Mattsters of the Mattiverse Session 19

...last episode

• The group ventured to Wydmoor after gearing up, invaded a guardhouse, then scarpered off back into the wilderness.

Alternate Infiltration

• After recuperating, it is day.
  • Edi notices Wyverns being ridden by humanoids patrolling the skies
  • The party decides strolling around in the day is less than ideal
  • Some thinking is thought and they figure on a sewer connection from the crater that is all that's left of Magus Keep
  • Turns out to be a solid thought. There's a quick climbing minigame and the party breaches the sewers

The Welcoming Party

• A long tunnel finally emerges into the sewers proper. For a sewer, it's actually quite clean, no doubt thanks to the severely reduced population aboveground
• Russ, with darkvision and armor that doesn't jangle and scrape on everything, takes the lead. The pattern is that he will go to roughly the edge of Gokar's vision, then signal the party the all clear so they can catch up.
• Almost immediately, they hit a river. Russ is stoked
• The river is occupied, though! A fight happens!
  • Otyughs! But greasy and necrotic. They are the corpsefeaster variant, and there are eventually four of them, although they take a while to filter in
  • Long tentacles reach and grab, beaks bite and infect. Their first move on seeing adventurers is their rot vomit After all is said and done, everyone is infected with the disease (although they don't know it yet)
  • Edi flame bolts. Apt shows what he can do with his bow, and really lays down the smack. Gokar dances around the edge, and takes an otyugh all by himself

• • Three floating, tentacled corpses, and the last otyugh breaks. Russ grapples it and lets the rest of the party finish the job while he keeps it pinned

This is a-maze-ingly grate

• The party decides, rather than following the river, that they will range through small sluices
• It's uncomfortable as hell for everyone who's not Edi, but they all fit
• Hours of crawling emerges. Russ continues to take point, keeping an ear out for things
• The small tunnels are punctuated by occasional chambers, usually with grates in the ceiling. The party uses these to occasionally get their bearings with Edi's remote viewing domain ability

• The party reaches a rat nest, but since it is in the wrong direction, they decide to let them be
• They reach an open section. It appears to be old buildings that were sunk beneath the surface--everything has been here for centuries, maybe even millenia
• They side-track into more tunnels, feeling that it is more the correct direction.
• They run into another rat nest! This is even bigger
  • They trigger it by having Edi throw a lit stone at the swarms, running back to join the alchemists in inundating them with fire

• • Apt watches for other things. This is eventually rewarded, as a dire rat (the third, it turns out, but two others died in explosions before ever being seen) jumps out of the shadows
  • Pyrotechnics and placement make easy work. The air is filled with the smells of barbecued rat
• Russ goes back to exploring. Apt does a quick detect magic over the massive rat dung heap and rings a lone magical ring
• This section turns out to be a dead end, but heading Westward finds another opening that heads the right direction

The Canals

• More crawling, and things eventually opens up into a massive chamber
• The floor still shows some remnants of Old Ubrekti mosaics. Most of the details are lost to time, although stray tiles litter the room and a few coherent images are still recognizable.
• The party creeps across the middle of this cavern. They can hear thick, heavy breathing to the southwest, and eventually, running water
• When they get close enough, they can make out canals. They do some buffing and approach cautiously
• Not surprisingly, more otyughs appear!
  • One is a corpsefeaster like the others in the beginning, but the other is a new kind--an oozing otyugh
  • The first two come out of the water to engage the party. They succumb relatively quickly, but not before rot vomiting on Russ and actually managing to overcome him with nausea
  • Russ detects more waiting, so he decides to jump into the water with him. This makes him and the five other otyughs untargetable by the rest of the party, unfortunately. Gokar joins him, but Russ ends up taking heavy damage in the first couple of rounds
  • One of the otyughs is raving and straining. It is clearly suffering, and cares for little but attacking as much and as quickly as possible (it is a plaguebearer
  • Gokar and Russ catch yet another disease from this, although they do not know it yet
  • Apt sounds his horn. Gokar and Russ withdraw, Gokar measuredly and Russ with a bit more haste. Edi heals him up, and he downs an extract to become a pebble-skinned, horned beast with wings (a [www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/monster-listings/monstrous-humanoids/gargoyle gargoyle], in fact)

• • Apt and Gokar murderize some otyughs. Russ tosses a frost bomb to slow the approach and let a bit more healing happen, then takes a flying (literally) leap back into the fray, nearly killing one of the pair that is moving to engage that side of the party
  • That weak one is finished off with arrows, Gokar finishes up with the plagebearer, and Russ gets a glorious murder-rampage on the final visible otyugh, hitting with all four attacks and turning it into a fine spray of gore (also, incidentally, his last attack in the sequence
• The party freezes here, still in bullet time, since they figure there's more to do and want to keep their buffs.

Awards

• Otyugh welcoming party: 1200 xp to all
  • 4 Corpsefeaster otyughs
• Rat nest: 735 xp to all
  • 4 Dire rats
  • 4 Rat swarms
  • Ring of the Tortoise (Reth's water aspect) (+3 swim, +1 enhancement bonus to natural armor, a silver ring with an emerald cut in the shape of a turtle's shell)
• Otyugh lair: 2600 xp to all
  • 1 Plaguebearer otyugh
  • 3 Corpsefeaster otyughs
  • 3 Oozing otyughs
• MSAllen learned a thing!: 100xp to Edi