Scarlet Citadel Session 62 – The Horror in the Pool

Here’s what happened in last week’s Scarlet Citadel session. Now that the characters have explored this final stretch of the Black River, they can’t really put off their meeting with Gellert any longer….

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

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After a long rest in the mushroom cave, Tricksy blows his whistle to summon the Boatman. The characters ask him to take them under the stone bridge and drop them off at the next landing. 

Before they set off Tricksy sends Yaffle ahead to scout. The owl makes it past the stone bridge before something lashes out from below the surface of the Black River and the familiar winks out. Tunde is watching and describes what she sees as a “tentacle of hair.”

When the boat reaches the area, a woman in the river grabs hold of the boat’s gunwale. She claims to have escaped from the fish folk and begs the characters to rescue her. The adventurers are suspicious and rightly so – this is a drowned maiden, an undead creature, named Solnis. 

Solnis attacks Tunde with her long hair, pulling the witch into the water and dragging her down beneath the surface, then attempts to kiss her. Clairmont uses water walk to rescue Tunde, but he is grabbed next, losing 4 points of Strength to the maiden’s draining kiss. Maya uses the bronze fish she recovered from the floating pool in the Clacking Caverns to hook Clairmont’s belt and haul him out of the water, then she too is pulled in. She casts freedom of movement and escapes Solnis’s clutches. Clairmont casts water walk on the rest of the party so they can fight more easily, standing on the surface of the Black River. 

Next, the maiden tries to grab Tricksy. She misses with all three of her attacks at first, before successfully dragging the elf into the river. Maya dives in, attacking with her axe, while Tunde tries to use power word fling to throw the maiden into the air. Eventually Tricksy stabs her with his rapier, killing her with a sneak attack.

Maya calls for divine intervention from Mavros to restore Clairmont’s lost Strength and succeeds! She’s promises her god a new cathedral after she’s been on her long overdue pilgrimage to the Seat of Mavros. The party takes a short rest on the boat to recover some of their lost hit points.

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The boat continues along the Black River. As the vessel approaches an arrow slit in the east wall, an invisible Tricksy scouts ahead, spotting a deep one with a blowgun. He sneaks up close and puts a piece of cheese into the tube to block it. Then, he flies around to the next arrow slit and does the same thing.

When the boat floats past, Maya casts flame strike through the arrow slit, damaging the deep ones inside the room, who find their blowguns are blocked with cheese. The boat drops the adventurers off at the landing so they can go through the door and finish off the fish folk.

In the chamber to the north they find baskets of treasure covered in a tarry substance and vile robes made from bits of sea creatures and human skin, complete with tortured faces. Tricksy puts a set of robes on; the others decide they’d rather not. 

Hearing chanting beyond the eastern door, Tricksy opens it, joining in the weird chanting of the deep ones inside in an effort to fool them into thinking he’s a fellow cultist. When he starts to cast a spell, the game is up! The deep one high priest cuts the throat of his comrade, spilling blood into the dark pool in the centre of the chamber and the surface starts to bubble furiously. Clairmont casts fireball, severely wounding the deep ones.

At the end of the round a terrible tentacled aberration appears from the pool – a shoggoth! It grabs hold of Renry, delivering 120 hp damage with its four attacks, before absorbing the hapless warrior into its body. Maya is struck by a lightning bolt from the high priest, but casts banishment, sending the shoggoth to a demiplane. Clairmont casts scorching ray, killing the high priest. The characters fall back to the dock and escape in the boat just as the banishment spell ends.

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After making it safely to the dock in the Clattering Caverns, they return by boat to the mushroom cavern. Here they spend a couple of days while Clairmont casts enough stone shape spells to seal off the entrance. His promise kept, the group return to Redtower to rest and recuperate.

Drinks with Gellert await next time they return to the Scarlet Citadel….

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Main image by David Auden Nash