4/30/1149 - They stay in town for over a week, paying Virdikun 100gp each to be smuggled into Lachen. Smuggling will be necessary because the Church, which runs the city and preaches so harshly against travel, surely wouldn’t embrace visitors.
They meet Stefanim, a lanky, nearly eight foot tiefling with talons, long black hair, big horns and a tail. He doesn’t talk much, but he is the agent Virdikun hooked them up with to take them into Lachen. They say their goodbyes and sail down the river on his boat. They camp on the shore and are approached by an old man and woman along with a guy with black orbs for eyes. Grimald identifies the man as a shadar-kai, from the Shadowfell, sworn to Arawn. Oswald sees through the disguise of the old woman for a moment and is suspicious of her. Enough to cause the some of the party to stay awake during watches they weren’t supposed to stay awake for. On second watch, the old man and woman disappear, something Ironhand notices immediately and sees their misty forms approach Yiska and Oswald on the ground. They are oni, and the shadar-kai leaps to the attack. Combat takes a long time, and during it Yiska and Stefanim retreat to the boat and hide in shadows while the others fight. The oni succeed in knocking Grimald unconscious twice so they can feed. They bloody Oswald, but not for long and soon the oni and the shadar-kai lie dead. They find no interesting loot and go back to sleep.
They travel all the following day until they stop to wait for nightfall for the approach and entrance into the city. By night, the city glimmers with thousands of torch and lanterns, a sight the party has never seen before. They drift down the river between two towers set in the water past massive walls. They see what they can of the city at night and dock at the west side of the river in the slums of the town. They are met by Lentikun Huntley, Virdikun’s cousin, who along with a goliath and other lackeys lead the party to the Red Flag Inn and the fine female elf Cyndiline who runs it. Keyleth is smitten. Introduction to the city is short. They will talk more later. Lentikun must return to Stefanim and unload the other cargo. Yngvar the goliath and Sergio the human warrior stay behind. They pay Sergio to get some nondescript cloaks. He says he will take care of it. They eat some nasty gruel and very watered down ale. Cyndiline says she might be able to do better tomorrow.
The next morning, they begin their exploration of the city. Lentikun meets them and tells them some more of the city. They get a brief layout of the city, verbally, and finally hear that Lentikun runs a pawn shop. They head to it, and along the way catch their first sight of the guards of the Church of the Sacred Book of Cursed Travel. They can be seen sweeping through the streets, walking the walls, guarding the gates. They all have immaculate dress and their uniforms are clean at all times. They wear chocolate brown surcoats and cloaks with the blazon of a white circle and book dripping blood on their chest. The guards look very competent, but Lentikun swiftly leads them through other alleys to their shop. There he shows off his wares and they buy a couple of simple items. He gives them directions to a dwarven smith, Yuri Rubybeard and off they go.
Exploration is difficult as they must avoid guards and other rough looking types of people in the districts. Passing between districts is also a challenge. They have to stop and carefully ask for directions. On the east side of the river they find the dwarf’s shop but buy only one thing, a mace for Oswald. They learn of the Bright Association, a loose grouping of 4 major spellcasters and other users of magic who reside in the town, and particularly the magic crafter and try to find his shop. Along the way they spot the Church in the distance and nearer to their location a temple of Duath.
They manage to find the shop, clear across the marketplace district, but it is closed. They decide to search for food and another sign bearing the Bright Association symbol to try and get an introduction or at least a clue how to get an appointment with Benth Dor, the crafter. They stumble across an old abandoned temple of Brage that they can perhaps use as a hideout if they are getting chased in this area in the future. They manage to find Dermiennes herb shop and try to question her about Benth Dor. They buy some ritual components, an elixir and she grudgingly tells them when Benth is usually in his shop, tomorrow afternoon in fact. She is, however, very suspicious of the party by this point, especially when she declares that the Bright Association know most in the town who need ritual components, and the party obviously is new.
They make it back to the Red Flag without incident, where Cyndiline says she managed to get a nice meal for them in an hour. They go to their room to plan their next move. They have the meal, spiced with cinnamon. They enjoy it including Lentikun, Yngvar and Serge.
