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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Richards" data-source="post: 8310946" data-attributes="member: 508">ADVENTURE 9: NO BONES ABOUT ITPC Roster:Alewyth Putterpye, dwarf priestess of Aerik 2             Thurloe Pulver, human fighter 2             Wakuren, half-orc cleric of Cal 1/paladin 1             Xandro Silverstrings, human bard 2             Zander Quilson, elf sorcerer 2Game Session Date: 12 June 2021 - - -Life as an adventurer was beginning to show it wasn't all daring exploits and violent combat - there were, on occasion, weeks-long stretches where nothing much seemed to happen.  This was especially true when you were a dreamwalker dealing with a dream plague that was spread across a continent and you traveled only at the speed of your mule-driven wagon.  It had been over a week since the group of dreamwalkers had dealt with the plant monsters - the needlefolk, yellow musk creeper, and the shambling monstrosities it had made of those who had first tried to slay it - in the abandoned silver mine outside of Moon Creek.  In the days since, it had been a steady trek along various northbound roads, the westernmost peaks of the Shieldwall Mountains always within view as they camped each night in a different inn or tavern, just to head out again the next morning.Part of the problem, as the Queen of Dreams explained during one of their nighttime training sessions, was that while the adventurers could access any dream they wanted while in the dreamlands, experience had shown they weren't going to be able to awake the dreamer from his slumber unless they were there at hand, using the dreamstones they'd gathered and had had shaped into focus items by the dwarven gemcutter Kerndell Lapidarius while back in Port Duralia.  Otherwise, the heroes' task would be greatly eased, for they could simply flit from dream to dream and deal with each in turn.  Stuck having to go to each dreamer on the Material Plane meant the task took that much longer.  All the Queen of Dreams could to was to track each dreamer back to his or her point of location on the Material Plane, and while she had no way of determining who exactly was having that particular dream she could at least steer her team to the location of the next-nearest dreamer.  Fortunately, the continent of Armaturia was more heavily populated along the edges, near the Shieldwall Mountains that ringed most of the land mass; much of the continent's interior was unpopulated.  That meant the team could make a clockwise circuit around the continent, rescuing those people trapped in their dreams in a somewhat orderly fashion.At the moment it was nearing midnight on the group's eighth day of travel since the silver mines and each was fast asleep in a separate room in an inn nestled just inside the border of the small town of Bastlethorpe.  But though their physical bodies were resting, their minds were fully active, currently housed in dream-bodies made of the same stuff forming all dreams, and they were receiving their nightly lesson from Mogo, the moogle who was their primary dreamwalking instructor."Okay, listen up, kupo!” said Mogo to the five heroes assembled together in the Dreamlands, each in a body looking identical to their real bodies back on the Material Plane.  "Tonight we're going to learn to do something one of you has already done once by accident, kupo!"  He took the group through a door and ended up in a long hallway filled with closed doors butted one right next to each other.  Indeed, Alewyth instantly recognized this as the area she was lost in when her moogle guide Calliope first found her and introduced her to the Queen of Dreams."Remember when the Queen flew us to the field of floating dream bubbles on her Butterfly Throne, kupo?" Mogo asked his students.  "Well, that's only one way to visualize the dreamfields and this is another way, kupo.  Behind each of these doors is an individual dream, kupo!"At Mogo's urging, each hero opened a nearby door and saw a different dreamscape beyond the doorway.  "Finding how to get to the hallways is the easy part, kupo!" warned Mogo.  "Tonight we're going to learn how to navigate through the hallways to find individual dreams, kupo!"And that's what the group did for the next hour or so: trudged endlessly up and down various hallways, learning how to find specific dreams based on a number of things: the general type of dream, or the origin of the dreamer (Thurloe was surprised to learn there were entire hallways of doors dedicated to dreams from people on entirely different planes of existence), the emotions behind the dream, or even some of the primary aspects of the dream.  The hallways were sometimes - but not always - marked; Alewyth furrowed her brow as they took a shortcut through the Hallway of Dreams About Penguins to get to the Hallway of Dreams Where You Forgot To Study For Your Exam.  The locations of the hallways compared to each other didn't seem to make a lot of sense but Mogo explained the hallways could be reordered however you liked with a strong enough will behind it.  He demonstrated by having the Hallway of Sexy Dreams fall away and be replaced by the Hallway of Dreams of Dancing Animals.  