[Our Side Trek to give Cliff and Kathryn some experience with the SW system continues after the brief side trek from this side trek. Kathryn was unable to join us but sent a proxy…her son Drew. Rachel was also missing but Jamie is back from his European excursion and played Ivarr in Rachel’s absence. After so many years of struggling to keep enough players, my cup now runneth over and there are even backup players!
This entry is from Jamie. As always, my GM comments in italics and brackets.
When we last left the party, they were preparing to open the gates into the barrow mound complex.
Spoiler Alert: Portions of this session borrow from the adventure, The Garden of Miracles, by Faster Monkey Games.]
After some scouting, we opened the gates of the barrow-mound complex and headed in through the tunnel in the wall. A swarm of undead rats poured out of the rough stone walls and began biting all unprotected areas of our bodies. Quickly determining that the swarm was not subject to Scaetha’s weakening and that killing individual members of the swarm was useless, we poured oil on the ground and were eventually able to light it, burning the undead scourge to cinders and releasing thick clouds of black smoke into the noonday sky. Entering the complex we confirmed that three of the smaller barrows had been dug open and that the central, larger barrow was also open to the elements. (The irony of our elementalist being closed to them was not lost on all of us.) As the party went to explore one of the open mounds, “Topsy” Tyrvi, also known as “Jackass,” made a bee-line for another mound and was immediately enticed within by the Hagbui that made its residence therein. Eventually this foul creature of undeath was destroyed by the combined efforts of Mule and Orcbane. We examined the other open small barrows to discover nothing of interest, and then focused our attentions on the main structure.
[It wasn’t so much that they determined that Scaetha’s weakening (i.e., Weaken Undead) didn’t work but that they failed and didn’t try again. 😉 Those knowledgeable of the undead failed their checks and so I ruled that had never faced or heard much about such a swarm and so weren’t sure if Scaetha’s blessings would affect an individual rat skeleton or the entire swarm. Good question, actually. I think, based on a Swarm being largely immune to attacks targeting individuals and Weaken Undead not being an area of effect power, I’d lean towards individual rat skeleton but I’m not completely convinced.
The barrow mounds are on a small hill with a large barrow atop the hill. Encircling this large barrow at a slightly lower elevation is a series of sixteen smaller barrows. Encircling all of this, again at a slightly lower elevation, is a thick stone wall. Once inside the wall, Stori took up position on one of the smaller mounds to keep an eye on the large dark opening leading into the larger barrow. Mule stood nearby. Ivarr and Gansi circled off one way while Tyrvi went off the other way. Note: This pattern was maintained for the session…Stori got stuck way in the back and different party members split off to go off and do things (i.e., get in trouble).
So how does a Hagbui, who really doesn’t like sunlight, get a nice, tasty looking PC to come into its now doorless barrow? Toss a few rocks into the back of it and hope the PC has the Curious Hindrance…that’s the definition of entice here. It also helped that the party pretty much split up as soon as they got into the complex. Tyrvi had to face the Hagbui for a short period a time on his own. Neither RJ nor I rolled very well for our respective attacks (one powered by Scaetha…Holy Warrior/Weaken Undead…and the other by Hela…Numbing Touch) so it was something of a stalemate until Mule made it in and continued his habit of beating the crap out of things.
Jamie’s reference to the irony of the party’s elementalist being closed to the elements while a number of the mounds were open to them is his rather clever nod to the Siphoning that Gansi was still suffering from.]
Upon entering the central burial chamber, we noticed a body on a slab that sat up and reached out towards us. After determining that the body was unaffected by Scaetha’s just chastisement, we realized that in its skeletal hand it clasped an amulet of Scaetha which had been defaced and over which the symbol of Foul Hela was superimposed. Examination revealed that the skeleton was in fact a statue and that its habit of sitting upright and then lying back down was caused by a pressure-plate in the entry corridor that actuated a metal stem embedded in the notional spinal column of the statue. (We also detected a gas trap that was fortunately unable to cause us to flee despite repeated opportunities.) Extensive searching revealed an inscription in blacktongue around the base of the slab indicating “spares below.” Eventually we abandoned our tireless efforts at opening a passage by moving the slab, and discovered three small holes in the wall under the shelf in the back wall of the chamber. One of the hands of the skeleton possessing three fingers, we intuited that this hand was a key and sure enough were rewarded with a small panel opening, revealing a ring. After nearly twisting it off, Mule determined that his strength was more than sufficient to pull upon the ring, and doing so caused a floor panel to sink down and reveal a passage in the floor equipped with a spiral set of metal rungs leading down some forty feet. Tying a rope around the slab to provide extra support, we began to descend after dropping a torch to reveal a tunnel below and no visible opponents.
