Broken Bones and Putting Down Roots

Day 12 of Harvester

Beads of sweat form along the brow of Feno after the long training sessions with Dorian. Feno has learned a few things from his fellow fighter these past few days while the rest of the group went back to the barrowmaze. After seeing the group show up suddenly one evening and being told of the problems of their latest adventure, Feno decided to recommit to and focus on more training to become a better fighter, and perhaps, a better elf. Later that day, while wandering around the grounds of Orlane, fireflies seemed to be attracted to Feno, and congregated all around him. In a large swarm they danced and danced, and in but a moment, he was transported back to the barrowmaze with the rest of the party.

Lhoss wanted to finish the skeletons off that attacked and nearly wiped out the party last time, and thought it was time to develop a strategy to accomplish that task.

After some discussion about plan of attacks and strategy, Feno suggested utilizing the door as a bottleneck of sorts and forcing the skeletons to come through that choke point. This would prevent both the party from being overwhelmed like last time, as well as being stabbed in the back. Hearing this idea, Gnorcia agrees that this is the best and safest idea, and the rest of the party agrees. 

Hearing approval of his plan, and seeing the group take tactical positioning, Feno opens the ancient burial door towards the skeletal crypts and walks towards the fateful are nearly wiped the party previously. With the torch that Kyro had given him moments before, Feno uses it as a helpful distraction by throwing it down the hall. With a smirk of elven confidence, he brandishes his sword in his right hand and his shield in his left, and bangs them loudly together, mimicking a dinner bell, trying to draw the skeletons in. And boy does it work. The previous horde comes quickly out of the alcoves ready for Feno. Having gotten their attention, Feno backs slowly into the next room, leading them into the ambush point that the party has set for them. He enters to the side of the fallen obelisk room as the skeletons shuffle in; only to be greeted by the rest of the party. Lhoss uses her arcane abilities and launches a couple magic missiles at a skeleton, blowing it to pieces. Feno, not wanting to be shown up, attacks a skeleton near him, and likewise, demolishes it. The rest of the skeletons adjust their movements and then attack. The party for the most party dodges their attacks, with Lhoss, Chalkboi, and Calbach being the exception. They get struck by the swings of the blades of the skeletal creatures. Gnorcia, as she tries to attack a skeleton, stumbles a little and completely misses her target. Niki is successful at destroying a skeleton, as is Kyro.

As the battle rages on, the underground room reverberates with the clash of metal and bone, the hiss of magic, and the war cries of the adventuring party. Exhaustion begins to creep into their limbs, and the chilling atmosphere threatens to sap their spirits, but they fight on, driven by a shared determination to cleanse this cursed place. Lhoss fires more magic missiles, injuring a skeleton. Chalkboi, using his self-aware sword, and upset over the strikes by the skeletons, destroys the skeleton he engages with. Feno with rage in his eyes destroys a pair of skeletons, beginning with the one skeleton that is nearest to him first. Another skeleton, whether he was particularly brave or just plain suicidal, attacks and cuts Feno lightly on the cheek with his short sword. It was short lived victory before Feno quickly cuts that particular one down. The group take turns killing skeletons. While most of the group simply defeat them, Sergius and Feno completely destroy them. With the group killing most of the skeletons in the room, Feno moves into a tactical position towards the door again and kills another skeleton that rushes towards him. With the much smaller remaining group of skeletons, Calbach, tries to do an aerial maneuver, similar to what Gnorcia sometimes does, but fails spectacularly instead. He runs forward to try to jump, and then trips over Gnorcia, and goes headfirst towards the nearby wall, knocking the wind out of him. The rest of the group kills the remaining few skeletons, with Sergius dealing the killing blow to the last skeleton. Gnorcia picks Calbach's dropped mace from the ground, walks over to his semi-conscious body, and drops the mace on him in retribution for his recent behavior.