Xandro caught himself looking wistfully for where the old hallway might have had gotten off to, then started blushing fiercely.And then, just that quickly - he vanished."Hey, kupo!" Mogo complained.  "We're not done with the night's training, kupo!"Alewyth opened her mouth to offer a word of defense for the young bard but then vanished before getting even a single word out."Oh, I see what's happening, kupo!" Mogo sighed.  "Something's waking you up in the Mortal World, kupo!  Oh well, I guess that's all for--"Thurloe didn't get to hear the rest of the moogle's sentence, for he found himself back in his small room in the inn, being awakened by a frantic knocking on the door.  He threw off his bedsheets and unlocked the door, after ensuring his bastard sword was well within reach should he need it.  "What's the bother?" he grumbled at the panicked-looking man standing in the doorway before him."You're the adventurers, right – the ones with the clerics?" the man asked frantically.  "You gotta head on over to the graveyard – there's a sinister-looking fellow down there, breaking into the Scarsdale Mausoleum, and he's got some kind of bone-dog with him!  I dunno what all he's up to, but it can't be good – don't nobody goes into the Scarsdale Mausoleum in the dead of night without a member of the family present, and this guy's no family member I ever seen before!"Thurloe buckled on his armor as the man woke the rest of the team.  It turned out the man, Jurgas Gremblin, earned a little extra money on the side tending to the grounds of the graveyard.  He had heard there were adventurers in town and figured the clerics would want to know about someone trying to disturb the dead.  The graveyard was merely a few blocks away from the inn, so the group didn't bother with their mounts or wagon, merely gathered up their gear and let Jurgas lead them to the graveyard.  On the way there, he explained the Scarsdales were an old family that had been founders of the town; most of their dead were buried in their own mausoleum at the graveyard, and that there were no longer any Scarsdales living in Bastlethorpe; Jurgas thought there might be some distant cousins living in Baron's Haven who came and paid their respects when they were in the area, but that was about it.  Once the graveyard was within sight Thurloe thanked the groundskeeper for alerting them to the situation and warned him he'd best hang back, out of trouble.  Jurgas was only far too willing to agree.The moon was hidden behind a thick bank of clouds, leaving most of the graveyard in darkness.  Of course, this meant nothing to Wakuren or Alewyth, whose racial heritages allowed them to see perfectly fine even in the darkest of environments, but Zander pulled his everburning torch out of his pack and gave it to Xandro, knowing the human bard's vision wasn't anywhere near as capable of seeing in areas of poor lighting as the elf's own low-light vision.  Plus, the elven sorcerer wore a scout's headband; he could activate its powers and grant himself full darkvision for an hour if he wanted to."Anybody see anything?" Xandro asked as he tucked the everburning torch behind the strap holding his crossbow in place across his back; the flames were pressed flush against his shoulder but couldn't possibly burn him, being merely illusory in nature."I see the bone-dog," Alewyth replied, squinting ahead into the darkness.  "He's standing at the foot of the steps leading down into the large building at the back of the graveyard, what must be the Scarsdale Mausoleum.""Is he doing anything?' the bard pressed."Nope, just standing there.  Moving his head back and forth - keeping guard, would be my guess."The team moved forward as one, taking it slow and cautious in case there were any other potential foes about.  Once he could see the "bone-dog" - a skeletal wolf with the odd scrap of muscle or skin hanging off its otherwise stripped-clean carcass - he pulled the crossbow from his back (shifting the everburning torch to the strap holding his lute on his back in the process), and sent a bolt flying at the undead guardian.  It hit the skeletal wolf in the base of its cranium but bounced off, seemingly without causing the undead guardian any concern.  But the wolf had already seen the approach of the five, for the gaze of twin red lights in its otherwise empty eye sockets were already focused in their direction.Alewyth continued advancing along with the others, her warhammer gripped in both hands and ready to bring to bear as needed, but she let the prayers of a bless spell spill from her lips as she stepped forward.  "Aerik the Ever-Watchful, guide us and watch over us as we willingly enter ourselves into unknown dangers," she intoned.As if triggered by the priestess's spell, the skeletal wolf sprinted forward, jaws snapping at Alewyth.  But the dwarven cleric easily dodged the incoming attack, pivoting off to the side so the lupine teeth clamped onto nothing but air.Zander Quilson hung back from the others as combat commenced, taking a moment to cast a mage armor spell upon himself as he had no illusions about his own capabilities as a front-line combatant.  At his side, Thurloe Pulver dashed forward, his bastard sword swinging in a graceful arc as he ran, ending in a powerful stroke that chipped bone as it hit.  The wolf involuntarily slid back from the blow, even as Wakuren ran up from the beast's other side and tried sending his new shield slamming into the undead thing's side.  