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This day started out well enough. We had our first real quest. In the morning with our breakfast served, a rat jumped up on our table. He introduced himself as Simon, owner of The Small Guys Struggle, the nearby tavern with a giant rat problem. He explained that some of his cousins had moved into his basement and were going through all of his food and drink stores. He wanted us to get rid of them.
We accepted this quest, and set off to buy a wheel of cheese and some poison. Personally, I figured these were not monsters and didn’t deserve to die, but the group was eager to get the task done. Ozy gave some of his blood to the woman who sold us the poison, and then promised we’d meet her at midnight to help her gather ingredients in exchange for poison. I tried to convince them to wait a few days so I could come along. Duter was full this and the next two nights, and there’s a double full moon the day after tomorrow. But they didn’t want to wait.
When we got down to the basement of the Small Guys Struggle, we eventually discovered 2 wererats. They refused to leave, and others in my party chose to attack after the rats also refused the poisoned cheese. There were quite a lot of powerful but missed attacks (seemed like overkill to me), and I finally pinned one of them. The others quickly trapped the other rat, and we convinced them to leave.
Afterwards, we explored the basement a little more – looking for more rats. Bizarrely, we discovered what appeared to be a smuggler’s tunnel under the tavern. We followed it for hours. We had to cross several underground waterways, which contained an interesting algae that gave gills to Cassandra (an elf who had been thrown in among our group right before we left on our quest). The Cassandra sneakily bottled some of the algae – I suspect she didn’t know I noticed.
We battled a couple of giant spiders and a troll, but never found the end of the cavern. Avet got a little parasitical friend that is now attached to his shoulder. Creepy. He found it in a corpse of spider-lunch. Eventually we turned around.
Simon suspiciously pretended not to know about the tunnel and cavern under his tavern. But he said we were not allowed back down. I think some of the group would like to get back down – not sure why. I prefer monster-hunting myself.
Upon returning to the guild just in the nick of time before sundown, Avet joined me in my room and put the tiger’s eye amulet around my neck. In the morning he was there to take it off. I think he’ll be discreet.
Hibernator's Library 