The Copper Piece Gang

D&D Session Summary

This session opened with the party returning to the Scarlet Citadel after a recent fight with an owlbear and some harpies. After taking a short rest, they moved through a foul thirty-foot chamber still littered with body parts and old gore. Krovuur caught the musty, unmistakable smell of the undead somewhere nearby, which immediately put the group on edge. That warning paid off almost at once when he spotted a shambling zombie and blasted it with a powerful Sunstrike, nearly wrecking it in one hit.

The zombie turned out to be much nastier than a standard shambling corpse. It lunged at Krovuur with disturbingly intelligent-looking eyes, oversized clawed hands, and a mouth that split open far too wide, spilling maggots as it attacked. The whole thing felt more like a corrupted horror than a simple undead servant. Zarnak answered in the most Zarnak way possible by ripping the zombie’s leg off and beating it to death with its own limb.

Instead of charging straight into the next room, the group checked a side chamber first and found what appeared to be the former living quarters of the jailer. The room was filthy and miserable, with nasty furs and a barrel of disgusting water. An unlocked chest inside turned out to be full of preserved body-part trophies, with flies buzzing out the moment it was opened. Underneath the horror, though, the group found valuables: coins, rings, a locket, shiny buttons, a talisman focus, gloves, a holy symbol of Baldur, and even some poetry. They dumped the worst contents, took the salvageable loot, and kicked over the filthy water barrel.

The party then pushed into the nearby torture-room area, where older threats still lingered. The animated cages they had dealt with earlier began rattling again. The group investigated a darker dugout space and found something more interesting than another standard fight: a cloaked humanoid kneeling before a candle-lit shrine tied to an old death god.

At first, the party assumed this figure was probably the source of the zombie trouble and were ready to kill him. Zarnak even got into position to put a blade to his throat. But when the cloaked man lost concentration for a moment, the dormant zombies in the next chamber started to move. That made it immediately clear that killing him outright would likely unleash all four undead at once. The man identified himself as Ushulk and begged them not to kill him, explaining that he was actively holding the zombies in check.

Once the party paused long enough to hear him out, the situation became much more interesting. Ushulk explained that the shrine represented an older form of a death god whose meaning had changed over time. What was once connected more closely to sacrificial death and solemn transition had later been twisted into bloodier, more corrupted interpretations. Krovuur recognized enough truth in Ushulk’s explanation to believe he was not simply lying. Through long devotion, Ushulk had developed a strange spiritual power over undead and was trying to put these zombies back to rest because their current state violated the natural order his god was meant to uphold.

That led to one of the session’s better pivots: a skill challenge built around helping an unsettling but useful NPC. Ushulk needed more candles and magical aid to complete the ritual. The party split responsibilities. One task involved gathering enough candles to control each of the four zombies. Another involved sprinkling water on them while adjacent. Nucky used music like a kind of macabre Pied Piper trick to lure them back toward their proper resting places. The whole sequence reframed the undead as a spiritual cleanup problem the party could solve through cooperation and timing rather than brute violence.

The ritual succeeded. The zombies were laid back to rest, the oppressive undead smell began to fade, and the crypt chamber stabilized. The party came away with a clear read on Ushulk: useful, knowledgeable, not immediately hostile, but absolutely not trustworthy in any broader moral sense. He remained tied to the shrine and would likely be a recurring factor later, either as a weird ally of convenience or a future complication.

After that, the party returned to the pool room and checked an unexplored door. While Zarnak was checking it, a mud sprite burst up from the pool and managed to catch several of the party off guard. The mud sprite blasted Rae with mud and immobilized him, kicking off a wonderfully stupid and memorable little fight.

Rae used Lightning Lure to reposition the creature, and Zarnak took full advantage of the room’s improvised environment. He jumped onto a board and used it to launch the mud sprite into the ceiling, where it hit and stuck. From there the party piled on the jokes and the damage. The sprite sagged, stretched, and got more ridiculous with every hit. Zarnak stabbed and spun it like spaghetti on a fork, which led to the group naming it spaghemorrhoids. Then mudroids. Then bloody stool. The fight devolved into a long run of toilet humor.

The fight stayed mechanically dangerous even while the jokes got worse. The mud sprite had some kind of explosive death effect when it finally went off, and Rae was hit badly enough to earn a running joke condition. The room itself was now contaminated by the sprite’s disease, turning a cleared room into a place nobody wanted to linger in.

Once the mud sprite was dead, the group opened the door and revealed a spiral staircase leading downward. Bitter chemical smells rose up from below, immediately signaling another shift in the dungeon’s tone. Something more alchemical and dangerous waited underneath. The session ended with the party staring at that staircase, fresh loot in hand, one undead cultist-adjacent contact behind them, and the Scarlet Citadel getting stranger by the minute.

Quick Recap

• The party returned to the Scarlet Citadel after fighting an owlbear and harpies and took a short rest.
• Krovuur smelled undead nearby and found a dangerous zombie, which he badly bloodied with Sunstrike.
• The zombie attacked with oversized claws and a mouth full of maggots before Zarnak killed it by ripping off its leg.
• In the jailer’s filthy quarters, the party found a chest full of preserved body-part trophies with valuables hidden underneath.
• Loot included coins, rings, a locket, shiny buttons, a talisman focus, gloves, a holy symbol of Baldur, and poetry.
• The party discovered Ushulk praying at a death-god shrine while holding several zombies dormant through concentration.
• Instead of killing him, they learned he was trying to put the undead back to rest and helped through a ritual skill challenge.
• The zombies were successfully returned to rest, and Ushulk became a useful but morally sketchy figure tied to the shrine.
• Back in the pool room, a mud sprite ambushed the party while they checked an unexplored door.
• Zarnak launched the mud sprite into the ceiling, leading to a ridiculous fight full of spaghetti, mud, and toilet-themed jokes.
• The mud sprite’s death effect contaminated the room and gave Rae a running condition for future critical failures.
• The session ended when the party opened the next door and found a spiral staircase descending toward bitter chemical smells.