But the undead wolf skeleton ducked low beneath the half-orc's strike, the shield's bottom edge making a scraping noise across the wolf's spinal column in passing.Another twang from the side indicated Xandro's next crossbow attack, but this bolt got caught up between the wolf's exposed ribs to little effect.  Alewyth sent her warhammer crashing down towards the wolf's head, hoping to crush its skull, but it was a nimble little thing despite being dead and all.  It snapped at the priestess again but Alewyth showed the undead thing it wasn't the only one capable of dodging from incoming attacks.Another bolt came streaking in from behind the combatants, this last one a magic missile hurled by Zander Quilson, opting to remain far away from the snapping jaws of the undead wolf.  But he needn't have worried, for Thurloe made quick work of the thing with another swing from his new magic bastard sword, Spellslicer.  Alewyth and Wakuren glanced around in all directions, making sure there were no other undead abominations about, the dwarven priestess even making a circuit around the Scarsdale Mausoleum to ensure they were still alone; such seemed to be the case.  Wakuren cast a virtue spell upon Zander, as was becoming his habit when anticipating further combat.  Then, activating the power of his ring, the half-orc disappeared from view and stepped invisibly down the steps to the below-ground doors to the mausoleum.The twin doors were made of thick wood bound in heavy iron and Wakuren found them to be locked.  Zander stepped forward to investigate, wondering if there might not be a secret way into the building.  Alewyth made another circuit around the building, this time examining the marble walls of the structure itself, seeking a hidden way within.  When her excursions brought her back to the building's front, she shook her head.  "Looks like just the one way in or out," she told the others."There's a keyhole here," observed the still-invisible Wakuren.  "Anybody have any skills in picking locks?"  Everybody looked around to their neighbors, but lockpicking was a skill none of them possessed.  "Knock spell?" Wakuren asked Xandro and Zander, the only two who might be able to cast the arcane spell.  They shook their heads in negation.  "Chime of opening?" Wakuren added, having heard of such magical devices.  Again, nobody had anything of the sort."Well, this is ridiculous!" snorted the half-orc, pounding a gauntleted fist on the doors three times in rapid succession.  Then he bent his head forward, an ear to the thick wood.  He smiled an unseen smile as he heard the sound of metal on stone - possibly a crowbar dropped in surprise or something similar - and a muffled voice on the other side of the door asking something that sounded very much like "Um, you want me to get that?"  Wakuren warned the group there was more than one person inside, then called for Alewyth to smash down the doors with her warhammer, stepping to the side as he did so to give the dwarf room.Alewyth gave it her everything and the warhammer crashed into the door, sending it rattling in place but holding firm.  Still, she reasoned enough blows would eventually allow her to gain entry and she set herself to the task, realizing whoever was in there was now well aware of their attempts to break their way in and the longer it took for her to smash in the doors, the longer they'd have to make their preparations.  Indeed, Gnoxos the Ossophile took the opportunity to cast a wide variety of spells in the time it took for Alewyth to finally burst her way into the mausoleum.Inside, the heroes could see the mausoleum was a single, large chamber the size of the entire building above, with a 20-foot ceiling.  Double doors stood along the middle of both the east and west walls.  Each of the four walls in the chamber held memorial plaques with the names of the Scarsdale family members entombed behind that wall.  Directly ahead, a stone sarcophagus stood on a raised platform at the back of the room, behind it standing a 12-foot-tall statue of a rearing griffon.  The entire place was lit by torches in sconces along the walls.But the five heroes were not alone in the mausoleum.  Standing along the west wall was a man in black robes, Gnoxos, bending over a row of skeletons laid out on the floor beside their coffins, recently pried free of their burial niches.  A large, sealed urn stood on the ground beside the man.  Two other men looked up at the newcomers over the coffin they'd just now pulled from another niche in the eastern wall.  At their feet were the crowbars they'd used to pry open the sealed hole in the wall where the coffin had been entombed.Worried about possible invisible enemies in the mausoleum with them, Zander activated his magic goggles and allowed his vision to gain true seeing.  He gave the place a quick scan but the only invisible entity that showed up was Wakuren.Thurloe raced into the mausoleum, charging directly at the nearest figure: one of the workmen lugging the latest unearthed coffin to the floor.  His bastard sword cut the man down before he even fully registered the fighter's presence.  And Thurloe had no qualms against slaying the worker in cold blood, as in his mind anyone willingly desecrating a place of rest of those who had passed on from this mortal coil deserved a quick push off said mortal coil themselves.Invisible, Wakuren slowly stepped into the room, looking all about him intently.  