meenlocks from killing the lot of them, perhaps even turning them into more of their kind. That was a fate not even worth thinking about!
Unfortunately for Brendan, the meenlock leader soon figured out Hoppy was keeping Adrielle alive, and waded in to do something about it. (Adrielle had no way of communicating it to the others, but the rats were taking such a toll on her that she kept slipping into unconsciousness, only to have Hoppy reawaken her with another charge from his wand, not realizing unconsciousness was greatly preferable over being able to feel each and every rat climbing over her and biting her while being unable to do a single thing about it.) As Hoppy's attention was focused solely on keeping Adrielle healed up (to his own detriment, as the rats were quite content taking bites out of him just as much as her), he failed to notice the meenlock leader come up from behind him and rake him with his venomous claws - until his muscles all froze up and it was too late to do anything about it. The sinborn realized the ridiculousness of being bitten to death by rats while holding a wand of cure light wounds in his hands and being unable to invoke its magic. He did his best to ignore the pain of the rat bites and wait for his impending death, hoping that his years of suffering in his own wretched form had paid off whatever karmic debt he owed for whatever sins he'd committed in his previous life to sentence him to birth as a mongrelfolk. Maybe, if he was lucky, he'd be reborn as a "smooth-skin" - and whether that meant a human, an elf, or a cockroach made little difference to him.
Brendan looked nervously about him and saw he was the last man standing - well, that wasn't technically true, for the others were all still standing, just unable to move. And while he was still trading blows with the one meenlock in the ritual room, the leader was making his way north; soon he'd have a foe on either side of him, attacking from opposite directions. At least the rats were no longer bothering him, having focused their attention on the unmoving forms of Adrielle, Hoppy, and now Kruz as well. At least, he mused, he'd go down fighting.
And then Shiroko snapped out of her fear-induced catatonia.
Looking about her in confusion, she took in the desperate situation and acted immediately. Casting a rain of stones spell, she caused a volley of small pebbles to come crashing down from the roof area, crushing the bodies of a large number of individual rats - enough that those remaining opted to flee back into their inches-tall crawlspace beneath the meenlock nesting area - and also catching up the meenlock leader in the magical barrage. Seeing he was no longer the sole one fighting off these insectoid menaces, Brendan went all-out at the meenlock he was fighting, striking it with his quarterstaff and also crashing a toughened heel into its buglike head. Then Shiroko shot it with her wand of magic missiles and it fell over, dead.
The leader, not only seeing the sole remaining member of their nest die but feeling its death over the telepathic link they shared, realized there was now no way to transform the spirit folk woman into another of their kind (it took more than one meenlock to perform the ritual of transformation), even if they could somehow rid themselves of these overworlders. And so, seeing caution as the better part of valor, it activated its dimension door ability and sent itself as far away as possible, traversing the sewers until it could find others of its kind - a new nest, where they could once again start to build up their numbers.
Once the paralyzed heroes were once again able to move on their own, Hoppy healed everyone up with his wand of cure light wounds - including, at Brendan's urging, himself; the mongrelfolk had argued he wasn't worth wasting a charge upon but the monk wasn't hearing any of that. They untied Kori, but whatever the meenlocks had done to her, she was deeply out of it, and would likely need a long time recuperating until she emerged from the comalike slumber they'd put her in. At Brendan's insistence, they returned to the room with the crocodile and while he continued searching for the secret door to the cellar he was sure had to be there somewhere, the others searched the room and found the belongings of the three guests who'd gone missing.
"We rescued Kori," Adrielle said, "but what happened to the other two guests?"
"You know those three little insect-men we killed?" Kruz asked her.
"Yes."
"I'm pretty sure two of them are what happened to the other two guests." The scout wrinkled her nose in disgust.
"Aha!" called out Brendan. "Found it - I knew there was a way in here somewhere!" He'd finally found a section of wall that, when pushed, pivoted on a central axis, opening two narrow passageways into the dark cellar of the Geshuku boardinghouse. Skull mask over his face providing him full darkvision, he stepped inside the cellar, looking for Keni's "ugly puppy."
It didn't take long, for a hideous, skull-like rodent face peered out at him before ducking back behind a crate. Adrielle, sickened by the slaughter of the meenlocks, carved a chunk of meat off the dead crocodile and tossed it over at the "ugly puppy." The osquip sniffed at it, then tentatively inched forwards, keeping its watery eyes on the intruders to make sure this wasn't a trap, before greedily gobbling it up.
"Go get another piece," suggested Brendan and when Adrielle did so and tossed it into the room, he pushed it closer to the osquip with his staff. It gobbled that piece up as well.