The next morning they wake up and everything is wrong. They slept later than they would have liked, to noon, and first watch apparently fell asleep too. Grimald is missing, and the room has been ransacked. Nothing except for Grimald’s stuff is missing. They discover that everyone else in the inn is also groggily waking up late. The front door is wide open and some patrons have passed out on the tables. They suspect the meal and immediately start questioning Cyndiline and the cook. They fail however, to convince the cook to tell them anything. But taking a bowl they figure that the poison in question is thassil root that has been enriched somehow. Looking out the front door they find some cart tracks and drag marks of the unconscious paladin. Lentikun is informed when they go to his house with Yngvar and Serge. He asks Yngvar to go with them on their investigation
They try to track down the cart trail. They ask around and figure the bakery will be a good place because they deliver bread so early in the morning. Gral, the assistant baker, a female half-orc, was delivering that morning and she tells them a cart with three guys and maybe something groaning in it ran over her foot. Her description leads them south to the prison area where they go to the brothels to try and find some prostitutes who might have seen the cart and three guys. They luck out with the prostitutes and they hear about Big Fred who suddenly got some money on an easy job. They corner him and force him to tell them what he knows. That he was hired to pick one guy at random from a specific room and take him with the cart to a bridge where they were met on the east side. He hired two others to help but prevented them from stealing from the rest of the party on the side of the main objective.
They try to search on the east side for the trail of the cart but it is the wrong time of day. They make their way to the magic shop and buy a new sword for Ironhand and some freezing arrows. They also have a run in with guards and have to run away. They go back to the inn and talk to Lentikun some more. They stay up on the roof of the inn and other places tonight.
The next day they go back into the city. They have more run-ins with the guard patrols, raising the alert levels of the Sacred Guard each time. They get to Dermienne’s shop and talk to her about the thassil root. She lets them know about a dwarf courier who delivered the instructions, Adrik, who works out near the Red Ruby café. They decide it is getting too dangerous since they appear to have roused the guards far too much. They split up. Ironhand and Yiska go out while the other three hide in the old temple of Brage. The two manage to head to find the Temple of Cecht for ritual components. On the way they see a sermon in the Church is about to start, so they go in to listen. Brother Nicholas, who leads the Church and the town, preaches the sermon, speaking of the Book and the dangers of traveling.
The crowd is fervent in their belief and support of Brother Nicholas’ words. Afterwards, they have a problem with a horde of rats, but that allows them to find the Temple of Cecht and avoid some guards. At the temple they buy ritual components for healing and are offered books. They return to Oswald and he thinks they should go back to buy one or two of them later.
They find the courier and talk to him, Ironhand and Yiska, but he is reluctant to talk of who hired him. Some intimidation and bribery gets him to say only that a powerful gnome with the Bright Association hired him. They return to the temple at this point and stay the night.
They return to Lentikun the next day to talk about the gnome. The only gnome he can think of is a very powerful member of the association named Kindigren, and he thinks it unlikely to be him. They talk with Lentikun for a long time, frustration showing. And he reveals that he had talked with the rest of the smugglers ring about the party. So that is most likely how they became targets and the culprit likely to be someone in the ring. He is reluctant to confront any of them because he doesn’t think it would do any good for Grimald. After a long discussion, he agrees to do some more investigating while they try to track down the gnome. They decide that confronting and coercing Aldrik is the next step. So they manage to track him down. Yiska and Keyleth hide and sneak behind while the rest walk up front to confront him. He doesn’t break at first until Keyleth fires a freeze arrow at the table. Pandemonium breaks out in the marketplace. They get the name, Quince Cacophan
After a time, they manage to make their way towards the Gnome district. On the way they find some guards fighting some thugs and decide to help the guards. They get some gratitude from the guards, who might look the other way while in the party is in this neighborhood.
In the gnome district, they ask a gnome merchant and then question a waitress at a place where Quince usually hangs out. They are led back to the district where he works. They learn that Quince asked about a place called Vallington here. They canvass the residential neighborhood for hours and get no results.
