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This week’s session was cut a bit short due to Nicu’s player being absent and a couple of very unfortunately-timed critical failures. Also, it was a great deal of combat.
In the third room, there’s a flash of white as one of the creatures dashes across the room and through the floor. The party looks around and finds another one—the one that had an arm hacked off by Roffe, half-collapsed in a pool of its blood. It hisses as they approach and then, inexplicably, attempts to give them puppy-dog eyes. Berendt just shoots it through one of its eyes.
Wondering if the creature is actually susceptible to sunlight, they unblock the windows in the room and (after a brief contest of rock-paper-scissors between the brothers) Berendt drags the creature’s corpse over to the patch of light. Unfortunately he gets some of the creature’s blood on him and is burned by it.
The last room looks untouched.
Satisfied that they’ve gone over the entire upper floor, the party heads back downstairs. They decide to open up all of the shuttered windows and light fires in the fireplaces in the common room and kitchen, in the hopes that scare the creatures. They light the one in the common room, head into the kitchen, and when they return to the common room, the fire’s been put out. They go back into the kitchen to watch the fire (which is still going) in the hopes of spotting the creatures. They don’t see them, but they hear them all around them. Finally, they give up on the fire and decide that there’s only one more place to look—the cellar.
The cellar can be gotten to by stairs outside and they wisely decide to take the hinges off the doors so they can’t be locked behind them. The floor of the cellar is covered with filth and is generally disgusting. Several of the walls are lined with shelves, on which there are a few jars of moldy preserves. There’s a pile of boxes stacked precariously up in one corner—proof that the creatures cannot actually fly, even though they can walk through walls. Henrik goes to shove the boxes over and one of the creatures leaps out at him. Fortunately, the cloth armor he’s wearing, thin as it is, manages to block the claws. They kill the thing easily and continue to explore the cellar.
There’s a low groaning coming from the other corner. The party investigates and finds a badly wounded, unconscious man and a terrified child, probably another street urchin who looks to be maybe seven or so. The child is in complete shock and not speaking at all. Lucien and Treneli tell him that the monsters are gone and he’s safe now. Unfortunately, the Schvarzkopf brothers have their hoods down so the kid sees them in all of their hideously tattooed glory and starts screaming. He is not calmed down when Roffe says in his horribly gravelly voice, “We are the things the monsters fear.” They assume that the child was trying to take some of the food that was left for the creatures when he was taken; he nods assent when Lucien asks, but still doesn’t talk. Fortunately, Treneli manages to coax the child outside, despite the fact they don’t share a language; on the way out, the child becomes an octopus (not literally, but you can never tell in a fantasy game) and starts clinging onto her. Meanwhile, Henrik begins his prayer of healing.
Treneli looks around for a townsperson to call for help and manages to call an old woman over. Through gestures, she communicates that she wants the guard. The woman makes a “one moment” sign and scampers off.
Down in the cellar, Berendt finds a small arch, painted in blood, on the packed-earth wall. They destroy the wall in response and then decide to go whole-hog and knock down all the other boxes and tear down all the shelves, so that the creatures can’t easily get up to the ceiling again.
Henrik finishes his prayer. The man’s wounds are scabbed over but he’s still out of it so they decide to carry him up the stairs. Unfortunately, Bad Roll #1 means that Lucien drops the man halfway up, injuring him further. First aid does nothing and Lucien tries to force a healing potion down his throat, but succeeds only at making the man choke to death. Lucien feels terribly guilty.
They continue upstairs and meet up with Treneli and the child just in time for several guards to come down the road. Lucien tries to explain what happened, but Bad Roll #2 occurs and the guards just don’t buy his story. They make the party drop their weapons and march them to the prison.
Upon finding out that they were in the inn supposedly on orders from the mayor himself, the head guard leaves the party under the eyes of two others and goes to confirm it. Here is when Lucien’s player realizes that he had a good luck charm that comes into play as soon as he rolls a critfail, so when the guard comes back a while later, he tells them that the mayor has backed them up but that they should consider leaving town sooner rather than later. The party asks what they should do about the kid; the guard says they can probably find a poorhouse for the kid but he’s just a street urchin so really, who cares?
They decide to go back to the inn, but realize they can’t leave now—they still have to break the captured Vistani out of prison as Nicu wanted.
***
At this point we break for the night, since two critical fails in a row plus the next plot heavily revolving around Nicu mean that it’s probably best we don’t continue; we decide to spend the rest of the evening playing Cards Against Humanity instead. It becomes obvious that they’re likely to adopt the kid, thus continuing this group’s decision to adopt almost anything I throw at them. In my last Dungeon Fantasy game, they adopted an entire tribe of goblins, taking them as Dependents.
Next time: Jailbreak?