"Poor fellow's just hungry," observed Kruz. "We going to let it live?"
"I don't see why not," replied Shiroko. "I'll bet Kenji would like to have a pet of his own."
- - -
Boy, was this ever a nerve-wracking adventure to play through! I was half convinced, at several points during the battle with the meenlocks, that we were headed into a TPK! But Shiroko's fear-induced catatonia pretty much meant she was ignored as a noncombatant for most of the fight, leaving her as a perfect cavalry right when the group needed it most!
Oddly enough, Vicki was sick and stayed home the day of the adventure, so her husband Dan ran her PC (Adrielle) as well as his own (Brendan). Then, when Logan's PC (Shiroko) went catatonic for 7 rounds, Dan passed him over Adrielle's character folder so he could run her while Shiroko was out of the fight. And then, of course, Adrielle got paralyzed, so Logan finished the adventure out running the NPC adept, Hoppy.
After the adventure was over, the players came up with some decisions about the after-effects of this adventure. They decided they'd have Brendan, Kruz, and Hoppy move out of room B and into room H, with the express purpose of assuaging Mrs. Geshuku's fears that "monsters" might enter the boardinghouse via that tunnel. Of course, the real reason is so the PCs have a secret means of entering and exiting the boardinghouse without being spotted, a particular concern for Shiroko as she's being hunted by a Lord from her homeland. And the sewers will allow the thieves of the Silent Sodality to get in touch with Kruz and Brendan surreptitiously as well.
In addition, they group jointly decided they could clear out and clean up the crocodile lair and the meenlock chambers and provide them as a dwelling place for the mongrelfolk who were displaced from the city dump due to the dregworm infestation. They plan on sending down any leftover food scraps from Mrs. Geshuku's dining area to help keep them fed. But the sinborn can easily spread out throughout the city during the day, posing as beggars but also serving as extra sets of eyes and ears for the PCs - kind of like a group of misshapen-bodied Baker Street Irregulars (for any Sherlock Holmes fans out there who get the reference).
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T-shirt worn: My Spider-Man T-shirt, if only because it kinda/sorta tied in with the shriek spider the PCs encountered in the sewers. (It was only afterwards I realized I have a Monster Hunters Association T-shirt featuring an osquip on the front pocket that would have been just as appropriate - oh well.)
PC Roster:
Adrielle, human/merfolk scout 2
Brendan Conaill, human monk 2
Kruz Taszan, changeling rogue 2
Shiroko, snow fox hengeyokai wu jen 2
Brendan Conaill, human monk 2
Kruz Taszan, changeling rogue 2
Shiroko, snow fox hengeyokai wu jen 2
NPC Roster:
Hoppy, mongrelfolk adept 2
Game Session Date: 27 September 2025
- - -
"What the Hell--?" sputtered Kruz.
Hoppy quickly scooped up the raggedy-looking rat he'd been feeding a piece of bread on the table in the dining area of Mrs. Geshuku's boardinghouse and stuffed him into the sleeve of his robes, a guilty look on his misshapen face. "It's my familiar, Scruffy," the mongrelfolk replied. "I was just feeding him."
"If Mrs. Geshuku sees a rat in her dining area, she's going to freak out!" warned Kruz. "You'd better make sure you keep him well out of sight." A sudden thought crossed the changeling's face. "You usually stay well out of sight, too, Hoppy - what gives?"
Hoppy bowed his head, looking down at the tabletop instead of making eye contact - it was the sinborn way. "Brendan said it would be okay...as long as I wore this new robe and kept the hood up." Kruz hadn't noticed it until now, but Hoppy was wearing a new hooded robe, instead of the ragged, moth-eaten one he normally wore.
"If he's going to hang around with a group of professional adventurers," beamed Brendan, obviously enjoying their new status, "he needs to look the part."
Mrs. Geshuku stormed into the dining area, already steaming mad - and she hadn't even seen Scruffy yet. "That's the third time in as many weeks!" she complained to her son, Kenji. "If this keeps up, I'm going to have to start charging our guests in advance!"
"What seems to be the trouble?" asked Shiroko. Mrs. Geshuku had always been a pleasant sort to deal with; the wu jen couldn't recall ever having seen her angry before, and never as hopping mad as she was at the moment.
"We had another guest sneak out during the night to avoid paying her bill! This is a legitimate business, not a charity!"
"And this has happened before?" Shiroko prompted.
