Ep1 Session 1 Play Summary

Characters Present

Colin - Colin the Holy Warrior

Tim - Cognor the Wizard

Tom - Icarus the Elf Scout

Summary

The characters had traveled to Gryphonburg, the capital of the Western Marches, where adventure and fortune are said to abound.  The inn that was to be their starting point, The Dancing Goat, was found to be locked up, and apparently abandoned.  Other than that the inn appeared to be solidly built and clean.  Shortly after they were approached by a portly middle aged man who introduced himself as Lee, the new proprietor of the Dancing Goat.  He was dressed in  fine velvet with gold braid, marking him as a member of a rich merchant family.  He then went on to explain that his uncle Merle had been running this inn on behalf of the family, but had disappeared.  He had found the place locked on his arrival and had entered to find the foul smell of the sewer and decomposition coming from the cellar.  He dared not open the cellar door to investigate as giant rats are known to swarm in the under maintained sewers of the city and he had heard scratching and movement coming from the other side.  The characters agreed to help Lee clear his cellar of rats for 8 copper per rat head as well as a weeks free room and board once the cellar was cleared. 

Upon entering, the characters were greeted by the stench  as described by Lee.  The front door opened up on to a large Tap room, maybe 50 x 60 in dimension.  Apart from the smell, the tap room of the inn was well made, and clean, with good solid oak furniture and a large bar. 

The characters went straight to work, Lee led them to the cellar door, which was a very heavy oak door with black iron bands to reinforce it.  They realised that they had no light, so Cognor improvised by creating a globe of fire and concentrating to move the fire with the party.   They could see that stairs followed the wall left from the door down to another landing, taking a right turn down to the floor of the cellar.  The cellar was noted to be heavily web infested. 

Upon reaching the floor of the cellar, Colin started to move some of the heavy webs aside with his greatsword.  At this point, a giant spider launched itself from the webs and attempted to bite Colin.  Within a second, more spiders were moving in on the party. 

The fight was concluded with Colin having taken 1 vicious bite to each leg, with acidic spider venom taking a further toll on his health.  Colin was not in good shape. 

The characters continued to explore the cellar, while Colin attempted to patch up his wounds a bit.  The cellar turned out to be as large as the room above, with 6 heavy stone pillars arrayed in a 3 x 2 grid holding the ceiling up. Cognor had found unlit torches in sconces on the pillars an went about lighting them with his fire.   A junk pile of crates, webs, furniture, barrels and dirt was found in the opposite corner, piled half way up to the ceiling.  An opening was spotted in the wall behind the junk pile.  Cognor attempted to move some of the furniture aside, and was halted by a warning from Icarus, whose danger sense was ringing alarms, just before becoming dangerously entangled in the webs.  At that, an enormous spider launched itself out of the debris at Cognor.  Colin halted his first aid attempts to face the beast, but had a way to travel across the room.  Icarus started raining arrows upon the beast, but ultimately it was two heavy blasts from Cognor's Flame jet at close range and a lucky dodge by Cognor that destroyed the spider.

Cognor utilised his flame  to burn off the webs, where the corpses of 40 giant rats were found.  These were swiftly decapitated and returned to Lee for their agreed reward, plus a bit more for the spiders.