Session 5

The party dusts themselves off and mill about the courtyard for a minute, kicking around the bones of the newly felled skeletons before Garret motions to the lefthand door and asks 'Shall we?'

'After you,' Bharash says, sheathing his sword. Garret raises his eyebrows and crosses his arms before he glances into the dark beyond the threshold.

'Please,' Keg says with a wave of his hand, slapping Garret on the back. 'We insist.'

Garret sighs and shrugs and pads quietly through the portal, finding himself in a long hall of sorts that runs perpendicular to the opening. All along the walls of this hall are set stasidia, of a size suitable for a halfling or gnome. Across from the door is a short hallway that turns out of sight around the wall. Garret creeps on and discovers a circular stairway leads downward. He motions his companions to follow him on and begins his descent. The others move into the hallway and briefly take a load off, reclining into the stasidia.

Garret arrives at the bottom of the stairway and finds himself in a long hall. He can make out a set of metal bars blocking a path to his right not far along but is unable to see what lies ahead down the way. He calls for back-up and his companions with keener vision are able to see that the further up the hall, it is interrupted by another and opens into a four-way intersection. The group becomes intrigued by the barred path when they discover a stone sarcophagus placed on a raised dais immediately beyond the door. They decide to investigate and Bharash breaks the lock with a swift quick.

Before they can investigate the sarcophagus, the party notices that some of the shadows their light is casting on the wall do not seem to correspond with their positions in the room. Keg infuses a ball bearing with magical light and throws it at one of the shadows, only for it to peel off of the wall and strike him. The shadow-figure's touch fills Keg with dreadful cold and he sinks to the floor as the breath rushes from his lungs. A second shade lunges forward from the dark and the party members who remain standing move in for the fight. Despite the cramped quarters and the incorporeal nature of their foes, the party manages to avoid being struck but against the shades' unhallowed grace they have difficulty dealing any damage. Erkash creates another searing plane of fire that catches both of the shadows in its span, but it proves less immediately effective against them than the skeletons. Alvalor fires a bolt of bright, sparkling energy at one of them and scores a direct hit - the shadow's form puckers and shrivels into a point, sputtering black smoke as it disintegrates. A few well placed projectiles from Aramil and Garret punch holes through the last shadow and weaken it enough for Bharash to deliver the final blow, a fierce sidelong strike that slices it in twain.

Aramil, Alvalor and Bharash get Keg back on his feet as Garret works on prying open the sarcophagus, wherein he discovers a resting skeleton what must have been a Gnome, still clutching a finely crafted steel shortsword. The party follows the hall out the other side of the small crypt and it leads to a corner and then a threeway intersection, where the decision is made to take the left, rather than continue straight. The party arrives in another, larger crypt adjacent to the fourway intersection they espied when they first descended into the catacombs. Before they can investigate the six smaller, less grand sarcophagoi here, a pair of skeletons jump from around the corner and attack the party. They prove to be no match for the party's superior number and are quickly dispatched. While the party sets to work opening the sarcophagoi, Aramil notices a goat standing motionless in the hallway beyond the room. He moves to investigate and hopefully befriend it. As he nears it, however, it suddenly disappears without a trace.

Alvalor notes that the goat is frequently used as a symbol of Buluru - a powerful, evil being who appears in all of the world's religious systems and to whom pray many depraved, monstrous creatures. The party pauses to consider what the apparition might have meant, who might have created it and how it might relate to the effigies that haunted their campsite. Aramil, perhaps reluctant to consider the grave and inhuman evil that they might have stumbled into, speculates that there might be a presence attempting to establish communication with them. Bharash suggests that they keep their guard up and guesses that the signs they've seen are threats rather than warnings. Nonetheless, the party does not even consider flight an option. They press on and Garret picks the lock on a door across from the crypt.

