Chapter 7

 

[Last we ventured we had cleared the moat house and killed Lareth and his evil minions. We uncovered the plot to rebuild the Temple of Elemental Evil along with their upcoming raid and likely razing of Hommlet by such a force. We had a diary to share with the leaders of the town and our next step in the journey to uncover more of this sinister plot. Nulb, port town of decadence, corruption, and debauchery awaits us, but before travelling to the town, a quick stop-over at Emridy Meadows, a great battlefield where the forces of good and evil originally fought and which evil was vanquished and sent to the Temple to be banished and sealed. We also had our first death, Xiamaru Sinistrari, mage extraordinaire, and used our only scroll of raise dead on him. This saved him; luckily, bet he lost something like 2,000 xp in the process and at this low of a level, hurt a ton. But now it was time to wrap up this leg of the adventure and so we gathered the party and ventured forth…]

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We woke up with heads pounding from too much ale, revelry, and an overall good time for we saved the town from a great evil this last adventure. We earned the reputation of ‘moat house cleaners’ and boy did we deserve it. We remembered the solemn words of the druid leader of this town and how he encouraged us to move on to Nulb to uncover more of the plot against this area and this town. If the Temple was truly being rebuilt, we would need to find out, and then pass the news on back here to the druid and get it in the right hands.

We remembered a quest the head cleric of St. Cuthbert had asked of us though, and felt obliged to do that first. It would be a quick side trek and gaining favor with the church of this town would mean lower costs for healing and items they sell. We sold our goods and loot from the moat house and readied ourselves for the worst these battlegrounds had to throw at us. Kumari was wearing Lareth’s black plate mail after getting refitted at the town tailor and even used his mace of striking. The rest of us purchased some more potions of clw from the church and what other magical items we found in the moat house were equipped and we were off.

The trip was uneventful and our survival skills were kicking in. We arrived in the field and surveyed the scene…

It wasn’t long walking across the grassy fields before the ground shifted and up crawled skeleton warriors long dead from the great battle. Whether these fought for good or evil originally, no one knew, but for now they only wanted our death and they came at us en masse.

We defended against some, but then more and more kept coming until Kumari brought forth her unholy symbol and commanded the dead to obey. Without hesitation, the skeletons stopped in mid-strike, mid-stride, and fell into formation with us. We had a skeleton army, albeit small, but still, we wondered how big we could get it…

We were off looking for undead to ‘capture’ for our control when we came upon a great grizzly brown bear. There also looked to be some items of dead adventurers lying around so decided it best to relieve the animal of its treasure. We attacked.

We felt good about the fight, about to use the typical web/grease combo and watching our new dead guardians go off attacking the animal as we fired our missile weapons from afar until the bears ‘master’ came running forth and this time, it was no illusion. Ohhhhhh…crap. We all gulped.

We had just killed the bear and launched the web/grease combo on the hill giant to buy some time. This worked but it wouldn’t for long. What’s worse, any summoned pets we threw into the mix would die in one shot and before they could even get an attack in.

We ran out of summoned pets to use and the skeleton army we once had was quickly becoming just a pile of bones. Stallen stepped in and used his mandolin to fascinate the hill giant, effectively taking him out of combat until he was attacked again, so basically gaining some additional moments as we fired our ranged weapon at the giant.

Just as the web dissolved and the grease spell faded, the beast was making a bee-line for the nearest opponent which was thankfully a skeleton crossbowman. That skeleton provided a great service for taking the punishment meant for us, and we were able to continue our firing onto the raging giant. This thing was like a pincushion of arrows and bolts and kept coming, charging another skeleton and killing it with one slam of his tree-trunk club. It was almost dead, we could tell, and just as it was heading toward us, Xiamaru let loose a crossbow bolt which lodged deep into the giant’s chest and as it collapsed on its chest, the bolt blasted through its back.

It was our toughest opponent yet, unless you consider Lareth, but the toughest without spells for sure. We gathered what was left of our skeleton army and beset on the giant’s camp and uncovered some elvish chain, shields, and other loot and items including some magical gloves and a ton of gems and jewelry. We scooped it all up and kept exploring, eager to find more skeletons for our growing army.