His ability to detect evil came in handy, as not only the auras of the black-clad spellcaster, the sole remaining worker, and the six human skeletons even now rising up from beside the spellcaster reeked of evil - as fully expected - but strangely, the head of the griffon statue itself.  Squinting as he focused his darkvision, the half-orc cleric realized the evil emanations weren't coming from the carved griffon's head (one eye of which, he noted, was the center of three parallel grooves as if the claw-marks from a distant combat) but the skeletal bat perched upon it.  That in itself was telling, implying the spellcaster was more likely a wizard or a sorcerer than a cleric and the skeletal bat his familiar.  Wakuren informed the closest members of his group of his findings, then became fully visible as he channeled positive energy through his holy symbol of Cal.The effects of this latter action were instantaneous; as one, the animated skeletons turned and fled away from the outthrust amulet holding the icon of the All-Father.  They bunched along the western wall, getting as close to the far corner as they could.Alewyth's dwarven vision gave her a good look at the necromancer at the far side of the mausoleum and she didn't like at all what she saw, for the man's skin was an unhealthy pale.  "We might be up against a vampire!" she warned her companions, causing Gnoxos the Ossophile to smirk quietly to himself.  He knew perfectly his complexion was due to keeping nocturnal hours and not any undead status, but if these interlopers were going to ascribe vampiric powers to him, he for one was not going to disabuse them of their foolish notions.  After all, he'd much rather they try coming after him with cloves of garlic or hand mirrors than, say, that fighter's impressive-looking bastard sword that had already slain one of the men he'd hired on to do the heavy lifting in this midnight venture of his.Xandro got a good feel of the group's overall discomfort at the thought of coming up against a vampire this early in their adventuring careers and switched from his light crossbow to his trusty lute, singing loudly his song of brave inspiration.  He was pleased at the acoustics in the large, open chamber, backing himself into the open doorway as he sang, keeping away from the potential melee combatants.Gnoxos spoke some arcane syllables and made a summoning gesture with his hands.  Almost immediately, the sound of the flapping of numerous leathery wings came from behind the heroes.  Then, with a series of high-pitched shrieks, a swarm of bats erupted through the smashed-open doors of the mausoleum and flapped around Alewyth, Xandro, and Zander, needle-sharp fangs piercing exposed flesh as the creatures dashed in and flitted about all around them.  "Vampire!" Alewyth cursed, swatting at the bats and now suddenly sure of her initial declaration.  She mentally tried recalling the various ways vampires could be permanently slain; exposure to sunlight was one of them, she knew, but she realized that option wouldn't become available to them for another four or five hours or so.  Unseen by the priestess, the skeletal bat on the griffon statue took flight as well, but not to join its living brethren - rather, it landed upon the left shoulder of its master, Gnoxos.Alewyth ran forward out of the swarm of flitting bats, casting a protection from evil spell as she did so - it certainly couldn't hurt when facing a vampire!  Zander stumbled forward as well, temporarily escaping the bats long enough to cast a magic missile at Gnoxos; vampire or not, he knew the spell would affect him regardless.  The necromancer winced in pain as the arcane missile hit home.Thurloe ran across the open room, swinging his bastard sword at the last skeleton cowering in line; as he understood it, they were fair game so long as Wakuren, the cleric who had turned them, didn't attack the skeletons.  It practically exploded beneath his blow, the various bones making up its animated body falling away from each other to clatter along the floor.  Wakuren reactivated the power of his ring and faded from view, stepping forward so Gnoxos wouldn't know his exact location.  If Alewyth was correct and this was a vampire, they'd need every advantage they could get in this fight!It took extreme effort on his part, but Xandro resisted the urge to swat at the bats flitting all around him, dipping down below the majority of them and stepping to the side without breaking the flow of his magical song.  He looked over at Gnoxos as he did so, wanting to keep what he assumed was their primary enemy well within view.  The necromancer cast some sort of spell upon the skeletal bat on his shoulder, then stepped forward and stood beside the sealed urn on the floor before him.  Following his master's whispered orders the undead bat familiar, Vespertilio, flew directly at Thurloe, swooping down at his head and triggering the vampiric touch spell Gnoxos had imbued upon him mere moments earlier.  Life energy leeched out of the fighter, flowing through the undead bat's skeletal body and channeling directly into the black-clad necromancer.  