Play Report 32 — Basement Freaks


Thank you to my good friend Kai, who plays Almuund, for this beautiful piece of art.

We started this session by covering what Akela got up to during Hant’s recovery. She seeks additional medical training in the Valley Collaboration. Unfortunately her player rolls a 6: “You discover no useful information, and may encounter someone you would rather avoid, at the GM’s discretion.” When she approaches the local sanitarium, her general demeanor of being gets the attention of one of its overseers, a stuffy staunch royalist scholar named Amand (he/him). Even when she manages to talk to junior staff, Amand inevitably arrives to kill the conversation, telling her to leave and stop disturbing the patients.

This eventually leads to Akela walking into his office to try and confront him directly. She accuses him of being unserious in his desire to heal people if he would turn away someone who wishes to learn, and he accuses her of being an uncouth foreigner who is the very reason the monarchy fell and no longer has the resources to do so as effectively. Tensions escalate until Amand orders her off the premises. She tells him to “enjoy wallowing in your withered husk of an ideology,” to which he replies that he will do that, thank you, please leave.

Akela is no longer allowed in the sanitarium.

The day that Hant is recovered walk again is a festival day, and the party walks through the crowds to the still abandoned market plaza where the nightmare is. They begin by heading straight in to the Corpse-Eater lair, where one is sleeping. Akela muffles its cries while Hant pours holy water directly over it, and its mummified flesh melts away from its bones.

The party finds the collected trinkets of the Corpse-Eaters under the flagstone they use to hide it, and then begin investigating the rest of the area. There is a locked door nearby, which leads to an occupied residence in the street above. They can hear faint festival music through it. Akela kicks it in, startling both the remaining corpse-eaters in the dungeon and the family above who have previously just unhappily ignored the sounds from below. Almuund tosses holy water on the stairs between the lair and the rest of the dungeon, hoping to prevent access. The plan plays off as the 7 returning Corpse-Eaters are now unable to return to their lair. Initiative is rolled.



Almuund begins abjuring the undead, and the Corpse-Eaters can no longer advance up the stairs even if they are careful of the holy water.

Hant decapitates the one that has climbed the highest.

The remaining 5 scuttle back from the abjuration and choke point of the stairs, hiding in the darkness.

Akela rushes down the stairs and dashes one of them against the stairway wall.

From above, the family of normal humans panics. One yells: “It’s the things in the basement, I told you they were real! Get the gun!”

Almuund maintains his abjuration as he tries to reassure the family above, saying that they are here to destroy the monsters. Unfortunately Almuund is the one who is an anthropomorphic cat not common to this plane of existence and is currently emitting some sort of ominous light, so the reply he gets is “OH GOD THERE’S SOME SORT OF WRETCHED CAT BEAST! LOAD IT FASTER.” He steps out of the line of fire, into the corpse eater lair.

Hant catches another Corpse-Eater in a splash of holy water as it scrambles for cover, and it falls.

Akela runs back upstairs to try to prevent Almuund from getting shot. The person at the top of the stairs screams and fires a pistol into the ceiling above her before running away.

Almuund stays out of the way.

Hant decides to retreat upstairs to not be alone against three foes. The remaining Corpse-Eaters slink away into the dungeon to wait in ambush, and the party, covered in dirt and blood, begins trying to determine how to convince the people upstairs that they are the good guys actually.