They talk about just going door to door, knocking and asking each time, utilizing brute force again. Frustrated, they find the Risky Duck inn in the gnome district after some fruitless searching. They decide to try and drop word of Vallington since the gnome in question was asking about Vallington. They notice a couple of gnomes leave the inn. Keyleth gets up to observe them and sees them arguing down the road. He tries to get close enough to hear the argument but fails. The gnomes split and the Yiska and he each take one to tail. Keyleth’s just goes home to make dinner. Yiska’s goes to a guard patrol and Yiska gets close enough to hear him telling about the strangers in the inn talking about outside villages. The guards go to the inn. Yiska books there first and warns the others, who get out in time and hide in an alley nearby. Then Yiska goes out and intercepts Keyleth as he returns. They had forgotten that talking about strange places would be suspicious in general to the Church.
From there, they try to decide where to go. Yiska goes out scouting alone to try and find a place to hide in. He succeeds in finding an empty house. They try to get there and avoid the guard patrols, but just as they are outside trying to figure out how to get in unnoticed, Keyleth spots their quarry gnome, Quince. He charges after him and the gnome notices. He ducks around a corner and hides. The party is too fast and Quince is forced to use a scroll ritual to teleport out. Keyleth manages to get some clues through the linked portal doorway – he is going inside a building that has gray brick. The party splits up trying to canvas the neighborhood to find out about this gnome and where he went. Each manages to get across the district borders past the guard patrols into an average residential tenement district. From there and separated they manage to find a likely building with a cart in the backyard (spotted over the fence from the rooftops), made of gray brick. They split up, Ironhand and Yiska circle around back and the others will wait and go through the front.
Ironhand makes a noise in the backyard alerting a knife fighter. Yiska is in the kitchen by now and when the knife fighter opens the door, combat starts when he shouts the alarm that the back door is open. The guys out front are slowed down by minions holding the door and Keyleth fails twice to get through a window. Tieflings have teleported invisibly to the backyard and surround Ironhand while the knife fighter and Yiska duke it out. The cavalier, Drew, gets in the fight late with some readied actions. The fight looks pretty even until Yiska, phasing through walls, makes a mistake and steps through a wall and has no floor to stand on beyond (he unknowingly walked through a wall over a stairway). He drops to the basement at the foot of the stairs. The leaders of the kidnapping attempt, Quince and Endilo are there with their thugs who take Yiska down. They drag him back, strip his unconscious form and tie him up getting ready for the rest. The party upstairs eventually defeats the guards there, killing one of the tieflings last but not before Oswald has broken down the door and discovered a large, angry half-orc in plate. The battle moves down the stairs where the casters stay in back and the fighters form a defensive line. The area spells will come out next.
And they do. While the party is tightly bunched up, the two casters nuke them both with their encounter power spells. The three fighters have them boxed in. It looks bad for the party. Then Oswald heals Yiska. Yiska manages to get to his feet, stealthy finds a knife on the table next to him, and then tries to run to the party. He is cut down along the way and knocked back unconscious, but by this time Oswald has put up his consecrated ground which is healing the party when they are bloodied. The bad guys order one of the slavers to drag Yiska out of the circle but that breaks the ranks and allows the party to move around more. The battle goes one way and then the other. Yngvar gets out and starts attacking the two casters, breaking out of root with his font of life power, but they still manage to get him unconscious, and then back up again. Meanwhile, Oswald is now the target of all the melee attackers. One of the slavers was taken down early, but the other and the half-orc corner Oswald and, with the casters help when they aren’t attacking Yngvar, knock him unconscious. Then the last slaver drags him out of the consecrated ground up the stairs. Yiska has been cut free by Oswald before that and grabbed Ironhand’s free longsword. He gave chase hoping to stabilize Oswald, which he does. But then the slaver takes Yiska down. So now it’s just Ironhand, Yngvar and Keyleth. Ironhand is the next to get focused on, and he goes down.
Now it’s up to Keyleth and Yngvar and Yngvar goes down first. The bad guys offer surrender to Keyleth, but he tries to escape. He kills the half-orc and would have escaped, but the time the bad guys spent chasing him means that his comrades are dying. Ironhand dies for real, and Keyleth, realizing that his friends will die, surrenders. They go back and stabilize Yiska, but Yngvar has miraculously recovered on his own and returned to his feet just as Keyleth gets down there and hands him a potion. Yngvar drinks a potion of his own and rather than surrender, and he goes back to fighting. The gnome, feeling double crossed fights back. The slaver has Keyleth’s bow, so Keyleth draws his falchion and fights. Unfortunately, the gnome was almost fully healthy and his yell power recharges when he is bloodied and he takes out Keyleth. But Yngvar has taken the slaver out, and so it’s just down to the gnome and the goliath. And the gnome wins, and Yngvar goes down.