Zander, however, broke ranks and dashed back up the stairs to the surface, fleeing the numerous bats and their wicked fangs.  He fished a healing potion from his pocket as he ran, unstoppering it once he got back out into the open air and he verified none of the bats had followed him back outside.  Then, swigging back the potion's contents, he sighed as the dozen or so wounds all over his exposed flesh healed up.The swarm of bats flapped around in the same general area for a bit before heading over to Alewyth, the physically closest target.  By now she had blood dripping down from a dozen tiny wounds, mostly on her face, neck, and hands.  Once again racing from her leathery-winged tormentors, the dwarven priestess cast a doom spell upon Gnoxos, certain that such a spell would be just as effective against a vampire as it would be had the necromancer still been counted among the living.Thurloe, angered at the life-draining spell triggered on him by the skeletal familiar, raced up to the necromancer (who was bent over the urn now, unscrewing its top for some reason) and attacked him with his bastard sword.  Gnoxos looked up in time and managed to avoid the worst of the blow, but still his left sleeve was nearly sliced off his robe and his left arm now trailed a line of blood.  Alewyth looked at the spellcaster's bleeding arm in puzzlement; was it possible he wasn't a vampire after all?Wakuren decided he was going to take the necromancer's familiar out of the picture and swatted at the thing as it flew overhead.  As his fingers brushed the bat's bones, he channeled power through the other ring he wore - a ring of mystic healing - and flooded the beast even with more positive energy than the cure light wounds spell he used as the basis of his attack.  But surprisingly, even this surge of positive energy wasn't enough to slay the familiar - both it and its master were much more powerful than the half-orc had anticipated!  Seeing the bat survive Wakuren's attack - for the cleric popped back into visibility as he channeled energy into his foe - Xandro stopped playing his lute, pulled the rapier from the hilt at his hip, and slashed at the skeletal bat.  It dodged the bard's blade, aided no doubt by its erratic aerial weaving immediately after the half-orc's attack.In the meantime, the other hired hand, seeing himself being temporarily ignored, took the opportunity to slink along the eastern wall and over to the open doorway, where he hoped to escape into the night.  It was one thing to break into the Scarsdale Mausoleum for a bag of coins but he wasn't willing to give his life for what was to have been a quick night's work and some easy money.  Unfortunately for him, right as he got to the doorway leading up to the graveyard above he was noticed by the bats summoned by Gnoxos's summon monster spell.  He screamed as the bats covered his body, nipping at him with their sharp fangs.  The worker collapsed to the floor and the bats dropped down upon him, feasting for all they were worth.Thurloe pulled his bastard sword up over his shoulder for another downward slice, but before he could complete the attack the necromancer pulled the lid off the urn and stepped back - and the fighter was momentarily shocked into temporary immobility at what crawled out of the container.  It was human in both form and coloration, but it slithered out of the top of the urn with the sinuosity of a serpent.  The thing was bald, with human facial features - two holes where the eyes would be, a gash of a mouth, a nose, two ears - but it was ridiculously thin, more like a human costume somehow brought to life.  As the boneless creature slithered all of the way out of the urn, it flopped onto the stone mausoleum floor with a wet plop, then pulled itself forward with rubbery arms ending in wayward fingers sticking out in random directions.  There was a slit down the creature's front, from neck to crotch; not only its bones were missing but all of its internal organs.  It pulled itself forward, a baleful moan emanating somewhere from the creature's hollow interior.While Thurloe stood aghast at the sight of the horrific creature before him, Vespertilio tried flying back to its master.  One skeletal wing entered Thurloe's field of vision and it snapped him out of his trance; with a crash of metal on bone, he brought his sword down upon Gnoxos's undead familiar, nearly shearing off an entire bony wing.  Wakuren finished it off with a bash of his shield, individual bones scattering across the floor as its corporeal body shattered.  Outside, Zander gathered up his courage and sprinted back down the stairs, straight through the flock of bats, and re-entered the mausoleum.Not having any idea what might affect the boneless undead thing, Alewyth tried the inherent ray of frost ability with which she'd been born but missed entirely.  The boneless splortched forward, making a swipe at Thurloe.  He stepped backwards - quite involuntarily - then steeled himself and swung at it, his blade slicing across the thing's chest and carving a horizontal gash along its front.  The thing had no blood to bleed, but now its front gaped open even further as it crawled across the floor.  Thurloe's face drained of color as he imagined the thing getting a hold of him and wrapping itself around him like an undead cloak, until he was wearing the boneless monstrosity.  