Death Underneath Cumin Inn

As related by Thibault.

 "Everyone, while you were busy with your brews, I've found us a couple possible options for new income. One, Ostler's got a rat problem..."

When Bryn pronounced these words, over our table at the Cumin Inn, we were so far from imagining the fate that was hanging over our heads or more precisely, creeping under our feet...

She pounded her fist on the table rhythmically while mincing her words, as if to clench the deal: "Big rats!... Ginormous rats!"

Torgin, our new companion and sometimes a dwarf of few words, waved his axe towards the cellar’s door.

A bit skeptical, I chanced: “And what about the cat? Too well fed or scared by the size of the rodents?”

Bryn stared at me, knowingly: "Thibault, I think the rats may be bigger than the cat..."

Mistle had also a good point: “Well I for one feel duty-bound to help, the Cumin is like a second home to me! And the thought of those rats nibbling away with their nasty yellow teeth at the food stores just turns my stomach!"

Besides, Ostler the Innkeeper promised us some free booze for a couple of weeks, so it suddenly became a very seductive business proposition.

Soon enough, Greeba, Gorlock, Eamond and Xarius acquiesced one by one.

We took our weapons and without a moment's hesitation, we opened the cellar door and walked down the stairs in the darkness.

“Well then”, said Mistle, “there's no time to lose. We had best go down there during the day, the rats will be more sluggish and possibly sleeping, so we can take them off guard.”

As a precaution, I paused for a moment, and tried to feel any impure emanation from around me… Reassuringly, none of the patrons were a cause for concern but, almost expectedly, something under the Inn was emanating with undead energy. Ginormous Rats?… and maybe more than we bargained for, as well.

Stepping down in the darkness, the smell of fermenting beer from the brew vat downstairs assaulted our nostrils.

But more worrying was the red glinting eyes of a pack of enormous rats, looking up at us in the darkness… and squeaking angrily.

Torgin quickly lit a torch and made contact with the menacing rodents, swinging his axe and screaming “Come here yer wee beasties, say hello to Torgins AXE!"

His axe fell on the back of one of the rodents and almost split it in two.

“SQUEAK!!!"

But the Rats soon counter attacked as a pack and their tactic paid off: 3 times over, Torgin gasped in pain as the sharp teeth of the rodents who attacked him from all sides took bites of flesh off his legs.

Bryn, still in the stairs, waiting for the group to attack, exclaimed: "I do hope that dwarf has a tough hide."

Unfortunately, a tough hide was not enough to curtail the frenzy of these starved monsters. Their ravenous attacks left our new companion within a sliver of his life... blood pouring out of his shredded legs.

With the surprise of the rodent-ambush subsiding at last, Eamon was the first to react. He immediately jumped over the bar in an impressive acrobatic figure and rushed down the steps to help the poor Torgin. Once down the steps, he delivered a flurry of blows to the rat closest to him, sending the giant vermin flying off against a chest with a sinister noise of ribs cracking.

“Its chest got crushed on a chest… oh the irony!” Zinged Mistle, feeling obviously upbeat about the impending scuffle.

More angry squeaking could be heard from the storerooms down the hall, where their doors looked meticulously chewed off at the bottom by a respectable gap.

Gorlock, seeing the brave dwarf falling so quickly, decided to make sure he doesn’t suffer the same fate and after a brief abjuration, a bright, metallic glow surrounded his limbs and torso.

Assessing the situation, it was now urgent that I’d jump in and distract the pack of rodents until the spell casters and ranged attackers could clean up the place. I leapt into the fray and let my trusted longsword fall on one of these vermins with the expected toll. 

Almost at the same time, Mistle promptly nocked an arrow on her bow and, with a swift and elegant gesture, aimed at the rodent still menacing Torgin, which was mostly concealed. But Mistle looked determined and sharply focused to score a bullseye, and the arrow buried itself deep in the rat with a clean “thump” noise, pinning it to the dirt and killing it instantly.

Gorlock, still glowing from his magical armour, was now ready to strike with more sorcery! :-)

He pronounced a short incantation and gestured until an intense blast of light and energy came out of his palms. The shockwave, although fearsome, missed the rat he was aiming at and crashed against the door right behind it, taking a whole chunk of the wooden panels with it.

