After a 4 week gap, we resumed the campaign last Monday. This session the players at last solved the mystery of the floating pools in the Clacking Caverns, and found their way down to Level 4.
You can read earlier posts here. This post contains spoilers for Scarlet Citadel.
The adventurers enjoy some downtime in Redtower before returning to the Scarlet Citadel.
Tunde recruits teenage misfit Gabe as her apprentice and sets him to work doing chores in her hut in the forest.
Clairmont makes more continual light globes and gives them to poor families in the village
There are new magic items for sale at the Treasure Chest – randomly generated using the tables in Vault of Magic. Tricksy purchases +1 studded leather armour and eyes of minute seeing, Tunde buys a rowdy’s club and a tailor’s clasp, and Clairmont buys a vial of golden dawn. The characters also purchase 500 feet of silk rope from the Block and Tackle and 4 potions of water breathing from Zula.
As Redtower gets ready to celebrate New Year’s Dawn, the characters remind the townsfolk to leave the traditional basket of food out the night before to avoid angering the Holly King again.
Once they’ve welcomed the New Year, the party return to the Scarlet Citadel, defeating a pair of dire owlbears lurking near to the tunnel to Level 3. They find a bezoar inside one of their stomachs.
Back in the Clacking Caverns, Maya drinks a potion of water breathing, dons Clairmont’s gloves of swimming and climbing, and gets ready to enter the lighter floating pool. Pop, Clairmont’s familiar, goes in first in salmon form but is immediately attacked by a swarm of quippers and winks out.
Maya dives in and retrieves a fish-shaped cylinder from the sea bed 200 feet below. The other three team up to haul her out with a rope as she is gnawed on by bloodthirsty quippers. Inside the cylinder are a diamond, two emeralds, and a golden disk marked with the dwarven rune for “safe entrance”.
After some discussion, Maya goes back into the water. This time she swims up to the surface where she catches sight of a tropical island. When a shark approaches she punches it in the gills and flees back to the cavern.
Thinking that the disk might offer protection against the automaton in the Clockwork Tomb, Tricksy and Clairmont crawl down the tunnel. Unfortunately their theory is soon proved wrong as the automaton unleashes a jet of fire at them. The adventurers beat a hasty retreat and head for the hole in floor of the owlbear stable.
After Skully (Tunde’s familiar) has peered down the hole and Clairmont has dropped a pebble with light cast on it, Maya climbs down the rope ladder. There are thousands of bats in the cavern below, all seemingly watching her. The others follow her down as quietly as they can.
As the group attempts to sneak into the next cave, several dog-sized sabre-toothed bats swoop down to attack. Clairmont casts silence to confuse them, but then steps back into the next chamber – a vast cavern with thousands of bats wheeling through the gloom in a frenzy.
A gout of fire erupts from the far wall, illuminating the image of a huge bat draped in jewellery, and a voice rings out: “Strangers! Approach the sanctum!”
Two derro escort the adventurers around the ledge above the cavern floor to a shrine dedicated to Camazotz, Demon Lord of Bats. Here they meet Gilsfeyr, leader of the bat cult, who asks them to carry a message of alliance to Kurgorom, another derro leader. Together, the derro and the characters can surely bring down Imortra the Debased and her fiendish servants!
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Main image by David Auden Nash
Richard Green | Game Designer 