The very thought made him cry out in anguish.Wakuren likewise wasn't sure of what to make of this unusual and unknown undead, but he figured positive energy was the way to strike it down, so strike it down he did: channeling another bit of enhanced positive energy through his ring of mystic energy, he cast a cure light wounds spell through that hand and touched the flopping skin before him.  Its undead flesh burned at his touch, falling to the floor and lying there motionlessly as flakes of its burning skin dissolved away, leaving little more than a puddle where it fell.Gnoxos screamed at the thing's death, all of his plans here having been dashed upon its destruction.  After all, Gnoxos had specifically brought the boneless - formerly a form of undead called a necropolitan - to this mausoleum with the specific intention of fitting it upon one of the animated skeletons of the entombed Scarsdales to grant it greater mobility.  Gnoxos longed to join the necropolitans in their undying forms and had hoped by gaining the boneless's favor he'd be well on his way to immortality.Now all of those hopes were dissolving on the floor before him.Xandro stabbed out with his rapier at the black-clad necromancer standing dazed before him.  He hit solid flesh, causing a rent in the necromancer's robes and another bleeding gash in his torso.  Gnoxos barely felt the pain in his mortal form; instead, he glared at Wakuren and promised, "You'll pay for what you've done this night, half-breed mongrel!"  Then the words of a dimension door spell spilled from his snarling lips and he was gone (but not before Xandro gave him another poke with the tip of his rapier for good measure).  The others looked around to see where he might have gone to, but saw nothing.  Zander looked around with his true seeing goggles and announced the wizard was not anywhere within the confines of this chamber.Outside in the graveyard, Gnoxos stormed off into the night, vowing revenge on the half-orc cleric who had not only slain his familiar but the boneless necropolitan as well.The bat swarm dissipated soon thereafter, each individual bat making its own way back up the entry stairs and out into the night.  They left behind the body of the second worker, his lifeless form bleeding from dozens of wounds.  That left nothing in the mausoleum chamber to fight but the five remaining cowering skeletons and Alewyth took care of them with a single blast of positive energy from her holy symbol of Aerik.  The skeletons exploded into bone dust.Wakuren and Alewyth took the time to cast healing spells upon those who needed them as Thurloe bent over one of the coffins and pulled out a ring.  "What have you got there?" Alewyth asked suspiciously, hoping she wasn't going to have to talk her fighter friend out of looting the coffins of those who had been put to rest."Signet ring," Thurloe answered, putting it on his finger.  The fact that it didn't automatically resize indicated it wasn't magical in nature.  It did have the Scarsdale crest upon it, though: the head of a griffon, upon which three parallel scratches could be seen across one eye."I hope you aren't planning on keeping that," the dwarf cautioned."Not forever," Thurloe replied.  "But this is where the Scarsdales are buried, right?  So if there are any traps laid out to guard against tomb raiders and the like, it stands to reason they might be magically warded not to activate by someone identifiable as a Scarsdale - like, say, someone wearing the family signet ring."  Even Alewyth had to admit the fighter's logic was impeccably sound, so she said not a word as the others rummaged through the rest of the exposed coffins, finding enough rings for each of the heroes to wear one.  Alewyth slipped a ring over her own finger, reminding everyone that these were just being borrowed and would be returned upon their exit.  "Works for me," Thurloe replied.With two sets of double doors to explore and the necromancer possibly behind either set, the group randomly selected the pair to the west.  Like the main doors to the mausoleum, they were locked.  "We're going to have to restore these doors, too," Alewyth sighed as she got a grip on her warhammer and prepared to bash her way through."I know the mending spell," Zander reassured her.Once Alewyth's hammer-blows had shattered the doors, the group saw the room on the other side - and it was not at all what they had expected.  The necromancer was not there, for one thing, but neither were there coffins or tombs on display in the small room just beyond.  Instead, there was merely an open toybox filled with various dolls and stuffed animals, with a dark-haired human girl sitting on the floor before it, a mangy-looking stuffed bear cub grasped in one hand.  The bear only had one button eye; the other was missing."Do you want to play with me?" Eva Scarsdale asked, tilting her head to one side and putting her hands behind her back - but not before Alewyth's dwarven eyesight picked up the dried bloodstains from fingertips to elbows.The torchlight didn't reach all the way into the room but Xandro had seen and heard enough to be wary; he held his rapier out towards Eva in case she came too close.  Thurloe did likewise with his bastard sword - no sense in talking any chances in this place of the living dead.But Eva didn't seem to notice the heroes' distrust.  