The group, upon the defeat of skeletons, regroup in the room of the obelisks, and the magically inclined party members memorize their spells. Upon the conclusion of their studying, the group moves to the alcoves the skeletons came from in hopes of finding untold treasures. The group find the usual gold and platinum, but Lhoss also find a hidden lever that opens up a new passageway. The hear the cries of someone calling for help as they proceed forward down the new passageway. Pressing down the passageway, the stench grows from bad to worse as they get closer to the pleading and begging for help. They arrive at the source of the cries: a sarcophagus, with the sounds of clawing and scratching coming from inside. As they approach the crypt, Calbach opens it up and a figure emerges and introduces himself as Roots. Roots offers to hug Calbach in gratitude, and Calbach naively accepts, and is paralyzed as a result. He turns to Feno and Gnorcia and blames them for what just happened. Lhoss casts levitate, bringing him towards the roof. In retaliation, he spews a noxious breath attack at Niki causing her to choke. Feno, having enough, swings his sword at it, causing some damage, but surprisingly not killing it. It cries in pain. Kyro draws an arrow from his quiver and puts it into his bow and fires. Then another. Both arrows find their mark and kill this unknown creature, Roots. Feno sees in the sarcophagus an enchanted bow and a platinum figure. Upon their removal Lhoss puts the lifeless body back inside the sarcophagus.

Session 120: A Horde of Skeletons Attacks

Recorded by Gnorcia:

We stayed the day in Orlane and had a wonderful but not exactly memorable day. Lhoss and I spent the day checking in on the mayor, Vilma, and the elves. The next day was Day 6 of Harvester. Feeling refreshed, we arose early, had our meal, and were on our way toward the Barrowmaze by 6:30am. It turned out to be a gloomy, rainy day. Sergius grumbled about the rain because for some reason he did not have a cloak, but the rest of us just pulled our cloaks over us and started the march down the road. I loaned my cloak to Chiki, who also did not have one, knowing it would require cleaning after a day around that gnome and his chicken. Also in our party were Kyro and Eldriel the Grey.

It was a somber, melancholy march with no sunlight and a steady pour of rain. We could smell Sergius and his increasingly-wet chain mail. The road got muddier as we went, then the trees from the Dim Forest dripped on us as we traveled through there. The Barrowmarsh trail was even wetter and murkier than usual, with a supernatural-looking fog. Despite the gloom and rain, we were excited and determined to find more treasure and possibly the Font of Law. We entered the Barrowmaze and made our way back through its silent hallways to the room we had been exploring two days before.

Peering through the portcullis, we saw a lot of dust and cobwebs and two doors to the left—one of them broken down in pieces on the floor. We raised the rusty portcullis and Kyro began sweeping the floor for traps. He soon discovered a large pit right in front of the second, broken door! Avoiding the pit, Kyro peered into the room and was immediately attacked by three crab spiders that dropped down from the ceiling. Lhoss ran in and attacked one and I leapt onto the back of another, destroying them both. Sergius then ran in and attacked the last spider but it turned and bit him, poisoning him. He dug a poison cure and a healing potion out of his bag and drank them down. I managed to harvest the poison sacks from the crab spiders and carefully packed them away as Lhoss and Eldriel did a quick search for hidden doors or anything on the walls. We then headed back out to look into the other room.

The other door was ajar and Kyro pushed it open, revealing two open sarcophagi. He looked carefully at the ceiling—which appeared normal with no hidden crab spiders—and began to sweep the room. The skeletons lay still in their sarcophagi—as skeletons should. We determined to head back out and try the closed door in the large room to the west. Kyro entered the room and began to sweep the floor for possible danger. At one point he found a hollow-sounding spot on the floor and Sergius hit the floor with his battle axe, revealing the seam of a pit trap in front of the first door on the south. Kyro continued sweeping and found yet another pit trap to the northwest in front of another door there. Beyond that, the floor appeared to be safe.

Kyro then began sweeping the floor in a hallway to the south and discovered a large group of 23 skeletons that began lumbering toward us from both hallways, north and south! One attacked Lhoss and another attacked me. Fragile elf Eldriel had gone wandering off across the room and found himself attacked by two skeletons at once. As the skeletons swarmed we all took some damage and Sergius quickly fell to the floor but Chiki grabbed him and dragged him out into the hallway, then poured a healing potion down his throat. He immediately jumped up and sort of stumbled around the room, mindlessly. In the meantime, the rest of us determined to get out as well. Kyro and I both turned and ran out the door, taking a hit from skeletons as we did so, but were able to escape.

