Scarlet Citadel Session 45 – Collateral Clerical Damage

Here’s the latest write up from the Scarlet Citadel, in which the characters continued to battle Imortra the Debased and her allies, including her deadly lich hound. Quite rightly, these terrifying foes had their stats toned down in the 2023 update to Tome of Beasts, but the Roll20 version of Scarlet Citadel I’m using has the full strength version 💀

You can read earlier posts here. This post contains spoilers for Scarlet Citadel.

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Last session, the characters were in mid-combat. Imortra vanished but three devils emerged from the statues on the portico.

Tunde joins the fray, having drunk a potion of augmented reality. Luckily, the side effects are 10 temporary hp.

Clairmont and Maya both breathe in spores emitted by the mindrot thralls, but don’t suffer any immediate ill effects. Clairmont casts spirit guardians and the adventurers take down both bearded devils and one of the thralls. Unfortunately, the other thrall’s acid breath is powerful enough to reduce Clairmont to 0 hp. He falls unconscious and the spirit guardians vanish, but he is quickly brought round.

To make matters worse, Imortra returns, casting cloudkill and then blight, killing two of her prisoners and taking down Maya and Tunde. Tricksy brings Maya round with a potion, then Maya heals Tunde, but Clairmont succumbs to the cloudkill which is moving towards stairs.

When Imortra’s pet lich hound returns, the characters decide it’s time to flee. Tunde brings Clairmont round and drags him out of the cloudkill. The adventurers withdraw, pursued by the barbed devil and the lich hound.

Clairmont casts spirit guardians again after failing to banish the devil but the lich hound is snapping at Maya’s heels, trying to pull her down to gut rip her. Meanwhile, Tunde casts phantasmal force, creating an illusion of a planetar which keeps the devil busy.

Clairmont is at the vanguard of the group as they enter the derro village cavern. He bellows, “Get out the way!” as he moves forward, but Kurgorom and the other derro don’t have time to react and are caught inside his spirit guardians.

Injured by the spirit guardians and angry with the characters for their betrayal, Kurgorom and her minions flee to their village, while Gilsfeyr’s pariahs make a run for it back to bat cult territory.

The party carry on towards the exit, entering the fungus farm, where more of Kurgorom’s dements are caught in the spirit guardians. They fire crossbows at Clairmont, but all miss.

Deciding they don’t want the derro to reach Gilsfeyr, Tunde and Clairmont kill the two surviving runners. The characters climb up the ledge leading to the large bat cave. Just before they enter, Clairmont drops his spirit guardians before he can do anymore harm to his “allies”.

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Main image by David Auden Nash