Session Logs

The Hook

A few days before the Founder's Day Festival, Tamily Tanderveil — the peg-legged owner of the Otari Fishery — gathered a band of unlikely volunteers. Something had been creeping up through a new hole in her cellar and making off with her fish, night after night. With a shipment of rare exotic fish due before the festival and the town guard away chasing highwaymen, she offered 10 gold each to anyone willing to venture below.

A would-be dragon-slayer named Franz Frangelico swept in, declared the culprit was merely rats, and stormed off when no chimera or dragon was on offer. That left eight: Finn the thief-turned-alchemist, Corpi the devout follower of the Raven Queen, Herald the talking rat and out-of-work chef, Shiro the reclusive animist, Jaja the taco-cart cook, Rygel of the notable Starwing family with Vega his construct eidolon, and Beans the sexy twink of a circus performer.

Before anyone ventured below, Tamily poured coffee for the whole crew — she doesn't drink anymore, having put her pirate days firmly behind her — and proudly declared herself the first to ever have coffee. She was left in open-mouthed shock when Herald calmly produced an espresso of his own.

Into the Cellar

Jaja was the first to descend. The party found the first room in disarray — crates and boxes burst open, their contents scavenged. Herald crouched low and spotted something telling: claw marks left by a reptilian humanoid, not a rodent. Beans and Jaja slipped quietly toward the back to hide in the shadows.

That's when the rats came. A tide of them poured out of the hole, tumbling over the heroes and swarming the room. Because Rygel and Vega share their vital essence, the pair took dangerous, mounting damage — until Finn saved them both with a well-aimed healing vial. With the swarm broken, Rygel and Corpi patched one another up, and Jaja, ever the opportunist, scavenged some usable meat from the carnage.

The Descent

Beyond the room, a cliff dropped away into darkness. Shiro's light cantrip revealed a cave dotted with softly glowing mushrooms. Shiro sent the spirit familiar Pizuzu floating ahead to scout — and it returned with an unwelcome discovery: a giant spider's lair below.

Jaja and Beans were reluctant to climb down, arguing the rats had surely been the fish thieves. But Herald reminded them of the claw marks above — something else was still down here, and it wasn't finished.

The Spider's Lair

The party rappelled down the cliff and pressed into the lair, where a giant spider immediately loosed webs to snare them — but every shot went wide.. As they closed in to attack it, a second spider dropped from the shadows behind them, catching the group in a pincer.

Mid-fight, everyone was struck by a sudden, visceral vision — Rygel, dead on the cavern floor. They shook it off to find him untouched and whole. A trick of the mind, perhaps... or the unholy energies of this place reaching out to them.

With both spiders slain, the party found a grim clue in the webbing: a dead kobold, one of the underground dragon-kin whose people have long clashed with Otari. From his body they recovered a healing potion and a fine short sword.

The Barricade

Further down the hall stood a crude barricade, dark unholy energy seeping through its gaps. The party smashed through it loudly — and were answered by moaning and banging from the room beyond.

The Burial Vault

The corridor wound down into an ancient burial vault, lit by a strange blue crystal. Alcoves lined the walls, each holding a rotten wooden coffin, and a raised platform at the center bore a stone sarcophagus. Tiny undead spiders and beetles — animated exoskeletons — skittered aimlessly across the floor. The whole place felt profoundly wrong.

Corpi prayed to the Raven Queen, calling down a blessing on the party for the fight against the restless dead. Vega tore open a coffin and smashed the zombie inside; Jaja finished it with a brutal thrust of his sword. Finn charged in with a torch, hoping to set a coffin alight — but a skeleton burst free before he could. Soon the vault was crawling with undead, and the heroes found many of their blows strangely ineffective against the animated bones.

Still, they prevailed, cutting down every last one. In the aftermath, Jaja stripped the fallen skeletons of their bones to use as toothpicks, while Beans swiftly plucked the glowing crystal from the wall — though Shiro was quick to note it served no purpose beyond casting light.

Rewards

Encounter	XP
Rats in the Cellar	67
Descending the Cliff	10
The Spider's Lair	45
Breaching the Barricade	10
The Burial Vault	100
Total	232

Loot recovered: a healing potion, a fine short sword, and an everlight crystal.