Lhoss then cast magic missiles on the two skeletons attacking her, disintegrating one and distracting the other enough that she could jump up onto the wall and climb quickly to the ceiling of the room, beyond their reach. She then doused her lantern just as I closed the door, leaving her and Eldriel alone with a horde of skeletons in the dark dungeon room. As the skeletons bashed on the door, trying to get out to us, Lhoss scrambled along the ceiling to where Eldriel was trapped in the corner by the bony undead creatures. She then cast levitate on him just as he fell to their attacks and passed out, bleeding. After Eldriel floated up to the ceiling, Lhoss bound up his wounds and poured a healing potion down his throat. She then tied him to herself so he would float along behind her as she silently moved across the ceiling toward the door. She noticed that the skeletons had stopped banging on the door and were click-clacking their way back to their hidey holes.

At the door, Lhoss made a low whistle and Kyro—who was waiting outside for her signal—quickly opened it to let them through, then closed it again. In the meantime, Chiki had cast a wall of fog to obscure the rest of us, just in case any skeletons got through, but it wasn’t needed as the skeletons had disengaged. Lhoss poured more healing potions down Eldriel’s throat and swallowed another dose herself. The poor druid looked drained, but we were all safe from the skeletal threat.

Session 119: At last, a gelatinous cube

Feno, Niki, Arnd, Sergius, Lhoss, Chalkboi, and Kyro could tell they were in the vicinity of the Font of Law, but they had thoroughly explored the current corridor and found nothing. They decided to retrace their steps back to the obelisk room and search beyond the eastern door. Upon opening the door, Feno was greeted with an odd sight: beyond some rubble stood a man with his back to the group; one arm was raised and frozen in place as if to ward off or wave. The figure did not respond to Sergius' calls, which was... disturbing. The party took in the rest of the room and noticed the walls of dark granite and limestone, distinct from the rest of the barrowmaze, as well as a rusty portcullis. As Niki moved further into the room to probe with her 10' pole, she noticed an odd ripple in the air. Immediately though, she was able to discern its true form: a large cube of transparent material... and it was moving toward her! The jiggling form attempted to advance and engulf her, but Niki outmaneuvered it. She struck out at it but it was Feno that delivered the destroying blow, absolutely demolishing it. The human figure, no longer supported by the gelatinous cube, fell and revealed to the group that he had been half devoured by the goo. Upon close inspection, it was believed that the half-consumed man had been a member of the Band of the Black Hand. Ah well, no great loss.

Sergius was the first to begin exploring a passageway to the south. He found burial alcoves and limestone walls that turned into rougher walls. There were eight hallways, each containing many differently-shaped burial alcoves. The adventurers closed the door behind themselves, as not to be snuck up on, and worked together to systematically search the alcoves. It was clear they would not wrap up in time to be back to Orlane for dinner, so the group ate a hasty dinner of bland rations and tried to make quick work of the searching. The haul was impressive: a gold circlet, brass cup, circular polished stone, ivory carving, bracelet, fire opal, glass box, jade idol, earrings, copper inkwell, ornate plate, mithril brooch in the shape of an elven tree, necklace, coral, and a healthy amount of gold, silver, and electrum. Feeling good about the day's work, everyone was prepared to head back to town. Feno carved a small star into the wall as a reminder that he had been here.

Alas, behind the door, the way was not clear to depart. A swarm of three stirges barred the way with a pair of sapphire skeletons advancing in the background. Two of the enormous mosquito-like creatures attacked Niki and began to suck her blood. Arnd swung out with his throwing war hammer and squished one. Lhoss used her spider climb to hang from the doorway and strike down at another, killing it. Unfortunately, this put Lhoss in a vulnerable position and she was stabbed by both of the skeletons. Feno squished the last stirge. Working swiftly, Chalbkoi and Sergius felled the two skeletons, their sapphires glowing ominously. This group has fought enough of these skeletons to know that they can only be fully defeated if their sapphires are smashed. Kyro and Chalkboi cleaved one each and the valuable shards were gathered up. The group headed back to Orlane as night fell.

The treasures were tested for magic and two items proved to be imbued with powers - the brooch and the polished stone. The group decided to divvy up some of the magical items and potions they had acquired. Anyone willing to pay the price to identify a potion could claim it. Feno claimed two and Lhoss claimed one. In addition, the ring the group had previously found was identified as a ring of fire resistance and given to Sergius. The polished stone was determined to be a luck stone and given to Feno. The brooch was shown to turn any fine cloak into a cloak of elven-kind (and therefore decrease the odds of being perceived) and given to Kyro. The rest of the treasure was sold to the jeweler Haskall with the proceeds split among the party for a handsome payday.