Thug Muggers in the Sewer 12/3/22
Table Talk:
I can’t remember for sure, but I don’t think we had anything beforehand, so, let’s dive right in.
"“A little honest work wouldn’t kill you, Mat.”
“Now, you know that’s not true. Soldiering is honest work, and it gets men killed all the bloody time.”
-Egwene Al'ver & Matrim Cauthon –Robert Jordan/Brandon Sanderson, “A Memory of Light: Chapter 36: Unchangeable Things”
🎲🗡️🔔✨🌿
'Cause I'm back in the sewers again ♪ (cont.)
🎲🗡️🔔✨🌿 'Cause I'm back in the sewers again ♪ (cont.)
It’s around midday on the second day of Kythorn and business is continuing as usual in Nibiru. The bakers are kneading, then bankers are telling, and - you know what? No, jump straight to the large dark room in the sewers, where Sorin almost drowned INSIDE the monster he was fighting. That feels more important.
Sorin is sitting with his back to the wall near a pile of boney remains. He is still panting a bit, treating every breath of air like a blessing, and trying to dilute the smell-taste (it's just sort of in everywhere, nose and mouth) of acidic decaying flesh. (you ever try dissolving a mummy with household cleaning chemicals, it smells like that)
Ari cautiously walks over to Sorin, his death gurgles still ringing in her ears. “Hey, um, …buddy… are you okay?” She reaches out to awkwardly pat his shoulder like an adult who is unsure how to help a crying child. In an instant, Sorin’s arms are around Ari’s legs and waist. He presses the side of his face against her outer thigh, not noticing as the rivets from her dagger sheaths dig into his face. She awkwardly pats his back as he gasps and half-sobs. “Um, there, there…”
Cypress averts his eyes, and looks around the room for any loot. There really isn’t much here. The room is almost completely empty except for some piles of bones and animal remains in some corners. The only ‘treasure’ left by the cube is whatever it hadn’t finished dissolving when we came in. There is a rusted and pitted short sword, and most of a wooden shield, then there are some scraps of armor and clothes, but nothing worthwhile.
Except for “ooze”. Cypress and Ari watch in perplexed disgust as Rae-The-Body-Fluid-Pervert takes her last empty flask out and scoops some of the dirty green slime off the floor and into her last remaining glass flask.
Her face scrunched up in disgust, Ari hisses, “What’re you doing?”
Rae looks back defensively, “What!? Do you know how much I got from Devin for the spider gunk!?”
Cypress shakes his head and walks over to Ari and Sorin. He reaches out and touches them each gently. A warm and comforting glow passes through his fingertips and over his two companions in a sparkling wave as he uses Preserve Life to heal them both for 5 Hp.
With that Sorin looks up and coughs, “Thank you.” He picks himself up and dusts himself up. After a deep breath, and still shuddering, he says, “Alright, one down, one to go!”
“Uuuuh…”
“You sure about that Sorin? Maybe we should rest, that was a close call for you…”
“I know,” Sorin says and pauses, “But, I need the money, and I'm on a deadline.”
With a fierce look in his eyes, Sorin heads out the room and into the tunnel, and the rest follow.
A bit further south down the tunnel (with Cypress leading, since he is the one that got a good look at the map), we come to a few familiar red-tinted bricks in the wall. With a little bit of thought, we realize that this is the same spot where we last fought some Thugs, and found them talking with the Wererat. There is a bit of hesitation, and a debate on whether to continue on, or to check in here for thugs.
Cypress just starts taking the bricks out and walks into the tunnel.
Cypress leaves his moss-ball lantern at the entrance, and cautiously makes his way down the tunnel.
Why is the ONLY party member WITHOUT darkvision the one to do this? I have no idea. Cypress, make a Dexterity Check. 4. Ok, great you stumble around and bump your head on the wall. Make a Perception Check. 4. Okay, yeah it’s dark in here, you know that now. Make another DEX roll for making your way back.
Cypress stumbles and shuffles his way back down the tunnel. This time towards the light of his lantern which helps. Cypress looks up at Ari, “I couldn’t really see anything… maybe you should check, just to be sure.”
Ari skips down the hallway.
She stops before the turn into the large room and listens. Nothing. She pokes her head around and looks. Nothing. She creeps into the room and stops there listening out for anything. With a very high Perception Roll, she hears groaning from deeper in the tunnels, behind some walls.
Ari skips back down the tunnel and everyone sets to work putting the bricks back in the wall.
We stand up, stretch our backs, and dust off our hands. Great, back to work. We turn to keep heading south down the tunnel- and stop.
Staring at us in the middle of the hall is a large, shiny beetle. Its carapace is a dull green, like a slick shiny version of the tunnel walls. Its antennae flit back and forth as it looks at us.
After some prodding by the other Thug Muggers, Ari draws her sword and cautiously approaches.
The Beetle makes a hissing sound, similar to a rattlesnake, and lifts up its forelegs in a fighting stance. When its head raises, Ari sees that underneath is a glowing red area. The light slowly washes around the corridor.
“Holy shit, is that a fucking Fire Beetle!?” Cypress says and immediately starts backing up.