"Yes! Two other times!" The boardinghouse owner explained that two weeks ago, a human male named Elmar snuck out in the middle of the night without paying his bill. Then, a week later, a female elf named Caliatta did the same thing, skipping out without paying. "I'll bet this Kori person snuck out while the maid on duty stepped away," mused Mrs. Geshuku. "Who was on night shift duty last night? Fumiko, wasn't it? Kenji, have Fumiko come here at once!"
"Yes, Mama," the eight-year-old replied, and raced off to go find the maid.
"How did you notice she was gone?" asked Brendan. "Isn't it too early for the maids to start cleaning the guest rooms?"
"Hmm? Oh, Kenji saw her door was open and took a peek inside - saw that her bed had been slept in, but she was gone, her and all of her belongings!" By then Fumiko had arrived at the dining area, bowing nervously to her boss; she apparently had not seen Mrs. Geshuku this angry before, either. "There you are! Kori, in room H, she's gone! But the ledger doesn't show her having checked out, and where's the money she owes us? Explain!"
"I...do not know," Fumiko replied, bowing again nervously. "She did not come by the front door while I was on shift."
"Are there other ways out of the boardinghouse?" asked Brendan. There were: exterior doors from the kitchen and the laundry area, but those were both kept locked and the keys stayed with Mrs. Geshuku or in her desk in the office area. And, as Fumiko hesitantly pointed out, the front door was barred from the inside at ten bells, when she took over the front desk from Mrs. Geshuku herself, so Kori couldn't have snuck out through the main doors and still managed to bar them again from the inside.
Shiroko had a sudden thought. "The other two who snuck out...were they all in the same room?"
"I'd have to check my records," mused Mrs. Geshuku. She headed back over to the office behind the front desk, where Akiko was now on duty. Thumbing through the log book, she announced, "Yes - all three were staying in room H." Room H was situated on the other side of the wall from the stairwell down to the small cellar, which was accessible only from the office.
"That's where the ugly puppy lives," Kenji pointed out.
"Now's not the time to tell us about your imaginary friend," Mrs. Geshuku scolded her son, as she stormed over to room H, the four adventurers and Hoppy in tow. Kenji looked like he wanted to argue about his "imaginary friend." but he could tell his mother was in no mood for that discussion right now. With a sulky expression on his young face, he sullenly followed the group. Fumiko, sensing she was off the hook about allowing Kori to evade her bill, returned to her duties.
Room H was set up like the other rooms, with two single beds against opposite walls and a shared, two-drawer dresser on the back wall between them. Kori had been the only one assigned to her room; during busy seasons, Mrs. Geshuku reduced the daily price for a room if the guest was willing to share with a roommate. But only one bed had ben slept in: the one that shared a wall with the cellar stairs. "I bet there's a secret door along this wall," the monk surmised, tapping against the wall but finding nothing. While Kruz pulled Kori's bed away from the wall, Shiroko asked Mrs. Geshuku how long she'd had the boardinghouse. The spirit folk widow explained she'd bought it about two years ago, when she came over to Armaturia to start a new life with her little son after the death of her husband. But then their discussion was brought short when Kruz called out, "Aha! Got something here."
The changeling rogue indicated a pair of thin, parallel lines, about three feet apart, cutting across the wooden floorboards of an area that had been underneath Kori's bed. "Looks like a trap door," he said, "although there are no handles or any easy way to lift it up, that I can see. Maybe if we pried it with the tip of a blade..."
"Let me," offered Shiroko, casting a mage hand spell. The 3-foot-by-3-foot section of wood came out as one piece and was set aside on the floor, revealing an opening leading down into darkness. They could all see, however, a series of metal rungs embedded in the stone of the wall shared by the cellar steps, forming a crude ladder of sorts.
Brendan pulled his skull mask over his face and peered down the opening with his darkvision-enhanced eyesight. "It goes down about 20 feet," he told the others. "I'll go first." And stepping barefoot onto the top rung, he began his descent.
"There's a very good chance your guests didn't depart on their own," Shiroko informed the widow. "They were likely taken against their will."
"Hrrmph!" snorted Mrs. Geshuku, not entirely convinced. Although none of them had asked to be lodged in that particular room, and she couldn't imagine how they'd have known about this secret passageway, one she herself had never known about. But a sudden thought jolted her brain. "Kenji!" she cried. "Go check the other empty rooms, see if there are other trap doors like this one!"
"Yes, Mama!" Kenji enthusiastically agreed. He raced off to see if he could find other secret trap doors beneath any of the other beds. His mind raced with thoughts about what could be hidden down there: a secret treasure vault, maybe? That would be so cool!
