Sessions 54 & 55 - The Ones Where They Stole A Bear's Shoes And When Carro Sulked About Leaving His Arrows

3rd & 9th Feb 2024

In-game timeline: DR1489 Uktar 3 - Uktar 3

Our "Heroes" consider their options. Either head into the ruins via the obvious route on the surface, risking being seen by the guards, or take the tunnel they have discovered which seems to be home to a strange and grotesque creature, and there is not even a guarantee that the cave system leads anywhere useful, as Mahtis only explored as far as the creature.

They decide to face the strange creature. Given Mahtis' warnings about the worrying chatter from all the mouths on the creature, and TC's historic vague knowledge of such creatures, they decide to plug their ears with candle wax so they cannot hear anything as they advance.

The cavern seems natural, and is very narrow in places, with lots of twists and turns and as they progress the nasty smell becomes quite overpowering. After a short while they reach a small widening in the cavern and encounter the Gibbering Mouther!

Much hilarity ensues as TC tries to communicate with the others without sounds. He motions for them to stop. They wave back.

The spot the creature behind a large rock. Mahtis puts a flaming sphere on it, illuminating the area around it. TC fires off some eldritch blasts. What comes next is a masterclass in monster hunting from the party of Heroes. The creature gets some attacks off, spitting at TC to blind him temporarily and firing off some little mouths to bite at TC at a distance. The archer being at the back of the group proves to be a questionable decision, and Carro feels a little impotent for a while. However, with their ears blocked, the main defensive mechanism of the creature is countered, and the party find little difficulty in picking off the slow moving creature with attacks from a short distance away, before TC, now able to see again, steps in and plunges Dragonsboon through its flesh, killing it.

Pressing on - there is, luckily, an exit from the creature's lair - they cross a small stream and Mahtis changes to a spider again to scout ahead. She emerges in what seems to be an underground floor of the ruins, with tunnels and rooms. She checks out a couple of rooms - one has a strange contraption in it, but is otherwise empty, whilst the other seems to contain a family of humans, just settling down for an early lunch.

Mahtis returns to the others and they plan.

Stealthing as best they can, stealthing with Pass Without Trace, they enter the constructed tunnel - Scriben made, according to history, and of great craftmanship, and great age.

As they head towards where they hope to find some stairs going up, they fumble their way around, and split up, in order to make best use of the stacked crates dotted around for cover. Unfortunately they all make a little bit of a racket as they head down the tunnel, so they hide to see what happens.

They have obviously alerted the people in the room that Mahtis spotted, and one of them comes out of the door into the corridor to see what is going on. TC's attempt at stealthing, now out of range of Pass Without Trace, is pathetic and the lad sees him and questions what he is doing here. The lad is followed by the other two humans and as they question TC, they change into wolf hybrid forms!

TC stammers a response, which is not particularly convincing, so he just resorts to his old faithful - Eldritch Blast!

Taking advantage of the surprise, and with Carro able to fire all his silvered arrows from behind, unseen, they cause significant damage - enough to take out the werewolf at the rear before he even had a chance to do anything. After receiving a small scratch from one of them, TC responds with some effective blows from Dragonsboon and Mahtis finishes that one off with a Poison Spray.

After taking down two werewolves - father and son - in a matter of seconds, Mahtis somehow manages to persuade the other one - the mother - to stop fighting. They interrogate her and find out some good information about the layout of the ruins and the location of Charlotta's 'lab' and the stolen children. They tie up the werewolf and leave her locked in the room.

Our Heroes decide to head down, towards where Charlotta is reported to be. As they reach the spiral stone staircase TC is taken aback by the impressive bas relief stone sculptures adorning the walls of the staircase. Carro and Mahtis are confused by the images and impressed at the handiwork, but TC seems to recognise a lot of the imagery from one of the (many) worlds that he seems to be resident of.

Still reeling a little from the shock. TC reaches the bottom of the stairs, along with the others. They manage to spot a rat-like humanoid up the corridor before they are seen themselves. Flushed with the success from the previous battle with lycanthropes, they decide to attack. Unfortunately, although they take care of this particular enemy quickly, this wererat had friends, one of which was a werebear, who comes rushing towards them. Carro looses off the last of his four silvered arrows and then needs to use his silvered swords to melee attack, dropping his bow for speed. Together the party focus on bringing down this powerful lycanthrope, which they do manage, but not before it manages to bite Mahtis and inject more lycanthrope curse into the Dragonborn. TC finishes it off with a very much on-form Dragonsboon and Divine Smite and chops off its feet in order to steal its nice pair of comfortable brogues that it is wearing.

They have taken care of the werebear, but they still have a wererat to deal with. As they run after it, they realise that there are in fact two wererats, and they are both running for help! Our Heroes give chase and rush after the two lycanthropes, trying to being them down with ranged spells whenever they come into sight. Carro doesn't even stop to pick up his bow and silvered arrows, which he is most upset about, especially as the group get further and further away from his discarded weapons. The rats reach a downward staircase and manage to disappear down before TC and the others arrive.

And so we leave our Heroes quickly deciding whether to continue with the chase to the next lower level of the ruins, in the hope they can stop the rats from raising an alarm, or stop the chase to allow the party to regroup, and for Carro to recover his favoured weapons…