Here’s the write up for our 22nd Scarlet Citadel session. I didn’t post this one last week as the PCs were still in the middle of the river trip described below and I didn’t want to give anything away before the game.
You can read earlier posts here. This post contains spoilers for Scarlet Citadel.
Farthrum, Maya, and Tunde hire a river trader named Sandor, captain of a boat called the Bright Drifter, to transport them downriver to Triolo. Later that day they are joined by Cauldvyr and Clairmont who has paused work restoring the dilapidated temple of Khors in Redtower and has sent a message to his superiors in Cronepisht to update them on progress.
That night, the characters have a few drinks with a trio of friendly Septime spice merchants heading to Zobeck, named Genarro, Silvia and Tommaso, and learn some useful information about the political situation in Triolo. Before going to bed, Tunde leaves his cat familiar watching the storage room where the characters’ loot is being kept.
Just before dawn, Tunde is awakened by his cat. Three people in the courtyard are loading the party’s treasure onto their mules Bill and Fred. Looking out the window, Tunde is surprised to see herself, Farthrum, and Maya down below. Realising these must be impostors, she shouts to awaken the others and jumps out the first floor window to arrive on the scene more quickly.
The three thieves in the courtyard are indeed impostors – they are doppelgängers posing as the characters. This leads to a very entertaining battle in which it isn’t clear exactly who is who and more than one PC ends up attacking one of their friends, thinking they were striking a doppelgänger.
Eventually, the three doppelgängers are killed and the characters get their stuff back. Then, they have an argument with the landlord over the bar bill rung up by the impostors the previous night, but persuade him (forcefully) into letting them off the hook.
Soon afterwards, the characters board the Bright Drifter and witness a mysterious crate, stamped with a black vulture symbol, being loaded aboard. Maya tries to persuade Sandor to tell her about the crate but he remains tight lipped. When she presses him, he threatens to kick them off the boat.
Intrigued, Tunde casts detect magic on the crate but the spell reveals nothing. Much later, when everyone is asleep, her cat familiar hears a noise from the crate in the dead of night.
The next couple of days floating down the river are uneventful, but on the fourth day, Sandor tells the characters they are getting close to Silver Lake, home of a terrible monster that is rarely seen, but has been known to attack riverboats. Sure enough, soon afterwards, the monster – an aalpamac (Tome of Beasts 2) appears and attacks the ship. Clairmont casts water walking on the characters to make it easier for them to fight the huge monster, and Maya kills it after Tunde first sends Bill and Fred to sleep.
Later that night, there is another noise from the crate….
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Richard Green | Game Designer 
Sleep turns out to be very useful for pacifying the domestic animals at the beginning of combat so they don’t panic and add to the chaos.
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Very true!
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