Critical Role Recap: Episode 10

Previously on Critical Role, the Mighty Nein explored the city of Zadash. While there, they learned of the Dwendalian Empire’s authoritarian control over the city, its trade, its religious practices, and social class. They also learned of a secret group of dissidents known as the Knights of Requital.

Seeking work, the Mighty Nein met with Voloshin, the Herald of the Hall, and took a mercenary contract to hunt down a monster nesting in the sewers of Zadash. They spent the night in a tavern called the Leaky Tap and prepared to take on the beast.

Art by Caio Santos (@BlackSalander)

Single Paragraph Synopsis

The Mighty Nein traveled into the sewers of Zadash and killed a phase spider, along with a horde of disgusting, bloated sewer rats. They met a suspicious halfling with a serpentine neck tattoo bound up in the sewers, and he told them to give a passcode to a bartender at a dive called the Evening Nip. They then took the spider’s head back to the King’s Hall in exchange for a reward and met the town’s mysterious Lawmaster Arentha. They then cleaned off at their local tavern, the Leaky Tap, and learned that the rebellious Knights of Requital are planning something big… and they want the Mighty Nein as their muscle.

Full Length Summary

In the taproom of the Leaky Tap tavern, Jester related the story of how she saw her mysterious god and best friend, the Traveler, in the Pillow Trove inn earlier that night. She was very excited to have her god with her again, but the rest of the party was skeptical. Beau questioned whether or not the Traveler was a god or not, and others wondered if perhaps he was just a new god. Either way, the Traveler was definitely not one of the approved gods of the Dwendalian Empire, and the Mighty Nein urged Jester to keep his existence a secret.

Jester called out to the Traveler. “Traveler, if you’re here, you can just show up any time!” A moment passed. No Traveler.

Travis looked at the Dungeon Master. “Perception check.” Fjord looked about, but there was no sign of the Traveler. Fjord quickly changed the subject, and the party discussed where they would stay for the night. Jester offered that she had a room she could share with the party in the Pillow Trove, but Caleb put a stop to that option, mourning how difficult it is for “shabby” folk like himself to get into Zadash’s finer districts.

Eventually, they decided to take on their monster hunting job in the sewers and then reconvene at the Pillow Trove later. They took stock of their adventuring gear (with several players laughing as they realized their character sheets were filled with items they had completely forgotten about!), and decided they were quite well prepared. They headed straight for the sewers, pausing just long enough for Caleb to get a new cloak.

Actually, it’s late autumn and the winters in northern Wildemount are cold. On second thought, Caleb picked up a full set of warm clothes and a pair of earmuffs for Nott. Then off to the sewers!

Upon reaching the sewer entrance—one of many throughout Zadash—the party was approached by a pair of Crownsguard soldiers, who asked what they were doing around the sewer. The Mighty Nein showed off the Lawmaster’s Writ they received from the Herald of the Hall earlier, which gives them official permission to enter the sewers. Beau looked the guards over and asked for rumors about what might be down in the sewer. They didn’t know much, and Beau quickly got impatient and started berating the man. Ultimately, they decided he knew nothing and decided to leave him alone.

Before leaving the guard, Fjord said, “If anyone asks you who those brave souls who ventured into the sewers, you tell them it was the Mighty Nein.”

“There’s seven of you,” the guard replied, confused.

“Count again!” shot back Nott, and the guard took a cautious step back, overwhelmed by the experience. He wished them good luck, unlocked the sewer grate, and let them in. Nott borrowed the ring of water walking the party looted earlier, and timidly entered.

The party trudged through the sewer searching for webbing, blockages, or monster nests—all signs of the creature that they were warned of by Herald Voloshin. After some time searching the sewers, they reached a four-way junction, and Jester exclaimed that she found webbing! The party assumed a marching order and found a dry tunnel. In the torchlight, they saw two yellow eyes flash from the darkness, followed by a screech. A refuse pile skittered towards them!

“Roll initiative.”

Monster Hunting

A horde of sewer-dwelling giant rats swarmed the party. Their fur was matted so terribly that the rats were practically an “outer shell of broken garbage, trash, and excrement…A horrible, half-burned pile of compost with teeth.” During the fight, one of the bloated rats was killed by piercing damage, and the creature exploded in a cloud of poison gas.

The party decided that piercing damage caused the creature to rupture, and all began using blunt weapons or handicapping their strength by using unarmed strikes to bludgeoning the mangy beasts to death.

After defeating the rats, the party healed up before moving forward. A quick inspection of the corpses revealed that though the rats were plagued by severe necrosis, they were likely just diseased and not undead. They decided to avoid the other nearby rat swarms and instead sneak down another passage. This passage was choked with webbing, and in the webs hung a cocoon the size of a dog. Molly cut gently into the mass with his scimitar, and out fell one of the giant rats, drained of all its fluids.

Disturbed by other human-sized pods further than the passage, Caleb conjured Schmidt, his unseen servant, and Jester suggested that he use the servant to poke at the human-shaped web pods to see if they were still alive. Unfortunately, both pods contained dead members of the Crownsguard. Caleb took some time to burn the pods and free the corpses, which Fjord then grimly examined. There were deep puncture wounds in their necks.

Jester carved through the giant web blocking the passage with her handaxe (which Matt described afterward as looking like the “world’s worst cotton candy”), and continued down the passage,w here they found the body of a halfling near the rungs of a ladder leading out of the sewer. The being was bound in webbing, but was still alive! As the party examined the halfling, however, they were ambushed by a massive arachnid.

Its body was white and covered in pale blue splotches—a phase spider. It attacked Fjord first, plunging its fangs into his chest, forcing Fjord to roll a Constitution saving throw. He succeeded, fighting through the creature’s poison. However, as the heroes prepared a counterattack, the phase spider vanished from sight! While the party thought that the creature had just turned invisible, it had actually jaunted into the Ethereal Plane, completely safe from harm.

