We last left our adventurers chasing after the remaining skeleton. Kragh of course smashes his way through the door, and through the pile of skeleton dust. Grace Carver is now wearing a scarf over her face, as the barrows is full of dust, and she seems a bit more susceptible now to dust. Having a slight allergy to my cats, I can understand! Seeing another door in front, that one is also immediately smashed.
In the room, the floor has a series of occult symbols written in blood, a pile of fairly fresh human bones and gore, and a thin wizard, reading a black leather book. Looking up in fear, the wizard starts what sounds like a spell. Kragh, having nothing to do with magic, decides to tackle the man. He actually did a natural 20, and the wizard's spleen was no longer an internal organ. A pool of blood comes from the now dead wizard, and Enoki felt some sort of lightening of the spiritual world. Unbeknownst to our group, they had broken the spell that was reanimating all the skeletons.
In the meantime, Kragh, who cannot read the book wants to know what is in it. Quinby, barely literate, decides to tell the tale of Princess Bubble Fart, and Kragh, our hulking half-Orc is either entranced or disturbed by the story the strange Halfling is spinning. Deputy Ellis takes a look at the book, and finds it is an evil tome to reanimate corpses, a foul magic. The book is soon burned after that, though Grace stepped out of the room to avoid the smoke. Searching the body, Quinby finds a ruby amulet and puts it on. It is not magic so has no effect on him, despite them all watching in curiosity to see what happens to the magpie Halfling.
Having spoken aloud of the shift in the feel of the barrows, Baldur and the group go back to find the undead Treant is now a pile of dust mixed in with the murky water, and Enoki and Quinby (I think!) each take some in one of the many bowls they have picked up. These are not Tupperware so not sure how they'll keep the contents from spilling out but we'll go with it is a game and they figure something out.
Deciding to investigate the rest of the barrows, and Kragh is still looking for Lurbok's stolen sword, the continue onward. Up the cave from the now truly dead Treant, they find a sword coated in blood and carcass crawler gore. Kragh picks it up, hoping it was Lurbok's. It was a fine blade, with the sigil of Sir Ignatius on it. Quinby found a holy symbol in the nest and paid no attention to what sounded like a voice in his head. Perhaps he is used to voices in his head. That, and I forgot to mention it until later...
The blue gore, though, was having an effect on Kragh: his arm was getting numb holding it. For some reason he thought this was a fine thing and waved the sword about. Even with a -2 he had a good grip on the sword despite the numbing effect of the carcass crawler blood. They move forward and are met with five very healthy-looking rats. I did try and stress how healthy these rats were. Not wanting to kill the rats as some remembered that Baldur had spoken with a rat, they moved a bit closer and tried to wave a torch to scare them off. The rats, however, felt cornered, and as Kragh was waving his very numb arm about, with the sword tied to his hand thanks to Baldur, they attacked the nearest big thing threatening them. The others tried to sweep the rats off of Kragh to little effect, yet he only took a single nip before they finally got the rats off of him, with three of them knocked out due to excellent shots by the thief with his sling.
The next chamber was a dead end, but with a strangely glowing pond in it. Through a bit of experimentation, they found that rubbing the water on their wounds helped heal them a bit. Kragh washed off the sword and got all feeling back in his arm, but made the little pond look dirtied from the blood and gore. Enoki walked out to the water and sucked water through what passes for feet in a Mycelium. And got a full healing just about. They tried to take some of the water in another cup but the effervescent nature of the water soon stilled once out of the pond itself.
A bit healed up, and taking a short break, they retrace their steps to explore the rest of the barrows. All the skeletons found at this point are all collapsed, no longer undead or animated. They find a storeroom with three skeletons that had been smoking pipes. One had a key around his neck, but with the door smashing barbarian, who needs a key? Inside a storeroom they find 5 merchants cowering and smelling pretty bad. They had been abducted by the skeletons, and they had overheard the guards planning on using their body parts to get back to a real life somehow. The tobacco they found would be of great interest to the Goblin Merchant Zesp back in Windemere Crossing.
After a brief discussion, Grace takes the 5 merchants out to wait outside, and the crew carries on their exploration, though now without the constant clicking of Grace's 10-foot pole tapping the floors. Sadly, there were no traps in this barrow, though in hindsight I should have put one that she finds. Just to prove the usefulness of a good pole in a bad barrow. They find a defiled crypt, and in the eye sockets of one of the skeletons find a pair of very lifelike eyes made of stone. They find a room with 3 tattered tapestries, one looking like it is covered in gold. Alas, it was a yellow mold that exploded when they tried to move that tapestry. Fortunately, the only 2 within the space that the spoors exploded into made their breath saves, else they would have died within six rounds. Though I would have allowed them to try & get to the healing waters which I would have allowed to save them. If they thought of it.
The other tapestry held a chain that opened the door behind the middle tapestry. This alcove of a room held a statue with no eyes in its sockets, holding a brazier with 3 blue gems in a writhing mass of white flames. Taking Kragh's sword, Quinby tries to scoop out the gems but instead, the fire crawls up the sword and starts burning his arms.
Enoki, remembering the eyes, gets them and places them in the socket. The flames go out, and they pocket the gems. I believe they left the eyes in the statue when they left, and they also burned that yellow mold tapestry, not seeing the treasure behind that now smoking tapestry.
They find a trapped pixie, Alfwine, in the next room. Freeing her, she says that the skeletons had captured her to be some sort of magical elixir for the wizard. Which brought back bad memories from her of Woodfall, where she was once a member of the Pixie Liberation. She is eager to help, not knowing that these same saviors had also stolen her 500 gold. At least not aware yet...
In a pile, clasped by a now unmoving skeleton hand, the Orc sword is found. While looking clumsy, when wielded by an Orc it handles very well. And I thought I had written that up but cannot find it. So will have to do that again before next week.
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| from Dyson's Book of Swords |
And that was the last room - had they made a right at the beginning rather than a left the sword would have been found the first few minutes into the barrows.
They meet up with Grace outside the entrance, and started loading their loot on the two horses that Ellis and Grace came in on.
Next post I'll go ahead and do a bit of an info dump as they walk back to Windemere Crossing to get the merchants back there and get another 1200 gold. Which they may have to look into a bag of holding, healing potions and the like. We are also close to the thief leveling up, and possibly the barbarian as het is getting a 10% bonus on XP.
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