We found some! These were skeleton gnolls, even better as they were tougher than normal skeletons and would make fine warriors for our ranks. It was amazing how quickly we fell into the role of generals as our army grew in size. We found a rock, multi-colored in fact, and figured this must be the rainbow rock the priest told us about which was near where he dropped his item. We searched and as we did, were attacked by even more undead. Great! Our ranks swell!

A skeleton priest led these new undead and didn’t like to be commanded. He would pay for his insolence! After his demise, Kumari commanded what was left of the undead army to obey and almost all the undead you see on the screen above was under our command. [OK, this was pretty awesome. Evil clerics get turn undead which will either cause them to cower in fear unable to fight or fall under our command while good clerics will either turn them or destroy them outright. It doesn’t take a genius to see the plusses of an evil cleric, and Kumari has proven her worth this campaign in spades! (is that racial?) I think we had somewhere between 10-13 of these troops at one time, a mixture of skeleton warriors, crossbowman, and gnolls. It was awesome! Although, some of the crossbowmen were running out of ammo and I couldn’t figure out how to replenish them. Oh well, they would make good buffers between us and the evil monsters that would do us harm ]

We gathered together and assembled a campfire and settled in for a good night’s rest with our undead soldiers rapt at attention. We memorized read magic and identify spells [which costs us 100 gp per spell – ouch!] and uncovered the gloves as dexterous ones, a cloak of elvenkind, and the elvish armor as some ornate and very strong magical armor, even better than the plate mail that Kumari was wearing. We shared the equipment amongst ourselves and gave it to those in need, and followed the advice of protecting the priest the most, thus she got to wear the elvish chain.

We gathered our camp up the next morning and set out for Hommlet to return the item we found to the church priest. We also found a strange figurine we asked him about which he exclaimed emanated some great evil and should be destroyed. That meant we should keep it and use it the next chance we got. Realistically, we identified it as a strange fungus figurine, and put it away for some future use unsure of quite what it would do. We were surprised to find the citizens of Hommlet unafraid of necromancy though as we trounced through town with a full retinue of undead guarding us. Maybe they were afraid to say anything lest they become one of them….muahaahahaahaha………..…ha.

We sold our goods, bought some more equipment and turned in the giants head to the town smith. ‘Huh? What’s this?’ you say. Oh, that’s right, a simple side quest from the town smith to bring him back the head of a giant before he would sell us masterwork items. This was some way of proving our worth, and to see the look on the smiths face as Karish threw the giants head at his feet. Priceless! He opened up the back shop and we all replaced all our normal weapons with masterwork ones, even getting a couple amazing bows that were tuned to our strength. Eldiritch sold all the gems and jewels we found and all told we must have accumulated some 2,000 or so in gold. We felt rich, and headed off to Nulb…

On the journey we were ambushed by some lizardmen. The poor lizardmen picked the wrong army to ambush as we let our undead loose on them.

Kumari walked over to a couple skeletons after the battle that were injured and cast cause light wounds on them which miraculously healed the dead. This was good…no pun intended J. We made it to Nulb without further confrontation and surveyed the town…

The town was full of brigands, pirates, and other scum not worthy of talking to. There was the typical selection of inns, taverns, shops and even a brothel which we would have to frequent. We set off to explore the dock-like town and stumbled upon a pirate named Grud that asked for a favor. This favor would bring great reputation to us and we figured since we’re still new in this place and need to get on their ‘good’ side so to speak, we obliged.

All we had to do was bring back the head of a giant gar. We already killed a giant crayfish, giant’s bear, and a giant itself, how hard could it be? Yea. We set off to this Imeryds Run…

The journey was short and with our undead retinue of soldiers we felt a little unstoppable. We began travelling through bogs and swamps looking for this gar and finally found the area marked on our map where this creature was supposed to frequent. Just as we arrived in this open bog area, a giant frog leapt out of the brush and attacked.