Her eyes gleaming mischievously, she said, "I know lots of good games!" as she rose to her feet and advanced towards the group.  At the last second she darted forward in a burst of incredible speed, getting past Thurloe's defenses and calling out "Tag!" as she touched him on the leg with a bloodstained hand.Thurloe said nothing in response but it wasn't from lack of trying.  Of the group, only Zander saw the spooky mist spilling out of Thurloe's mouth and cascading down to Eva, who slurped it up between her dainty teeth.  Not sure what was happening but convinced it couldn't possibly be good, the elf sorcerer cast a magic missile at the little girl and the slaymate hissed in anger at the attack.  Wakuren used the final daily charge from his ring of mystic energy to channel an extra-strong cure light wounds spell on Eva, pushing her away from Thurloe while calling out, "She's evil!" to the others after having read her aura.  Alewyth ignored the fact that this particular undead thing took the form of a little human girl and swung her warhammer at Eva with all of her strength.  Eva's dainty little upturned nose shattered in her face as she staggered backwards from the power of the dwarf's blow.  "Let's leave her alone and get out of here!" called out Thurloe's voice - but little Eva wasn't fooling anyone, for the fighter's stolen voice had come from her own mouth.  Xandro stepped forward and finished off the slaymate, the undead body of an eight-year-old girl whose family used her toys to lure her here to the mausoleum so she'd stop haunting them.  Upon her destruction, Thurloe's stolen voice went floating from Eva's mouth and back into his own."Ugh," he said, clearing his throat.  "Let's get out of here, for real!""Not all the way out of the mausoleum, surely?" asked Zander.  "That necromancer guy could still be behind the other set of doors."  He stepped inside Eva's playroom and did a quick circuit of the room, until he was convinced there were no secret passageways out of the chamber.Alewyth was prepared to bash through the pair of doors to the east but upon checking them Thurloe found they were unlocked.  Opening them, he saw a mirror image of Eva's room, only this room had a set of leather-bound books on a long table across the back wall and niches in the walls to the north and south.  These niches all held smaller urns, much too small to house a boneless undead but the perfect size to hold the ashes of someone who had been cremated.  Wakuren examined the name plates beneath each urn and suggested these were likely the remains of the servants who had worked for the Scarsdale family over the years.Thurloe looked up from the book he'd been examining - it was a history of the Scarsdale family - and grunted.  "Nice.  The Scarsdales get buried in fancy coffins and the servants get burned to ashes.  That's typical."Alewyth was examining another of the tomes at the fighter's side when she suddenly felt a bite upon her leg.  She and Wakuren gave identical cries of pain as the two tomb motes bit them on the ankles.  Wakuren instinctively set the bottom edge of his shield crashing down upon the head of the creature biting him, squashing it almost flat.  But as the half-orc stepped back, the tomb mote crawled up from its hiding place under the table and the cleric could see its vaguely humanoid body was made up of dust, ashes, and dirt - and a squashed-in head made little difference to a creature not truly alive.Xandro's blade went stabbing into the tomb mote's chest with little effect, while Zander Quilson sent a magic missile spell flying into the one that had bitten Alewyth.  Thurloe proved the creatures could be killed with a single swipe of his bastard sword, causing the body of the mote fighting Wakuren to explode into its component parts.  Alewyth swung her warhammer down upon the remaining mote but it dodged around the weapon and darted forward again to bite the dwarf a second time.  Out of magic missile spells and not wanting to resort to acid splashes, Zander threw his masterwork dagger at the remaining mote, hitting it where one of its eyes would be if it had any.  But that was enough to cause the tomb mote to discorporate, falling into a heap of detritus.  Zander retrieved his dagger, sheathed it, and gave this small room the once-over as well, for it too looked like it had no other exits.But unlike Eva's playroom, this one did have another way out: a section of urns to the south could be pulled forward and then moved aside to reveal a narrow passageway leading down several steps to a lower elevation.Wanting more than an everburning torch to light their way, Thurloe activated a sunrod and tossed it down the narrow steps, illuminating the room below.  He started down the steps and was immediately surprised at the blast of cold emanating from below; he warned the others and took the time to put on the fur-lined cloak from his cold weather gear before continuing.  Even thus protected, Thurloe could tell the temperature decreased with each step downward."Let me see," Alewyth commanded, calling the human back up the steps so she could check it out for herself.  Sure enough, she immediately saw and recognized the culprit: "It's brown mold," she told the others.  Having grown up in a subterranean city of dwarves, the priestess was well acquainted with brown mold, a fungus which often grew in large patches in hidden corners of the Underdark.  