Rappan Athuk: Throat of Doom

Session played on 3/28

Nick the Pike, Fighter 6 (Me)
Karl, Dwarf 9 (Julia)
Borumar, Thief 9 (Josh)
Darryl, Cleric (NPC)
Biffin, Fighter (NPC)
Cassandra, Sellsword
Cory, Sellsword

After recovering from the last delve, Nick goes looking around for more meatshields hirelings, as well as other helpful items to bring into the dungeon. He’s accosted by a youngling who says his grandpa is interested. Going off to meet him, it turns out that Grandpa Wilsig is a “mystic” of some sort who can, at the very least, knock people out. He charges 50gp a day. Nick agrees.

There’s also a night farm belonging to Edrick the “Naturalist” wizard. Thankfully the old man is not naked, but sells “organic” and “scientifically proven” potions, tinctures, and sachets. Nick buys the available healing potions, and Karl buys the Fire Candles. Edrick does ask (after prompting) that should we happen to acquire some stirge poop (and/or a live specimen or two) he’d appreciate it.

Nick also hires on Leafglad the linkman and Sunkin the sellsword.

Heading to the dungeon, they go directly to the lair of the stirges, but find that there are some giant ants in the room, eating the poop. Nick bottlenecks them in the door while Karl guards the back of the party, especially the old squishy “mystic” (ants are boring and you’ve got it). Only a single sack of stirge droppings were collected. Moving back to the entrance hall, the bag was left as a lure for the pit trap.

The stairs from the fossil room are flanked by a pair of iron cobra statues. Karl uses Nick’s shield to suft down the stairs. The stairs collapse into a ramp, making that easier, but one of the statues animates and follows Karl down. Nick slides after the snake, and together Nick and Karl smash it apart. Ropes are tossed down, and the rest of the party safely joins Karl and Nick. The stairs (now ramp) end in a branching corridor. Following along the branch that they can see a door,beyond which the party finds a large room with a pool in front of a statue of a dragon being ridden by an armored figure with a demonic goat head (helmet?) Checking the pool causes the stone bat on the figure’s shield to fly and attack the party. Darryl smashes the bat out of the air. The chunks of stone slowly begin to make their way back toward the statue. Karl grabs one, but the force of the pull causes it to worm out of his hand. Some coins are recovered from the pool.

Moving further down the hall, the next door leads to a room used to camp, with fairly freshly gnawed bones and a cold campfire. Directly connected to this room was a room with half a dozen gnolls. Wilsig sleeps 3 of them, the others are killed. While most of the party searches the room, Borumar grabs one of the corpses and drags it back to the camp room, and has a snack. It wasn’t tasty. The smell attracted 4 zombies, which he slowly killed. Darryl watched, just in case he needed help.

Adjoining the gnoll’s room was a very stinky room. The party opted not to investigate.

The next room from the camp room was a small square room with “Dam it is alive. Have to sleep, or die” written in charcoal on the wall.

The last door off of the camp room was more gnolls and a pair of hyenas. Wilsig tried to web them, but missed. He then shot out some flaming arrows… which didn’t seem to do much more than lightly crisp the gnolls. Meanwhile Biffin and Darryl tossed in flaming oil, and the gnolls were cut down. Some more minor treasure was recovered.

Feeling rather battered and bruised, the party packed up, and headed back to Zelkor’s Ferry.

There, they hired the gem cutter to try to recut 5 saphines they’d found. He destroyed one, damaged three, and only did a good job on the one. Never gonna hire him again. The stirge poop was dropped off to Edrick who was hoping for more.

Gains: Too little coin
Kills: Iron cobra, gnolls, hyenas, zombies, giant ants
Losses: