Tag: undead

The Scarecrow King

On By ravonlockeIn Belladonna, MarathonsLeave a comment

Fires have started around town. 4 specific places.  A couple guards peel off. Barty goes to distract the guards We sneak in and lock the door behind us. Barty ghosts in. Then quietly attack the four scarecrows inside. We eat spme berries and Barty dispels the ward on the trapdoor..

We head down the trap door. Down spiral stone stairs intina catacombs. North chanting,  east combat, west nothing. We head towards the green lit chanting. Finding a guard post. We blow them up. Then Anwin shoots the scarecrow down.

Onward. To a large vaulted chamber with pointy alcoves. Cultists carry materials morth. 4 Scarecrows guard them. Battle signs to the east. Green ritual chamber to the north.  We join battle.

We head forward, berries in hand. Another large room, filled with bodies of dead cultists. And a staircase down, where the glow comes from. Briar found a box in a pillar. Barty dispels the trap. A small black iron hourglass flowing upwards. Briar takes it more more cantripping, and my potion for recovery. 

A tattered priest with burning eyes and eight skeletons come up behind us. Acolyte Mordin. They are sweeping up here and will join us below.

We head down another spiral staircase. Death rites on the walls and pulsing green light from below. Chanting and light from the left. Quiet from the right. Eye goes right. We go left to a semi-circular antechamber with four pillars, with cultists kneeling in prayer. Grren seeps through the far door, which is guarded by a cultist who appears to be Corvus, wearing the black armor of a knight, and four massive scarecrows. We take them all down. I am a tired, injured, wolf by the end.

Massive cathedral room. Glowing green throne. 13 villagers around it glazed and chanting. Lord Blackbriar on the throne with the shadowy Pumpkin King above him.  6 scarecrows behind the cultists.  We bomb Corvus. The scarecrows bomb us to death (Barty, Briar, and me).  Arwin knocks out more of the cultists and Lord Blackbriar kills himself to complete the ritual. The Scarecrow King manifests into the world.

The lich queen enters with her horde and raises the dead to fight again. We rejoin the fight. His throne is destroyed and he is banished back to the netherworld. The scarecrows melt to the floor. The “volunteers” are alive but unconscious. 

The lich queen is satisfied with us kerping our word. She didn’t intend to give us unlife. Grats on your unlife. They will be taking back the temple ward of the city. We cannot attack her. We are bound to the goddess of death. We may leave, but are welcome in her ward. 

We gather up Rico and the survivors. Heading back out into the city through the undead army. The city awakes in confusion and horror. The Lord is disgraced. The rogue guild gains political power. 

We are given a writ of nobility and a manor on the edge of town. Time passes, the Sycthe has half the power in the city. The cult is scattered. The city negotiates with the Lady Templar Lich. 

In the spring, we receive a message. The goblins – the barrow collapsed. Large things moving in the darkness below. 

Cultists and Death

On By ravonlockeIn Journal, PandoraLeave a comment

Heading down the stairs we follow some footsteps to a pair of cultists playing strip chess. They don’t mind us ransacking the room, seeming very focused on their game and each other. How strange, but they seem busy for the moment, so become a later problem.

The next room, I am encouraged to sneak into alone. It is a dormitory, full of bunks and chests. I rifle through each chest, avoiding the bed with the lone sleeper, relieving these cultists of their money seems the least I can do. Plenty of robes here, too, should the group decide to disguise up while we explore. The sleeper jumps up when I get to her bed, and a short scuffle ensues as she runs out straight into the rest of the party. Amazingly, Ard doesn’t kill her, but knocks her out and Gideon ties her up before waking and questioning her. Ashara tells us that she is well taken care of here. That Shamet promised her a better life. They knock her back out and bind her securely on her bed before we move on.

We continue on, finding a room with two people conversing quietly. I unlock the door and the group rushes in, to find what Tasha calls an Oathbreaker in black armor and a woman in leathers. I stay in the hallway while the group takes care of them. Once down and dead, they are relieved of all of their earthly possessions, many of which are magical, including a portable hole, currently empty, but quickly filled with everything, including these bodies. It takes some convincing to get Tasha to try on the platemail because it is blackened, a symbol, she says of oath breaking, but she’ll be safer in it.

