"Aye then. Ready to bash a head or two in. Y'all ready to get moving?" The dwarf said.
Cressida nods, "We have the man who sold Gaekhen's body to Rolth in custody: a simpleton named Elkaris. He spilled everything when we told him what was going on and how much trouble he was in. In any event, Elkaris says he delivered the body via wheelbarrow to a partially-collapsed mausoleum deep in Potter's Ward, near the southern edge. A toppled and headless statue of a sword-wielding gargoyle lay in the dirt near the mausoleum's entrance - he was told to leave the body behind the gargoyle. That's the best place to start the search.
"Be careful, though. It's possible that 'Rolth the necromancer' refers to Rolth Lamm. He's been a thorn in my side for over a decade. The prime suspect in a large number of gruesome murders, but I've never been able to find any evidence against him."
Upon hearing the necromancer's full name, Ril's golden eyes almost pop out of her head in surprise. "Hold on. Lamm? Rolth Lamm?" Yhrrilka glares at Cressida. "What is his connection to the late Gaedren Lamm?" She whirls back to Macaria and Torsten. "One of the things we found at Lamm's, it said something..." she furiously tries to recall the inscription.
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"Wait... Did you just say Lamm?"
A key-shaped dagger inscribed with the phrase "For an inspiration of a father"
"Rolth is his only son. To be honest, I'd half-expected him to take over his father's crime empire, but he's been rather silent of late."
"Unbelievable." Yhrrilka shakes her head in disbelief as the Marshal confirms Lamm's parentage. "Well, we've stopped most of the evils of Gaedren Lamm, I guess it's time to throw away the last rotten fruit of that tree." She looks to Macaria and Torsten. "To the Dead Warrens, then?"
”Aye, let’s get to it. The dead don’t wait this time around.”
The Gray District is a mournful place even by day. An unnatural stillness is in the air, and this ominous feeling is most noticeable in Potter's Ward. Locating the entrance to the Dead Warrens is a simple task using the directions you were given. Unfortunately, Gaekhen's body is not present - although you do find a wheelbarrow trail leading into a mausoleum. Interestingly, several smaller humanoid tracks clutter the site as well. Inside the mausoleum, you find a trapdoor in the floor that leads down into the dark.
Ril turns to Macaria. "I hope you've got a lantern or something?" She opens the trapdoor and takes a look.
”I’ll go first. Then Mac, then Ril. Slowest one sets the pace. Ril protects against ambush. Mac blasts apart any ghosties.” Torsten said, as he motioned for Ril to let him go first.
Seeing Torsten cast spells on himself reminds Yhrrilka to do the same.
The Dead Warrens are dimly lit by patches of eerily glowing mold that fills the chambers with a cold blue light. The air is musty and damp, with the stink of rotting flesh always present.
D1
This large room is supported by four wide pillars of stone. The ceiling above arches in a dome nearly twenty feet high. The walls are lined with skeletons caked into the mud - adult human bones mostly, but here and there smaller bones might be from halflings or perhaps children. Fifteen-foot-square pits sit to the east and west, each filled with a large heap of hundreds of bones. To the south, a crude hole has been gouged out of the wall, providing access to a tunnel.
Macaria and Torsten realize that some of these bones are moving. Several skeletons lurk in the bone pile to the west, and the bones of a large creature are animating in the pile to the east.
"An undead horde?" Torsten said, as he saw the bones begin to move. "Hey, Mac, this be something ye can blast apart?" He asked. "If so, then Ril, I think we should focus on keepin' her safe while she does her thing." He finished, never taking his eyes off of the incoming threat.
Maca offers to cast a spell for better illumination .
Maca positions herself just behind Torsten, ready to summon her otherworldly energies.
Eyeing up the moving piles of bones, Yhrrilka says, "Yes, I think that makes good sense." With blade in one hand and fire in the other, she stands ready to face whatever shows up.
Fire
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Ishta walks to the room where all undead seem to be. She stands by the door and invokes the power of the Upper and Lower Realms to castigate the aberrations.
Macaria's divine power obliterates the smaller skeletons, but the creature from the eastern bone pit is significantly more powerful. It appears to have once been an owlbear, and while death has taken its feathers, the beast's legendary fury remains. As it closes in, Torsten unleashes a powerful punch that rocks it back - and draws its attention. That's probably for the best, as Yhrrilka's hastily-aimed projectile narrowly misses.
With the skeletal owlbear within arm's reach, Torsten attempted to take it's legs out from beneath it. Given the obvious height and weight disparity, it was a tall order. But luckily he had a low center of gravity and only reached the skeleton's knees. Putting all of his strength into a blow to the back of it's leg, he quickly moved to follow it up with a pair of rapid punches to it's ribs.
With a nod, Ril gestures to Torsten for an opening. Her blade flashes with fire, burning the creature even as it deflects off a bone.
