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.