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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Iron Chef BBQ" data-source="post: 1076197" data-attributes="member: 1844">Searching for the Abbot (run of 07-15-03)Borin rushes in and lops off the head of the nearest ghoul.  Bits of toe spew out of its mouth at the head hits the back wall.  He slashes at the next one which looks up in total surprise.  Marja pushes through the crowd at the door and sends a single magic missile into the wounded ghoul which falls never getting the chance to completely grasp what is happening.  Her remaining two missiles sear into the chest of one of the two remaining creatures.  Kel barrels into the room sword swinging and strikes at the other which lays down a piece of calf meat like he’s perturbed by this disruption of his evening meal.  He claws at Kel and manages to sink his teeth into the little space where Kel’s wrist pokes out of his gauntlet.  Kel feels his jaw seize up, but the adrenalin in his veins overrides the weak poison.  He swings his sword in a complete circle over his head and through the creature’s chest.  Fang bounds onto the one Marja wounded and in a swift bite, tears it apart.Quickly and as gently as possible, the healers pull the poor priest from the wall and begin the healing process.  As soon as he can speak he tells a ghastly tale.  He has been hanging in that room for three months, being eaten by ghouls and rehealed byArdis Cadfeil.  It is clear the poor man isn’t ready to relate more of his experiences so Deke takes him upstairs to safety with several bottles of healing potions to help bring the man along.  Kenyan recognizes the name Ardis Cadfeil.  He was the abbot here.  He was married and had a two-year-old son, probably the Althea of the portrait and the poor little vampire.As Deke and the monk struggle up the stairs, Borin is moving door by door, listening briefly at each one, and then kicking it in.  The first room is empty.  Lucre joins the process.  He hears the sound of sticks knocking together.  Opening the door he finds a large room with padded walls covered with weapons displays, a training room.  In the middle of the floor lies a body being whacked by two ghouls with quarterstaffs.  Borin rushes in and strikes.  As Lucre dashes in he tosses Marja his crossbow which goes off in her hands before she can aim it.  His strike is not impeded, and he attacks, but does not kill the nearest creature which turns and lunges at him, but Lucre manages to shake off the poison and kill the beast.  Kenyan pokes his head into the room from the relative safety of the hallway.  With a flick of his wrist his wand sends three magic missiles into the ghoul nearest Borin which dies.  Lucre breaks the quarterstaffs and stabs all the bodies for good measure.As they move carefully down the hallway, they find destruction and often rotting bodies in abandoned rooms, but nothing either living or undead.  At the end of the hallway, the corridor turns to the right, and they find another hallway of equal length with four more doors.  The next room is a library, and every book has been torn apart.  Marja is moved by this senseless destruction.  “They don’t read.  Why don’t they leave the books alone?”  Borin replies, “They believe RIF – Rending is fundamental.”The next room is remarkably intact.  There is a large wall hanging of a great white horse, but the horse has been desecrated.  Kel pulls the tapestry down.  Lucre breaks into a sideboard and finds an iron box.  Something inside it rattles.  He sets it aside for Deke.  The next room is long and narrow with a big table in the middle.  It is the ruined kitchen.  The last room on the hall was the scriptorium.  Desks with continual light spheres are in a line.  Four ghouls sit at the desks writing on long pieces of flesh that they are unwrapping from their arms.  A larger ghoul walks between them with a switch in his hand.  Borin swings his axe at the master, but feels it being magically pushed away.  Kel turns undead, and the four writers fall.  The master turns and growls.  He points at Borin and whispers, “Die!”  Borin laughs, his defiance causing the spell to fissile.  Kalina approaches with the green living glow of healing on her hands.  The ghoul tries to attack as she approaches, but is distracted as he tries to avoid her touch.  Borin swings again, and this time he cuts a slice out of the creature’s back.  Kel can see its spine poking out of the wound.  He steps in and breaks the spine in two, and the creature falls.  