Session 70 - Dungie & Rats

The adventurers find some traps, deal with a horde of giant rats led by a wererat and encounter a very tough and smelly creature.

This write-up is based on Kay’s notes from our November 12, 2025 session. Since our group is scattered around the country, we use Discord for our voice communication and Roll20 for our virtual tabletop. Thanks to Kay for the write-up and screen shots.

Continued from: Gargoyles, Part 2
Location: Rappan Athuk, Level 1
Date: Monday, June 26, 3517


7:30 AM
After following the east tunnel, we came to a Y, and took the right fork, heading east-northeast. Shortly afterward, we entered an empty room littered with bones and dirt. We could hear whispering in the distance both ahead and behind us and at the Y. Crossing the room, Blaze entered a dirt tunnel in the NE corner of the room; it branched to the north and east; it had a 4-foot-diameter and smelled like rats and fresh dirt. The room had a closed door in the east wall. Elron listened at the door and checked for traps. The door was not trapped or locked, but it was stuck.

 
Elron pulled on the door and it opened. Behind the door was a hallway going to the east for 40 feet, ending at a wall with another closed door. Elron checked this one out and it was stuck as well; there was an outhouse smell. Elron pushed it open and a foul stench rolled out, like an outhouse on a hot day. Artie lost it and puked out his guts; the rest of the party were made of sterner stuff.

On the other side was a roughly square room, with a broken candelabra, a worm-ridden carpet, and empty casket in the middle of the room that once had silver trim, now pried off. There was an opening in the SE corner of the room, looked like a tunnel dug into the dirt with a low ceiling. Blaze checked it out and found two tunnels going roughly SE and both ending 35 ft further. In the NE corner of the room was a staircase downward. At the bottom of the stairs was another room with a skeleton sitting in a chair facing the south wall; red ants crawled over the skeleton. Downstairs at the NE corner of the room we could hear pinging sounds like dripping water.

Blaze went down the stairs first to get a look around the far corner. At the bottom, the stair broke under her and her leg was trapped by spikes underneath. She was unhurt but would need to be very careful to get her foot out without damage. She decided to escape by casting thunder step to teleport across the room without moving her leg.

When she teleported to the other side of the room, the floor gave way under her, leaving her at the bottom of a 20-ft-deep pit trap, injuring her slightly.

Next to the pit was a hallway that was oriented north-south. She heard the familiar sound of rats charging from the south. No doubt attracted by the sound of her thunder.

The first giant rat came to the edge of the pit and looked down at her, followed by two others. Blaze cast flaming sphere, damaging one of them. Four more giant rats came up from the south.

Breena started down the stairs; standing on the second step, she could see, through the broken wood, that underneath the last stair step had metal spikes with what looked like poison on them. Two more giant rats joined the others and a wererat joined the growing horde near the pit.

Artie, still sick, walked down the steps and stood next to Breena. Elron moved down the steps using his sword to tap the steps and found only the bottom step had been trapped.

After Blaze’s thunder step, the skeleton in the chair was broken, the chair was broken and the ants were scattered, dead or dazed. In the northwest corner of the room was a pile of broken furniture.

There was a pinging sound next to the flaming sphere, and we could hear a sizzling sound, as if dripping water was landing in the fire.

Elron moved toward the pit and pulled out a rope. Another giant rat joined the growing horde. Two more giant rats moved up. The giant rat in the flaming sphere moved out of it to the north. 

Blaze levitated up, bringing herself level to the floor and pulled herself onto the solid floor on the west side of the pit. The pit trap was located at the junction between the east side of the room and the west edge of the hallway.

Breena stepped over the trap and moved to Blaze. She cast magic missiles, killed two giant rats, and injured a third.



The wererat ducked around the corner and aimed his crossbow at Blaze; his shot went wild, missing her completely. Artie got to the bottom of the stairs, next to the smashed chair and stepped on some of the ants that were dazed.

Elron moved to Blaze and aimed his magic stones at the wererat, hit with his first and third stones. The wererat shrieked and made chittering sounds. 

Parahelia moved down the stairs next to Sinis.

A giant rat injured by a magic missile retreated up the hall to the north. Blaze moved over the pit, into the hall, and moved her flaming sphere into the wererat, killing it. She discovered it was in front of five giant rats that began moving south away from the fire.

Elron jumped over the pit and moved to the hallway, aimed at a giant rat and killed it with his first stone. 