Hah! Oh, we so got this. Stallen didn’t even bother pulling out his mandolin for this one. [Little did we know, we were actually ambushed by a crap-load more monsters than this simple frog. Look above in the screenshot and see the wonderful selection of monsters I somehow missed until it was too late.]Oh this was going to be easy, we laughed. We’ll be back by lunchtime, we joked. Yea… Then big daddy came hopping out and we realized we were in way over our heads…

‘AMBUSH!!’ Yelled Stallen as he whipped out his mandolin and began playing, ‘We gonna dieeeee toddayyy, oh no, oh no, pleeeeaasseee don’t let us die today, oh no, oh no!’. The living troops tried to gather the courage to fight, they would need it, as the dead simply obeyed and attacked. We were attacked by a giant king frog, almost 3-4 times the size of a normal one and it already killed one of our undead in one mighty bite. We were also attacked by lizardmen from the west which we somehow didn’t see until they were running to us. ‘Web and Grease! NOW!’ shouted Karish just as Kumari ordered all the undead to attack.

Our faithful man-at-arms, Raimol, was training up to be a ranger and as such was pulling arrow after arrow from his quiver as he sent them downwind into the Kingfrog. Some arrows struck and other missed, but just as he was pulling another arrow from his quiver the swamp water beneath him erupted in a mass of water and greenish-blue flesh just as a giant Swamphag came bearing down on him. A mighty blow from the right, a mighty blow from the left, and a viscous bite from the 7’ tall hag left Raimol without part of his face and his arm barely hanging on as he collapsed into the murky swamp dead before he submerged under its depths.

Just as Zert, who was closest to Raimol turned around to try and save him (although it would have been fruitless), a mighty tongue lashed out from the Kingfrog and wrapped around him keeping his arms held tight against his body. Just at that time Eldiritch pulled out his short sword of toad slaying from the lesser of the two frogs as it slumped below the murky waves. Karish swiped at the Kingfrog attempting to kill the beast to let Zert go just as the web and grease spells finally went off a little too late. It did have the fortune of webbing that Seahag which likely saved our group momentarily, at least until it broke free. The morale was low, the fight was not going good, our dead warriors were become….deader, and we lost Raimol. Actually, it got worse.

[Look at the screenshots above and see the Behemoth’s tongue wrapped around Zert. Oh jeebus!]

*GULP!* Was the sound the Kingfrog made as Zert went flying through the air and ended up down the giant frogs throat now slowly being eaten alive in the belly of the beast.

Thankfully, the giant frog was almost dead and the skeleton gnolls, Karish, Eldiritch, and even the mages were pounding on the beast in the hopes of saving another from dying. Just as all looked lost, a skeleton gnoll got a lucky blow with his weapon and killed the giant frog with a mighty blow. As the now-dead Kingfrog began to slump to the ground, Karish used his sword to open the maw of the creature and help Zert out of the belly of the beast, who was all covered in a green jelly-like substance and smelling like Verbobonc sewers.

Zert was lucky to be alive, but just as this side of the fight looked good, we still had to contend with a very angry and ferociously strong Seahag and its minions. The lizardmen began to fall to our attacks as the Seahag kept trying to escape her sticky prison. There were only a couple lizardmen left when Stallen fascinated the Seahag with his singing which looking back probably saved another death.

The battle was swinging our way with only the Seahag left when the web disappeared. Karish knew what he had to do, and just as he was stepping into the sacrificial zone of the Seahag to tie her up, a skeleton attacked the swamp hag with its weapon and broke the fascination. She was wounded, but it would take a lot more to take this thing down and everyone focused their fire on doing just that. Karish swung back his great sword in a chopping motion and came down hard in an overhead swing and cleaved deep into her shoulder finally stopping some midway through her chest. He kicked the beast off his sword as the Seahag splashed into the swamp whence she came.

[Check out the above screenshot and the killing blow of the Seahag. Phew!]

The battle was beyond tough. This was no ordinary fetch and retrieve of a simple fish head. Oh no, this was an ambush and we were the morsel of meat in the giant pincher attack of swamp monsters. And to think, we haven’t even found the gar yet. Ugh…but we felt a bit wiser from that fight, a bit more ‘experienced’ as it were, and decided what to do with our dead.

We were debating on keeping the man-at-arms with us for a while to see if there was anything we could do when the gar attacked. When this thing moved, the swamp would make waves accordingly; we almost felt the monster before encountering it. ‘Skeletons! Attack!’ shouted Kumari as the rest of us took our ranged weapons out and fired. The skeletons proved great so far and without them we would surely all have died in that last battle. They soaked up hits, dealt some damage, and proved most beneficial, so when they began dying so easily to the giant jaw of the gar, we winced out a little each time.

