Arans Tavern Tale Part Three
“To Rangrim!” Aran lifted a flagon and drained it; he then set it on the table and reached for the next one.
The people of Winterhaven gathered around him, and supplied the drinks in exchange for the tale he brought them, recent events had brought home that terrifying events were taking place and that if the heroes failed then their town might be destroyed.
“That keep isn’t abandoned any more I can tell you, the rumours we heard are true, there are foul deeds taking place in the ruins.” Aran paused to check he had the audience’s attention before continuing.
“We arrived without problem and found the ruins of the keep, they did not appear to be lived in but I spotted some stairs going down, there were torches lit and before long we found the guards, a bunch of goblins keeping watch for intruders. We tried to bluff our way in but it didn’t work so we had to kill them, they had a nasty pit filled with rats but only one person fell in. From one of the goblins we captured we learnt a bit more about the underground complex and quickly headed on.”
“Is that the goblin that is following the warlock around? He seems quite tame for one of their kind” asked Delphina. (Recent events had proved the woods outside too dangerous for gathering flowers so she was resting in town)
Aran shook his head and sipped his ale “Nope, that’s Splug we rescued him from a cell in the dungeon there, they had been torturing him, he likes gambling I think but I cant understand him much, most of the time he is whining to Fau… Now as I was saying we killed the guards and then proceeded too clear up the upper levels, we didn’t want to leave packs of goblins behind us, you can bet they would set up a sneaky trap behind us. We hunted down the fat boss Balgron and his minions and that evil torturer was a piece of work, I got this armour off him, nice stuff and magic too.”
The ranger grinned and buffed his knuckles on the armour he was proudly wearing and waited a moment so people could admire it before starting on the next flagon.
“Now Splug was useful, he told us a lot of stuff about the area and warned us about what we might face so we were not surprised when we entered the depths of the keep and found some nasty undead, zombies attacked us but they are stupid and we chopped them down. More worrying were some magic symbols that I spotted on some of the corridors near the stairs we had come down, we made a little bridge over one of them so we wouldn’t touch it but decided to go the one route that had not been trapped. It led to a corridor that was lined with huge coffins, I sneaked forward with out a sound but then suddenly…. They all opened and an army of skeletons climbed out, worse then that lids then started closing again and we could hear scratching from inside. Surrounded by the bones wielding sword and shield we fought back to back, chopping them down and returning them to death, but even as we did that the lids of the coffins opened and more skeletons poured out, but we were able to destroy them faster then they could climb out ad soon the last fell and it was quiet.”
The tale of endless waves of undead caused the blood of the townsfolk to chill, they had seen the glow from the Winterhaven Cemetery, where the dead had also arisen and were thankful that the heroes had overcome that threat.
Aran glanced over to where Valthrun the Prescient was sitting and smiled. “Your not going to believe the next bit, beyond the corridor was a shrine to the dragon father and also the coffin of Sir Creegan the former lord of the keep that went mad. Now Creegan regrets his actions and wanted to make sure we were on the side of good before helping us. Its true, he even gave Elwanen his sword and shield to help in the fight. Now we had been mapping and fighting all over the keep and were in need of a rest so in the safety of the shrine we slept, everyone seemed to have bad dreams that night except me, but then im the only one with a lucky fish protecting me.”
For the second time in a week the halfling showed the locals his well preserved fish, if they had doubts as to its powers or the rangers mental wellbeing they kept quiet, after all some people have a lucky rabbits foot and from the stories he told Aran indeed had Avantra’s blessing.
“So after our little nap we moved on and climbed over the magic symbol without setting it off, we came to a room with several exits and I heard groaning, from all around us and then we could make out shambling figures moving towards us from all directions under the direction of a dark robed figure.”
Thair Coalstriker stroked his beard and nodded sagely, “The old zombie ambush… ive heard it to be the end of many an unprepared party”
“Yep” Aran agreed “But those groups didn’t have me with them, if I hadn’t been there then the rest might have fallen, it was a close fight and we had to split our resources, there was no way we could retreat back down the corridor without setting off the symbol and it didn’t have any affect on the zombies as they just walked through it. Cass and me blocked one corridor, but they horde of undead tried to swarm past us, Cass’ axe is good on the backswing so they didn’t manage it. There were two large zombies that blocked the route forward and several smaller ones but the bit that was nasty was that behind all them were two dark figures that ripped lumps of their flesh off and threw it at us. Cass got hit and the icky stuff splattered and sucked the strength out of her, leaving her weakened. This made it hard for her to take down the undead until I damaged and distracted one enough for her to take it down, this gave me the break I needed, she was in trouble and I was the only one there to help her… I charged down the corridor, weaving and darting past all the others until I reached the two gore lobbing gribblies and I opened up a can of pint sized vengeance on one of them. Talon and Fang did their work and I ripped it to shreds before it had a chance to retreat. Its companion then attacked me be I was ready and deflected its attack, but it was about then that Elwanen stepped onto one of the symbols, there was a sudden loud alarm and waves of fear swept the area, im not scared of a stupid symbol but it shook Cass and she ran away from it. Luckily that meant she headed towards me and between the two of us we made short work of the other gore lobber.”
Taking a moment to wet his throat he paused as he remembered the following events and sniffed sadly.
“We regrouped and patched ourselves up and headed off again, the person leading the zombies had been a priest of the god of undead… im not going to mention his name but you can guess who I mean. The priest had fled the fight and we followed, finally finding more stairs leading down to another room but this was full of heavily armed hobgoblins. It was bad, just as we thought we were getting an advantage another bunch of bad guys arrived, they worked together and it was hard to get past their shields, I moved around taking them down where I could but there were so many and they had a spider working for them, the size of a horse it was. We all fought as hard as we could be we didn’t realise until too late that Rangrim had fallen, we found him amounst many corpses, his last words were for Fangorn to look after the hammer he had been given and then he passed on to Moradin’s halls.
There was hardly a moment to reflect on what had happened before Ryam arrived to tell us of the troubles here. We quickly decided that we had to return here and stop what was happening so we brought Rangrim's body with us and returned here as quickly as we could. As you know the glow could be seen from the town walls, we headed there and I scouted, there was a magic circle that was causing the glow but it was beyond my ability to disrupt. I also spotted those responsible for this hideous act; Agrid the gnome that we thought was prisoner here and Ninaran who gives a bad name to elves and rangers everywhere. We had thought there might be a spy here but finding it to be true is still a shock, I wasn’t going to take this, she needed to be taught a lesson. Skeletons were rising from the ground and attacking my friends, and Ninaran was shooting her bow as well, I don’t know what Agrid planned to do but Sabbat Fau took it upon himself to punish the gnome.
Fangorn charged Ninaran forcing her back into the magic circle, she responded but summoning more skeletons to rise from the ground and fighting back, she didn’t last long as I shot her with an arrow and then sliced her up with Talon and Fang. As she died so did the magic, the circle faded and the skeletons collapsed into piles of bones…”
Aran finished his drink and nodded to the crowd. “That’s were I have to leave it im afraid, there is still unfinished business at the keep and we are heading back at first light, so either you will see us soon or something very bad has happened, but not to worry, no undead god will get the better of me or my fish.”
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OOC:
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For those curious about what actually happened in the zombie ambush, basically the group fought as individuals rather then as a team and it could have got very messy, three characters got knocked out and could easily have died. Saying that... Aran's cunning plan worked well, once there was a gap he activated his armour (to give 10 damage resistance until his next turn) and charged through the horde to attack the corruption corpses. Using his big powers and an action point took down one of them. His armour absorbed the retaliation attacks allowing Cass to recover and help clear up.
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