Adventurers
Grateful as they were for the return of one of their missing youngsters, the villagers encouraged the adventurers to look for the other two as well. Bertram bagged the assistance of another thief and a particularly strong retainer, and they set off for the ruined gatehouse.
They poked around the surface level to ensure no new critters other than some birds circling overhead had moved in, and found themselves some ratlings in the storeroom with the way down. They captured one for some possible intel but lacked any common language, so they bound it and left it upstairs while they descended the brick stairs into the gloom.
After investigating the drinking horn-bearing dwarf statue again and swatting aside some giant mosquitoes, the party came across a pair of terrified ratlings who, after wolfing down some of the party’s rations, tried to communicate with them. Without the language, no specifics were understood, but the adventurers interpreted the creatures’ motions and gestures as indicating the presence of a secret door a little way ahead. They tried it and found a laboratory-like room with a pouch of blood tubed into four giant rats in various stages of transformation into ratlings.
Spying some prisoners in some cells off to the side, the party found more quivering ratlings and a woman who named herself Aena. She wasn’t one of the teenagers they were looking for but they released her anyway, and she clung to Lucky as they continued exploring. The thief heard some breathing on the other side of a door, so Bertram heaved his shoulder against it to try and take whoever was on the other side by surprise. Unfortunately he couldn’t break it down in one go, and when Lucky stepped through the eventually-opened doorway a shabbily-yet-stylishly dressed gentleman with distinctly pointed features charged into him from the side.
They were able to wrestle the man to the ground, but their captive appeared surprisingly untroubled by his predicament, introducing himself as the long-missing Lord Jarlath, owner of this former keep, and suggesting they toddle off while they still could. They continued exploring the room and found a chest and a jail cell containing one of the two missing youths. The man warned them against freeing her, indicating that they should take the chest instead. When they ignored him, he gave a whistle and swarms of rats poured in from the corners. Distracted, they were unable to stop him rising and attack, chomping down with distinctly rodent-like teeth on Bertram’s arm.
Pinchy and Vincent had had enough, and they fled the room, bleeding from lots of tiny bites, but Lucky (and, by extension, Aena) hung back to try and hold the way open for Bertram to free the girl and escape with them. Alas, the doughty fighter could not resist the shabby gentleman’s power and was hurled, badly injured, to the floor and bound hand and foot. The gent then turned his attention to the towering Koldo, dispatching her easily.
The last thing Bertram saw before he slipped into unconsciousness was the screaming Lucky disappearing under a wave of rats, and Aena picking up the thief’s fallen torch, face expressionless, and dashing from the room.
