Here we are in the bustling city of Cian!
The adventurers are walking back towards their inn (the Clumsy Archer), and are looking for a place to grab some dinner. Zook tells his dog, Maeve, to sniff what smells interesting (bold choice, to entrust your dinner to what a dog finds appealing to sniff), but she sniffs at a woman walking near them on the street and growls. The woman looks over and asks what's wrong with the dog. The characters don't have a good answer, but they do worry a little. Dogs are good judges of character.
A woman in light armor and with a crossbow on her back walks over to ask what's going on. Zook recognizes the insignia on her shoulder; she's a Strike, one of five city guards posted on a section of the walls. Since she's down here, she's probably not on shift yet. The barked-at woman says that this dog just started growling at her, and then walks off into a store. The Strike questions Zook (and Maeve immediately calms down and accepts scritches), and the group of them start to chat.
She introduces herself as Silé, and is very interested to meet the adventurers. She points them to a nearby shop to get a pie for dinner, and joins them, as she doesn't go on shift until the night-bell rings. She is especially interested to talk to Zook, as she's studying wizardry herself - she finds it useful to work from scrolls, as having the spells "fixed" as she learns them helps ("also it's just so many hand-waves!"). Zook encourages her to keep at it, and Aisling asks if she's intending to adventure when she learns magic. She says she isn't sure, she never really got the travel bug, but maybe, at least for a while?
She tells them a little more about the city and mentions a Delver (one of the investigators in the city's authority) named Bláthnaid - a tiefling ("can't miss her, she has that indigo skin and those horns!") ranger who was an adventurer but lost her party in the eastern swamps. Aisling says she remembers hearing about this, that the party wound up sinking into the bogs and becoming lost, but Clara says she heard that a necromancer raised the bog-mummies up and had them march out. Silé doesn't know for sure.
Checking the time, Silé realizes she needs to head to the wall, and so bids them good night. But just as she stands up, a loud bell starts clanging from the northwestern wall - an alarm bell! Silé informs the characters of such and charges off into the crowd. Dara shoves the rest of her pie into her mouth, Zook polishes off his drink, and the heroes are off!
They can move through the crowds more easily than a lot of others - Zook and Clara are small (and Clara is nimble enough to dodge around people). Aisling climbs a staircase to try to get a better vantage point, but there's a big domed building in the way of whatever is happening. She can see people crowding around the wall, though.
Dara simply turns into a hawk and flies over the dome, perching to see what's happening. At the base of the wall, she sees a building with an opening on one side. She can see running water below; this must lead into the river. To her horror, she sees a huge, quadrupedal monster with two spiked tentacles and a maw of huge fangs pull itself out of that aperture! It roars and then lashes out with a tentacle, wrapping up a fleeing bystander, and before Dara can react, it devours him!
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| RAR! |
Dara drops to the ground and changes to her normal form, and throws an Entangle spell under the monster, trying to slow it down and give people time to run. She spots a man in armor rushing in, drawing a sword, and figures him to be another Strike.
Meanwhile, Zook and Clara are closing the distance as best they can. Aisling jumps down to street level and runs, dodging the crowd by wall-running around some of them. Silé is doing her best to keep up, but she is not nearly as experienced in crises as the heroes.
The monster lumbers forward, tearing itself free of the entangling roots, and lashes out its tentacles at Dara. The first one misses (thanks to Zook's prophecy magic, not that Dara knows it) but the second one digs into her flesh and wraps her up.
Zook arrives on the scene and hurls magic missiles at the creature. Clara rolls up and socks the monster in the jaw, and Barry, the Strike with the sword, nods to Zook and charges in. Silé arrives and fires a crossbow bolt at it, but it misses.
As they fight, the heroes notice something strange - they can hear the monster's thoughts. It's not thinking anything profound or even displaying particular intelligence; HUNGER. RAGE. PAIN. DARKNESS. Dara summons a flame blade and the monster drops her (OW HOT), but it lashes out again and wraps up both Dara and Clara (DELICIOUS). It bites Clara's shoulder and she feels her arm start to go numb - this thing is venomous.
Zook hits it with another set of missiles and Barry stabs it. Dara, badly injured, turns into a crocodile and bites it (WHAT). Clara struggles to get free, but can't quite manage at first. Silé hits it with a bolt ("Hey, I got it!"), and Aisling finally arrives, throwing a cloud of daggers the back of the creature in a calculated gamble (OW MY BUTT).
