Aethra Chatoyant [Magic-User 1 – apprentice of a famous master / elf-sister]; Ayleton the Cat [Familiar 1 – animal familiar / ship cat of unknown port]; Oland [Rogue 1 – Spy / personal keyword not yet defined]; Dungar [Dwarf 1 – Dwarf-raised / Treasure Hunter]; Brömm [Dwarf 1 – Dwarf-raised / Bonded Clockwork Guilds-dwarf]; Azric [Rogue 1 – Assassin / leatherworker]; Richard Stockworth [Hairfoot Halfling 1 – Satyr / Tavernkeeper & Cook]
The crew takes a 10-minute rest, eating rations and using
the convenient garderobe, as Azric flips through the journal. The owner, Jon
Thompskin, is a customs house clerk working on his ‘flourish hand” every lunch
break. 20 pages in we learn that he achieved his goal of becoming chief steward
of the Customs House, and he marries his beloved Victoria. He now escorts
people to the private vaults (to the first-class waiting room via a lift the
eastern storage area). He lays out the roughs of roughs of how one accesses the
vaults, but the group opts to keep moving and explore more later.
It's been impossible to track the beetles but their helpful
light is shining in the next room, into which flows the stream on the dirt
floor. There’s a low archway in the east wall… another drainage grate? There
are things sticking out of the floor that they can’t clearly see as the beetles’
lights point up not down. Brömm, Aethra and Dungar approach and find parts of
halfling-sized skeletons each with silver circlets, torques, bracelets and
anklets. Concerned with Disquiet Dead they start breaking the skulls and
scattering the bones, only to find themselves sinking into the wet mud. Brömm,
the furthest in, glances madly, spotting another 3’ of door concealed in the
mud to their west and surges towards it.
This is when the adventurers learn the fire beetles attack hindered
targets. The four in the room deploy mandibles on the slowed adventurers; while
Aethra can ward off one with her athame she gets a nasty bite on her other arm.
The dwarves are for the moment safe due to their heavy armor, but that plus
their short stature may doom them in the mud. Oland beats surprise to leap
across the scriveners’ room to spike the door to the ballroom shut, blocking 4 beetles.
The beetles still have the initiative, despite Oland and Azric’s
attempts to seize it with risky attacks – if the beetles were interested in
anyone outside the mud the rogues would be in trouble – but the beetles only
manage a strike on Brömm due to Aethra’s luck and Dungar’s heavy armor. The
hearty dwarf ignores the small cut and gives back better, killing one with an
axe blow as he reaches the door. Everyone save Aethra is surprised when her
familiar leaps from her hood, transforming mid-flight to a cheetah that batters
away one of the bugs menacing its master. Dungar considers making a run for the drainage
ditch but pulls his hemp rope free and lobs it loosely to Richard. Aethra grabs
the slack of the rope and is pulled free by the doughty satyr’s strength. The
rogues’ attacks are frustrated by the beetles’ carapaces.
The adventurers win initiative, and Brömm
shatters the concealed door’s latch, shlorking out to a corridor with mud, half
of the glowing beetle, and some skeletal remains. Richard yanks Dungar free,
and, seeing the bugs still attracted to Aethra’s blood, the dwarf staggers to
his feet and hurls the magic-user onto one of the tables to get her clear.
Aethra desperately binds her wound to hopefully calm the beetles. Azric hurls
her grappling hook and rope across the mud room to latch into Brömm’s open
doorway to give them a path. Olands dagger and Ayleton’s claws find no
purchase.
This is when the beetles all sphincter their light-glands
shut, and the room goes dark. The only light remaining is in the mud room from Brömm’s
bisected beetle, and in those feeble shadows the adventurers see the beetles go
mad, feel the bugs skittering over them, hear the chittering from the beetles
trying to get in from the ballroom, and the blossoming of blood and pain as
bite after bite lands as the adventurers are unable to recover the initiative and
the horror continues.
“Marines, we are lea-ving!” Aethra yells. Dungar, severely
bloodied despite his armor, snags the rope from Richard and vows to be the last
to leave. Fearing their light might die Oland yanks open one of the paperwork
filled drawers and lights it with flint & steel, throwing light as others
scramble across the surface of the mud with the rope for support, as Brömm
keeps watch to make sure they’re not ambushed from a different direction. Within
seconds the scriveners’ room contains just Oland and Dungar, and the they lose
the initiative. They should die here save that Oland seizes it back with a
risky attack, wounding one of the beetles as he breaks for the door and across
the mud. Dungar finishes the bug, finally getting a clean strike that impales
the bug on his axe. He drags it behind him as he runs for the door. He wouldn’t
have made the distance before the mud took him save for Brömm yanking the rope
and pulling his dwarvish ally to safety. Richard and the now-cheetah Ayleton
shove the concealed door closed and Oland spikes it shut. End of session 1.
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