Session 13 — The Saddest Inn in Gwyndinas

Session Recap

Picking up on the 6th of Spring's End, 4E 1396 in the streets of Gwyndinas — the party reunited with Fenric and Ashlyn (returned from a week of mutual blood-feeding) outside the Colosseum, beaten bloody from their two Session-12 arena wins — the session never made it back to the arena at all. An evening of shopping errands (a fruitless quest for a "meat shield," a butcher's run at Mendelin's Meats that doubled as Ashlyn's cow-blood supply line, and a guard's tour of the city's smithing options) ended with the exhausted party bunking down in the cheapest tavern in the Brown district: the Clapton's Hammer, run by a relentlessly sad, doomed-to-be-empty innkeeper. The place felt wrong — like the Veilwood transplanted into a big city — and after a night's rest (with Lash sleeping in the backyard bathtub), the party's suspicions hardened into a mystery.

What they uncovered: a dead halfling (Dorian Montagu) had been sitting "alive" in the corner for weeks; the inn was built four months ago on top of an ancient burial ground; and the basement opened onto a crevice from which a grief demon had crawled up out of the underworld, slowly draining the will to live from everyone above. The party descended, fought through the demon's grief-illusions, and — once Draak finally drew the Silvered Short Sword — destroyed it, freeing the inn, the trapped guests, and the burial ground's restless dead. The capstone was a long, careful conversation (via Silithane's Comprehend Languages + Message) with the horned skeleton of an ancient pre-Fall race, who at last translated the Ankley Island runes: they mark a sealed prison of the Elder race's enemies — "do not open." Meanwhile Lash crawled headlong into the demon's grief-hole chasing her dead pet crab, and is still crawling toward the underworld as the session ends. Two pips awarded — cleansing the basement and unveiling the ancient secret.

Key Events

• Reunion and the "meat shield" run: the party regrouped outside the Colosseum, most of them at half health, Magra "critical." Ashlyn, freshly fed on Fenric all week, spent her unused level-3 ability to give Magra and Lash 10 HP each (taking 20 herself). Draak, wanting a distraction tool, tried to combine a shield vendor and a meat vendor into a "meat shield," to everyone's confusion.
• Mendelin's Meats: the party visited a butcher (young human, ~20s, run by Mendelin) for travel meat — Fenric bought 5 lbs of cow meat (2 gp). Lash quietly steered Ashlyn here as a discreet source of animal blood; Ashlyn bought a 2-week supply of cow blood (14 flasks, 14 gp) so she can stop biting Fenric.
• Smithing intel from a city guard: a helpful guard listed the city's smiths — the best weaponsmith works meteorite metals in the nobles' district near Gwyndinas Castle (likely off-limits); for auricalcum, the Blue Top Docks by Eastport, where an islander Atollian works deep-sea metals (relevant to Lash's Prehistoric Longsword). Reaching it means a long trek or a ferry between Westport and Firstport.
• The Clapton's Hammer: the party slept the night of the 6th at a near-empty Brown-district tavern run by a perpetually sad, balding innkeeper waiting forever for "the Reclamation" to arrive (not realizing they've been in the city 9 months). Lash slept in the backyard wash-tub; the innkeeper bottled and labeled her bathwater as "axolotlan water" by morning.
• The mystery surfaces: leaving the next morning (7th of Spring's End) felt like a weight lifting, which made the party suspicious. They went back in. An Arcana/Perception sweep revealed the "drinking man" in the corner had been dead for weeks; Silithane's Identify named him Dorian Montagu, a 57-year-old halfling, killed by magical means with no wounds. The innkeeper revealed a previous guest (a young man, "Percy"?) had also died asleep in a bed weeks earlier. The inn was built ~4 months ago on a former burial ground.
• Thalia's Primeval Awareness sweep of the city: undead, fiends, and fey present; probably celestials; no aberrations within a mile (a relief); no dragons. Crucially, magic is blocked ~0.9 miles out on the palace/castle grounds — something shields Queen Ysolde's seat from magic. Focused on the tavern, she sensed a small handful of invisible undead in the unseen basement.
• Into the basement: behind the bar, a hatch and crude spiral staircase led down to a 90-ft storage cellar (faded bloodstains, barrels of failed home-brews), then a locked room (the party had the key) holding three trapped, listless guests — an orc playing a card game he'd forgotten the rules to, a sad bard the table named George, and a naked ~80-year-old man hiding in a chest from "the sun." Past a smashed false-wall sat the demon's lair.
• The grief-hole and the dead crab: a crevice in the wall radiated unnatural darkness. Lash sent her pet crab in via a telepathic link; the crab sensed a huge dark space and a standing humanoid before the link cut out. Lash crawled in after it (each crawl forcing her to relive her worst memories), found the crab dead — and, on emerging, it could not be revived by Ashlyn or anyone. Lash then crawled back into the hole chasing the source, ignoring the demon's illusion, and is now crawling toward the underworld (an estimated 20+ miles / a week of crawling) as the session closes.
• The fight and the cure: Ashlyn's Eldritch Blast first wounded the grief demon; her instinct to Soulbind it backfired catastrophically (binding her own soul to the demon, which then puppeted her against Lash). The party ground it down — Draak raging, Magra's Sharpshooter shots, Silithane pulling an obsidian Shadow Blade "stolen from his future self," Fenric's claws, Thalia's Hunter's Mark + thorn-whip drag — but it kept self-healing by tormenting the party with fabricated griefs. The fight turned only when Draak grabbed Fenric's Silvered Short Sword and struck: silver dealt double damage and dropped the demon, releasing everyone (it left only ectoplasm-and-dust).
• The fabricated griefs (character beats): to heal itself the demon dredged each fighter's deepest sorrow and made them relive it. Silithane relived stealing a sister he never had's ship-ticket during the fall — forced out of Orathos at 98, living in her place while she was left behind. Magra relived standing on the deck beside Daewynn and their father as a child, watching her mother wave goodbye from the port, refusing to cross to Varia. Draak mourned a rock he'd tried to teach to swim, which "drowned." Fenric relived his mother walking into the Veilwood at age 12 and never returning. Thalia's sorrow reached back to the Fae courts: a teenage memory of being caught ditching class with the noble children her mother was sanctioned to protect, and her mother naming her a failure to the Blackthorn name — the first confirmation of Thalia's family name.
• The ancient skeletons and the rune translation: the cleansing freed the burial ground's animated dead — including a horned skeleton, an Elder-race fisherman "a few hundred years old, maybe 400," and the elf-ancestor skeletons he'd been (uselessly) teaching to fish. Via Comprehend Languages + Message, Silithane interviewed him. He spoke a language predating Common; he described a society of elders ("handlers"), naive younglings, and "the greatest" immortalized in shrines. Despite being an island fisherman, his people feared the open sea — "I have never been off the coast; it is too dangerous to go into the water" — fishing only the shallows and walking inland to their shrine. He translated the Ankley Island runes: ultimate authority / warning / door / do not open / prison of our enemies. He confirmed "aberration" is an ancient word for monster that survived intact across every fallen people. He marked the party's map: Ankley Island is an ancient prison, and a separate inland Shrine of the Immortals (no one buried — "they have ascended"). His last question, fearful: "Were the guards still at the prison?" — Thalia mimed the heavy celestial presence she'd sensed, which seemed to reassure him.
• The dead can be put to rest: Silithane's Identify on a youngling named the elf-ancestor Ailendyras (a not-quite-adult High-Elf forebear) and revealed the skeletons rose from burial-protection magic triggered by the grave's disturbance — they can be re-laid to rest by sealing/walling off the section (complicated by Lash still being in the hole). Left for next week.