It killed only three of our skeleton warriors before we finally put enough arrows, bolts and spells into it that it too fell to our attacks. With the help of Karishs’ mighty sword, we cut the head off the beast and headed back to Nulb to turn in this quest. We felt overwhelmed, almost out of our league, and decided after dropping this stinking fish head off in that damnable town that we would head back to Hommlet to see what we could do for Raimol and also see if there were any adventures worthy of lesser experienced parties. Oh, we also went back and looted the other monsters we had slain and found a magic sword, some more elvish armor, and some potions and a ring in the belly of the Kingtoad. There was also a magical longbow and we wondered just how many unfortunate adventurers this giant toad ate before we liberated these items.

Karish and Zert, the two strongest warriors, carried the lifeless body of Raimol between them and thus the trip back was long and hard. We left Raimol at the town entrance deciding not to drag him through town and dropped the Gar’s head at Grud’s feet, somewhat pissed.

Grud Squinteye was elated and swore up and down he would tell everyone about us and a friend of his is a friend to us. We didn’t stick around to believe him and began the long and tough road back to Hommlet. We were downtrodden, beaten, and wondered how much it would be to raise Raimol. If it was affordable we would do it, but regardless, it would be good to know for the future what that price of life would be. We finally arrived without encounter and went straight to the church. We talked to the head priest over and over again but he never seemed inclined to help our dead friend. We didn’t have time to figure out why and carried his body to the town druid who actually was able to help.

It was going to cost 3,000 gold and we ran the risk of him coming back as a badger. It was all of our money, we would be broke again and it only took a moment more of thought to decide it was worth it. He spent too much time with us and saved us too many times to let him go, but most important, we could afford it. This did leave us in a quandary, for the next party member to perish would likely stay dead unless we found the means to come up with the funds. We gave the druid his money and he began the spell.

As the great spell finally climaxed, Raimol’s chest heaved and it was his own breath that escaped his lungs. He was no badger, otter, or gnome either! We cheered, although still feeling somewhat beaten, and went back to the inn to rest a few nights and regain our strength. Before we left we discovered that the price of such a reincarnation would almost be doubled if needed again. We understood the meaning and headed back to the Wench. During this time we also trained some and advanced our skills in various areas…

[Level-up! Yea… Here comes the dreaded HP roll.

Eldiritch 18hp to 25hp (very good – above avg)

Karish 35hp to 43hp (above average. Could have been better, but best not be greedy)

Stallen 19hp to 25HP (finally! Some health for the bard)

Kumari 17hp to 19hp (this absolutely sucked. This made the case to protect Kumari even greater as she must have rolled a 3 then with her -1 con modifier for a 2. Total suckage)

Xiamaru 12hp – he actually didn’t level because of the huge xp loss from dying. But, he summoned his familiar, and you can choose from a ton, and chose a toad (of all things, right!?) which added 3 hp’s. Please note that he also lost a hp from coming back to life.

After a few days of rest, or was it a week?, we gathered ourselves together, brushed off the dust, and headed out to seek some other adventure. Nulb would have to wait for now until we felt a little stronger in skill and spell. We spoke to the smith in the town as we were selling loot and he mentioned a possible lead…

After selling our goods, we decided to seek out the town elder and see what possible adventure he may have. He would be sleeping though now and best discuss it in the morning after we lift our spirits with some ale, singing, and rest. That night as we celebrated we would look across at Raimol and wonder why the priest of St. Cuthbert refused to raise him and the more we drank, the less we thought on it. Tomorrow would be a new day and we would find out what this town leader wanted and most importantly, we were all together, even as what was left of the skeletons stood at attention against the inn’s walls.

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[Next time… we visit Kenter Nevet, the town elder, and see what he has for us. Looking back I fear I rushed to raise Raimol as it left us broke and the more we raise the dead, the higher the cost. But, he was an NPC, a follower, and coming up through the ranks becoming a semi-decent ranger, which you’ll see more of next chapter so… Stay tuned for Chapter 8!]