The giant rats were running away to the south.

Now that Blaze was in the hall, she could see an open doorway at the north end of the hall, with a door lying on the floor. She moved north into the room. She saw three broken arrows sticking out of the wall in the entryway and a smashed wooden door lying at the entrance of the room. Two human-sized skeletons were there — one was headless, and both show signs of extreme corrosion, as if by acid. Everything in the room was smashed and corroded except for a small desk in the northeast corner. The room itself had walls of rough stone. There was crack that looked like an open secret door in the north wall.

Back in the previous room, Breena asked Sinis to help her take some of the wood from the broken furniture and put it down as a bridge over the pit trap. As they worked, Elron moved north into the room and noticed a bloody trail of giant rat footprints going to the west and into a tunnel going south at the southwest corner of the room. Blaze moved into the center of the room and saw a tunnel in the east wall, a tunnel to the north, and the secret door near the northwest corner of the room with a tunnel heading north. 

Artie, Breena, and Rocky crossed their bridge and moved to join Elron and Blaze. Elron checked out the east tunnel and saw a dead end, and then the tunnel to the north, which went around a corner to the east. 

Breena marked the bottom stair as a trap before joining the group. The pinging sound turned out to be dripping water from the roof hitting a metal pan underneath.

Blaze moved to the desk and began opening drawers, finding six vials in the top drawer; three full of an orange liquid, two vials were empty, and the last looked like there was water in it. The ones with liquid had wax seals. Blaze put them in her pack for later examination with Sinis’s detect magic spell. Breena suggested that the water may be holy water, which made sense.

Breena went through the open secret door and followed a tunnel around to the west into another room with three privies. The odor was foul; two of the privies were really nasty, one was clean. When Breena got closer to the clean privy; it moved and turned into a creature, hitting her with three tentacles, seriously injuring her. She screamed.

 

Elron ran in with his sling; the first stone missed, the second and third hit but made only small marks or craters. Sinis moved toward the sounds. Breena disengaged and ran back to Blaze and Elron. Blaze came in and unleashed a lightning bolt that did no damage, and she ran away. So did Elron, yelling “run away.”

Breena cast a cantrip, frostbite, doing no damage to the creature, and ran like the wind after Elron and the others.

The creature started chasing us. Blaze cast flaming sphere in the narrowest part of the tunnel and ran south. 

The creature encountered the flaming sphere and got burned; there was a burning stench the party could smell. Blaze got to the secret door and closed it. 

Parahelia healed Breena halfway back to normal.

Elron yelled, “Let’s get out of here,” and ran south down the hallway. Elron ran back into the room with the skeleton in the chair. The pit trap had closed; the wooden planks for the bridge were now lying on solid stone. Apparently, the pit trap resets itself quickly. Breena, Artie, and Rocky moved south down the hallway. 

Blaze marked the secret door before moving south to catch up to the others; Blaze could hear the creature slamming against the secret door from the other side. Blaze also marked where the pit trap was located as she passed it.

Elron cast cure wounds on Breena for more healing.

After everyone rejoined the group, Sinis remembered he once heard a rumor: “There is a monster immune to everything on the first level of Rappan Athuk. It is amorphous and smells terrible. A wise person flees from it.”

Well, we did. Although it seemed like flame burned it, so it might not be immune to everything. 

Checking The Journal of Helman Hairfoot:

“We all went inside before the rising floor passed the top of the opening; Wikvaya came close to losing a foot.

 

We passed down a tunnel cut in the stone to several rooms that were mostly empty. Then we came to a stairway with a trap on it. It was a clever design but easy to bypass. (Blaze’s note: apparently not for us.)

 

We found a room with mostly broken furniture and a leaky roof. (Blaze: they didn’t mention a skeleton in a chair. Was it there at the time, or after they moved through?)

 

There was a large pit trap at the room’s east exit. Undntilrmo almost fell in, but was able to jump back just in time.

 

Next was a long hall that turned into a roughly dug tunnel that led to a large natural cave with a stream flowing across it. There we were attacked by a swarm of giant rats. (Blaze’s note: they must have turned right instead of left.)

 

Collette said we needed to go west from there and found a blocked-up tunnel. It looked like someone had blocked it intentionally.  We cleared a passage and found some stairs going down.”

Continued in Session 71 - Rat Tunnels