To the southeast we could see another barrow that seemed to be a stony hill with a little bit of grass. Arnd and Armaziti approached carefully, weapons drawn, and Yldarb moved stealthily forward, his spear at the ready. Tatania and Kyro had their weapons out, walking carefully and keeping an eye out on the surroundings. Kyro’s wound was red and painful, and it seemed to bother him, potentially hindering his ability to fight. Lhoss probed the ground ahead with her staff as she walked, and Hilja used her staff to check the ground all around for sinkholes. The ground was firm and we were able to approach safely, but realized that this barrow would require some excavation to explore. Arnd, Adelbertus and I quickly estimated that excavating would take two people about 13 hours, but because we had only my one small shovel, the group decided not to attempt that task at this time.
We decided to move ahead and continued a hundred yards or so further southwest, approaching another mound. Its stone entrance had been shattered and there were footprints in the mud, going into a looming black hole. Arnd and Armaziti cautiously entered first and found bone debris everywhere. The whole area was a mess, looking like it had been searched roughly, with upturned sarcophagi and broken vases strewn about. It had both the smell of a tomb and the smell of the marsh outside. Arnd and Armaziti did a preliminary search through and found nothing of value and most of the group decided to all in and work together to search the walls more carefully.
As we began our search, a group of five zombies quietly lumbered up and surprised Adelbertus, Kyro, and Tatania, who were waiting outside. Attacking from behind, the five of them immediately overpowered Adelbertus and killed him! They then turned on Kyro and knocked him out. Tatania responded by firing a magic missile at one of them as the rest of the party inside the barrow heard the horrific screams and moaning sounds and came running. Hilja cast ensnare on one of the zombies, holding it to the ground, and Lhoss tossed burning oil, damaging three zombies (and splattering some on Kyro at their feet.) I damaged one and Yldarb took out one of them with his spear, Falstaff. Just then, Armaziti used his turn undead spell and the zombies suddenly turned as if to run in horror. One of them that was burning immediately fell, immolated, and Yldarb finished off another. The rest of us laid into the rest of them in great anger and quickly brought them down.
Horrified at the death of Adelbertus, we paused to consider the possibility of hauling him to Hochoch to attempt a resurrection, but determined we didn’t have enough gold to entreat a high level cleric for that spell. Arnd said dwarven custom was that the body should be covered or wrapped and laid in a shallow grave, so Hilja and Armaziti carefully wrapped the poor cleric in his old bedroll. Arnd led the party back down into the tomb, singing the dwarven durges, and laid him in an empty sarcophagus with his holy symbol of Pelor, god of the sun and healing, placed on his forehead. As they did this, Tatania and I brought Kyro’s body inside with us, and then Chalkboi and I both stood and hid in the shadows of the entrance, watching out as the others continued with the burial of our cleric friend.
In the middle of the rites, Chalkboi and I were horrified to see three vile scorpions come chittering out of the mist, smelling the blood of the dead. They attacked, but because of the narrow space only one could get near us at the entrance. Suddenly, one of the scorpions in back—seemingly berserk with hunger—attacked the scorpion in front and killed it! Hearing our shouts, the rest of the group came running out yet again and we all attacked one of the remaining scorpions. I tried to run around to its back, but it turned with me and I ended up facing it head-on. The rest of the group then attacked it from the back and side. Its armored chitin was very strong but we managed a few hits and then Armaziti made a killing blow with his warhammer, Melissa, breaking the creature in pieces. We then converged on the last scorpion and managed to destroy it as well, but before it fell it stung Chalkboi, poisoning him with its stinger! Armaziti immediately cast slow poison and then we all stood around and looked at each other for a minute, wondering what to do. I had the strange thought—it came almost unbidden to my mind—to open the bag of holding, and realized that we actually had some poison antidotes! Digging one out, I quickly poured it down Chalboi’s throat.
Most excellent relating of the horrible day. One slight correction is that Adelbertus' diety (and thus holy symbol) was not St. Cuthbert but was instead Pelor, God of the sun and healing.
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