Year of the Demon Lord - This is No Cave

**Spoilers for A Case of Consumption below** 

Last night my group, in their last Expert level hurrah found themselves in the town of Thorpe. Our oracle determined that there was work to be done in town in the name of the New God and the promise of coin and a chance for help with their quest to find a cure for the people of Blackstone Ford led the players to the castle of Roderick Garlach. The Lord's kids were missing, gone in the night from their sick beds. 

It was short work for Runt the orc to use his tracking skills to find suspicious donkey tracks leading from an unsecured pantry door. The trail led them to a seaside cave where the children's' uncle was distraught. He's brought them here to cure them by the ways of the Old Gods but was now worried it had been a mistake. There was nothing to do but enter the cave and rescue the children if they yet lived. 

The cave turned out to be a linear exercise in survival skills and careful navigation. The group soon began to suspect that this was no cave, but in fact a massive creature (it was) and soon they found themselves in the gizzard, their fears confirmed. Wisely they avoided antagonizing their host and were able to make it to the digestion chamber with very little incident apart from a ghastly chorus of prior victims. The digestion chamber found the group confronting a massive living tar and rescuing the three children from horrific fates. Successful in their quest the heroes had to guide the children out the creatures bowels and home to a happy reunion with their family, marred only slightly by the disfigurement of Lord Garlach's daughter Vanessa. 

A Case of Consumption turned out to be quite fun. We had 3/4 of our group but I didn't need to dial the difficulty at all because they played it smart and used their brains as they navigated the creature's guts. This also marks the second consecutive session with a poop-centric plot (we ran The Feast of the Father last month), which really makes me a crappy GM (sorry, I've been holding that in for ages).

Best of all I was able to squeeze this one out in about 2.5 hours with some added on RP that I ad libbed to help tie this into the campaign. Our next session will advance into master territory and be our last so I need to find a good denouement, but after last night's session I feel really good about maybe closing up this campaign well.