Throughout the fight, the party dealt with the spider hopping across dimensions, striking it in the precious few seconds it remained in the Material Plane between attacks. Ultimately, Mollymauk dealt the final blow with a well-placed vicious mockery. One could say that the spider was Molly-mocked to death!

After recovering their wits, the party turned to the halfling and Caleb’s unseen servant smacked him awake. The halfling, named Thed, said he was in the sewers because he was “trying to get somewhere quickly.” He was freaking out and not being very helpful, but Nott spoke to him in thieves’ cant and rolled a clutch natural 20. Thed reluctantly said, “I can’t tell you anything, but if you want to find him, there is a place you can inquire. If I give you any more information and it gets out, I’m deader than that spider! There’s a dive [bar] not five miles from here called the Evening Nip. Say to the bartender that ‘I’d like a drink, but while I have no coin, I’m willing to offer many gifts.’”

As the party ponders this information, they look over the halfling. He has spiky hair and a goatee, but more importantly he has a bizarre tattoo on his neck, intertwining serpentine shapes that form a dark band. The Mighty Nein don’t suspect this, but I suspect that Thed is a member of the Myriad thieves’ guild, a brutal cartel that began in Wildemount and has spread as far as Tal’Dorei. Beau tried to recall what the tattoos signified, but rolled a natural 1 and learned nothing.

They set Thed free and slyly promised to forget about their entire meeting.

The Nein Rewarded

As the victorious Mighty Nein recovered from the fight, they burned the phase spider’s eggs, severed its head as proof of the kill, and looted the corpses of its prior victims. Caleb surreptitiously took a huge sum of loot for himself and Jester (lampooning how frequently Vex’ahlia was chided for hoarding loot in the last campaign) quipped “Is everyone just a greedy **** and [keeping all of the loot they find for themselves?” The general consensus was “yes.”

Caleb pulled Jester aside, however, pretending to have a problem that needed medical attention. He quietly passed her 100 gold, knowing that she didn’t receive any from her mother the other day. For whatever reason, Jester’s requests for money and aid from her mother in distant Nicodranus had gone unheeded. A quiet moment passed between the two of them. Not long after, Molly got Caleb alone and pinned him against the wall. They were face-to-face, as awkwardly close as they could get. Molly eyed the gold Caleb had taken from the bodies and intoned, “I’m fine if you skim something off the top, I don’t care. But at least be clever about it. Leave sixty, seventy percent for the rest of us.”

Mollymauk let Caleb go. The shaken wizard said nothing. Then, Nott climbed up the ladder and emerged into the night air, out of the sewers. They party quickly exited the wealthy part of town they had emerged into and hauled the phase spider’s severed head back to the King’s Haul for their reward. Upon delivering the head to Voloshim, an unfamiliar voice rang out through the hall. A human woman with graying, shoulder-length hair and a weathered face, and wearing comfortable, gold-and-white robes shuffled toward them. She introduced herself as Lawmaster Arentha and thanked them for their loyalty to the crown and their service to the city.

Then she disappeared as soon as she appeared, and the Nein claimed their reward of 700 gold pieces.

A Brief Respite

They returned to the Leaky Tap and used the washrooms to clean off from their sewer escapade. Caleb also showed Fjord a set of mariner’s armor he found in the spider’s treasure hoard. He offered a trade; the armor for the Fjord’s glove that can cast scorching ray. Caleb said that had a “checkered past” and an “interesting history with… fire,” and very much wanted the glove.

Fjord agreed, but asked for Caleb’s story in return as well. Caleb stammered about not trusting most people. He claims that he thought he was going to be someone one day, but now he doesn’t think he has that opportunity anymore. Caleb trailed to an awkward halt, and asked Fjord to ask him again in a few days to give him time to prepare a better answer. Fjord nodded and handed over his glove for the armor.

Meanwhile, Fjord and Beau were approached by a dwarf from the secret assembly of the Knights of Requital. He asked them to follow him into the cellar where the secret meeting was held the other knight, and asked if they had shared any information of the meeting with their companions. They replied no, and the dwarf nodded contentedly. He asked, “Do you have a heart for goodness in this world? And do you want to make a difference?” The Knights of Requital were planning something, and he wanted Beau and Fjord to bring their companions to their meeting tomorrow evening—he asked them to be “the fist to his voice” as they planned to shake up the status quo and bring justice to the corrupt authoritarians of the Dwendalian Empire.

They relayed the offer to the party, and while they were skeptical, they seemed willing to go along with the idea if the pay was good enough.

Before the night ended, the Mighty Nein made one last trip out. They traveled to the Evening Nip, the tavern that Thed the halfling had told them about, and scouted out the joint. While there, they found it to be a rough and tumble dive bar with two dangerous looking bouncers outside. However, inside was a quiet, dingy establishment with only two lonely patrons. One of the patrons, however, was an older man with the same serpentine neck tattoo as Thed. The party took note of this information and hurried out of the bar… but not before having to leave Yasha behind as Ashley had to make her way back to New York.

What’s next for the heroes of Critical Role? What revolutionary plans do the Knights of Requital have in store for Zadash? Critical Role will return on March 22nd, 2018. Is it Thursday yet?

Character art by Ariana Orner (@ornerine).

James Haeck is the lead writer for D&D Beyond, the co-author of the Critical Role Tal'Dorei Campaign Setting, and writes as a freelancer for Wizards of the Coast, the D&D Adventurers League, and Kobold Press. He loves watching Critical Role and wants everyone he knows to get into it, too. He lives in Seattle, Washington with his very own Frumpkins, Mei and Marzipan. You can usually find him wasting time on Twitter at @jamesjhaeck.