Combat & Encounters

• The Grief Demon (basement crevice): a "cave-baby" grief demon — small for its kind but formidable — that drained the will to live from everything above it and fed by implanting fabricated grief memories to heal itself, forcing wisdom saves. Mechanics seen: Soulbind/Torment Soul (puppeting Ashlyn after she bound her own soul to it — a hit on her would've been an "infinite damage loop"), summoning friendly Living Blood blobs (10 temp HP + resistance + no nat-1s to whoever drank one; Ashlyn and Thalia each took one, Silithane and Magra declined), and reflecting attackers' damage back onto them. The animated horned skeleton and lesser skeletons (a sword-and-board pair, an archer who "curved" arrows) fought alongside the party against it. The demon ignored every non-silver weapon's lasting effect until Draak struck with the Silvered Short Sword for double silver damage, dropping it (~32–36 to both, exactly Drak's remaining HP). No permadeath — it dissolved to ectoplasm and dust.

NPCs & Factions

• Mr. Clapton, the innkeeper — new note: the relentlessly sad, well-meaning owner of a doomed Brown-district tavern built on a burial ground; son died in the arena and "lacked the will to come back." Never firmly named in play (the GM ad-libbed "Rufio/Rufius"; the table settled on Mr. Clapton after the tavern), his father fled the Veilwood and "died of depression." Freed from the demon's pall by session's end.
• Dorian Montagu — new note: a 57-year-old halfling guest of the Clapton's Hammer, found dead-in-place for weeks, killed by magic with no wounds — the demon's most recent victim. The innkeeper had kept "serving" his corpse.
• The horned skeleton (Elder-race fisherman) — new note: an animated skeleton of a pre-Fall Elder race (horned, hooved, with "handlers"), a self-described mediocre fisherman dead ~400 years; translated the Ankley Island runes and named the island a prison. Restless until re-laid; speaks only an ancient pre-Common tongue.
• Ailendyras — new note: a not-quite-adult High-Elf ancestor skeleton ("a hornless one") buried under the inn, one of the youngsters the horned fisherman was teaching to fish.
• Mendelin — the cheerful young butcher of Mendelin's Meats ("Yes, yes, I killed them all"); source of Ashlyn's cow-blood supply. Likely one-scene.
• Ashlyn — fed on Fenric for a week; now stocked with cow blood as a sustainable food source.