Slashing
Fire
Macaria decides she ought to finish the undead before it can deal further damage, and calls for her dark energies again.
Torsten trips - and then absolutely clobbers the skeletal owlbear.
A tunnel to the south leads out of this chamber, but everyone except Macaria (who's farther back and doesn't have a good view) notices a well-hidden passage leading out of the eastern bone pit. It appears to be sized for Small creatures.
"Hey, what did you find over there?"
"A shortcut, maybe? Not that I'd want to squeeze into anything so small. Seems like a great way of getting killed. It does mean that if we keep going that the enemy will always have a way to get behind us."
Ril frowns at the thought of fighting in such close quarters as that tunnel. "You're right, a space like that is no fun. But if someone tries to get behind us, I promise you I will make them regret it." A small ball of flame flares in her hand to emphasize the point.
Rank with the stink of sweat and mud, this cavern contains four filthy straw pallets and a low table covered with dice and a miniature maze of carved clay. A pair of white-haired blue-skinned humanoids are playing some sort of game involving pliers, hammers, numbered stones, and a rat. As you enter, they pick up strange hooked weapons and attack!
Yhrrilka strides into the room, sword in her right hand, pointing with her left, as a blast of fire streaks toward the nearest of these creatures.
vs touch
Fire
With no capability to attack anything outside of punching distance, Tosten stayed next to Ril and readied himself for the creatures to attack.
Macaria advances carefully, keeping some cover behind the rocks.
Yhrrilka's blast washes over her target to no apparent effect. It seems these creatures are warded against magic - at least partially. As the pair closes in, Torsten lands a solid hit on the first to approach. Rather than crying out, it giggles madly. The two lash out with their strange hooked weapons in unison.
Movement sounds from behind you, and a moment later, a third creature comes charging from the other tunnel. From the room it's exiting, you hear the buzz of stirges.
A little irked at the lack of response to her magic, Ril shifts her grip on her sword. "I can play it this way, too."
Piercing
Fire
With Ril having set them up, Torsten followed her lead. Using his sheer mass, he reached out and grabbed one of the creatures and attempted to throw it off balance and onto the ground. From there it would be a simple matter of stomping onto it's head, putting said head between a rock and a hard place (in this case his foot).
Standing where she is and not panicking over the small blue guy appearing just behind her, Maca conjures forth her signature netherworld energies.
Torsten and Yhrrilka work together to take down their opponents. Macaria's divine energy then washes over the fallen creatures, making sure their journey to the River of Souls will be swift. The other creature manages to resist the worst of this ability, though, and closes in quickly.
In addition, from the other chamber, a pair of curious stirges approach.
Maca dodges the creature's attack, steps backwards and calls for pain again. "Your resistance is futile!"
As Macaria stepped back, Torsten moved in. And in doing so he gave the creature a Janderhoff Handshake by grabbed it's shoulders and delivering a bone-cracking headbutt. Luckily, his own skull was reinforced by his magic.
Ril smiles, seemingly quite amused at Torsten. "I think that was how you wanted handle your sailor friend, nyet?" she asks, as she waits to launch a fire blast at whatever comes.
vs touch
Fire
The creature once again shakes off the worst of Macaria's pain, but then Torsten arrives and headbutts it into unconsciousness. The dwarf is within reach of the stirges, though, and one is quick to seize the opportunity.
With one stirge in reach, Torsten reached out to grab it so he could throw it to the ground, but then thought better of it. The insect like creature was flying, and while he might have been able to bounce it off the ground, that didn't mean it would stay there. Instead, when it came at him he instead deftly lifted his leg up and stomped on it.
Ril does her best to aim past Torsten stomping the first creature into oblivion, launching a fire blast at the rearmost one.
vs touch
Fire
With both stirges turned into fairy dust, Maca looks at her companions and asks "Anyone hurt?"
Breathing deeply, Ril turns to respond to Macaria. "No," she shakes her head in response. Slightly sheepishly, she says to the other woman, "Sorry, Maca. I was so eager to get the ones up front that I forgot to cover the rear. I'll try to not let it happen again."
With her boot, she toes one of the humanoids that still has a recognizable head. "Who were these jokers, anyway?"
"No idea." Torsten said, as he tried to shake the gore off of his foot. "But I don't think that they were undead. Ghouls, maybe? Never seen one of those either. Even my little guy here isn't feeding me information on them." He motioned at his backpack, in which his ioun wyrd was sheltering.
"But whatever they were, they're dead. And we're alive. Let's keep moving while we still have momentum on our side."
"I couldn't agree more," the half-orc said, casting a glance around the room.
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There's nothing of interest in this room, so you check where the third creature came from. That room holds three wooden tables stained red with old bloodshed. To the east stands a ten-foor-wide hutch with wicker doors opening into a straw-lined cage. A body lies on one of the tables, serving as food for a quartet of stirges.