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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Radiating Gnome" data-source="post: 197550" data-attributes="member: 150">Spire 3: Back to BusinessThe group listened to the story that Crys told, while the big cat rolled around on the floor, begging to have it's belly rubbed. Pah and the others were not entirely sure they should trust these two. "And all that," Pah said, "Puts you on the side of the good guys . . . how?"But Uri made a good point. "Um, I'm not so sure we're the good guys." While the group gave that a little thought, trying to figure out what their next move was, the Vampires, this time with reinforcements, reappeared and attacked again.This time the group managed to be a bit more successful. Irk managed, through a Herculean force of will to resist the charms of the Vampire Vixen that had dominated him earlier, and the Heroes of Spittlemarch fought side by side with the Crys and Ulrich to defeat them, driving them back to a room where their coffins were kept. Once there, they fashioned stakes and drove them through the Vampires, killing them once and for all. The battle seemed to have settled any question about whether Crys and Ulrich would become members of the party. Ulrich took the opportunity to transform into his Half-elven natural form and meet the party in person, before taking on the form of a great Grizzly, a form which proved to be very adept at opening doors.In one of the rooms just off the Vampire Spawn sleeping chamber, the party discovered the Vampire's pantry - a room filled with the bodies of prisoners who had been bled to death slowly. While poking around, Irk discovered one body that was not quite dead - a woman, He roller her over. She was pale and looked drained, with several bite marks on her neck. She looked up at Irk with droopy, lazy eyes. "Aren't you a little short for a Vampire?"They patched her up a little, and had a chat. She was able to tell them a lot of what was going on, and it didn't exactly make them happy. Apparently there was a Vampire in the spire, named Gulthias, who was obsessed with an ancient Dragon Cult - perhaps he had been a worshiper of it in his previous life - and he was here in the spire working to try to revive the Ancient Dragon Ashardalon. He had apparently harnessed some massive source of necromantic power, and was using that to create undead minions to support him and defend him - the spawn the players had just destroyed were a part of that. That, combined with the goals of Anathe, could only mean bad things for the world of the living should Anathe and Gulthias meet. Feeling that they must press on, the party helped Yesha, the victim, up through the hole in the ceiling so she could try to make her way down the side of the tower and escape. Then they pressed on. They encounter many shadows - most of which they handled easily, but a few hits here and there were taking their toll on the party, sapping their strength. Eli had to loosen the string on his bow, because he could no longer pull it at full strength, And Pah was dragging along, pretending that she wasn't feeling as weak as she was. They found a staircase that lead down, and took it.On the second level down they picked up the trail of Anathe's group, and followed it through a door into a room full of sarcofogi standing on end. Near the foot of one the corpse of one of Ulrich and Crys's former compatriots lay dead. When they went over to investigate, specters sprang out of the shadows, and the casket at the end of the hall opened, and out stepped a terrifying sight. A mummy-monk, waving a Kama around in a complex Kata of death. Things got off to a quick start. The party managed to dispatch the Specters, taking a bit more damage from them but surviving. The Mummy was locked in fierce one-on-one combat with the Bear-Ulric, who was holding his own but would need help soon. Once the place was clear of specters the party gathered around the mummymonk, but they found that he moved too quickly, it was too hard to hit him. It looked as if everything was lost, and then the Mummy slipped and dropped his Kama, which went skittering across the floor. This left him no less dangerous, but it did give the party hope. Bear-Ulric decided to change the combat situation a bit and wrapped the Mummy up in a huge bear hug, hoping to hold him still so the others in the party could pound on him a bit. But the mummymonk was not going to put up with that. Sensing that things could go quickly bad in this situation, he wrestled around, pressing on hand into the bear's shoulder and another to the top of his Jackal-shaped helmet, speaking a word through gritted teeth, visible through dried, rotted lips.And then he started to disappear. Ulrich felt himself being pulled along with the Mummy through the gate, but he threw himself back and managed to resist. And in a moment it was over, and the Mummy was gone. The party, sensing that things were more urgent now that ever, slapped a few healing spells on each other and headed for the door, hoping to catch up to the Mummy before things got really ugly. And that's where we stopped for the night.-rg</blockquote>

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