There was a large patch of the stuff on the floor, immediately before three closed chests ringed with frost from the mold's heat-draining abilities.  On the wall above the chests hung a longsword, a battleaxe, an exquisite-looking warhammer, and a heavy steel shield bearing the Scarsdale family crest."How do we get rid of it?" Xandro asked."Cold'll kill it," Alewyth replied, "but I don't think we have anything that'll freeze it, do we?"  She'd already cast her daily ray of frost and she doubted a spell of that low power would have been strong enough to slay the mold.  The rest of the group acknowledged their lack of cold-based attacks.  "Then we'll just have to scrape it away," she decided."I can do that," Xandro offered, using his own dagger and a mage hand spell to scrape the offending mold away to the far corner of the treasury.  Once it was safe to do so, Alewyth stepped forward and pulled the warhammer from its support hooks on the wall, marveling at its fine craftsmanship.  It felt perfectly balanced.  She peered at the writing in the middle of the hammer's weapon-head - in Dwarven script, no less! - and read "Sjondra, the Sunderer."  Alewyth stepped to the side to marvel at the weapon, allowing the others into the room to check out the rest of the treasury's contents.Xandro used his mage hand spell to open each of the three chests, triggering a fire trap spell on the first and a poison needle on the second.  Each of these chests held golden coins, likely numbering into the thousands.  When the bard opened the third chest in the same manner, though, a moaning erupted into the room and a score or more of pasty-white, wriggling worms crawled out of the chest.  Disturbingly, each maggot-thing had a human face.Thurloe wasted no time bringing his bastard sword to bear upon these writhing larvae.  But his blade had no sooner touched one of them than the whole bunch disappeared from view with an audible pop.  "I'll be darned," the fighter commented to himself.  "The whole thing was just an illusion."  His new bastard sword, he knew, had the ability to slice through illusions upon a single touch."What's inside?" Zander wanted to know."More coins," Xandro replied, "and this."  He pulled out a jade carving of an animal - a dog, it looked like, with pointed ears and a curving tail."It's a cooshee!" the elf exclaimed.  "We used to have a pet cooshee when I was a kid!""So what do you say?" Thurloe asked Alewyth.  "Are we keeping this stuff?  We did kind of earn it."  He hoped he'd be able to convince the stubborn priestess that when something good came your way, it was foolish to turn your back on it.But he needn't have bothered.  "We were meant to have this," Alewyth replied.  "A cooshee statue for an elf who had a cooshee, and a warhammer of dwarven build for a dwarven priestess whose martial training was focused upon the warhammer?  Aerik must have set things in motion for us to find these items.""Including the money?" Thurloe pressed.Alewyth gave it a moment's thought.  "It was all found together - I suppose it only makes sense that we were meant to take it all."  Thurloe's mouth gaped open at the dwarf's uncharacteristic reasonableness, but then he broke out into a broad grin.  "Now you're thinking straight!" he approved. - - -I wrote this adventure after having realized I had two clerics in the party and they had yet to meet up with much in the way of undead, with the exception of a few skeletons and zombies in the sewers under Port Duralia.  I decided I might as well throw in a few oddball undead to keep things interesting - and did I ever succeed on that front!  Harry was unnerved by Eva the slaymate (I guess he's encountered plenty of creepy little girls in the anime shows he and Logan watch at night) and the whole group was freaked out by the boneless.  They wanted that thing dead quick, before it could get it into its floppy head to make one of them wear it like a second skin.  (As a mini, I simply cut a human-shaped blob out of paper and drew on a pair of eye-holes and a mouth, then bent it into shape so it was kind of supported by its arms.  They hated it!)And, quite unintentionally, I got a big plot hook out of how this adventure worked out, for Gnoxos the Ossophile ("Bone-Lover," heh) now has a two-fold reason to hate Wakuren.  I'm not sure when or how, yet, but I'm almost positive he'll need to make another appearance at some point in this campaign.Sjondra and the jade cooshee (the latter a figurine of wondrous power) were intended as Alewyth and Zander's signature items, and had Vicki not come to the conclusion she did I was going to have a friendly apparition of a Scarsdale elder appear before them and hand over the contents of the treasury in any case.  Harry's only slightly miffed that he's now got the only PC without a signature item, but I told him there's a very good chance that his own item might be appearing as early as in the next adventure (as indeed it will be). - - -T-shirt worn: My "WWDD?" T-shirt with Daryl Dixon from "The Walking Dead" pointing his crossbow and ready to shoot - it's one of my go-to shirts for adventures which feature fighting the undead, since that's what Daryl does (living as he does in a zombie apocalypse).</blockquote>

Verification