Rae and Sorin back up with him.
Click for info
The Fire Beetle spits a blob of bright glowing red goop, but misses Ari and it falls to the floor. Ari ducks to the side and brings her sword up in a flash for 8 damage, slicing the beetle in half and killing it in one blow.
“Damn!”
Everyone turns.
Rae is patting her pockets and digging through her pack. “I used my last flask on the Gelatinous Cube slime!”
With a ‘I guess it was inevitable’ sigh, Cypress hands Rae one of his empty glass flasks.
“Oooo, thank you,” She rushes forward before the corpse cools down, and Rae-The-Body-Fluid-Pervert slorps some glowing red pustulous ooze into a bottle with a grin.
We’re at an intersection now and it seems like things are going a bit wrong. Mainly, because a Swarm of Centipedes is crawling over Sorin, biting him and tearing at his skin for 14 damage on one side. But also, because on the other side of the T intersection, a Giant Centipede has latched onto Rae by the color bone for 3 damage. She looks on in horrified disgust, as she sees the large throbbing glands behind the head throb and pulse as it pumps poison into her for 9 more damage. (Sarah didn’t like this description and i don’t know why)
Cypress ducks around Ari’s legs and casts Sacred Flame on the Swarm around Sorin. They succeed the DEX save and only take 4 damage. Then, Sorin casts Firebolt and incinerates half the swarm in one go with 7 damage.
Seeing the swarm mostly handled, Ari leaps to her best friend’s aid. She draws her sword, she leaps, she rolls a nat’ 20, she brings the sword down in a wicked ark and slices through the head of the Giant Centipede, leaving the poison sack dripping harmlessly into the air as the body slumps to the floor.
Rae has had enough. She pulls the mandible out of her neck and tosses the head away. She runs over to Sorin and her hands are a blur as she does 4 unarmed damage and takes out half of the half that were left.
“Oh come on!” Rae groans as the swarming centipedes crawl over her arms, biting her for 4 more damage. That is, until Cypress casts another Sacred Flame, turning every last one of them to ash.
“Okay yeah, maybe a rest is a good idea.”
Before we go, we get a good look around at our surroundings. We are in a new corridor with one side well lit (red tinted, but lit) behind a grate, and one end stretching away west, into the darkness.
When we peek inside the grate, we see a decently lit room of red bricks. On the other side of the room is a blank gray stone door, just a slab of stone with a handle. In front of it is a spiraling staircase leading up into the ceiling, and in front of the staircase is a large statue of a man in some kind of headdress with an outstretched hand holding a lantern. [The headdress is actually a large collar and half hood. Years ago, the Church of Shadows priests didn’t paint their faces, but wore these huge intricate head pieces that rotated and always kept half their face hidden in shadow.] The lantern light is the same earthy red tone as the brick walls and floor. It fills the room, feeling warm and gentle. The light reveals several stone sarcophagi arranged in neat rows, spaced out so a family of mourners can gather around each one.
“It’s the Church of Shadows crypt.” Cypress says in a flat voice behind the grate. “When I looked at the map I saw we’d be heading for it.”
“Then the other Gelatinous Cube is just on the other side?”
“To the south yeah,” Cypress confirms pointing to one side, “We either go around through a bunch of sewer corridors, or we find the crank for this grate, and just go through the crypt.”
Everyone stops to think about this for a moment. Thinking about their injuries and what else might be lurking in the dark hallways.
“I think we should go through the crypt.” Sorin says and Ari nods.
Rae looks at the ceiling where the grate slides up, “You wanna go find the crank for this yourself? Go for it, but I am taking a rest.”
Sorina and Ari look at their scratched up arms.
“Yeah, actually a rest sounds like a good idea.”
Cypress thinks for a moment and asks Ari, “You said that Thug room was still cleared out, right?”
“Oh yeah, it was, good idea!”
“It had four hallways leading to it, the other one should be just… down… here” Cypress says as he slowly walks down the hall, examining the stones. “Ah ha!” he points to a few reddish bricks.
With that, we all file into the hallway and into the square room with the round table where we first encountered the Wererat. Sorin takes a seat on the couch and rests his head, Ari and Rae bandages their wounds, and Cypress looks over Ari’s miniature map trying to find where the crank might be.
And we leave off there with a short rest, having just seen into the Church of Shadows crypt, but needing to go somewhere else, what a tantalizing tease!
“Life is pain highness, anyone who says otherwise is selling something."
-The Dread Pirate —Roberts William Goldman, “The Princess Bride (movie)”
Table talk:
The topic of Long Rests vs Short Rests came up. In particular, that races like elves who meditate rather than sleep, do not get to treat a short rest for everyone as a long rest. That would be too ‘OP’ and doesn’t quite fit what's going on. We also briefly went over how Hit Dice work (you have one hit dice per level per day, and can roll as many of those as you want during a short rest) for some of the newer players, this is the first time they have enough hit dice and HP to have to make those decisions.
We also discussed the Cleric Feat of ‘Preserve Life’ as written in the book, it doesn’t seem to have any limiters or caps (once per day, etc.) so i will be digging around to figure out what it needs in order to be balanced out.