Lysandria and her crew now have all the party as their prisoners, except that Ironhand is dead. Who will rescue them?
Four days later, a new group of adventurers answers a call from Jacob Wetz, a powerful jeweler and member of the Golden Council of the Guild of Coins in Lachen. Uthred is a warrior who has worked for Jacob before. He was asked to find an arcanist not associated with the Bright Association, and Uthred found Alistair Havoc, a street performer illusionist to fit the bill. Jacob also sent a letter to Zhagrim a monk who was once a Sacred Hunter, an elite group of the Church whose mission is to seek out strangers and threats, but is no longer affiliated with the Church and has gained a reputation of finding people or things. His note also asks to bring another ally if he can and Zhagrim thinks of Marden, a wilden shaman and a strange traveler who he helped hide in the city, and is still a problem to be dealt with. They meet with Jacob in his mansion, in his opulent study. Jacob lays out the job. He believes someone is making a power play for the Guild of Coins, and he wants to find out who. There was a fight four days ago and his investigations have revealed interesting information about that fight. The Sacred Guard never investigated it and the few eyewitnesses were paid off.
He was able to get people inside where the fight occurred and they found that there were cut ropes spotted with blood, and a room where someone was obviously kept prisoner for some time. But it has all been cleared out. He also heard that the smuggling ring moved something big a week ago, and he thinks that it might have been people. It seems like there has been a move against the smugglers too to grab the people, and there might be kidnapping victims. He offers them 1,000 gp to investigate and find out and neutralize the threat, perhaps rescuing anyone who was kidnapped. Alistair at this point tries to bluff out that the pay isn’t enough for the job. He and Jacob negotiate, Alistair almost walking out, until Jacob mentions that there is the possibility of future work if they play ball with him. And if Alistair refuses, well then he will definitely not get a chance to meet more of the guild of coins or the Bright Association. Finally, Alistair agrees. Several more provisos are added to the job: If captured, the party must disavow that they work for him, but not under extreme torture. And so on.
They stay in his study to plan, after having been provided with the address of a warehouse where Jacob believes might be part of or even the destination where the prisoners might have been taken. It’s been cased for a while and it definitely does not have goods in it. They decide that they will go in the morning, meeting at a tavern near that area. Alistair will set up his Magnificent Cart and do his street performance as a cover while Zhagrim will scope out the place stealthily.
They enact the plan. Marden had stayed the night in Alistair’s cart and that would provide the means of moving him through the city without attracting attention. Alistair provides good cover and Zhagrim is able to get in and see a bunch of guards, and that this place definitely has not been used as a warehouse in some time. He gets back out without anyone noticing. The party comes up with a plan, to charge in and take them out quickly.
The party gains surprise, getting in quickly and taking out two minions. True to Jacob’s request, no one is killed, and all are knocked unconscious during the course of the fight. Alistair uses esoteric knowledge to grant everyone an insane initiative and they get two full rounds of actions before the bad guys go, taking out all but the two minions in the basement and injuring and incapacitating the others. A doom flayer priest of a strange evil god and Quince the gnome come out just as a girl runs out the office in the warehouse, having escaped the two.
As usual, the fight turned directions a couple of times. Despite the strong start, the party then loses ground when the two evil casters double nuke a grouping of the party and seriously wounds them. But Marden’s healing and regeneration come through and keep everyone up. Once the goliath and then the gnome fall, the tides turn back in the party’s favor.
Oswald had woken up during the encounter, but it would take too long for him to escape his bonds by himself. Several times during the fight it looked like someone might try to go see if he can free the prisoners to get their aid and Oswald could have come up to join the fight if necessary, but that didn’t happen. In the end, all of the bad guys are taken prisoner knocked unconscious and tied up, and Uthred yells down to the prisoners but doesn’t go down yet. Zhagrim finds a chest full of equipment in the office.