Locations

• The Clapton's Hammer — a failing tavern in Gwyndinas's Brown district, ~0.7 miles from the Colosseum, built ~4 months ago on a pre-Fall burial ground; basement opened onto a grief-demon crevice descending toward the underworld. Cleansed this session; the restless dead remain to be re-laid to rest.
• Mendelin's Meats — a Gwyndinas butcher's shop; sells fresh cuts and (discreetly) animal blood.
• Gwyndinas — more of the map surfaced: Eastport / Westport / Firstport ferry crossings, the Blue Top Docks (auricalcum smith), an Orkware's orc-goods shop in the rough side of town (per Daewynn's group), a bazaar district, and the magic-blocked palace grounds.
• Ankley Island — finally identified, via the rune translation, as an ancient sealed prison of the Elder race's enemies ("aberrations"/monsters). A separate inland Shrine of the Immortals is also marked on the map.

Loot, Items & Rewards

• Silvered Short Sword — proved decisive again: silver does double damage to the grief demon (as it does to ghosts and vampires). Draak wielded it like a club to land the killing blow.
• Cow blood (14 flasks / 2-week supply, 14 gp) — Ashlyn's new sustainable food source from Mendelin's Meats.
• Cow meat (5 lbs, 2 gp) — bought by Fenric for travel.
• Grief-demon residue — a pile of ectoplasm + dust ("don't let anyone snort it"); harvestable by an alchemist the party doesn't have.
• Pet crab — dead. Lash's beach crab (from Session 11) died in the grief-hole and could not be revived.
• Two pips awarded — for cleansing the basement and for unveiling the ancient historical secret.
• 165 gp of unsold pirate goods still in the party's possession (forgotten during last session's downtime).

Decisions & Open Threads

• Lash in the underworld: Lash is crawling down the demon's grief-hole toward an estimated underworld — a multi-day journey she means to complete "no matter what." She'll surface next week; the party doesn't know if she's alive.
• Re-laying the ancient dead: the burial ground's skeletons want to rest again. The party must seal/wall off the section (and the grief-hole), but can't until Lash returns. The horned skeleton has agreed to wait and answer more questions (Silithane has ~10–20 more minutes of Comprehend Languages next session).
• Ankley Island is a prison: the celestials Thalia sensed beneath the ruins are likely the guards of a sealed aberration-prison; the runes explicitly warn "do not open." The aberration that "saw her looking" in Session 10 is presumably the prisoner — and the warning now carries enormous weight.
• The Shrine of the Immortals: a new inland map marker where the Elder race "immortalized" its greatest; no one is buried there ("they have ascended"). Unexplored.
• The magic-blocked palace: something shields Gwyndinas Castle / Queen Ysolde's seat from magic out to ~0.9 miles — noted for future reference.
• Carryover: the Ponterford abductions job (Silithane/Dominus); the Gwyndinas serial killer; the auricalcum Prehistoric Longsword (the Blue Top Docks smith is now a known lead); Magra's mother bound somewhere snowy; the Prince Lon letter; Scary Joe; Garruk the Red; the two outstanding leaving-paper signatures; 165 gp of pirate goods to pawn.

Memorable Moments

• The entire "meat shield" saga: Draak trying to buy a shield made of meat so a monster will eat it instead of him — "I don't need a shield, I need Demise to be distracted." / "Then you have come to the wrong store."
• "Did you kill the animals?" — Draak, to every meat seller. "Yes, yes, I killed them all." — "Guys, I found them. The killer of the animals, he's right here."
• The innkeeper's whole tragic existence: bottling Lash's bathwater as "axolotlan water," dangling 7 inches of vertical tinsel, pouring a drink for a ghost, and waiting nine months for heroes who are already there. "They tried [to revive my son]. They said it's the first time ever someone lacked the will to come back."
• "What if the guard just died of depression?" — Ashlyn. "They say my father died of depression." — the innkeeper.
• Thalia casting Druidcraft sparkles around the innkeeper to cheer him: "they don't reflect in his eyes at all... even literal magic cannot light up his eyes."
• Ashlyn Soulbinding the grief demon and instantly falling unconscious, soul bound to a demon: "I did not think this one through."
• Silithane pulling an obsidian blade from a tear in time, his future self shouting "hey, I need that!" — the GM promising a level-3 Silithane will reach through a portal to steal it back at level 16.
• The grief demon's Living Bloods wandering up to each party member offering to be drunk, getting politely refused ("the no thank you waiter hand"), and slapping the ground in frustration: "Nobody wants to drink me."
• Lash crawling into the abyss after a dead crab and refusing to stop — the GM's favorite beat: "she'll have a look around, be like, waaah."
• The horned skeleton's worldview reveal: "To be the greatest at something was to become immortal. I strove to be the greatest fisherman, but I was okay at best."
• The rune translation landing one page at a time — "ultimate authority… warning… door… do not open… prison of our enemies" — and "aberration" surviving as the universal word for monster. "It implies that a single word meaning danger has survived every generation of every people."
• "Were the guards still at the prison?" — the skeleton's quiet, fearful last question about Ankley Island.