Day 23 of Harvester, afternoon in the Barrow Maze
Jack the cat is a troll. OK, not literally, but he's maybe possessed by one? Ever since he got that Lesser Ring of Jack, he's become really snarky and kind of mean. I don't know, maybe he was like that before and we didn't know because he couldn't speak common. He certainly doesn't treat Niki with the respect she deserves. I'm quite tempted to try to take the ring from him and re-bury it deep in the barrow maze again. Sure, it gives him some great power, but he doesn't use that power responsibly. I'm sure glad he's not my cat. Then again, I'm more of a dog person anyway.
Anyway, after that strange cat magically appeared, caused mayhem, and then disappeared again, we continued to explore this latest area of the Barrow Maze. Moving north from the pit we'd found (things that fell in disappeared at about 10 feet down, so we don't know how deep it actually is, and have no interest in finding out), there was a midden pile in the corner of the room. Thankfully, the smell isn't much different from the rest of the Barrow Maze, although nowhere down here smells pleasant. Arnd was checking the rest of the floor for stability when he heard a somewhat familiar growl from behind a half-closed door. As one might expect, it is more of the ravenous (un)dead like we'd fought off earlier. Nasty critters! There were only two this time, so I wasn't worried. First, they swung at Arnd since he was in the front of our group, but they missed him completely. Armatzi attempted to use his gauntlet to "Turn Undead" but it didn't have any apparent effect. Lhoss used her "spider climb" ability, gaining a back-stab advantage that allowed her to destroy one of the attackers. Arnd tried to hit the one that attacked him, but he missed, so Feno stepped up and slaughtered it before it could do anything else.
Upon looking into the room the monsters had come from, we found the bodies of two unfortunate adventurers that the undead had been devouring. It was obviously much too late for us to do anything to help them since they are both mangled and one is completely missing his face. Despite not being able to identify the (probably) human men, Armatzi was moved to perform funeral rites on them. He first asked Niki for proper herbs, but she didn't have anything fresh so I offered to let him use my sage that I always carry. It was sufficient for his needs, so I helped him to arrange the bodies while the others searched the backpacks we found with the deceased men. They found a fairly large amount of stuff and Niki cast "Detect Magic" on it, finding that only a crossbow was magical. Unfortunately, nobody in our group uses a crossbow, but I ended up with a nice footman's mace, Armatzi added to his supply of writing materials, and Lhoss packed up the unused bandages they'd had. Everything else was packed up to be sold in Orlane at loot. Once Armatzi cast his blessing spell on the bodies to consign them to the grace of St. Cuthbert, we placed them in a pair of empty burial alcoves out in the hallway and continued down the passageway to the west.
There was a door in the passageway that seemed to have been warped by moisture, and when Arnd tried to open it, he accidentally smashed it in. The room revealed was full of alcoves which most of us decided to search while Feno guarded the damaged doorway and Armatzi tried to concentrate enough to regain his spells, but he ended up feeling too frazzled for it to work. We did find a bit of treasure in the alcoves but before we could complete our search, Feno let the rest of us know that he heard voices approaching. As is to be expected, we quickly determined that the newcomers were not friendlies since they were talking about gaining a source of power and about undead servants. We extinguished our light sources to avoid letting our presence be known too soon and Lhoss considered using her spider climb ability to crawl out and spy on them but changed her mind since it was too likely that she'd be spotted and then be at a disadvantage. Niki used her "Stone Shaping" spell to open a passageway between the room we were in and the previous room that we'd found the dead men in since our hope was that we could then send half our group behind the bad guys in a pincer move and have them surrounded. Feno held the damaged door in place so they couldn't get in while Lhoss, Arnd and I tried to sneak out the other door.
I don't know if we weren't quiet enough or if they were just that aware of their surroundings, but what turned out to be a group of zombies under the thrall of four Necromancers of Set were not surprised by our attempted ambush. My arrow, which should have pierced the chest of one of the Necromancers, was deflected harmlessly by a spell and then Arnd, Niki and Lhoss all missed hitting the zombies they were attacking. Fortunately, of their return attack, only Arnd was hit while Niki and Lhoss were both unharmed. Armatzi tried to cast "Turn Undead" but was unsuccessful, possibly because the Necromancers were right there to reinforce their control.
Admittedly, there was rather a lot of ineffectual fighting between us and the zombies until Feno stepped out and obliterated a zombie with a single blow, which shocked the Necromancers because of his strength and speed. They decided to enter the fight then, to their ultimate destruction. One attacked Niki and one attacked me, but both of them missed, followed by Feno expressing his contempt by smashing to paste the one that had attacked Niki. I managed to kill the one that had attacked me, and the third one committed suicide, calling out, "My life for Set," as he died. Feno finished off the final Necromancer with little effort and we focused on cleaning up the zombies that were left.
It wasn't as quick and easy as I would have liked and Armatzi for some crazy reason tried to attack with a water creation spell (which was completely ineffective in doing any damage, although it may have helped with the smell a tiny bit) before we finally eliminated the scourge. One bright spot was when Armatzi cast "Cure light wounds" on Lhoss and managed to fully restore her health. Best casting ever!
The zombies were typical zombies and had no valuables on them but the Necromancer corpses had platinum, daggers and a staff on them. As we finished looting, a disembodied voice proclaimed pride in the dead Necromancers, which absolutely disgusted me since they'd been pretty pathetic and the one even had killed himself rather than fight for his standards! My goddess, Merikka, would never find pride in such a thing. Sympathy for a damaged mind maybe, but never pride.
We finally finished going through all the alcoves we'd been searching before Set's wimps interrupted us and decided to head back to town. That is when we remembered a slight problem. In that room we'd gone through that had all the holes in the floor, the portcullis had been triggered and dropped down, blocking our exit. We tried to lift it, since we'd done that successfully before, but it seemed to be locked in place somehow. Even my companions using their superior elven eyesight couldn't see any way to release it.
Suddenly, Feno remembered that there was a piece of paper in the bottom of one of the floor holes and decided he wanted to see what it said. Lhoss looked in the hole that had appeared green and discovered that was because it had a quantity of green slime at the bottom of it, so she quickly backed away from that hole. Feno found the correct hole but didn't want to risk putting his hand down inside it. Using a bit of ingenuity, we put a blob of sap from my kindling onto the end of a piece of rope and were able to snare the paper without endangering anyone. The paper read, "First Up, then Down" which Lhoss interpreted as instructions for opening the portcullis. She bravely reached into the hole that held the lever that had triggered the portcullis dropping in the first place, grabbed the lever and followed the directions. She pulled the lever upward and then when it made a clanking noise, she pushed it back down. To everyone's relief and joy, the portcullis noisily raised itself back up and we were free to go on our way. Thinking about it now, I know we were extremely lucky that it worked, but I kind of think that there is some sort of diety or power of the dungeon, a master perhaps, that is watching over us as we bumble along and helping to keep us going, even against great odds.
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