After securing the prisoners with rope, the prisoners are lined up. Zhagrim goes to run off to the Wetz estate for more instructions on what to do next. Marden goes down to find the prisoner that has been talking and releases Oswald. They go upstairs, Oswald kicks the unconscious gnome a couple of times, and then they investigate the chest of loot. The girl is finally questioned and she tells her name, Kandeth Virson Lee. She was taken a few days ago and held up in the room upstairs, trying her best to fend off the leering looks of the goons. They had finally cornered her and were about to do unspeakable things to her when the party arrived just in the nick of time. She doesn’t know why they took her and just wants to go home. Uthred volunteers to escort her home.
Oswald identifies his equipment from the chest and those of his companions as well while Marden examines them. They discover that some loot belongs to no one including a lot of ritual components, cash, and some ritual books. One of them is discern lies and Alistair starts mastering it so they can use it on interrogations. Uthred meets Mindor Lee, the coppersmith husband of the girl. They have their reunion and Minder reveals that threatening ransom notes appeared on his door asking for the key to the tomb of his distant ancestor Kas Lee, a powerful merchant back in the times of the war. He just wants to be done with the key so they will leave him alone, so he gives it to Uthred, asking him only to share whatever secrets they find should they decide to go into the tomb.
Zhagrim meets with Jacob Wetz after made to wait a little while, tells them they have captured everyone and asking what to do with them. There was some misunderstanding about what the job exactly was. They thought they were just hired to look into the warehouse, when he was talking about solving the whole mystery. Some clarification there and Zhagrim returns knowing they must interrogate the prisoners to learn more. They chill until Alistair completes his mastery of the ritual. They move the prisoners downstairs, searching them carefully and discover that the leader doom caller has a tattoo on his chest: a crocodile being ridden by an old man, holding a hawk on his wrist. Oswald identifies this as possibly being related to ancient cults, and they get the name Agares but nothing more.
They start interrogating a scrub first, and don’t learn much all except that they were hired muscle. They then move to the gnome, going down into the basement and securing him in a room with locked doors, prisoners in cells, and so on, so he cannot escape. They try to break the gnome and fail. They don’t learn much except that he has tried to lie and holds something back. Next is Endilo, the strange priest, and they succeed in breaking him, using religion as his weak point. He is proud of his church and wishes to see it succeed. He reveals the name of his high priest Andokin and that Lysandria was a source of donations to the church for their services. They learn a bit about Lysandria once they get her name and know they must go there next. She is an eladrin who poses as a tailor, but secretly owns a number of businesses including The Red Flag Inn! She appears to have designs on the Guild of Coins.
They try to decide what to do with the prisoners. Many options are tossed about, but in the end they decide that they will probably let them free after tipping off the Sacred Hunters about them. Zhagrim sends off notes to his Sacred Hunter contacts and to Jacob Wetz. Wetz responds back saying they should meet for breakfast at the Silver Chalice the following morning.
Yiska, Keyleth, Grimald, and Yngvar wake up but are groggy and still down from the poisoning and drugs. They offer little to the party’s decisions, but are outfitted at least. Before leaving the prisoners to the Sacred Guard, Zhagrim wakes up Endilo and shows him that they have the key to the Tomb of Kas Lee. Now after being released, there is no reason for them to bother the Lee family, so they have saved them further harassment.
Alistair and Uthred go home while Zhagrim and Marden take the Vallington heroes and Oswald to Zhagrim’s house to sleep. They meet Zhalgrim’s master, but there is little conversation.
They meet in morning with their employer Jacob Wetz, and Oswald joins them to represent the other group. The others are still too under the weather and encourage Oswald to go to fulfill his promise. They have breakfast and Jacob tries to see if there is any opportunity for a deal to be made in terms of Vallington for trade or income but it doesn’t look like it. Although Oswald says his friends may have other ideas, so there is the possibility of that coming into play.
They have learned that Ironhand was killed for real and his body dumped in the river and all of his equipment sold on the black market, so he is basically unrecoverable. There is little reason to stay. The possibility is brought up that Jacob Wetz might be able to help them leave.