But as Brendan made his way down the rungs, he saw the room below was a long rectangle, with a crocodile down at one end and a closed door down at the other. He leaped off the lower rungs of the ladder and readied his quarterstaff in a defensive posture, well aware crocodiles were quite capable of short bursts of amazing speed. Hoppy looked down the open hole, and saw the crocodile rush forward and snap at Brendan, getting a whack on the head with the monk's quarterstaff for his efforts but thrashing his head back and forth to bump it aside and then snap its serrated teeth across the monk's leg. The mongrelfolk adept's first impulse was to race down the ladder to go heal Brendan, but he knew with his mismatched legs and feet, "racing" down a ladder was not something he could easily do. And he wouldn't want to hold up the other adventurers from being able to climb down the ladder....
Adrielle and Kruz returned to room H at about the same time; they'd run back to their rooms to fetch their adventuring gear. The scout pulled a sunrod out of her pack and tossed it down the hole, where it landed beside the hungry crocodile. Then she started ratcheting up the heavy crossbow she carried, loading a quarrel into the stock, before starting down the rungs, holding her readied crossbow pointed upwards so the quarrel stayed in place while she descended.
Kruz had a light crossbow that was much easier to load; he managed to get a shot off at the crocodile while Adrielle was still only halfway down the ladder. Shiroko moved to the other side of the trap door hole from the changeling, bending forward until she could see the crocodile in heated combat with Brendan and sending a magic missile spell to strike it in the back.
Brendan slammed his quarterstaff into the reptile's head and backed away; Adrielle leaped down into the spot he'd just vacated and shot her bolt at it, hitting it just behind its left foreleg. It rushed her, getting a good grip on her leg and causing her to cry out in pain. The mermaid hadn't even had legs for that long, and now she was afraid she was about to lose one!
Hoppy couldn't wait any longer - his friends needed him! He scrambled down the rungs as quickly as he could, the hoof on his right foot making a clonking sound every time it hit one of the metal rungs. He leaped the rest of the way down once it looked safe to do so, landing beside Adrielle and casting a cure light wounds spell on her as she used her short sword to poke at the reptile until it released her leg from its powerful jaws. Then Kruz shot a second crossbow bolt into its head, and the threat caused by the reptilian beast was no more. Now that it was safe to do so, Shiroko climbed carefully down the rungs of the ladder, going slowly due to the confines of her tightly-wrapped kimono.
Once down on the floor level with the rest of her team, the hengeyokai headed over to the sole visible door, casting a dancing lights spell above her head as a source of illumination. Hoppy bent down and picked up the active sunrod, while Brendan looked for secret doors along the northern wall - by where the crocodile had been waiting - with no luck. Hoppy approached the monk and cast a cure light wounds on him as well.
Adrielle was over by Shiroko and pulled open the door, revealing a nasty stench: they were down in the sewers beneath Port Duralia! Across from the ledge upon which she stood upon exiting the door, a metal grate likely led to the boardinghouse's two bathrooms and shower room. She backed up away from the open door to allow others to come out on the ledge beside her, as she bent down to reload her heavy crossbow.
A sudden shriek erupted from behind and above her, causing her to momentarily freeze in place in shock - and that's when the shriek spider crashed into her back.
The arachnid's body was about the same size as the scout's, but it had thick webbing connecting its back right legs together and likewise with its rearmost left legs, forming a set of primitive "glider wings" that allowed it to leap out and soar horizontally for a bit before succumbing to gravity. It had made a nest up by the sewer's ceiling and had been patiently awaiting prey to appear when Adrielle stepped outside the room with the crocodile and made herself available. However, the spider miscalculated its leap, and instead of landing upon its intended prey and driving her to the floor of the ledge, it bounced off her and fell to the ledge behind her, slightly dazed.
Fortunately, the spider's terrifying shriek had been heard by those inside the room with the dead crocodile, and Kruz came running outside, crossbow at the ready. He shot past Adrielle and hit the arachnid on its abdomen, causing it to flinch back in pain. Shiroko stepped onto the ledge next, made a quick appraisal of the situation, and cast an animate water spell on the murky sewer water, using a wu jen trick to extend the spell for twice its normal duration. The slimy sewage elemental, for lack of a better term, crawled up onto the ledge behind the spider and swatted at it with a damp fist, but the arachnid was already in the midst of a tactical retreat, scampering up the wall out of reach of its intended prey.
