Meal Team Six

January 10, 2X26

We are kinetic. The Temple of Turas supports our momentum, paying out a small reward for our previous efforts and offering logistical support to push further at the enemy and rescue the boy Nathan. I have a Wand of Slumber on my belt and fresh intel from the Temple's interrogation of our prisoners.

Guygiss, a slight "man" confused about his elven heritage, joins our party. He is quick and observant, volunteering to scout our advance at every opportunity, and shares a little of my aptitude with arcane magic. He fits our capabilities well.

The target location is what we believe to be the original store front of the lycanthrope's terrorist cell. We surveil the place early in the morning, finding little apparent activity. There is a poorly maintained rear entrance that our copied key works on. We breach and clear the floor, encountering no resistance.

The layout is the same as the prior location, including poison manufacturing paraphernalia in the lab above. Guygiss claims some aptitude with alchemy, specifically poisons, so he collects what he find use out of. He also discovers the key to the coded ledger we found hidden behind a painting. We stack up to clear the basement.

The scene is familiar, shackles on the wall and barrels stacked about, but there is no one here. After some time we locate a secret passage and follow it into a poorly crafted tunnel. We hear rats in the distance but encounter none. Slaid rubs against some goo on the wall and vomits in disgust. Guygiss correctly identifies the goo as a destroyed gelatinous mass. We carry on carefully.

A smokey, hazy window reveals sunlight ahead. I caution the party to halt, the prior goo causing me to suspect the window as something more. We hurl fire at it and destroy it, another mass of goo waiting to ambush the unwary. Unpleasant as it is, we dig through the muck to recover a bit of treasure and otherwise are stymied by the dead end, the "window" having been just a small hole illuminating the goo deceptively.

Sloane picks up a faint trail of feet arriving and departing back up the tunnel. Curious, and our only lead, so we follow. She takes us right to where the trail diverts directly into a wall, clearly a secret entrance, and it does not take long to locate it. We breach into a more well-crafted tunnel through which a handful of giant rats flee, likely as early warning for the wererat cell beyond. I quickly dispatch them with the wand and we carry on.

Guygiss reports contact ahead. I sneak up with him and use the wand to dispatch them as well. We verify with wolfsbane their affliction before eradicating the vermin. We are too few to effectively guard captive monsters.

The next chamber has seven enemies, again unaware of our presence. I pass off the wand to Guygiss and we both sneak forward, using a combination of the wand's final charge and my magic to neutralize the enemy. Again we dispatch them, unable to divert resources to guarding captives.

Guygiss hears the voice of a boy resisting abuse in the room beyond. We stack up and breach, nearly out of magical resources but resolved to save the boy no matter the cost. The foe resists my spell but Sloane knocks him prone and Guygiss makes quick work of him. The boy knows little of the operation, imprisoned as he is, but he is otherwise unharmed and we free him.

Up the stairs and into the main level of the building above us, we discover no further combatants. Slaid dupes the women running cover for the operation and we subdue the household. The master, Jenner, is suspected to be the head of the snake. The staff expects him back within a few days.

We report back to the Temple and have another net cast at the second location to capture any loose ends that may show up, while we maintain our position at Jenner's residence. The ledger implicates some well-known and positioned names in town, but that seems above our paygrade. We are resolved to destroy Jenner when he arrives. For now, we wait, crouched and ready to strike.

Musings:

Hunting season stole one of our players but he's back, reskinning a character from our childhood games, a terror of selfish criminal activity that I can only hope doesn't repeat itself. An elven nightblade's skill set fits what we're doing really well. We only lack some sort of outdoorsman/explorer type but so far we haven't needed it.

Session went well, pacing was good when we would stfu and focus on the game. We have a tendency to chatter, especially when the roster rotates and an absent player returns, but the point of all this is to hang with the homies. The game's just a welcome excuse. We ended on a bit of a hanging chad with the ambush but we were running out of session time.

I appreciate that the DM presents a scenario the elements of which act in plausible ways. He pointed out after the session that he had a good idea of the operation and expected us to potentially jack it up by being too aggressive or overt. Kicking in the front door or something. He did not lament our cautious approach. He may or may not regret loaning us a wand of slumber.

We've been lucky so far in that we can sneak up and ambush most of our enemies. I'll be interested to see how we hold up in an actual fight, but as a wise man once said, "I'll kill a man in a fair fight, or if I think he's gonna start one..." I'm not on a paladin this time to care so much about honorable combat. We're striking hard and fast and can hopefully maintain our momentum.