But first there is the matter of Lysandria. Zhagrim cases her estate for a few hours and discovers that she is probably working out of her mansion. There are couriers going in and out all day, several guard changes including a dragonborn bodyguard. They decide to go in, using the key as their means of entry (we have something you want) and take it from there.
They go for the plan. They are taken inside where she is with Andokin the death priest, her pet wolfhound, bodyguard and regular guards. The party is clearly going to take her out but when they talk to her and the key is brought up first, she says, “So how much do you want for it? 10,000gp?” They almost think about taking the deal, but then figure she is probably lying. They attack. Alistair uses his power that lets everyone get a massive initiative and they all go with their best combat options and end up devastating the bad guys in no time at all. It looks like they are going to get away with a clean fast kill but then they find that her guards have summoned the Sacred Guard.
The Sacred Guard have shown up in record time, and Zhagrim sees them first. He recognizes them as one of 5 elite patrols, this one led by Captain Palance, that are brought out in times of great trouble and when serious muscle is needed. The fact that this patrol showed up so quick lends strength to the rumor that the wealthy district has patrols that are paid off to be “available” faster. The party makes a quick escape out the back window as the patrol is moving to enter and surround the house. They then lead a chase through the streets of the city to lose the patrol, scattering into three groups. Alistair and Uthred go to their homes and the rest make their way to the slums.
The next morning, Zhagrim sends out messages to Alistair and Uthred to come to his house, giving directions and addresses, and they do. They talk, including Grimald, Yiska and Keyleth, about what the effects of last night’s encounter will be. They determine that they are probably wanted now and that they also didn’t fulfill the specifics of the job. The pretty much caused a mess. They decide that they will visit the Tomb of Kas Lee and then leave town. Alistair at first has problems with this but then sees the greater picture and agrees. They will not contact Jacob Weitz and collect their payment, leaving a note for him to be found or delivered after they leave.
Master Kin Shee (Zhalgrim’s master) had left early in the morning to get vegetables, and when Zhalgrim returns that afternoon, his master has company. Ironhand, who was known to be dead is there and he nods to Yiska and the others and they say to Oswald, “It is time to go. I have a way out.” Naturally, there are suspicions and confusion, and Oswald looks lost. They notice that Keyleth is acting odd, and the whole problem with Ironhand being alive and not adequately answering questions about how he got back indicate that something is about to go down. It does, weapons are drawn and combat follows. Yiska’s body shimmers and an oni mage is revealed. Ironhand tries to kiss Uthred but misses, and then the party lets out with their powerful abilities. Ironhand is killed in one round with critical hits, and is revealed to be a devil succubus. Keyleth and Grimald are doppelgangers. Oswald is in too much shock to fight so it is up to the new party to deal with this threat. Master Kin Shee appears to be under some kind of control and also fights on the side of the devil and doppelgangers. He is the last to go down and is knocked unconscious. When he awakes, he seems to be back to normal but doesn’t have much in the way of information about what happened.
They talk about disposing of the bodies, perhaps burning the building or dumping them in the river, but decide that both are too risky. They are going to just leave the bodies there, gather their belongings and then go to Marden’s house. Alistair goes home and packs his belongings to come back and stay there that night.
They go to the tomb of Kas Lee the next day to tie up this last loose end. Master Kin Shee stays behind at the house, asking them to come get him when it is time to leave. They find the tomb in the slums close to the city wall. The wall, in fact, was built right through the graveyard and they see that there are no new tombs. The graveyard itself predates the cataclysm. The tomb is against the fence and the fence around it is pristine and intact while the rest of the fence is rusted and broken. Uthred walks right up and uses the key. When he does, the fence around the tomb crumbles and shatters and Alistair feels the release of wards and psychic necrotic energy. A small shack that was inside the fence of the tomb bursts into flames and attacks. They see the bones of burned bodies inside it. It moves up and grabs both Zhagrim and Uthred, and they are caught in its charnel blaze taking fire damage each round. Uthred is well suited to fight this creature as his shield protects from fire and his armor protects from necrotic. However, the damage output of the creature plus the aura is just too much for Marden to heal. Oswald is unable to help.