When most of the party was down, Hefinnr tired of waiting and opened the door at the end of the short subterranean passage. Spying a group of undead spaced around a central sarcophagus (and, strangely, all facing in the direction opposite our point of ingress), he charged into the room and leaped upon the central structure, screaming unintelligibly about Scaetha being sent to Hela or something similar. Combat is engaged as Gansi crashes through the rungs to the bottom of the shaft and Stori hurries down as quickly as is safe in order to join the battle. Stori maintained a vigilant rearguard defense. An attempted sweep resulted in Ghostmane swapping positions with one of the foul minions of the liche lord and some momentary confusion, but Mule’s belligerent bellowing and some quality swordplay quickly brought the enemy to a standstill. Gansi proved unusually adept with his spear as Scaetha guided his blows through the defenses of the undead.
[The “let’s split the party” meme continues! As did the “leave Stori behind” theme of the night. I think, at some point, this will somehow come back to bite the party in the “vigilant rearguard defense”…much like it has in the past. 😉
Liche Lord, eh? Did I say that?
Jamie rolled “snake eyes” with a Sweep attack. Per our House Rule, I offered Jame a Benny to not reroll the catastrophic failure and he snatched it up without a second thought. The skeleton feinted and spun, shoving Ivarr’s attack wide and right into Hefinnr (I believe) and winding up where Ivarr had been standing. The attack hit Hefinnr but I don’t think it did much more than slide off of his chain hauberk.
Gansi was still suffering from Siphoning.]
The central sarcophagus, carved with zombie or liche-like images, was opened to reveal a silk-shrouded body with gemmed-gold orbs for eyes, rings, crown, and necklace as well as a curved bronze dagger. The crown and necklace were obviously magical, so Ivarr tucked them in his pouch for later analysis at the temple. The foul corpse was beheaded to disrupt its animation, and the text “Reserve Body #23” was found under its resting place. Further exploration of the complex revealed a long, windy passageway of more natural-seeming stone ending in a ladder whose exit was under a boulder in the woods some 400 feet north of the mound complex, and the muddy soil around which showed no recent passage other than ourselves.
After some discussion we elected to hide as many signs as possible of our presence at the complex and to await the expected arrival of undead critters along the path from the withered lands in hopes of learning who or what was directing these horrors. Having hidden scorched grass, reconstructed the animated statue as well as possible without the mechanism being functional, and Gansi flooding the muddy ground near the tunnel exit to hide our footprints, we hunkered down in the brush near the path and waited for some hours. Sure enough, the pitter-patter of thousands of small bony feet made itself heard on the path, and after an enormous army of diminutive undead had passed, Stori snuck to the wall of the barrow-field and peeked in upon a scene of industrious undead badgers, rats, squirrels, and other vermin unearthing the opening of yet another barrow under the direction of a human standing atop the central mound. Finally, the apparent architect of the undead invasion of Hrafn Point!
[There was a bit of GM hinting as well about all the signs that had been left when the party decided to set up some sort of ambush. I particularly liked the use of Gansi’s Knockdown power (Siphoning finally wore off) to “flood” the muddy ground to hide the tracks around the back entrance. Good idea for using a power, based on its Trappings, to do something other than just the basic power description.
And, or course, we ended the session once the “architect” made his appearance. Most of the party is off in the woods, Stori (finally) is at the front instead of stuck way behind the rest of the party, and the “architect” is turning to go into the large barrow mound.
Of course, there is one question that I have…where did the architect come from? He didn’t come with the horde of skeletal critters or, if he did, he did so without being heard or spotted. Did he travel with the horde? Did he come from a different direction? Did he just magically appear? Or is there something else that I’m missing?]
