The smart people had a plan this time. Druidly, the wizard, wanted to lure the rats one by one to the entrance. There he would put them to sleep with a spell, and then we would kill them one by one. His brilliant plan worked for precisely one rat. The rest fled deeper into the barrow.
A few steps farther in, we saw more rats. Druidly cast aspersions upon their ancestry. No, that’s not a spell, it’s an insult. They told the man the rats likely didn’t understand Common. I thought he was smarter than that. In any case, none came. We went further in and saw a rat taking a nap. Druidly cast a more useful spell to Strike it with a magical missile, which killed it. Two rats down and so far the party had taken no wounds.
The remaining rats retreated into the distance, dragging their dead behind them. Bancroft shuddered to think of what use the rats might have for it.
Druidly and Bancroft proceeded deeper into the Burrow, taking a left turn to close the entrance to the rats’ lair. This task they completed without incident. While Druidly looked for something to plug the pipe trap on the statue with, Bancroft braced the rat’s trap door with scorpion viscera.
After a brief pause to beware of skeletons outside, Druidly pried the opals from the statue and set off the trap. It spewed a greenish cloud of poison gas into the room while he frantically stuffed the gems into his bag, holding his breath. Bancroft had slipped to the north, beyond the other secret door, to wait out the gas. The others were near the entrance.
To hear Druidly tell it, it was a close thing. He could barely hold his breath, yet he made it down off the statue holding the gems aloft triumphantly. When the gas finally dissipated, Bancroft collected his caltrops, and the group returned to town.
We got 50 gold apiece for the gems. Jaenelle used the money to bribe her way back into the innkeeper’s good graces, then immediately proceeded to sleep with a half orc and turned into a tavern wench via some strange magic. Apparently she’s quite the scandalous little elf. Maybe if she hadn’t slept with that noble, he would still think three inches was above average?
The next day we returned to the rats’ barrow and considered their lair. Two large rats sat on top of the pile, while more lurked an ambush along the north and south walls. Druidly put the two central rats to sleep, but they were woken by rats inside the nest. Several of the group had already had their spells fail, so the wise course was to return to town and rethink strategy. Bancroft could hold the line in a narrow place, and Druidly could put rats to sleep, but if we went into the room we would be surrounded and overwhelmed.
Burning the nest was an option, but Druidly objected, thinking there might be scrolls there. Does he think he’ll find a magic spell in someone’s toilet paper?
We need a way for Jaenelle and Irulan to take out rats with missile weapons fast enough to keep from being overrun.
