Previously on Reclaiming Orathos

It's a long night at the Keep Grow Inn. Magra trades stories with the amnesiac slime-girl Jex over crispy potatoes. Lash scrubs off spy-blood at the well and forges a stable master a wagonload of horseshoes, earning hammer-fighting lessons. And Silithane peers into the snoring brute Guilford's mind — and recoils: a hanged mother in the rafters, and a lifetime spent re-creating that death on wheat-haired women. There's a fresh victim in the room tonight.

So the party fights dirty. Thalia plays waitress and poisons Guilford's ale; Silithane Suggestions the dazed giant off toward the Grey Vale Cave to "prove himself."

At the cave, meet Valmora — a winged Angel cleric hunting relics of dead gods. She talks Guilford down, joins the party, and helps them bridge a yawning chasm over a pit of hand-monsters. They rescue trapped survivor Jaxley, who reveals the horror below: a breeding Queen Grabbler, and more captives drinking from an acid pool.

Now three Grabblers come boiling up from the dark — and initiative is about to roll.

SUMMARY: A present-tense player recap of Session 23, ending on the three-Grabbler combat cliffhanger.