Brendan was fairly certain there was a secret door along the northern half of the eastern wall, one that would open into the boardinghouse cellar, but he was unable to find it. Sighing in irritation, he turned and called for Hoppy to come with him to see what all the fuss was about outside; they were in the sewers, that much he'd gathered, and he pulled out a vial of antitoxin and drank it down - there was no telling what all kinds of poisons one might find down here in the dank depths of Port Duralia's sewer system!
But at about that same time, a new combatant entered the field of battle, as a small "wave" of sewer water rose up and slapped at Adrielle's ankle; the scout leaped out of the way at the first sight of movement down by her feet, and she was unable to determine just what it was that had attacked her - if that was indeed what had just happened. "What was that?" she asked the others, and all they could say was that they had seen it as well.
So, dismissing the oddness of having a sewer wavelet try to slap her feet, Adrielle focused on a foe she actually could see: the shriek spider, climbing up the wall. She fired her heavy crossbow, but the quarrel clonked harmlessly off the wall by the spider's rear legs. Kruz, however, fared much better with his next shot, skewering the spider directly in its abdomen, and it fell off the wall to land on its back, dead, on the ledge in front of Adrielle, who was busy ratcheting up her heavy crossbow again.
Another bit of movement caught Shiroko's eye as another "wave" came up over the edge of the ledge to try to swat at Adrielle again. This time, the wu jen was ready for it, and she fired off a charge from her wand of magic missiles, striking the nearly-invisible flotsam ooze as it floated atop the sewer waters. The animated water from her previous spell likewise tried to attack the flotsam ooze, but it missed the hard-to-pinpoint bit of protoplasm.
Brendan stepped out onto the ledge just in time to see a pseudopod rise up out of the water and go swinging at Adrielle, who once again skipped back out of its way. Hoppy saw it, too, and rather than try to fight it - whatever it was - he limped along the ledge until he reached the corpse of the shriek spider, kicking it into the sewer with his lizardfolk foot. It floated along the top of the brackish water, moving slightly to the south with the current; its present course would likely have it bump into the flotsam ooze, thereby providing it with a free meal so that hopefully it would leave the adventurers alone.
Not wanting to take the time to mess with her heavy crossbow, Adrielle pulled the short sword from its scabbard at her hip and stabbed at the flotsam ooze - or at least where she thought it was, for its near-complete translucence made it difficult to determine its precise location while it was waterborne. Kruz likewise fired another crossbow bolt at it and missed; Shiroko had much better luck with her wand of magic missiles, for all she had to do was catch a glimpse of the water sluicing off its pseudopod to pinpoint its current location, and that was all it took to guarantee a hit. And while the force energy of the wu jen's spell was striking the floating ooze from one direction, her animated water-blob successfully attacked it from the other.
What followed was a slight comedy of errors, as the adventurers (other than Shiroko) tried hitting the ooze with their various weapons, to no avail, while the ooze likewise was unsuccessful in its attempts to latch its pseudopod onto any of the potential meals standing there on the ledge. Eventually, the shriek spider's corpse floated into the ooze and it latched onto that meal, which made it a bit easier for the heroes to detect its exact location, and their attacks started having a much higher rate of success. However, Brendan then made the mistake of moving past the ooze and it, detecting the movement, automatically lashed out at him and solidly connected with his leg, adhering itself to the monk's limb and preventing him from moving any further away.
"What the--?" sputtered the monk, as the flotsam ooze slammed his leg again with a newly-grown appendage. Hoppy came up behind the monk and applied a healing spell from his wand, and now that it was halfway out of the sewer water, Adrielle was able to shoot it with her crossbow. Shiroko sent another magic missile at it and then moved south down the ledge, turning the corner to make sure their noisy combat wasn't attracting the attention of anything else that might be living down there. She saw another door to her left and approached it.
Brendan slammed his quarterstaff into the ooze's center of mass, trying to pry it off his leg, but all that did was get his main weapon almost stuck into its adhesive body; it took all his effort to pull it away in time before it was stuck fast. Kruz shot at it again, while Shiroko pushed open the door and got quite a shock, for standing there along in a small room was a hideous, hunched-over creature, humanoid in build but with a distinctively insectoid appearance. Not sure what exactly she was looking at but not liking what she saw, she instinctively cast a sleep spell at it and was relieved when the meenlock collapsed in a heap to the floor. Not seeing anything else in the room but an open doorway to the north, Shiroko went back around the corner to go fetch Kruz, who she figured could dispatch the thing before it woke up.