Onward, we find a crypt with 5 bodies laid out in death. We decide to leave them be for the time, instead heading down nearby stairs to a single door. Inside, a woman in black robes reads from a book. I, once again, stay in the hallway while they fight her. Unfortunately, a man in red robes comes from up the stairs and tosses a spell at me. A quick shriek brings help out into the hall to deal with him, while I run into the room, tossing some rocks at the woman. She responds by summoning over a dozen zombies. It is very unpleasant in there until we get some turning power going. Afterwards, we have to head back to the entrance to get a quick rest and some medical care before we can continue.

Having still not found the prisoners, we have to head back in. Back in and to the right this time, we find some doors, an open sacrificial room, and a temple full of unmoving undead. There is a bell in the back of this latter room that seems like it might activate the undead – 30 skeletons and 30 zombies. They don’t seem to care if we’re in the back of the room by the hall, however. So, I open a nearby door to find just 6 undead, three of each type, guarding a couple women, Aseneth and Arpad, and merchants. We unlock them all and draw up a map back to the entrance to get them out.

We all head back down the hallway together, finding a collapse behind one door, and a double bedroom behind the other. This one has a couple more cultists who immediately attack and must be put down by the group. Laramond finds some historical tablets here and a book translating them – the story of the evil goddess this place is dedicated to.

Moving on, we check out the sacrificial altar room. The altar hold bloodstained containers, and the walls are frescos showing a man fighting past monsters that guard seven tombs to reach a woman in black. There is a single cultist here, a man hiding behind deep red pillars. We talk him out without a fight, tie him up and take him back to where Ashara is still bound.

Not ready to fight 60 undead, we head back to the crypt with five. And their shadows rise. Laramond is able to take control of some and between those and the recently found magic weapons, the group is able to put them down. They look around, but don’t find much else here.

We head back to the temple, checking out the small rooms around the edges, without bothering the silent undead. Finding a bedroom with a secret door hiding a treasure room. Using the new portable hole, we steal all the treasure. Tala comes back in from guarding the back entrance and takes a look for secret doors – many of which lead to the disorienting tunnels. Back in the sacrificial room, Ard tries to pick up the vessels on the altar, and is nearly possessed by one, so he uses a skeleton to move them all into the portable hole for later destruction. We’ll have to talk to Rafe about borrowing the forge for a few hours one evening.

Then we really do have to deal with the sanctuary. Do we collapse the tunnels? We don’t have the right gear for that, even if I could figure out how. Instead, we prepare a bottleneck. Gideon and I set up a tripwire in the hallway. The fighters line up to fight them, with the new Mace of Disruption in the middle. Then the clerics and Laramond line up behind them. I go hide in a little room with a locked door with the rescued prisoners, and eat the final remnants of Mendel’s food. The group wins out, but poor Tasha is unconscious for the effort.

We head back to the room where they fought the Blackguard, to see if his stone horse will wake up with the magic bridle they had found. It does, and Ard rides it back to the keep, with Tasha draped across its haunches. It looks stable enough, so we head out to go back to the keep.

Unfortunately, the bandits from a few days ago find us in the woods, and they’re unhappy at having been robbed. They demand half of what we took from the cultists, instead of just what we took from them. Laramond tries to negotiate with them. Several folks want to just fight them, but with Tasha down, and the others not feeling well, we should not chance it. Laramond pulls some money bags and art pieces off of his donkey and sets it down for them – around 2000 gold worth. They accept this offering and head off toward the caves. Gideon, Terak, and I trail them a little ways to be sure of their direction and number, about 20. Then we all get back to the keep for some rest and healing.

Gnolls, Zombies, and Skeletons

On By ravonlockeIn Journal, PandoraLeave a comment

Back at the Keep, Laramond figures out what the Goblinoid sign said: Comrades, join the cause, repel the loathsome invaders who profane our ancestral caves with their sacrificial alters. All humanoids welcome. Well, that is very well written for goblins, and it gets everyone curious. The discussion at the table over what to do next is rather lively bouncing between gnolls to goblins to a lady necromancer who has gone missing.

The lure of gold and reputation wins out, and in the morning we head south the investigate the gnolls in the forest. Who, for my money, are doing good work of attacking bandits instead of caravans. It’s a long hot walk in the forest and we have to backtrack a couple times. Just so we can get attacked by big furry spiders. Yuck! They party kills some and chases the rest off before we can continue on.