Kel cuts off its head.The group wanders down the remaining hallway, but find nothing more until they reach the wall of hornets.  They backtrack to return to the stairs while Kel detects magic.  They find one intact magic scroll and two vials.  They take these and the strong box two the stairs.The wall of hornets is engulfing 5 doors on the last hallway.  Kenyan throws his voice down the hall to sound like it is at each door, saying, “I say, all you ghouls and ghoulish things come out and get what’s coming to you.  I have a might firebrand of retribution and will smite your unholy souls.”  The trick works.  Two doors open and five figures shamble out into the hornets.  They’re all in a line, and Marja pulls out a lightening bolt scroll and yells for everyone to wait.  Borin jumps in and kills the first one in line.  Marja isn’t wasting a scroll on 4 ghouls and a fellow party member.  She steps back and pouts.The ghouls advance, and Lucre shoots a crossbow bolt through the first one’s neck.  They see hornets fly through the hole.  Kel waits until it steps out of the hornets and kills  it.  They quickly finish off the rest.As the hornets disappear, they search the last rooms.  Fang can smell the abbot and paws at a desk.  Kalina finds a leather-bound journal.  The front of the journal has ordinary entries about temple visitors, crops and horses.  Four months ago the entries start to change.  The abbot’s wife and son have died of a sudden illness.  The temple healer was unable to help.  The abbot is distraught.  Each day his writing becomes more frantic as he becomes consumed with grief, guilt and anger.  Finally, he curses and blasphemes Corean writing, “I will do it tonight.  I will give my soul to whomever will take it!”  Three days later the precise handwriting has returned.  He describes the systematic destruction of the temple and how he turned some of the order into ghouls when it became impossible to hide his “darkness.”  His anger and hatred began to scorch the land.  He dug up the body of his son and fed him his blood.  Of his wife he writes, “She would not come to me.”Deke comes downstairs cautiously since he has not heard any noise in some time.  He left Brother Niall resting and has explored the stables.  He absolutely forbids Kalina or Kel from entering saying only that the horses are all dead.  Brother Niall has told him more.  He was the cleric who failed to heal Cadfeil’s wife and son, and was being kept alive and tortured as punishment.  Deke searches the basement and is appalled at all the stuff the others overlooked.  There’s tons of valuable stuff down here: potion components, parchment and a few undamaged books like “Mind Magiks: Fact and Fiction,” the Temple of Corean report on Secret Societies and “Monster Manual with Prophecies of Akbar.” He easily springs the lockbox and finds a ring with the Corean holy symbol.  Kel puts it on.The party carefully walks around the main temple and the grounds.  Fang can not smell the abbot anywhere.  A few of the others go into the stables and see the remains of horses that look like they were tortured horribly before their deaths.  Outside, Kel is sure that he sees a large white horse trot out the stable door.They continue their search in the graveyard.  They don’t have too much daylight left.  Reexamining the graves of Althea and her son, they notice that the earth is very dry and cracked.  They begin to dig.  When they reach the coffins, Borin smashes in the lid of Althea’s with his axe.  Kel smashes the baby’s and finds a tiny body.  Lucre jumps in and steaks it.  Lucre turns to Althea’s coffin.  He sees a face and strikes, but hits the back of an empty coffin, then Borin attacks.Lucre manages to tumble out of Borin’s reach.  Marja tries twice to cast dispel magic from a scroll, but cannot concentrate properly.  Both attempts fail.  Deke carefully inspects the coffin.  It is empty.  Kalina summons a constrictor.  There is so little living near the shrine that she finds it very difficult, but she concentrates and draws life from deep within the soil to bring the constrictor forth.  Kel uses two blasts from his ring of the ram which Borin dodges.  He isn’t so successful at dodging a blow from Kalina’s avalanche sling.  With Borin briefly dazed from the blow, Lucre jumps in to grapple his cousin, admonishing him the entire time.  Borin breaks free, takes a few staps back and drops his axe.  He stops raging and grabs his head in pain and confusion.</blockquote>

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