As Shiroko turned the corner to rejoin her adventuring partners, Brendan was just finishing off the flotsam ooze with a solid stab with the tip of his quarterstaff deep into the creature's protoplasmic center, piercing whatever near-invisible organs kept it alive. It lost its adhesive properties in death, and the monk was able to scrape it off the ledge and into the sewer waters with his staff, where it slowly floated away, along with the shriek spider's dead body. Their battle with the strange ooze over with, the group joined up with Shiroko, who led them to the sleeping meenlock, where a single blow from Kruz's blade nearly severed its head from its neck.
Shiroko forged on ahead, entering the next room to the north, a square chamber 15 feet to a side with another open doorway to the north. From this distance, the wu jen's dancing lights spell whirling around her head illuminated the interior of the next chamber to the north, which turned out to be a similarly-sized room containing three more meenlocks, and the bound form of an unconscious spirit folk woman on the ground before them. This, no doubt, was the missing Kori from room H, and the fact she lay in the middle of a magic circle with arcane runes scratched into the stone floor all around it indicated she was in the midst of having some horrible ritual performed on her.
Of course, as soon as Shiroko could see the three meenlocks, they in turn could see the intruders into their lair and, more importantly, approaching their transformation ritual room, where they created more of their kind from the victims they stole from the overworld above. This would not stand! Sending waves of energy from their minds, they encompassed all but Hoppy and Kruz in waves of all-encompassing fear. Shiroko fell sway to this powerful mental attack and felt her body seize up in a catatonic stupor, as her mind similarly froze up. Fortunately for the others, they were able to overcome the mental attack, leaving them open to making attacks of a more physical nature of their own.
Kruz raced up and shot the farthest-away meenlock with a crossbow bolt, as he was directly facing the open doorway to the south and the changeling could see him the easiest. Adrielle moved up to the side of the open doorway and fired her heavy crossbow at the same meenlock, the northernmost of the three. Brendan ran into the doorway, seeing the other two meenlocks, one on either side, and slammed his quarterstaff into the one on his right. Hoppy held his wand at the ready, monitoring the battle and ready to leap forward and apply healing to whichever of his friends needed it.
In retaliation, the two meenlocks by the doorway both went after Brendan with their wicked claws, and the monk was hard-pressed to fend off all of the attacks with his staff. Two sets of claws tore into his legs - the meenlocks were not even half his height - but he fought off the paralytic effect caused by a meenlock's claws.
Then the northernmost meenlock, clutching the two different-sized crossbow bolts sticking out of his chest and shoulder, silently called forth a mental summons. Beneath their nesting area, one chamber back, there was an inches-high crawlspace of sorts, with numerous holes along the edges of the walls, and it was through these numerous holes that literally hundreds of rats came swarming out. The meenlocks and the rats had come to an understanding of sorts: the rats were allowed to lair in the safe space beneath the meenlock nesting area, and in return the meenlocks called them forth when prey was available. (On occasion, they also lured a single rat or two from the swarm and killed them to keep their crocodile lair guardian well fed, but the rat swarm as a whole didn't seem to notice.)
Kruz shot at the meenlock leader and Brendan attacked the one to this right with a flurry of martial attacks while Adrielle was ratcheting up her heavy crossbow when the rats suddenly burst forth from their hiding places, swarming all over Adrielle and Brendan, the two closest to the ritual room. Shrieking in surprise, Adrielle backed away and dropped a new quarrel into her weapon, readying it for firing, but she knew she couldn't very well use it against the literally hundreds of rats that now shared he chamber with them. Brendan was surprised enough by the sudden rat attack he was unable to fend off the claw attacks of the two closest meenlocks, but he once again managed to stave off the paralysis that so often accompanied the gouges formed by meenlock claws. Hoppy, however, saw the monk's predicament and bravely waded through the sea of rats until he was close enough to use his wand, sending a blast of healing energy into Brendan's poorly-used body and closing up the worst of his wounds.
The meenlock leader, unable or unwilling to stand between the other two and attack Brendan with his own claws, dimension doored himself to the sentry room, beside the cooling corpse of the fourth member of their little nest. He looked over at a catatonic Shiroko and dismissed her as a non-threat, focusing his attention on Kruz, the nearest hero to his present location.
Kruz, however, was unaware of the leader's sudden shift in location; he'd looked away for a moment to reload a new bolt into his light crossbow, and when he looked back, the leader was gone, but he could easily have simply shifted positions somewhere inside the ritual chamber. As such, Kriz shifted his own stance a bit and fired off a shot at the meenlock to the left of the doorway, as Brendan had been concentrating on whittle down the other one. Brendan, opting to cut his losses, hopped - barefoot - away from the open doorway through the sea of rats, until he was up against the eastern wall of the nesting area. He brushed off a few rats that had been climbing up his clothing as he did so, as he gathered up his sling and sent a stone flying into the meenlock Kruz had just targeted. But his brief respite was just that, as the swarm shifted with him, with individual rats once again leaping at him and biting at him with their wicked-sharp incisors, this time catching up Hoppy in their midst as well.
