DA2 TTRPG Campaign Diary - Session 4 - Throw Away the Plan!

 ((I had ideas for this session. I was certain the party would want to (1) use the house deed to put the building in their name, and (2) head to the mason's guild to get the hole in the wall fixed. They did both of those things, just not in the way I expected.))

The party split with Deorum, Felin, and Lulia heading to Oldtown and Fisher, Revas, and Dardin'an heading to the Mason's Guild. Deorum posed as a noble interested in getting the house put in his name. He first inquired with the City Guard who to speak to, then traveled to the city Archives and waited 2 hours for documents on the house to be brought up. It turns out that about 50 years ago, the owners of the house mysteriously vanished. No next of kin was found, and the city itself had no interest in claiming the house.

Deorum then traveled back to the Keep to seek an audience with the Vicount. He met Seneschal Bran, who (after some very successful roles) was willing to escalate the case to take care of the house no one wanted (and was a sore of the city). Though it would take a couple days for the paperwork to come through.

The Mason's Guild quoted 4gp to fix the wall, which no one in the party had, not even combining resources. The party offered a trade -- some kind of job they could do for the guild in exchange for the wall being repaired. 

((This is, honestly, where I goofed. I had PLANNED for the party to need to do a job to get the house deed changed and for the matter of the wall to be done easily -- all they had to was mention demons, and the Guild would have insisted on getting the Templars involved, and then the city would have paid for repairs. Instead, the party completely flipped my expectations.

I had prepared a scenario for the party to infiltrate the archives a la The Smuggler's Seal. And in hindsight, I could have repurposed that adventure -- just have the leader of the Guild want some illegal paperwork done. But on the fly, I went with Rats in the Walls. This was NOT an adventure I had planned at all and was hurriedly skimming as the players went through.))

When the guild member asked what had caused the hole in the wall, the party mentioned an "infestation" they had taken care of themselves. So the dwarf offered up a rat infestation their cousin was dealing with and could not get rid of.

The party meet back up at the house, but not before Fenlin corners Deorum in an alleyway and confronts him about his Tevinter heritage. Deorum insists not all magisters at bad, that he does not believe in slavery, and he does mean Fenlin mean any harm. He also promises to defend her should slavers come after her. Lulia was waiting for this conversation to happen and let's it flow as she watches the street for any signs of trouble. Eventually, a truce is made, and the group cary on.

The party traveled to a Locksmith in the Docks. Vhez Grimour of Vhez's Locks & Keys and his wife and daughter have battled a rat infestation for weeks. They have never seen the rats, but they suffer bites at night. They can't think of anything that might have caused the infestation but remember a drunk woman entered the shop a few days after the biting started happening, saying that the shop was cursed. The family has tried rat traps, and even cats to rid themselves of the pests. The cats ended up bitten and dead within a couple days. 

All three of them are pale, likely due to disease. Rat droppings litter the shop and the living quarters above. But the true horror lies in the cellar, where the party finds a hidden door in the floor the family had been unaware of. A spiral staircase leads down into a large square chamber with a 12ft statue of a desire demon in the center. In a side chamber lies a nest of rats, including two dire rats and six individual rat swarms.

The battle against the swarms ended up much scarier than expected and downed Revas twice. Fisher decided to attack the statue, and after bringing it down, what was left of the swarms ran off. In the center of the statue's rubble lay a shard of red lyrium.

The mage in the party immediately identified the shard as lyrium, and the Grey Warden immediately identified the lyrium as blighted. Arguments ensued over want to do with the shard, and that's where we ended the session.

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