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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Black Omega" data-source="post: 1205740" data-attributes="member: 79">It was only Volar’s quick thinking that saved Toshiro.  The Elven illusionist saw through the door and convinced the others it was really an illusion, even though it took persuading Kaz to close his eyes and then pushing him through.  Beyond was a paralyzed Toshiro, being gnawed upon by ghouls.  But Verick, Mir and their new friend Hawk made short work of the undead creatures.  And just in time, Toshiro was on death’s door by the time they were done.  Luckily, Mindra was able to draw him back.  The hallway led to a steep drop down a slope into darkness.  But Bansho Kishu were not convinced this was the path to the lich and exampled the dead end at the other end of the hallway closely.  Verick’s skills came in useful here, finding the secret door then picking the lock.  Going down the twisting stairs, they came to another door.  As Verick approached, a magic mouth was triggered, shouting out “This is your last chance for peace.  The first hand raised against me will find his life, his family and his clan devoured by darkness.”  At the same time, a Evard’s Black Tentacles spell was activated and it took a minute for the fighters to hack their way through the writhing tendrils.  Beyond lay the throne room of the Lord of the Barren Lands.  His throne was guarded by a massive undead minotaur, as well as other undead..ghouls..ghosts.  And to one side a  strange dog looking creature made from total blackness, it’s form shifting from one dog shape to another now and then, eyes covering the body at irregular intervals.What this demon dog might have done was left a mystery to the group since Volar immediately Dismissed it, and just that fast the creature was sent to another plane.[GM Note – I had Volar roll the chance to see if the creature was returned to it’s home plane.  It wasn’t.  So, someday, in another game of mine in a different game world, the PC’s will run into an evil dog like creature and wondered “Where the hell did that come from.”<img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />]Verick charged forward invisibly to try and get at the lich while Toshiro and Kaz charged at Zeal.  Verick was fast enough to avoid the trap door that opened when he got close to the lich.  Toshiro was not and the unlucky samurai fell down into the darkness out of sight.Again, Zeal caused no end of trouble with her Hold Monster spells and her ability to heal both herself and undead.  The massive minotaur went toe to toe with Hawk, massive axe against axe as blood and undead flesh flew.  Risky as it was, Verick’s charge worked for him and it drove the Lich back.  Volar’s antimagic field, cast on himself, seriously cramped the Lich’s style and though the battle was fierce, Bansho Kishu eventually prevailed.  Volar collected the magic items from the bodies while the samurai searched the other rooms, finding a laboratory and a storage room for body parts that apparently could be used for spells or some twisted sort.  But Zeal, who had teleported away from the battle, was no where to be found.  Though the lich was defeated, the group had no illusions a lord of the undead was destroyed.  They knew he’d be back.To the surprise of some in the group, Volar wanted nothing to do with the items recovered from the bodies that related to necromancy.  In fact, he liked the idea of turning them over to the Volodni to be destroyed. Verick wanted to play with the Lich’s staff, however.  And using his roguish skills he managed after a couple tries to activate a darkness field that covered the entire room.  Not trusting the staff, the rest of Bansho Kishu, and Hawk, had already withdrawn from the room.  The darkness was more than normal darkness, it bit into Verick’s skin, as if it was trying to burrow it’s way into the reckless samurai’s soul.  Verick managed to find a small corner not covered in the darkness and once there, decided to try his luck with the staff again.  After a moment, there was a roar in the darkness, a bull like grunt and Verick had this bad suspicious he just brought the Minotaur back to unlife.Toshiro rushed in to help him and Volar dispelled the darkness field.  Verick wasn’t in serious trouble, however.  He had found the staff could control the minotaur.  An idea that appealed to him for a second before he realized it was him controlling one of the dishonorable undead.  The minotaur was destroyed and the staff was tucked safely away to be destroyed as well.Exploring the rest of the caves, the group found more ghouls to kill and ghosts to chase off.  They also found a halforc in the process of turning slowly into ghoul.  The creature was chained to a wall, emaciated and obviously diseased.  His only wish was for a fighting death rather than turning into a ghoul.  A death Verick granted him, but only after they found the halforc had traveled with Malachai into the forest where they had found and joined the lich.  Apparently Malachai had performed some act of treachery against Stavros to give Viktor an edge in that battle.  And then Viktor spared their lives but otherwise wanted nothing to do with the traitor.  They had fled, and then Malachai had betrayed the halforc to the lich as part of a deal to keep him alive.Bansho Kishu realized it would take a week to clear every undead from the catacomb of caves and they really didn’t have the time.  So they settled for collapsing the cave entrance then heading back to rejoin the Volodni.</blockquote>

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