Session 5 - Claws of the Lioness, The Demon Waters, Pt 1

This session marked the beginning of a twice-monthly Monday night game which will form the core play group for Under the Shadow of the Winter Queen, the open-world multi-group campaign set in the Exarchate of Alsudhvi. 

Our dramatis personae for the night:

• The Thief - Randar the Keen of Ina-Zhunawl, Footpad and Lockbreaker - Played by Nathaniel
• The Paladin of St. Faruin - Alsuna of Vlamesht, Bulwark and Vanguard - Played by Sophia
• The Paladin of St. Gogar - Gogar of Eda, Bulwark and Temple Guard - Played by PJ
• The Barbarian - Adelmar of Adalsted, Hunter and Sea-Rover - Played by Jonathan
• The Dwarven Craftpriest - Moriana of Beasthold, Dwarven Craft-catechist and Reliquary Guardian - Played by Andrea

This adventure begins on the Third Day of the First Month (September) of the 251st year of the Vikarian Empire.

When last we left our heroes...

Brought together from disparate corners of the Duchy of Alsudhvi, our party of Ratcatchers met literally in the common room of the Guildhouse of the Claws of the Lioness, about five minutes before their swearing-in ceremony. Low on gold and/or hungry for adventure, these five individuals have joined themselves to The Claws of the Lioness, a Free Company which is "duly licensed by the will of his grace, Duke Uvias, to operate within the Duchy of Aesta-Suvash." With a grunt, Quartermaster Bamavar directed them to a board on which were posted a number of bounties and other jobs which sworn members of the Company (which now included the five of them) could undertake for payment:

After a bit of debate, the companions decided to head just up the road to The Sign of the Eagle, a once-prosperous inn there in Aesta-Suvash, since the problem looked easy enough to solve. Once they arrived and began questioning the innkeeper, Ranset, they quickly realized that something was amiss. The inn was in shambles, plagued not so much by poisonings as by a series of strange tragedies and mishaps (of an arcane or supernatural sort) befalling the inn's various patrons. Ranset suspected that Halbrand, the barbarian owner of the inn across the street (The Blacksmith's Revenge) had been poisoning his food (and Randar, the Thief, was all for murdering Halbrand and seeing if that solved anything) but upon investigation, this theory just wasn't adding up. Finally, Moriana the Dwarf narrowed down the various strange occurrences to a single unifying strand: all of the patrons who had disappeared or died in this way had ordered The Eagle's Claw, the house wine Ranset himself produced using the same blessed waters from an underground stream which his father and his father before him had used. The prosperity of The Sign of the Eagle had always been tied to this especially delicious and potent wine. 

Just then, one of the inn's few customers (an out-of-towner who had, yes, ordered the wine) began to cough violently, keeling over as a strange creature -- a small, rotting, bipedal tree, covered in slime, with glowing red eyes -- crawled out of the dead man's mouth. The party immediately attacked the creature, Moriana knocking it across the common room with a blow from her Morning Star before Randar pinned it to the wall with a bolt from his crossbow, killing it. 

Randar wrapped the creature in a towel and put it in his pack in case they wanted to examine it later, and the party decided they'd better head down to the basement to have a look at the wine cellar, and this "blessed" stream that ran through it.

Down in the cellar, the water looked clear and clean enough, but to the vision of the Paladins (both of whom have Detect Evil as an at-will ability) it glowed with the obvious corruption of Chaos. Since the underground stream ran right under the city, the companions decided to go back upstairs (to buy torches and other equipment) and then follow the channel of the stream to see where it led. 

When they emerged from the long, dark tunnel, they found themselves in marshlands a mile or two north of the city. The corruption of Chaos seemed to be even stronger here, and the Paladins led the party forward to its source, which (after a few hours) turned out to be an ancient temple rising up out of the marshlands. Although none of the companions recognized the temple (or when it was built, or by whom), it was obviously very old. They took some time to reconnoiter around the structure and found that its exterior was about 350 x 175 or so feet. It had two entrances -- one, on the southern side (the direction from which the party had approached) was a great rotted door, some fifteen feet up, accessible by a crumbling stone stairway. The other entrance was on the north side, and at once time had matched, but the doorway had collapsed and the stairway had long side crumbled away under moss and lichen. Additionally, there were four 10' wide drainage pipes, one on each side of the rectangular temple, which alternated spewing forth polluted waters into the marsh about once an hour.

After deliberating, the party decided to try the front door. Climbing the stair, they pushed through the rotted wood into a large chamber, covered in ancient bas reliefs and mosaics. Before they could study these (and see what clues they might hold to the rest of the temple), Randar (the Thief) noticed what appeared to be a spray of coins and gems hovering in the air just a few feet in front of him. 

He stepped forward to grab them -- and was immediately attacked by a gelatinous cube! He managed to leap nimbly aside (making his Surprise roll) and the rest of the party fanned out to attack. Randar it the cube with a crossbow bolt, and Adelmar the Barbarian managed to sheer off a chunk of it with his axe before being enveloped by the strange abomination. Alsuna tried attacking it with her torch, and Moriana got her morning star stuck in it. Randar managed to hit it with another bolt from his crossbow before Alsuna, switching to her warhammer, finished it off with an upswing that sent pieces of goo splattering across the bas reliefs in the backdrop. 

As it disintegrated, Adelmar fell out, gasping for air, and the floor of the temple rang with the clatter of coins and gems. The companions scooped these up, before turning to the mosaics and bas reliefs to study them...

Monsters killed:

• Demi-dryad
• Gelatinous Cube

Treasure recovered:

• Citrine Gem (50 GP)
• Tourmaline Gem (100 GP)
• Topaz Gem (500 GP)
• 1000 Electrum Coins (500 GP, 1 Stone)
• Vial of rare perfume (150 GP)
• An unidentified Potion (now in Randar's keeping)

Notes: Evening is fast-approaching. The PC's will need to rest for the night in 2 Turns.