Clara wriggles free and retreats; she's one good bite away from being devoured, and she's come close to that before. The Croco-Dara chomps on the creature's tentacle, and it lashes against her (AS I DIE I WANT ONLY TO EAT THIS THING), but the cloud of daggers finishes it off. It collapses, dead, and the bystanders cheer!
Two more Strikes arrive from the north, and Barry asks where the hell they were. Silé tells the characters their names (Aodhan and Imogen), as well as a fifth one arriving from the southeast (Ronan). Ronan tells them that they couldn't get through the crowds; the only reason they were even in the area was because the shift hadn't begun. Barry tells Ronan to sound the all clear and then take Silé and get folks calmed down. He tells the other two to help him check the outflow - there might be another one of these things.
Zook goes with them, and a moment later (after quaffing some healing potions and casting some spells), the others join them. There's still some blockage in the outflow (which, remember, had been a problem of late), but with some better light and some poking, they realize that this blockage happened deliberately, and clearly from human interference. Aisling remembers hearing stories about this creature; it's called an "otyugh", and it's attracted to offal and refuse, but it'll eat pretty much anything organic. She never heard anything about the weird telepathic broadcast, though, but maybe that just didn't make it into the stories.
So maybe someone stopped up the pipes to cause the waste blockage that attracted the creature? But why? Barry thanks the characters for their help and tells Imogen and Aodhan to stick around and help him clear the rest of the blockage (this would prove to be a mistake), while the heroes leave and go in search of baths. Fortunately, Aisling and Dara found a bathhouse yesterday!
The proprietor gives them a discount because, y'know, they just killed a monster. Freshly cleaned, they head into town to celebrate. They find a tavern and Aisling plays (and earns a little coin), Zook does some magic tricks (and largely earns indifference; he's a talented wizard but apparently not much of a showman), and Clara avails herself of the drinks that the citizens want to buy them.
Dara, however, is suspicious - who was that woman that Maeve growled at earlier? And who blocked up the pipes? Clearly something is going on. She turns into an owl and flies around the city, looking for anything odd, and winds up back near the sanitation station where the battle happened. She sees Barry, Imogen, and Aodhan walking away from it, and it strikes her odd - aren't they supposed to be on shift, like on the walls? She follows, and they enter a shop. Moments later, three other people arrive severally. She flies to the back of the building and listens in...
"...mostly successful today. We need to be careful of them. If you have the chance, pierce their kidneys."
"Would rather pierce more than-"
"Keep it under control, you two. We don't want a repeat of the manor. We'll meet up tomorrow."
The six of them leave, mostly in groups, but one of them goes off by himself. Dara gets ahead of him, changes back to her elf form, and stumbles toward him, drunkenly singing. He asks if she's all right, and she says she's celebrating the victory over the monster! She invites him to come drinking with them, and he is initially reluctant, but then she casts a charm spell on him. He agrees and she leads him to the tavern where her friends are gathered.
He tells her he's going to hit the privy before they go in, and Dara goes in, gathers her friends, and explains what she saw. The four of them decide to go back to the sanitation building, since that's where they saw the Strikes last; a check of the privy reveals no sign of the stranger Dara brought along.
Back at the smelly building, Aisling sees something glint off her light from the pipe. She prods it with a hook...and pulls out a corpse. Barry, his throat slit, his armor and sword missing.
Zook and Dara go out to find a guard (they realize that using the buddy system will be key here). They find a Posted guard, who summons a Strike - Ronan slides down off the rope ("I'm getting too old to do that"). They show him the body, and Ronan fights through his grief and says he needs to tell Barry's wife, but the heroes remind him that the doppelgangers might be watching and they know they're trying to copy Strikes. Ronan has two Posted guards take the body into the domed building and guard it, and at Aisling's suggestion, sets a code word ("Muire"). And then they go and find Beren, one of the Sworn (the handpicked elite warriors of Cian).
Beren is a halfling, and is sitting at a patio tavern quaffing a very large ale. They tell him the situation, as well as their finding that sleep spells don't affect doppelgangers, so casting one can be a handy and harmless way to detect them. Beren thanks them and says that he needs to raise an alarm - internally, no point in panicking the whole city. But he has to inform the other Sworn, the Queen, and the Voice. He gives the characters a bronze seal and tells them that these will grant them the authority of a Strike for the citizens, and then goes off into the city.
Ronan asks them to accompany him, and leads them to a set of buildings used for housing. They wait and listen while he knocks, and speaks to the woman who answers. "Muire. I have to tell you something. Are the kids asleep?"
The heroes stand by quietly. Sometimes adventuring is quaffing ale in a tavern and glorious battle. Sometimes it's...this.
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