Session 6

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Session 6
The group split up, with Sam, Erin and Thirdwheel McGroovebuster Greg staying on the ground level of the ruins to make sure that no surprises showed up while the rest of the gang went to investigate the secret underground passage that they had discovered in a closet in the ruins.

Dave, Maggey, Lassier (Now dubbed 'Laser') and Paul peered into the trap door in the officer’s building, until finally Lassier, with his superior elven vision and much better armor and weapons, climbed down into the tunnel below. It looked like a dungeon, and sure enough, the tunnel was 10 feet wide, the ceilings were 10 feet tall, and in the dim and dismal light ahead he could make out what looked like a couple jail cells.

Lassier scouted ahead a bit, and sure enough... there was a prison. His sharp ears picked up the sound of something else in the prison and he silently booked it back to the trap door to let everyone else know what was up.

Soon, all four of them were down in the dungeon, planning how to jack up whatever monster lay in wait.

Maggey cast a light spell, and soon they saw a horrible looking creature, 8 feet tall and 8 feet wide, with spiked tentacles, a massive jaw and skin that looked like a moldy paper bag, barreling down the hall at them!

Dave recognized it as an otyugh and blasted it with a couple magic missles that it barely noticed. Lassier sprinted toward the creature and with a twisting leap, tumbled over the monster and as he came up behind it, plugged an arrow in its back. Maggey summoned up a floating magical battleaxe that gave the creature a good whack. At the same time, she figured out that the otyugh's mouth was probably it's weak spot. Paul gave a wild laugh that lasted a little too long, and then charged the beast, winding up for a power punch. His fist glowed with magical fire as he connected hard, shattering the otyugh's jaw and burning it badly!

The 500 pound monster whimpered and staggered backward, teeth falling out all over the place. It slapped at Paul with a tentacle, knocking him against a tunnel wall, but did no serious damage. As its mouth opened wide in a whining growl, Dave plugged two more magic missiles into the beast, landing them inside its mouth and hammering on what was left of the thing's brain. It dropped in a heap and Lassier gave it another stab for good measure.

The group explored the prison area, finding nothing of value, and moved to the next room beyond. This was a large area that looked like it had once been a sort of jailer's office, but now there was a huge tunnel that had been bored through the stone walls, bisecting the room diagonally. There were owlbear feathers in the tunnel. Slowly... cautiously... the group closed the door and left to find some other place that was less... owlbeary.

They followed another branch of the tunnel and quickly hit what had been the old castle's armory! Unfortunately most of the items in there were molded, decayed, or rusted beyond repair, but there were a few that items that had survived the centuries. Maggey had prepared a couple repair spells that morning, and was able to magically restore a suit of chain mail that was about her size and fix up a cracked shortsword. The gang also found ten high quality axe heads that Dave stuffed into his magical hat of holding.

They ventured down the last fork in the hallway and saw that it extended far beyond the limit of Maggey’s light spell. After about 20-40 feet the quality of the stone work started to change, becoming much more rough and primitive. After about 50 feet, they passed under an archway carved with an image of a kneeling figure. Maggey was able to figure out that it signified some sort of religion based on piety and poverty. Dave marched on through and wasn’t smote by anything so they figured it was safe to proceed. After about 150 feet they passed under another arch with the same kneeling figure carved into it.

A few more corners took them into a 50 x 50 foot temple room with a statue of a withered old crone in the middle of it. All the walls had carvings and paintings of powerful warriors and spellcasters bowing down the meek and common looking individuals. Aside from the path they entered, the room had 2 other entryways, one of which looked like it led to a room full of coffins. And speaking of coffins – there was one coffin on each corner of the temple room, with a skeleton in red robes kind of crumpled up next to each of them. The statue in the center of the room had another skeleton in front of it, in rotten hide armor, but with a shiny large shield and shortsword on its former person.

Dave decided to take a cue from the carvings on the archway and entered the room to kneel in front of the statue. Once he did so, the coffins in the corners started to clatter to life! The animated coffins moved like some sort of extra from Beauty and the Beast, and marched themselves toward two of the entrances to the temple room – the entrance Dave had come through, and the one to the right that no one had looked down yet. The entrance to the coffin room was left unblocked. As the coffins were moving, the group scrambled into the room to keep Dave from having to face the coffiny threat alone!

Lassier moved into the hallway to the coffin room and found that the lids of the coffins in there were moving. Dave cast invisibility on himself and moved fully into the coffin room as skeletal hands started to move. Back in the temple room, Maggey found it odd that the skeletons in red robes weren’t animating, and that Paul was engaging the door-blocking coffins in hand-to-lid combat.

A very hard-fought battle with the skeletons began. The skeletons all wielded surprisingly well-kept longswords of a simple design and were armored, and while the skeletons weren’t exactly battle-hardened combat experts, they had their living opponents outnumbered 10 to 3 (Paul was focusing on trading blows with animated coffins). Maggey summoned another glowing magical axe to bash on the skeletons from afar, while engaging in melee with the skeletons that ventured close to her. Lassier kept up a steady stream of arrows blasting into skele-skulls, and Dave tried interesting tactics with a grappling hook and a few volleys of magic missiles.

The skeletons somehow found Dave to be the easiest target, and he took a few cuts from the undead warriors. Toward the end of the fight, he picked up the femur of a downed skeleton and began using it as a club. Immediately after, a skeleton found a perfect opening as Dave swung his club high, and ran its sword through Dave’s guts almost up to the hilt. With a scream of pain, Dave smashed the offending skeleton apart with his bone club and leaned on a coffin for support as Maggey raced up to smash apart the last skeleton near him and then cast a much needed cure spell.

Lassier and Paul finished off the coffins, and then the group searched the room. The last remaining hallway disappeared into darkness, and with nothing jumping out at them, the four decided to leave it alone for a while. In the room they found what seemed like they must be a magical shield, a magical short sword, a leather-wrapped parchment sheet with writing and drawings describing something that the now-skeletonized knight was seeking, bags containing a total of 100 platinum pieces, 100 gold pieces, 100 silver pieces and a bunch of moldy herbs and spices.

Maggey also discovered that the right index finger of each of the red-robed skeletons was carved into a key. Skeleton keys! She snapped off the finger bones and pocketed them in the likely case that they'd come in handy.

With that, the team decided to head back to the surface, rest up and heal.

Continue to Session 7