“Crap!”, punctuated a frustrated Gorlok.

Meanwhile, Torgin was taking stock of his initial assault and, in the true spirit of his ancestors, decided that this offensive was dynamising him, rather than putting him down. He gathered all his combativity and his energy to reach his second wind and counter attack, dwarf-style!

Swinging his battleaxe vengefully, he shouted “Take that ye Sasnack!” and a giant rat fell with a long agonising ”SQUEEEEAK!”

The rats, attracted by this juicy, blood-covered, dinner-on-legs that was now Torgin, closed-in around him and let their gnashers land on his poor embattled legs.

In a grimacing smile, and through bloodied teeth, Torgin finally fell, vanquished by the vermins.

Seeing this tragedy, Bryn ran down the stairs after Torgin who was by now in the throes of a semi-comatose red mist.

“Mother is that you? your whiskers have shrunk” was all he could mutter, looking strangely at one of his assailants.

Limping acrobatically upon a table on the way to her target, she shot an arrow to a rat in the corridor and hit it enough to make it turn around and flee through a hole in one of the storage room doors.

High up on the staircase, Greeba, the impressive half-orc, was visibly pining for a good ol’ slash and bash! 

She grabbed one of her hand axes and threw it at one of the remaining rats, more than 30 feet away!

With a worryingly satisfied smile exposing two cute orc-fangs, she looked at the axe flying and the business end of it landing straight on the head of her target, splitting its skull in two clean halves. 

It was now Xarius' turn to stand up and be counted!

Seeing him, Bryn stomped a beat on the table and started to chant: "Dead rat, dead rat, dead rat dead rat dead rat!"

Still in his delirium, Torgin was mumbling…“Mother, your eyes are red and beady, have you been kissin elves again?”

Xarius was now fully invigorated by the encouragement and let a fire bolt propel itself out of his hands. The bolt flew across the room but missed the rat it was meant to hit. Damn!

Back to Eamon, for more monkish demonstration of pure deadly acrobatics!

• "Worry not, Dwarf, i am here to rescue you!"

• “Oh mother your voice is deeper than i recall…” replied Torgin

We are losing the dwarf, I reckoned….

Eamon, crushed a rat instantly. So far, 100% success for our monk!

• "The dwarf is saved huzza!"

• “Thank you mother i love you too”

We were now surging in the corridor and moving to the main door at its end.

A rat was hiding in a corner of a side storage room but we didn’t bother as I could feel again the same undead presence that I felt when we started this mission.

I warned my comrades-in-arms of the undead presence.

”Sorry about that!” mumbled Torgin, who still had a sense of humour in spite of his near-fatal gushing wounds.

Anchoring the string of her bow and aiming at the main door, Mistle was ready to shoot at anything that could burst from that room when I would open it.

Meanwhile, Gorlock joined his hands and started a discrete chant for himself. A beam of light seemed to come from the above shone onto Torgin and his wounds stopped bleeding instantly. He sat up, rubbed his eyes and asked: “Wha, what happened?”

As Torgin found refuge in one of the store rooms, the last rat who laid cornered in the other room finally mustered the courage to jump at my throat. Luckily, my sword was at the ready for this eventuality… and didn’t miss.

The dead rat slid off the blade and thunked to the cold dusty floor.

Taking advantage of that short break in combat, we dusted each other off and I healed the dwarf a little more.

Once that was done, we had to decide to pursue the exploration or come back later. Almost out of a premonition, Bryn suggested we have the possibility to come back later now that we might have “lucked out”. But neither her, nor the rest of my companions, nor myself were willing to let Evil stay there one more day. My family got slain by leaving these sort of tasks to tomorrow and I made it my life purpose from then on, to seek Evil and destroy it wherever it crawls.

Greeba was already looking at the last door with a mix of expertise and lust for destruction. She reached at her belt and brandished a ridiculously oversized warhammer.

Torgin checked out the tool with an admirative glance: 

• “Never goes out of fashion, a good warhammer…” and paused.

• “... and multipurpose too!” he hinted, maybe hoping to give the hammer a try on that door.

Greeba, feeling equally like-minded, replied in Dwarvish:

• “I like how you think, Friend!” 

And without fault, in a couple of deafening blows, she pulverised the locks, the heavy door’s panels and took the rest off its hinges.