I’m still hidden from the spider fight when the gnolls arrive, surround the group, and take them prisoner. Gideon is quite polite though, so they are escorted to their camp instead of killed outright. There are several dozen gnolls and hyenas there. The three largest come out to meet the party, one of which can speak the common tongue. They are killing the bandits because they are among the invaders who took their caves from them. Others came in robes – the cultists, likely – as they say those kidnap and kill people. Laramond asks if they’ll help us get rid of them, but they want proof we mean to help. They do share a map of the area with a few things marked that we did not have – one with a letter Laramond says is a Q. I lost track of the conversation at that point because a hyena got too curious and I had to feed it my jerky rations.

The party is walking away when I’m done with that, so I join back up. We check out the flooded road area, but it seems fine. Then head up for the Q place, which is just south of all the caves, up on the higher land around the valley. Turns out it is a big stone door in the back side of the hill. Terak finds skeletal footprints heading inside. Ard lifts the door open to find an antechamber with a couple dozen skeletons standing in rows. Gideon and I set a tripline in front of the door, but the party ends up going inside to fight them, and also scaring them further into the cave instead of pulling them out. They make such a racket that a bunch of zombies come out to join the fray, but the holy folk and Laramond turn and take control of enough to handle everything.

Once everything is under control, we discover barrels being stored here with false bottoms, with A.K. burned into the bottoms. The cooper is Asham, maybe this is what he’s grumpy about. Putting Laramond’s new pet skeletons in front, we head down a very long tunnel. The first room we find holds skeletons kneeling in worship to the most beautiful woman in the whole world. Terak and I go and join them, but Tala pulls me away and then things get fuzzy for a few minutes. When I come back to my senses, the group is talking about putting a tent in front of the lady, but decide not to waste the time and tent.

The next room is some sort of mausoleum with robed bodies in open graves. They begin stirring, but the holy folk go in and shut them up again so the swordsy folk can cut their heads off. There isn’t much to find in there. So, we head back and try a different path, which leads us to one of the entrances into the valley. Further along this path there are a few more doors. The first one leads to stairs, but the group wants to finish up here before going down.

The next door leads to a lavishly decorated room, where the toady merchant Mendel is sitting, with his two guards and the latest of women serving him sweet treats. He tries to get us to go away and leave things be, but the group is having none of that. I enjoy a few snacks while Gideon asks him his business. Gideon doesn’t like his answers and throws a couple darts into his chest, which signals Ard to promptly cut off his head. This convinces his guards to immediately surrender, and also causes the two women to come out from under a charm spell.

They admit he was supplying people, mostly off caravans, to the cultists. This included the cooper’s daughter to keep him quiet, and the necromancer lady who had disappeared, and the last two women he’d had with him in town. They offer to take the women back to the keep, but Tasha doesn’t trust them. She pays them a handful of gold to officially ‘hire’ them for this task. They take off and we take a look around, and I take as many sweetmeats as my pockets can hold.

Tasha finds a secret door in the back of the fireplace. It leads to a very strange twisting tunnel. We decide to investigate, and I try to lead the way, but I keep running into the walls and it feels terrible. A loud thumping begins further down the tunnel and we decide that leaving might be a better choice at this point, and head back to Mendel’s sitting room for a quick breather.

In Which Zero is Cremated Alive

On By ravonlockeIn Journal, ZeroLeave a comment

Description:

A note was later added that this next entry was six months after the last. The intervening entries have not been found, but reports show Zero was active in Sigil during this time, repeatedly dying and returning to life in spectacular and mostly magical ways.

Here, she has awakened on an autopsy table, and is greeted by a skull and, one would guess, an awful miasma of smells. She learns that people are dying and then waking up, and this is making people angry. A flying cat returns her red marble to her, fantastical you say? She was often seen in the company of one Cordon the merchant who had such a flying cat he called Chroma.

It appears that next, she and others she awoke with, for surely at least Cordon was there, and given records of the time, probably an entire group of characters who had been gallivanting around the city together, decided to sneak through the darkened mortuary. If you thought the cat a delusion, she next appears to have witness skeletons and ghosts having a puppet show. I only report what I see in her drawings, you should see her paintings.

It appears they may have next encountered a Duskman and a flesh golem in another room. He, very likely, objected to their attempts to leave and looks to have called a couple minotaur skeletons to help dissuade them. Though it looks like they found a doorway out, and a zombie manning at least one side of the hallway. It looks, however, as though Zero may have perished once again in a horrific fire. Perhaps an incinerator, instead of getting out of the Mortuary that time.