Feverborne

The wererats charged us before we could charge them, trapping us in the staircase. Awkward. u-Heury pulled back furher up the stairs to force them to come to us. I pulled out my (borrowed) longbow and shot over his head, hitting one of the wererats in the gut with a silver arrow. That pissed them off, but recognizing the poor tactical position, they withdrew and called for reinforcements. We charged into the empty room, but failed to catch them. Ygnass did masnage to put a silence spell on one of them before the retreat, preventing further reinforcements, at least for the moment.

It turned out the retreat was less a retreat than an ambush. The wererats attacked again, dropping from above or from dark corners. We fought bravely, especvially Kraznak, who killed one with a silver tipped bolt and went into melee with the silver dagger I had lent him when they closed in. They wounded him badly in return. For my part, Cloacina’s gift passed through the wererats as if they were mist. Clearly I was not yet worthy of the blade. I sheathed it and drew my silver dagger, retrieved from our tragically-fallen elf on the level above after his death. That blade did for two of the wererats, so I was not entirely out of favor. The last of the wererats fled through the eastern door.

It turned out that the reason they fled was… concerning. Ygnas was deep in conversation with a flaming devil creature, aking her fill out some kind of form. Perhaps it knows Oscar. But I felt it was very unwise to give a devil her full name, whether she knew it or not, and said so. Never mind the rest of the strange parchment it was filling out, or the fact that it appeared in place of the healing spells she had meant to cast, and which we were sorely needing. That said, the creature’s appearance may have contributed to scaring off the wererats.

Alas, they had spiked the door to the next room to slow us down as well, which worked long enough for several giant rats to arrive. The rats came from the same staircase we had, and we managed to trap them there, at a severe disadvantage. They fell to our blades quickly. Despite this my misfortune continued; the sword Verminbane turned in my hand and struck stone, marring the blade. I will redouble my efforts to prove worthy of Cloacina the Cleanser! But, I will also stop risking the sword until I am worthy.

With combat over for the moment we forced the door to the next room open, noting obvious signs of a trap near the north door. When we went in to check further, we were ambushed by wererats from above. We slew several, forcing the last to retreat, but took dire wounds in the process – me especially, as the retreating wererat set off the trap we had spotted, filling the room with poison gas.

We retreated again to the main room, hurt and discouraged. Kraznak had died, the poison gas had nearly killed me, Ygnas was hurt as well. She did manage to burn out some of the poison from my lungs, at least, once we had all gotten over the demon appearing. u-Heury has some healing wafers which helped as well.

We may need to retreat to the surface and recover before we continue.