Bryn turned towards the rest of the group and mouthed with an admirative face: “Orc-Smash!!!”

The room past the threshold was pitch dark, so Gorlock created a bright light on Eamon’s sword, glowing in turn all around the party and lighting up a flight of stairs descending into darkness. At the end of the stairs, we could see the shimmers of water and blood-smears on flagstones. Some daylight was coming from a well-shaft above one of the pools, and two enchanted torches were giving out a dim light around them.

Once landed in the room, we could see that the water shimmerings were of a large rectangular pool. The edges of the room were rough as were the ground itself. Some half-finished job, it seemed. Quite unusual but crude and human-made, added Torgin.

As we were pondering on the meaning of all this, some repellant-looking creatures suddenly creeped out from the shadows and took us completely by surprise!

 

Hissing, malodorous Ghouls emerged from the shadows, crawling towards us and reaching me first. Fortunately, the first bite ripped on my chainmail with a disturbing noise of broken rotten teeth.

Always pragmatic, Bryn shouted: “Heh, if we don't manage to kill them, the door's unbarred now. Ostler'll find out soon enough what was below…”

The Ghouls were in position around me and Torgin. But their weak speed meant we could now counter attack.

Torgin slashed a big chunk off one of his, but didn’t slay it.

Mistle did the same on another ghoul with her shortbow.

And I missed mine… not the best start but it could have been worse…

Fortunately, when the ghouls attacked us again, they were not much more successful than us: Torgin got some bitemarks and was a bit weakened but resisted their foul poison. And all the bites destined to hurt me ripped again on my trusted chainmail.

Meanwhile, Xarius loaded his crossbow and shot across the room to superbly hit one of the ghouls and wounded it quite seriously!

Bryn positioned herself on the platform in order to have a better defensive advantage, and slashed one of the undead abominations with her rapier. Next to her, Greeba planted her warhammer in the ghoul on her right.

Eamon also distributed a flurry of blows on another ghoul. But even if these attacks made them sway, the monsters managed to hold on tight nevertheless. 

The status quo lasted for a short time until some ghouls finally fell: First from Xarius and followed by Eamon.

Then I got blessed when I landed a devastating blow on the ghoul in front of me.

But more worrying was when Gorlock saw a Ghast leaving the shadows from the back of the room and, taking a wide berth from me, engaged Bryn.  

The Ghast lunged at her and attacked Bryn with its poisonous claws. Even though she resisted the poison, the Ghast dealt some devastating wounds to her and she collapsed on the ground.

 

All I could scream while seeing her falling was:"Hold on Bryn, we'll save you!"

Then, like in a nightmare battle, it was Torgin’s turn to be mercilessly slain.

Seeing this tragedy unfold, Xarius prepared a fire bolt between his hands and blasted it towards the nearest ghoul. It went up in flames and collapsed.

Bryn was struggling not to die at that point… and was putting a brave fight at this!

Meanwhile, another Ghoul got slain by Eamon. Gorlock healed Torgin right before he got up and slayed the last ghoul with a swing of his battleaxe.

From then on, it became a race: we all concentrated our efforts on putting the ghast out of combat before it could give Bryn the “coup de grace”... and failed all our attacks, including myself.

Out of desperation, I lunged on top of Bryn to try to provide cover, and maybe distract the merciless ghast.

In a terrible moment of bad luck and brutality, the monster ripped out Bryn’s throat in the most gory manner.

In unison, everyone in the party screamed in despair!

Greeba, blinded by the most visceral rage, swung her warhammer with all her strength towards the grimacing head of the ghast, its mouth still chewing the windpipe of the poor Bryn. Upon impact, the head of the undead got crushed like a watermelon and bits of skull got dispatched all across the room.

Greeba let out an inhumane scream that only ended when the warhammer fell at her side, having finally avenged her friend. 

Everyone rushed at the side of Bryn and first in disbelief, then in resignation, we had to admit that the healing powers that could be her salvation were by far out of our reach.

So, we carefully carried her corpse towards the surface, Myrtle dressed her with the noble clothes that she had in her backpack. I gave her the last rites and while singing her favourite songs, we all carried her to her last resting place: the tallest Hemlock tree in a beautiful clearing in the nearby forest.