The Copper Piece Gang

D&D Session Summary

This session opened with the party descending deeper into the Scarlet Citadel by way of a claustrophobic spiral staircase leading into an acrid, chemical-smelling lower level. Right away, the place telegraphed danger. At the bottom of the stairs was a grated floor that had clearly been melted, warped, and reformed by something corrosive. The group quickly realized they were standing in a trap zone. Zarnak searched the steps, found a trigger on the staircase, and identified the problem just in time to stop everyone from blundering forward blindly.

That did not mean the situation was safe. The moment the party began trying to get off the trapped staircase and floor, hidden sluices opened and acid started pouring into the area. The group had to improvise movement in a hurry. Rae leapt back up the stairs to avoid the worst of it. Others jumped or scrambled clear in different directions. At one point Rae essentially threw Nucky down along the side of the staircase like a piece of tactical luggage, and Zarnak caught him at the bottom. Rae used wall-climbing movement to get clear as well. It was one of those absurd but effective sequences where nobody moved elegantly, but everyone survived.

As soon as the party got clear of the acid hazard, the room introduced its next problem. A pair of alchemical monsters emerged, one of them a lizard-like shock creature and the other a bubbling slime shape trailing greasy residue and foul fumes. The air around them was nasty enough that just being near them was becoming part of the threat. The lizard belched fumes onto Nucky, while the slime closed on Rae and spread noxious vapor and slippery trails.

Zarnak immediately went for a big physical solution. He moved into a risky position, took opportunity attacks, and tried to force the lizard down through the grated floor. The party committed to that plan in full. Nucky ended up getting tossed into the air and brought down on top of the creature in a kind of improvised Goomba stomp, helping drive it through the grate. Bloodied, the thing discharged lightning, which turned the fight into an even more chaotic mess. The second creature did similar volatile things when pushed too hard. The group gradually learned that the enemies on this level were not just dangerous because of their attacks. They were unstable chemical reactions in monster form, and hurting them often made the battlefield worse for everybody nearby.

Eventually the party brought both enemies down, but not cleanly. The monsters could shift between states, move through vents, and made it impossible to feel safe even after the immediate fight ended. The group tried to take a short rest, only to realize the space itself could not be trusted. That led to one of the most ridiculous problem-solving moments in the campaign so far: Nucky used the infamous brown note idea to force an absolutely disgusting but effective seal on a vent or opening so the party could actually get a breather. It was absurd. It was gross. It worked. D&D in its natural habitat.

Once the party had stabilized, they moved into the next chamber and found a room dominated by three large sealed vats connected to hoses and tubes. The whole place felt like a poisonous distillery or processing room. Acrid air burned their throats, and it was obvious this level of the Citadel was built around chemical extraction and alchemical processing rather than normal dungeon architecture. A desk nearby held notebooks, color-coded inks, quills, parchment, and three potion vials with different suspicious liquids. It looked like someone had been doing serious experimental work here.

The desk immediately proved dangerous too. A green inkwell spilled and transformed into a hostile creature, which the party quickly dubbed Grink. Like the other entities on this level, it was volatile and weird. It used whirlwinds and strange attacks, tried to shroud Krovuur, and then dissipated explosively when killed. Once again, the lesson was that even seemingly harmless objects in this area could become hostile alchemical problems with almost no warning.

After the fight, Zarnak and Krovuur both temporarily lost their sense of smell, which is honestly a mixed blessing on this floor. The party then took a closer look at the vats themselves. Rae, Nucky, and Zarnak pieced together that the vats were being used to extract essence from oozes, slimes, and jellies. Rae specifically recognized that the slime-essence extractor was unstable enough to either explode or produce strange mixtures if tampered with. That made the whole room feel less like storage and more like the engine room for whatever hideous experiments were happening below.

From there, the session shifted into cautious exploration. The party advanced into a larger adjoining chamber obscured by purple-tinged fumes. Visibility was poor, but careful scouting revealed more clues. Zarnak and the group found rubble in one corner, and Krovuur’s excellent perception and dungeoneering checks determined that the damage came from explosives. Burnt fuses were still present, and there was even evidence that at least one earlier adventurer had died here after being hit by a bomb. This was not just a naturally dangerous room. Someone had fought here, used explosives, and either fled or died here.

The group also found several sturdy, wax-sealed barrels. Arcane probing suggested these contained valuable distillates used to separate other liquids or materials. Each barrel could be worth roughly four to five hundred gold pieces if the party could ever haul them back out. That made the room feel like both a treasure chamber and a logistics nightmare.

As they pushed farther in, the party began to see the true shape of the room. A large central construction rose toward a vaulted ceiling and gave off heat, glow, and periodic hissing. It felt like some kind of furnace, reaction chamber, or alchemical foundry. The closer they got, the more the space suggested an active industrial experiment rather than a dead ruin. A nearby table covered with notes contained phrases like temporal transfer refractor, temporal transfer linkage, and harmonic plate assembly, along with equations, coded notation, and cross-outs. The notes pointed toward advanced and unstable magical-alchemical work far beyond simple poison brewing.

By the end of the session, the party had survived the acid staircase trap, fought chemically unstable monsters, turned a bodily-function joke into a tactical sealant, uncovered an ooze-essence extraction lab, identified valuable distillate barrels, and started piecing together evidence of a much larger alchemical operation involving explosives, temporal theory, and dangerous machinery.

Quick Recap

• The party descended a spiral staircase into a lower level filled with bitter chemical smells and obvious trap energy.
• They discovered a staircase trigger and then had to escape as hidden sluices opened and acid poured into the area.
• Rae, Nucky, and Zarnak used frantic improvised movement to get off the trapped stairs without being dissolved.
• Two unstable alchemical monsters attacked: a shock lizard and a bubbling slime creature surrounded by foul fumes.
• Zarnak and the party forced the lizard through the grate, with Nucky helping via an airborne stomp that triggered dangerous lightning.
• The monsters could shift states and move through vents, making it hard to feel safe even after the fight.
• A ridiculous brown-note plan was used to seal an opening so the group could finally get a short rest.
• In the next room, the party found three sealed vats, a poisonous distillery setup, notebooks, and potion vials.
• A spilled green ink-like substance turned into a hostile creature that attacked before being destroyed.
• The vats were identified as devices used to extract essence from oozes, slimes, and jellies.
• Further exploration revealed a larger fume-filled chamber with rubble, burnt fuses, and signs that earlier adventurers had been bombed there.
• The party found valuable barrels of distillates and notes referencing temporal transfer and harmonic plate work.