Another disclaimer. This series of posts sees more drunken party exploration. And undead. Undead are gruesome. That’s all I’ve got to say on the subject.
After another evening spent drinking, the 10 minute moonlit walk to the observatory was filled with singing and suddenly frantically whispered shushing noises. The building itself was a 3 storey sagging building, the slit for the telescope hanging bare and empty overlooking a flat bluff. Lights flickered in the upper floors of the tower, but the huge ground floor lay dark and imposing.
Whilst Torvig muttered a spell of blessing over some small stones he had picked up on the walk up, Flynn looked up, filled with drunk confidence.
“I don’t want to go in through the front door”, he announced. “I’m going in through the roof. I’ll help you get the door open first, though.”
The double front door lay slightly raised from the ground; covered with mould, and the aging carving of a gibbering face. Before it was a short flight of stairs, under which was a small door leading to some kind of shed. Both doors were locked, and revealed no signs of magic to my inner eye. After a few minutes work, Flynn picked the lock of the toolshed under the stairs. We formed up, and I pulled the door open.
A tiny, bone-white streak hurtled out, hurtling at Niccoli’s throat. The little form, made of jagged bone shards and teeth at odd angles, sawed at his exposed flesh before leaping off him and savaged Flynn. Torvig tried twice to repel the undead with his holy symbol of Fharlanghn, to no effect. Morgan unlimbered his crossbow, drew aim at the thing (which he described as a “tomb mote”, and pulled the trigger which had laid low so many of our enemies in the last few days.
…he missed. Our jaws fell at this utterly unimaginable occurrence. The mote took advantage of our distraction, and bit out at Torvig a couple of times. Frustrated at the small wounds being slashed at the joints of his armour, Torvig smashed the tiny tomb mote with a couple of sweeping blows from his morningstar. Flynn, meanwhile, realised that the bite to his elbow was already angry and inflamed.
The toolshed the vile creature had come from was filled with useless junk. Morgan, prodding the wreckage of bones announced that tomb motes would be immune to clerical attempts to denounce them, as well as possessing a powerful effect rendering them completely safe from crossbows.
Flynn moved up the stairs and managed to fight his way past the locks on the front doors, before swinging them open. Inside, the large room was filled with wrecked furniture and smashed equipment. The far end of the room was fronted by a barricade of tables and overturned wreckage. To our horror, three skeletal figures (two adults and the abhorrence of an undead child) rose from the other side of the barricade, a blood-red glow lit the inside of their skulls and poured out of their eyes.
They raised crossbows towards us and fired, seriously injuring Niccoli in the hail of bolts.
Torvig raised his holy symbol for a third time, and drunkenly slurred a prayer to his god. The skeletons positively exploded, bones collapsing or hurtling off in all directions. We sighed with relief.
![:]](http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/devious.png "Devious :]")