During the fight, Uthred is grabbed the entire time, taking crushing damage until he goes unconscious. Zhagrim also would have gone down if not for the healing and once the house drops Uthred and turns its attention to Zhagrim, he goes down quickly as well. Once Zhagrim goes unconscious, the house goes to Alistair and takes him down in almost one round. Oswald has enough presence of mind to drag Uthred away from the aura and stabilize him and does the same for Zhagrim. Marden and Alistair finally do the last damage to destroy the creature, and the last explosion knocks Alistair unconscious. They had to use their best powers to kill the creature and they know that now that the wards are off the tomb, whatever is inside it can now get free. There is a time limit now to what they must do, and they will have to risk an extended rest soon in order to be back to full strength.
They discover that they are too excited to rest so soon after waking up. So they have to push on despite being low on resources. They enter the tomb and face the guardians. The battle is long, and it looks bad when the strange skeletons leave a zone of darkness that the party can’t counter. Oswald and Zhagrim have many close calls until Oswald pulls out the consecrated ground. Finally, they are victorious. They open the sarcophagus and find a body, but there are no riches. Alistair enacts a detect secret doors ritual and finds one and they successfully open it. But they decide to go down after an extended rest and close it up. They spend the day doing nothing except for Alistair who goes in to town to shop and do shows. He learns that there is a price of 1,000 gp on Zhagrim’s head and the town is on high alert. Alistair returns to the tomb at dusk, and the party spends time talking and getting to know each other. A couple of hours after, they feel like they can get some rest and set up new watches. Unfortunately, a short time into first watch, a mist comes out of the cracks under the sarcophagus and wraiths come through the floor into the upper tomb. They attack. A vortex wraith has the power of force around it and it looks like this will be a serious problem as everyone will take damage each round from it. Oswald breaks out his resistance power, which he hadn’t used yet this day, and negates that danger. Once again, the fight at first looks quite grim and then the party begins to turn it around. A trap haunt possesses Zhagrim and then Marden for a round or two but then they are destroyed and no lasting harm is done. Towards the end, all the wraiths gang up on Oswald, hoping to either knock him down or possess him to keep him from sustaining that power of Foersyn. Finally, one by one the wraiths are destroyed, the last one trying to escape, and the party can breathe easy. They take a few minutes to recuperate and then hit the sack again.
They successfully make it through the night and regain their abilities, then head downstairs. They near a 5-way intersection and notice that the walls have crumbled. The walls themselves indicate that they were built over a century ago with flaking mortar and age. In the rubble from the collapse, Marden sees something glistening and moving. They stop well short of the intersection and identify a black pudding and a blood amniote ooze. Alistair puts up a lightning pillar and a grasping shadows area, and the oozes retreat down the passages out of sight and range. Unfortunately, Alistair becomes the first one to step into the intersection area, despite being warned that some other creature might be hiding around the corner. Sure enough there was – a swarm of rot scarabs. The oozes also sweep in and it becomes a fight to keep Alistair alive while he tries to escape. The oozes keep grabbing him and anyone else in the party and the blood amniote especially drains healing surges while it has a creature grabbed. Soon, Alistair is taking serious damage. The party manages to take down the black pudding, but the blood amniote kills Alistair before the party could finish it and the swarm.
They retreat upstairs. Oswald decides that the right thing to do would be to cast the raise dead ritual and everyone agrees to wait the 8 hours for that to happen. The rest will stand guard in the meantime. Three hours later, an ooze and two wraiths come up through the floor and a new fight begins while Oswald tries to stay out of it to finish the ritual. Just then, a dragonborn sorcerer named Akra pushes open the tomb door a crack (all he is able to do because Alistair’s cart has been moved inside to block one of the double doors) and declares that the tomb is his to raid and blasts the wraiths. Marden is in front of the other door and doesn’t like this new development. The dragonborn is accepted as an ally, however, and while Oswald tries to continue his ritual, the rest fight. The moonwraiths, however, do their crescent arc attacks that dazes and damages the entire party repeatedly. Luck turns against the party and Oswald eventually has to stop his ritual to join the fray when Zhagrim and then Akra fall unconscious. In the end, it looks grim but once again they pull off the victory. They rest and decide that they must risk another extended rest, whiling away the day with the raise dead ritual.
