Adventure #5: Shadowfell Keep PART THREE
This causes a few moments of consternation among the players. Do they really want to let out whatever is inside? Magical and mundane probing doesn’t reveal much…
…and then they hear the voice.
A little girl. “I’M COLD,” she says. “IT’S DARK. PLEASE LET ME OUT…”
That is definitely creepy, and Helga rolls a 22 Insight check to confirm that it’s creepy. The little girl doesn’t answer questions and seems to repeat herself a lot. The group wavers back and forth, open or leave it, open or leave it, and at one point they even have it stacked in the corner under a barrel of lamp oil. But curiosity gets the best of them and they vote to open it.
Weapons and magic readied, they begin to carefully unlock it. Tension is high as Brandis Padraig turns the key with sweaty hands…
…and the lid flies open!
Cold gray mist froths out, spilling around them, and they all swipe blades or discharge flashes of magic. The mist is fast though and it harmlessly ripples around them like water in a stream and streaks for the door, vanishing under the gap. It’s probably hurt, and Erevan and Kerric the paladin of Kelemvor suspect that it is some kind of vampire or wraith, and silver lining inside the trunk reinforces their suspicions.
It must be trying to reach its coffin!
Religious knowledge indicates that a true vampire could regenerate if it finds the dirt of its grave, so they unanimously elect to hunt this thing down before it escapes. In fact, Kerric insists that this must be done! He LIVES for stamping out the foul progeny of Orcus.
Helga slams a shoulder into the heavy wooden door under which the mist fled. The door is stuck, and she rams into it again. It bursts open on swollen hinges, revealing a steep stairwell descending into inky darkness. The smell of must and dust and a more unpleasant stink rises to their nostrils.
But no sign of the fleeing vamp-mist-girl-thing.
A junction at the bottom bears east, west and north, and Erevan’s light spell adequately illuminates their options…
…and the west option just barely reveals a dark figure standing motionless in the corner of another room.
Kerric tosses a sunrod into the room, shedding a nova of light on the thing. It is a hideously rotten abomination that whirls around and begins shuffling toward him, followed at once by several more that shamble from the corners. In the room beyond these zombies, the sunrod just barely allows them a glimpse of two upright black iron sarcophagi.
Helga the fighter and Brandis the warlord plug the hole and confront the zombies head on. The minions drop fast, but a few of the dead things are horrible brutes, and their claws rip through flesh and armor with ease. Regardless, the PCs have an excellent position and the zombies cannot break their defensive wall. They’re hacked down one at a time, rotting flesh and syrupy guts spewing across the floor in a wide berth. The paladin steps in to help, but is painfully mauled by one of the things, and he’s forced to reconsider.
[GM Note: This was hilarious; the paladin jumped in to do what he does best, and the zombie bloodies him in one hit. The paladin started screaming, “Undead are horrible! I didn’t know!”] 
Eventually they prevail, and wiping the gore and rot from their blades, the group presses on toward the sarcophagi room, assuming that this is where the vampiric mist fled to heal itself. The ceiling is high and arched, and there are actually TEN black iron tombs standing upright all the way down to the end, where large doors are set into the wall, with a dim light shining down from the ceiling.
They approach the first coffin, gathering around it and readying their weapons to impale whatever is inside. Brandis grabs the cold handle and flings it open…and a bleached white skeleton reaches out a fleshless hand! Swords and halberds thrust into the thing’s ribcage, and within seconds it has been torn down to a brittle pile of dry bones.
That was easy enough, but it was no vampire. They move to the next coffin, using the same tactic, and there is another skeleton warrior inside, but this one is wearing a suit of tattered chainmail…and their hail of blows doesn’t immediately kill it. In fact, he pulls forth a notched longsword and deftly blocks an attack, its lipless jaws clacking.
Here is where things get scary.
Down the long hallway, from every closed sarcophagi, the group hears bony fingers scratching on metal, and then with a resounding series of loud BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOMS! The lids simultaneously fly open, disgorging more foes into the hall, all of them armed with bows and swords. But Helga loves a good fight, and Kerric the Paladin wants more notches on his arm, so this is not an unwelcome surprise (That comes next round).
The warlock finds herself quickly surrounded, but manages to teleport away and run down the hall toward the entrance. Helga engages her foes with a furious charge, bellowing a war cry, and cleaves two of them in half, a cloud of bones splintering around her. She crushes a skull under the boot of her heel and spits on it.
Brandis’s polearm makes short work of another skeletal foe as well and they’re feeling pretty good about the situation…
…until they hear bony claws scratching the inside of the upright iron coffins AGAIN, whose lids have mysteriously closed, and the ten sarcophagi clang open the next round and vomit ten MORE skeletons into the brawl. Within seconds they’re outnumbered and in danger of being surrounded.
“Fall back!” the warlord bellows, and everyone tries making their way to the junction corridor…
…and that’s when they see ten zombies shambling toward them from the darkness. They’re being attacked from both sides now, and the enemies in the sarcophagi room have no end in sight. The implications of this are horrifying; they’ll be torn to shreds down here and no one in Winterhaven will ever see them again.
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