Adventure Log: Rats in the Cellar (Session 1 -- 03/09/13) After traveling for several days, Corinne and the rest of the party, Garv, Kal, and Petril, finally reached a small town. Nameless and run down, the despair of its citizens felt thick in the air. Corinne frowned and pulled the edges of her grey cloak of woven rain closer, as if to ward herself against the despair and grief. Longing for a night of rest in an actual bed, Corinne was disappointed when the rest of the group decided to take up an offer by the local innkeeper to remove an infestation of rats from his cellar. The reward was as much ale as you could drink. Not much of a reward in the young mage's opinion. Foul tasting swill in old wooden mugs used by all manner of loathsome patrons. With a heavy sigh, she followed her allies and descended into the cellar behind Garv and Kal. Petril lagged behind, keeping an eye on the rear. A foul stench of putrid water and rotten wood assaulted her senses, leaving her dazed momentarily. The cellar was filled with all manner of rotting barrels and debris. Behind them, a heavy oaken trapdoor slammed shut and the sound of a bar being placed across it echoed down the stairwell. "Well doesn't that bugger all," she muttered. Kal raced up the steps and tried to break through the barrier, but couldn't seem to even scrape the wood. Petril loosed a blast of eldritch energy upon the trapdoor, but the powerful spell was dissipated without effect. "Naught to do but push onward it seems." Before moving on however, Corinne cast a minor enchantment about herself, causing a shower of silvery rain to fall around her, cleansing her robes and boots of the foul muck underfoot. Garv continued to lead the party onward into a room in even worse condition than the first. Piles of rubble were scattered all over. The halfling storm priest, Kal, decided to shove bits of the rubble around and started a swarm of rats. The battle was soon joined by another swarm and two mongrel ratmen from the corner. Corinne led the attack by conjuring a thick fog of icy mist that oozed up from the cracked earth and stone beneath the rat swarms. Dozens of the tiny rats perished from the attack, diminishing the swarms greatly... but not enough to keep them from being a threat. The others in her adventuring party gave a good accounting for themselves by battle's end, though one of the mongrel ratmen did make his escape to the south. Petril seemed to be suffering from an affliction that caused his body to waste away. I've never come across anything like this, Corinne thought to herself as she watched the warlocks flesh blacken and flake like burnt ash. Before the party could push on, a ringing sound echoed throughout the underground complex and the color drained from the world around them. Vibrant hues were muted and shifted to a blend of grey and white. Dark colors lost their intensity as they grew darker. "This is not good," Petril announced. "I do believe we've just been planeshifted into the Shadowfell." Corinne frowned, upset at not deducing that on her own. "Well, I doubt we're going to make it back in time for dinner now," she surmised. Garv led the party back to the first room within the cellar and found it to be twisted out of shape, having grown larger and more spacious. "This is most odd," Corinne noted to herself with furrowed brow. The trapdoor was still solidly barred and sealed by arcane magic; and so the party returned to exploring the other rooms down beneath this strange inn owned by the malevolent innkeeper. Deeper within the cellar, the party came across a religious symbol on the ground. Kal noted that the symbol was that of the Horned God, a god of disease, pestilence, plagues, and vermin. Rather apropos given the filth about them and the denizens they had slain or driven off. As Garv and Kal came close to the symbol, two creatures more teeth and leggy clawed limbs than flesh appeared in out of thin air around them. Fearing that the symbol would draw in more of the mouthy creatures, Petril darted forward and tried to destroy the symbol on the ground. His attempt was for naught, for the symbol itself morphed and oozed as it shifted into a blackened, tentacled mass of crimson ooze. Petril led the attack with a black curse and a blast of eldritch energy as he backpedaled away from the creatures and then teleported to what he thought was safe refuge behind Kal and Garv. He wasn't able to get away unscathed however. A vicious swipe from the tentacled ooze left a nasty red welt covered with a viscous liquid that bubbled and frothed as it ate away his flesh. The scent of blood drove the maw demons mad and they darted through the party and feast on the warlocks flesh. Corinne cried out in frustration as her careful planning was disrupted. Instead of being able to catch all three aberrations in a freezing cloud of mist and ice, she channeled her anger into a Siren's wrathful song. The powerful song drove the ooze mad and it struck out blindly at one of the maw demons, but left a stripe of acidic ooze on the earth and stone next to the demon instead. Kal stood fast against the maw demons, keeping them at bay while Garv struck out at the tentacled ooze. Between them, they were able to keep Petril and Corinne safe from the monstrous creatures. The storm priest used the last of his healing and then Garv's face crumbled as he struck a mighty blow against the ooze and watched as it split into two copies of itself. "Bloody hell!" Corinne shouted, almost losing her concentration. Had she lost her concentration, the cloud of freezing fog and mist would have dissipated, leaving the party in a dire situation. Fortunately, she recovered from the shock of watching the ooze split in two and was able to sustain the icy mist. The oozes slither and ooze across the ground towards Garv. One of which he is able to destroy with a flattening strike of his hammer. Corinne then conjured a rune engraved sphere of ice that crackled with barely restrained force. A slight movement of her staff sent the sphere hurtling towards the earth and stone behind the ooze and the last maw demon. The explosion of cold and shards of ice ripped into both the creatures, knocking them off balance and forcing them deeper into the bank of freezing fog Corinne had created earlier. The battle was soon over as Garv finished off the ooze with a mighty hammer blow, which appeared to break the summoning spell that had brought the maw demon into the Shadowfell. "I think," Corinne began... "That we should really consider taking a moment to rest after a battle like that." The rest of the party agreed and sought out a place to sit, recuperate, and recover from the variety of wounds inflicted upon them. ... to be continued ...