Hoppy ignored the many bites he was taking as he touched his wand of cure light wounds to the monk's shoulder and activated another charge, before awkwardly hopping away out of the mass of rats, trying to get himself free from their numerous biting mouths. Adrielle, just out of range of most of the rats, shot her heavy crossbow at the meenlock to the right of the doorway, catching him in the head and slaying him instantly. That left only two of the little buggers, one in the ritual room and one back in the sentry station, with the bulk of the heroes sandwiched between them along with a swarm of hungry, disease-ridden rodents.
The meenlock leader focused a different type of mental blast at Kruz, and the changeling felt his mind go woozy for a moment, making it difficult to think - but he had enough presence of mind to fire his crossbow at the offending insectoid. The other meenlock leaped out at Adrielle, catching her up with its claws and paralyzing her in place, unable to move. Brendan raced out from the swarm of rats to slam the scout's attacker with the tip of his quarterstaff, catching it in the throat. But then the rat swarm, in chasing after Brendan again, discovered the unmoving form of Adrielle, frozen fixed in place by the meenlock's wicked claws with their paralytic venom. Adrielle, unable to move - and thus unable to scream - was nonetheless able to feel the dozens of rat bodies climb up her body, gnawing through her armor to get to her tender flesh. "Get off her!" hollered Hoppy, wading through the rats to apply a charge from his wand to the scout, doing his best to undo the wounds the rats were making as fast as they could make them.
Then the meenlock leader struck at the mentally sluggish Kruz, and his venom-laced claws froze the young rogue in place, as helpless as both Adrielle and Shiroko. Brendan dodged an attack from the other meenlock, and spared a look behind him to see he and Hoppy were the only ones left in the fight for now. "Keep Adrielle alive!" he called to the mongrelfolk adept, swinging his quarterstaff at the meenlock in an attempt to kill him before the rats and the hunched insectoids could take down Hoppy and him, for he knew if the two of them fell, there would be nothing stopping the meenlocks from killing the lot of them, perhaps even turning them into more of their kind. That was a fate not even worth thinking about!
Unfortunately for Brendan, the meenlock leader soon figured out Hoppy was keeping Adrielle alive, and waded in to do something about it. (Adrielle had no way of communicating it to the others, but the rats were taking such a toll on her that she kept slipping into unconsciousness, only to have Hoppy reawaken her with another charge from his wand, not realizing unconsciousness was greatly preferable over being able to feel each and every rat climbing over her and biting her while being unable to do a single thing about it.) As Hoppy's attention was focused solely on keeping Adrielle healed up (to his own detriment, as the rats were quite content taking bites out of him just as much as her), he failed to notice the meenlock leader come up from behind him and rake him with his venomous claws - until his muscles all froze up and it was too late to do anything about it. The sinborn realized the ridiculousness of being bitten to death by rats while holding a wand of cure light wounds in his hands and being unable to invoke its magic. He did his best to ignore the pain of the rat bites and wait for his impending death, hoping that his years of suffering in his own wretched form had paid off whatever karmic debt he owed for whatever sins he'd committed in his previous life to sentence him to birth as a mongrelfolk. Maybe, if he was lucky, he'd be reborn as a "smooth-skin" - and whether that meant a human, an elf, or a cockroach made little difference to him.
Brendan looked nervously about him and saw he was the last man standing - well, that wasn't technically true, for the others were all still standing, just unable to move. And while he was still trading blows with the one meenlock in the ritual room, the leader was making his way north; soon he'd have a foe on either side of him, attacking from opposite directions. At least the rats were no longer bothering him, having focused their attention on the unmoving forms of Adrielle, Hoppy, and now Kruz as well. At least, he mused, he'd go down fighting.
And then Shiroko snapped out of her fear-induced catatonia.
Looking about her in confusion, she took in the desperate situation and acted immediately. Casting a rain of stones spell, she caused a volley of small pebbles to come crashing down from the roof area, crushing the bodies of a large number of individual rats - enough that those remaining opted to flee back into their inches-tall crawlspace beneath the meenlock nesting area - and also catching up the meenlock leader in the magical barrage. Seeing he was no longer the sole one fighting off these insectoid menaces, Brendan went all-out at the meenlock he was fighting, striking it with his quarterstaff and also crashing a toughened heel into its buglike head. Then Shiroko shot it with her wand of magic missiles and it fell over, dead.
