The Band of the Black Hand Loses for Once

By Arnd

We turned the corner and as Niki walked ahead, sweeping the floors for traps, she found herself face-to-face with a 10-legged creature—a pseuropod—that looked like a floating giant brain with a beak! It grasped her with two tentacles, paralyzing her, and pecked her with its beak.

Lhoss cast magic missiles and hit it, then Feno cut off one of the tentacles, allowing Niki to fall back and stepping in front of her. Feno was then hit by a tentacle and paralyzed also! 

Kyro stepped in and finished it off with an arrow and it fell to the ground next to Feno and Niki. We planned to rest for half an hour as they recovered from the paralysis and Lhoss memorized her spells.

As we waited and kept watch, Chiki noticed a strange pile of rubbish farther down the hall and then spotted a familiar glowing red light approaching: fire beetles. The beetles also appeared to be attacking from behind us around the other side of the hallway.

Feno immediately destroyed the first beetle to approach, Kyro hit another, and Lhoss interrupted her spell memorization to levitate a third. More fire beetles advanced on us and Kyro nearly killed one, firing point-blank with his bow. One hit me but I couldn't seem to hit anything. Lhoss tried hitting the levitated beetle but missed and it somehow managed to spin itself around with a leg on the wall and faced her down! Feno smashed two more into pieces and Niki and Chiki finished off the rest of them.

Chiki then examined the rubbish and noted that it seemed some of it had gone missing during the battle. Feno used a torch to start the rubbish on fire and smoke began to fill the hallway. We moved back north to the brick wall and decided to break it down. Four of us wielding sledgehammers made short work of it and we discovered it was hiding a room full of over 100 burial alcoves, plus a large, bricked-up space with the words "Vermingretrix the Reaver" written on it in ancient common.

As we were busy looting the alcoves, Feno—who was guarding the door—heard quiet footsteps in the hall. He stepped back in and the rest of us moved up to the north wall, prepared to ambush who or whatever was coming.

Someone called in to us, “Drop your treasure and come out and we won’t harm you!” We taunted the bandits to come on in after us and instead they tossed in two fiery vials of oil. One broke and splashed and I found myself hit with burning oil. Bother! We all stepped out into the hall and began attacking them.

It was the Band of the Black Hand! Feno smashed a couple. Kyro and I smashed two more. They stupidly kept coming at us and got in a few hits, but Kyro and I quickly damaged two more. One then turned to run and was immediately smashed by Feno. Kyro finished off another and the last one—nearly dead—dropped to his knees and begged for mercy.

He was a young man. We began questioning him angrily and as he blubbered about joining the band from his home in the forest. Chiki then slapped him across the face and he passed out, but several of us began feeling guilt about the kid. We discussed hiring him as a torchbearer. I decided to bind up his wounds and wash his face. Chiki slunk away back to the burial alcoves and Niki cast a healing spell on him.

Kyro then went through the pockets of all the dead and Lhoss gathered tokens of the black hand from their armor to take back to town for a reward. Lhoss also pulled out an old tunic that had once belonged to Derrick and Kyro pulled out some old pants with holes in them. I took those for the young man and stood guard over him as the others went back into the room to finish searching the alcoves.