Inside, they discover a small chapel to the god Ym, who is worshipped widely among the dwarves, gnomes, giants and men of the North Country. The wall behind the altar is carved with a mural depicting a popular myth about Ym and one of his encounters with Buluru in the shape of a serpent. Around the back of the wall, the party finds an old bedchamber, and among the dust on the bookshelf, a case with two remarkably well-preserved magical scrolls. Another room off of the chapel seems to be some sort of funerary chamber, in which the party finds a pair of healing potions tucked into a shelf on the stone embalming table. Before taking their leave, the party breaks open the urns filled with embalming fluid, flooding the room with its noisome smell.

Aramil, the first to grow tired of these antics, takes not one step back into the hallway when something he is unable to see screams right in his face. He pauses and turns back to his companions who are rushing to investigate, before he admits that he's starting to feel uneasy in this place. The party rushes out of the tomb up the stairs at the end of the hall opposite to where they first entered. They emerge out the right-hand door, back into the courtyard, where they discover that six effigies have been placed in the boughs of the tree growing out of the broken cobblestones in the far corner. Standing in the doorway that leads back to the cave is the same ghostly goat that appeared in the tomb.

Bharash, his patience exhausted, calls out to the unseen creature that stalks them. Erkash, knowing an impressive variety of languages, demands in each of the tongues that he knows that the creature reveal itself to them. At last, he receives a response in Sylvan - the language of the fey.

'You are meat for the soup,' a voice announces.

Garret and Keg manage to notice the outline of a figure on the walkway above them around the courtyard where the light isn't bending quite right. Garret raises his crossbow and fires while Keg lets loose another ray of frost, but both of their attacks miss and the shape recedes out of their sight.

The party rushes on into the last doorway, through a large dining hall and up the staircase there. As Bharash is about halfway up the stairs, the treads all simultaneously flip down to create a ramp and he slides into a newly revealed pit of spikes at the bottom. Garret immediately sets to work trying to figure out how to disarm the trap and quickly locates the switch, but he has to climb on top of Bharash's shoulders to reach the device. The stairs reset and the party ascends, shortly finding themselves on the walkway above the courtyard.

They discern the location of the monster again, standing on a platform atop another flight of stairs on the far side of the courtyard. Bharash, Alvalor and Erkash rush along the rampart toward their foe while the rest of the party takes aim with their weapons and Keg readies a spell. As Bharash reaches the stairs, a shadow figure glides up from the ground to block his path. Bharash charges, undaunted, and passes through the shadow even as it attempts to strike him down. The invisible creature retreats again toward a grand doorway at the rear of the platform and the rest of the party draws forward. The shadow is quickly put down by a barrage of spells and strikes as Bharash enters into combat with the invisible being. Finally, he lands a hit and the illusion is interrupted, his opponent revealed.

The creature that has been taunting and stalking the party is a hag, a vile and jealous creature with a gaunt frame, sickly green skin and a twisted, warty, female face. Even as Bharash strikes at it, the hag proves to be deceptively sturdy and resistant to his attacks. It puts its arm up to block Bharash's sword and swipes him with the talons of its free hand. While the paladin is recovering his balance, the hag turns to Alvalor as he gains the top of the stairs and lunges with a sickly gleeful cackle, it's long calloused fingers blackened with old blood stains ready to plunge into his throat. Alvalor turns his face and covers himself with his shield, raising his hand just in time to fire a missile of holy energy squarely into the hag's face. The explosion that follows obliterates the hag's upper body, leaving behind a raw, charred torso.

A long, silent moment passes as the party waits for any surprises to be revealed but it seems they're in the clear.

'Nice shot,' Keg congratulates Alvalor with a friendly punch to the chest as he passes him on the staircase.

'Yeah,' Garret agrees, still sweeping the courtyard with his crossbow. 'It's about time you guys started carrying your own weight!'

The party crosses the platform and enters the door into must be the old throne room of this Gnome stronghold. The natural windows carved from the stone illuminate a wall above the throne on the opposite side of the chamber covered in Gnomish inscriptions. Although none of them can read Gnomish, because the language is written in the Dwarven alphabet, Keg is able to find an instance of a very familiar word: his own surname.