The leader, not only seeing the sole remaining member of their nest die but feeling its death over the telepathic link they shared, realized there was now no way to transform the spirit folk woman into another of their kind (it took more than one meenlock to perform the ritual of transformation), even if they could somehow rid themselves of these overworlders. And so, seeing caution as the better part of valor, it activated its dimension door ability and sent itself as far away as possible, traversing the sewers until it could find others of its kind - a new nest, where they could once again start to build up their numbers.
Once the paralyzed heroes were once again able to move on their own, Hoppy healed everyone up with his wand of cure light wounds - including, at Brendan's urging, himself; the mongrelfolk had argued he wasn't worth wasting a charge upon but the monk wasn't hearing any of that. They untied Kori, but whatever the meenlocks had done to her, she was deeply out of it, and would likely need a long time recuperating until she emerged from the comalike slumber they'd put her in. At Brendan's insistence, they returned to the room with the crocodile and while he continued searching for the secret door to the cellar he was sure had to be there somewhere, the others searched the room and found the belongings of the three guests who'd gone missing.
"We rescued Kori," Adrielle said, "but what happened to the other two guests?"
"You know those three little insect-men we killed?" Kruz asked her.
"Yes."
"I'm pretty sure two of them are what happened to the other two guests." The scout wrinkled her nose in disgust.
"Aha!" called out Brendan. "Found it - I knew there was a way in here somewhere!" He'd finally found a section of wall that, when pushed, pivoted on a central axis, opening two narrow passageways into the dark cellar of the Geshuku boardinghouse. Skull mask over his face providing him full darkvision, he stepped inside the cellar, looking for Keni's "ugly puppy."
It didn't take long, for a hideous, skull-like rodent face peered out at him before ducking back behind a crate. Adrielle, sickened by the slaughter of the meenlocks, carved a chunk of meat off the dead crocodile and tossed it over at the "ugly puppy." The osquip sniffed at it, then tentatively inched forwards, keeping its watery eyes on the intruders to make sure this wasn't a trap, before greedily gobbling it up.
"Go get another piece," suggested Brendan and when Adrielle did so and tossed it into the room, he pushed it closer to the osquip with his staff. It gobbled that piece up as well.
"Poor fellow's just hungry," observed Kruz. "We going to let it live?"
"I don't see why not," replied Shiroko. "I'll bet Kenji would like to have a pet of his own."
- - -
Boy, was this ever a nerve-wracking adventure to play through! I was half convinced, at several points during the battle with the meenlocks, that we were headed into a TPK! But Shiroko's fear-induced catatonia pretty much meant she was ignored as a noncombatant for most of the fight, leaving her as a perfect cavalry right when the group needed it most!
Oddly enough, Vicki was sick and stayed home the day of the adventure, so her husband Dan ran her PC (Adrielle) as well as his own (Brendan). Then, when Logan's PC (Shiroko) went catatonic for 7 rounds, Dan passed him over Adrielle's character folder so he could run her while Shiroko was out of the fight. And then, of course, Adrielle got paralyzed, so Logan finished the adventure out running the NPC adept, Hoppy.
After the adventure was over, the players came up with some decisions about the after-effects of this adventure. They decided they'd have Brendan, Kruz, and Hoppy move out of room B and into room H, with the express purpose of assuaging Mrs. Geshuku's fears that "monsters" might enter the boardinghouse via that tunnel. Of course, the real reason is so the PCs have a secret means of entering and exiting the boardinghouse without being spotted, a particular concern for Shiroko as she's being hunted by a Lord from her homeland. And the sewers will allow the thieves of the Silent Sodality to get in touch with Kruz and Brendan surreptitiously as well.
In addition, they group jointly decided they could clear out and clean up the crocodile lair and the meenlock chambers and provide them as a dwelling place for the mongrelfolk who were displaced from the city dump due to the dregworm infestation. They plan on sending down any leftover food scraps from Mrs. Geshuku's dining area to help keep them fed. But the sinborn can easily spread out throughout the city during the day, posing as beggars but also serving as extra sets of eyes and ears for the PCs - kind of like a group of misshapen-bodied Baker Street Irregulars (for any Sherlock Holmes fans out there who get the reference).
- - -
T-shirt worn: My Spider-Man T-shirt, if only because it kinda/sorta tied in with the shriek spider the PCs encountered in the sewers. (It was only afterwards I realized I have a Monster Hunters Association T-shirt featuring an osquip on the front pocket that would have been just as appropriate - oh well.)
