Shattered Star: Mite and Magic

Game Date: 10/11/2014
Location: The Game Cave
Campaign: Shattered Star, Session 6
System: D&D 5e
DM: Rusty

The Party:
Bjertha Brawlbaker (Matt) - Dwarf Fighter
Looplily Timber (James) - Gnome Cleric/Fighter
Maruca Notyet (Daniel) - Human Ranger
Sneex (Cliff) - Dwarf Rogue

The Session:
When we left off last week, we had just been defeated by Anya, the were-rat leader of Tower Girls.  We started today's session still tied up.  Anya probably would have killed us, but she was impressed that we'd been able to solve a puzzle last session, when we opened a door they'd been trying to get through.  Now short-staffed (thanks to us), she needed our help exploring the corridors beyond the door.  So Bjertha, Sneex, Looplily, Anya, and Maruca (Anya's last remaining minion) proceeded to explore the halls.

A few corridors in, we came to a room with a balcony overlooking a scum-covered pool.  We saw one side tunnel that was too small for us to explore, with tiny footprints inside.  We decided to worry about that later.  As we searched the room, a couple of pseudopods erupted from the pool, and we had to fight a pair of oozes.  Bjertha tried to bypass the fight entirely, but Anya reprimanded her.  The oozes weren't particularly difficult, but they did split into two when damaged, prolonging the battle.  When the oozes were finally destroyed, we went down the next hallway.

In the next room, we awoke a swarm of bats.  Bjertha fended them off until a few got into her armor, sending her into a panic.  Finally Looplilly used her magic to make a loud noise that drove them off.  Sneex found a bracelet in a fountain, and attempted to pocket it without the rest of the party seeing.  Some of the party did see, but we didn't make an issue out of it.  We went through more corridors and down some stairs.

We came out into a room filled with large mounds of dirt.  Bjertha disturbed one of the mounds, and a giant ant climbed out.  Four more ants eventually joined the battle, some of which had scorpion-like stingers.  Bjertha and Sneex lost a lot of hit points that fight, so we took a short rest afterwards.  In one wall there was another one of those tiny passages.  Then in the next hall we found a tiny secret door, scaled the same as the other tiny tunnels.  We wondered what little creatures could be living here.

We found out in the next room.  We encountered several pint-sized goblinoids called mites, two of which were riding giant spiders.  They didn't do a lot of damage, but since there were a lot of them, they still inflicted their share of pain.  Some of the mites could cast Bane, which gives you a negative d4 to attack rolls and saving throws.  Anya finally helped out in this battle, killing a few of the mites, which made it go a lot easier.  The final two mites tried to flee, but we killed them on their way out the door.  We kept one of their bodies and took it with us.

We went down a spiral staircase and had a choice of two directions.  The corridor we picked led us to some halls lined with empty cells.  We reached a large room with a heavy stone door and torture instruments.  There was one more cell, but this one actually had someone in it.  There was a crazed humanoid with a half-melted face, attacking the bars.  Looplilly lobbed a couple of spells at him, and we considered finishing him off, but then decided to leave him alone for now.  We ended the session there.

Shattered Star: Hide and Sneakx

Game Date: 10/4/2014
Location: The Game Cave
Campaign: Shattered Star, Session 5
System: D&D 5e
DM: Rusty

The Party:
Bjertha Brawlbaker (Matt) - Dwarf Fighter
Bugg (Daniel) - Human Warlock
Looplily Timber (James) - Gnome Cleric/Fighter
Sneakx (Cliff) - Dwarf Rogue

The Session:

There was a bit of confusion about the order of last session's encounters.  Some of the rooms couldn't have been conquered in the order we did them, requiring a small amount of retcon.  This session began with us entering a room containing five enemies - three Tower Girls and two rats.  Bjertha lost initiative, but she still managed to kill both rats before the rest of the party did much of anything.  Then Natalia, Bugg, and Looplily each killed one of the Tower Girls.  Sneakx spent most of the battle finding places to hide to set up a sneak attack, but missed when the time finally came.

The room contained a life-size statue of a beautiful woman, wielding a polearm.  We all failed our history/arcana checks to identify the subject, so naturally Looplily drew a mustache on it instead.  There was also a barrel of whiskey in the room, which Looplily took with us.  Rolling the barrel through the hallways and bouncing it down the stairs didn't do any favors for our stealth checks.

A later room contained several doors.  One set of doors had the words LISTEN and THE EYES written on them, on moveable tiles.  We rearranged the letters to spell SILENT THEY SEE and the doors unlocked.  We decided to rest for an hour before proceeding through the doors, but we failed our stealth check and drew some unwanted attention.  Three were rats, one of which was much larger than the others, burst into the room and attacked us.

We quickly killed the two smaller rats, but the big one gave us a lot of trouble.  It was resistant to ordinary weapons, so we had to get creative to damage it.  Sneakx kept throwing dirt in the rat's eyes, causing temporary blindness.  Bjertha had a silver dagger she'd picked up in a previous session, which helped a lot.  She rolled well on the next couple of hits, but so did the rat, and soon Bjertha was making death saves.  While Bjertha was down, Sneakx grabbed her dagger, and took over dealing damage.

Meanwhile, our guide Natalia fled the room and braced the door closed behind her.  Thanks to a heal from Looplily, Bjertha got back up, but without the dagger she could no longer damage the were rat.  As the fight went on, Bjertha went down again, along with Bugg and Looplily.   Now alone, Sneakx ran out another of the room's doors, followed closely by the rat.  Natalia came back into the room and healed Looplily a little bit.

Sneakx fled out a door into an X-shaped hallway, which contained another door back into the room we'd been fighting in.  The were rat proceeded to chase Sneakx in a circle - through the first door, down the hall, through the second door, back through the battle room, and so on.  Meanwhile, Natalia started rolling the barrel into the hallway, no doubt with some clever plan involving igniting the whiskey.  This plan would never come to fruition, however, as the were rat killed Natalia on the next pass.  Eventually Sneakx fell as well, finishing off our party.

We woke up a few hours later, all tied up.  One by one the were rat interrogated us.  When Bugg refused to answer any questions, the were rat killed him.  Looplily, on the other hand, was much more cooperative, spilling the beans on our entire operation.  We ended the session there.

Next session:
There are several questions we need to ponder before going forward.  For starters, the party Bard, Slancio, wasn't present this session.  We need to decide where he was in the hopes he might be able to rescue us.  With most (or all) of the Tower Girls dead, the were rat seems like she wants to recruit us.  Daniel will have to bring a new character next week, so that might also be a factor in our escape.