This time, he finishes without interruption and Alistair is returned to life. He informs the party that adventuring is just not the life he wants. He’s going to return to the city, where he can blend back in, not being wanted by the Sacred Guard. He contemplates a career change to pastry chef. He does tell them that he will send a warning if he learns of anything coming to harm them and offers his house to hide in if they need it.
They begin an extended rest an hour later and manage to sleep through the night, despite a feeling of dread that something is gathering below.
The next day they have gained power while sleeping, level 9, and now head back downstairs. At the intersection they hear noises coming from the right passage and investigate. They find a room filled with niches and hordes of zombies dressed in commoners and servant clothes. The fight goes very smoothly and is much easier when the attackers don’t daze or do instant damage. The party is victorious and after a short rest will be ready to move on. They go down to the room directly across and find an empty sarcophagus that looked like it was opened from the inside. They see the name Vanath Lee and assume it was a son. They move on to the final room on this level, a big room with two large statues, a dias and 3 biers upon which rest two mummified bodies, and the third has what looks to be a fully-healthy man. When they enter and get close to the dais, the man moves, coughs weakly and gestures them closer. They know it’s a trap, and are prepared to fight. He stands, saying some nonsense about it being so long, and then he attacks. They are ready for him. His shriek manages to immobilize Oswald and Uthred for most of the fight. His gaze dominates Zhagrim for a couple of rounds, and his two mummy guardians infect the entire party with mummy rot. The corpse vampire son hiding in the shadow of the pillar on the ceiling jumps Akra and occupies his attention for many rounds of the fight. The bad guys manage to steer the fight away from the immobilized ones for a few rounds until finally the undead fall one by one.
After they are victorious Zhagrim and Akra contract the mummy rot disease and healing effects are only going to be half effective until they can fight the disease on their next extended rest. They search the big room and Oswald notices that something doesn’t look right on one of the statues. Zhagrim climbs up and fails to see anything wrong, but with Oswalds help, he finds a panel to open with a mechanism to work. He fails to work it correctly and they must use brute strength to pull the statue down with ropes. An opening is revealed and they go down below and face immortal angelic and demonic guardians in front of a massive 20 foot stone door. The guardians warn them away, saying that they fulfill ancient compacts with Kas Lee to guard this place. The party naturally won’t withdraw, and combat begins. This fight is not too difficult for the party. All of the foes hold the party in place, they don’t do too much damage. In a short time, the party is victorious and takes a couple of short rests. The mummy rot on Zhagrim and Akra complicate the healing, however.
They enter the tomb of Kas Lee. The see that sparkly mica and quartz makes up the majority of the natural cavern and the air smells damp. Through one part of the room it looks like water once flowed, causing flowstone and other formations and a fine layer of the same crystal mineral covering and creating what looks like a statue of a dragon on one side. The dragon sits in the remains of a stone sarcophagus which looks like it burst open from the inside. There are two chests also on that side of the cavern. As they approach, the dragon moves and the very stone beneath the party’s feet begins to grip at them, slowing their movement. The dragon teleports after Zhagrim rushes it to do damage and uses its nasty breath weapon power to immobilize the rest of the party. When they fail to resist its effects, they take damage as it clings to them with necrotic power. It’s frightful presence also affects everyone except Oswald who is unable to get his damage resistance power up until a few rounds into the fight, and then only gets himself, Zhagrim, and Uthred. The combat is long and arduous, and the dracolich, after it is finally identified, showers the party with bone shards when it is hit, which does devastating damage.
Around its neck it wears a kind of amulet, though it won’t be an amulet when taken by a humanoid. It is gold and encrusted with ruby chips. They speculate about it being something they will have to deal with to defeat the dracolich, but an insight from the spirits tells Marden that it is not. Round after round they are beat down, using their very last healing power to defeat the dragon. Uthred gets timely critical hits with his dragonslaying axe, doing lots of damage towards the end of the fight. At last, the party is victorious and the dracolich has been defeated. They examine the amulet and feel its power, but they are unable to determine what to do with it, so Uthred takes it. But Akra feels his attention being drawn to it more and more until he asks to hold it. Its powers are revealed only to him and he says nothing to the party. But from there he starts actively seeking out the other treasures the party gets from the hoard.
Here, the adventures end, unresolved.