conclusion of session #43
Session #43
Part Two: A Fierce Battle in the Central Chamber
“Hurry with the light!” Jeremy fumbled towards the lip of the ledge, feeling for the rope.
Beorth clenched his teeth. Invisible in the darkness, he felt two more of the black bolts strike his chest.
“Pull us up!” Kazrack cried, but Ratchis had already called to Nephthys and cast light upon one of his javelins. He dropped the weapon down into the pit.
Jeremy already had his hand on the rope, and he leapt over the wall and followed the light down to aid his friends.
Derek did not react in time. The ledge was shaded in darkness again, as the light did not reach very strongly from below, and he was forced to fumble for the remaining rope in the darkness.
“Should we start pulling?” Tolnar asked aloud.
“Should we start pulling?” Jolnar echoed.
“Wait for the signal!” Captain Adalar roared. He moved to look over the edge. Martin snapped his fingers and tiny colored lights danced off his fingers to leap about his heady happily. He looked over to see the fate of Beorth and Kazrack as well.
What they saw, was Beorth stumbling away from the open door and beseeching his god for healing ans he lay hands on his chest and felt the divine healing warmth.
Blodnoth leapt over the low wall into the pit without the aid of a rope. He clambered down, thrusting his fingers and booted toes into tiny cracks and fissures. However, the lower half of the climb proved too smooth. He faltered and tumbled down the last fifteen feet into the pit, with an ‘oof!’
The ensorcelled javelin did not provide enough light for Beorth to see past the very entrance to the area beyond, but he was able to get the sense that it was very large and vaulted. Kazrack could see with his gift of dwarven vision that the door opened onto a stone stairway that led down into a vaulted chamber. He thought he saw the outline of what looked like column. There was an armored skeletal thing, one of the Minions of whoever ruled this place waiting patiently, sword in hand. Kazrack noticed that floor seemed to be a checker of alternated colored stone tile. His jaw dropped open as he several of the tiles burst open, and necrotic corpses began to pull themselves out of the earth below. They crawled over the tile, dressed in shredded woolen clothing, and aprons.
Kazrack lifted a fist over his head and held his bag of runestones in the other hand. “Lords and Lady! Put the fear of dwarvenkind into these creatures and turn them away from us and our might.”
The dwarven priest felt the swell of divine energy release and wash out in all directions.
The undead kept coming.
“They are coming up from the ground!” Kazrack called to the others. He hefted his halberd.
Ratchis had heard the popping sound of the bursting stone tiles and was already coming down a rope as fast as he could. It was the rope that Derek did not see until the half-orc grabbed it. The young woodsman sneered and then sucked his teeth to hold back a wave of sudden anger. (1)
Derek moved over to help the three dwarven brothers instead, they still held the ropes attached to the harnesses worn by Beorth and Kazrack.
“Get ready to pull as soon as we get the signal,” Derek said to them.
“We already know that,” Tolnar snapped, rolling his steel blues eyes.
“We need reinforcements,” Beorth called, as he slipped the harness off.
“Ta-da!” Jeremy replied, leaping the last few feet to the bottom of the shaft. He drew his two swords with a flick of his wrists.
“Maybe we can draw them out,” Blodnath suggested, thrusting his chin towards the open door, while creeping behind the metal refuse half-buried in the dirt.
Kazrack moved to the door to get a better view of what was happening within. And Ratchis leapt down the final fifteen feet. Martin grabbed a rope and began to come down. Jeremy moved to stand at Kazrack’s right in the broad door. The human could not see far into the darkness, but Kazrack could see chains that were connected to counterweights and were strung along pulleys and hen disappeared into the wall above the doorway. There were cold braziers flanking the stairs. The room was greater than sixty feet across and nearly seventy feet long. There were four columns supported a vaulted ceiling, and the walls were decorated in a crumbling mosaic. The other end of the room was shrouded in darkness even to a dwarf’s keen eyes.
With a yell, Belear came tumbling down, slipping from the rope he had tried to use to come down. The elder dwarf landed atop of Blodnath, which cushioned his landing.
“Ugh,” Blodnath spit, and looked up. “Are you okay master?”
Belear leapt to his feet, as if embarrassed.
Beorth stepped out of the harness, and picked up his quarterstaff, which he had brought down with him earlier. He moved in to support Kazrack and Jeremy.
The battle that followed was chaotic and spread out.
By now a group of zombies were making their way up the dark stairs with purpose in their dead eyes. They marched with their hands stretched before them and emitted an almost mechanical droning moan.
Kazrack stepped into the room and called to his gods. Four of the zombies broke ranks and began to shamble away from the dwarf into the dark end of the room. The armored Minion’s skull-face could show no emotion, and it was disturbing how perfectly still it stood, pointing at the dwarf, while holding a sword in its other hand.
Ratchis pushed past Jeremy and Kazrack to charge into the room. He cut a huge chunk off a zombie’s shoulder, and sent it crashing down on to the steps, leaving a slimy trail of gore behind it. It still fumbled to stand. The half-orc winced, as he took a second to hold his ribs. He had run past two zombies hoping to reach the Minion, and they had hammered him with their calcified fists.
To Jeremy it appeared as if Ratchis plunged into total darkness.
“I need to bring the light with me,” he thought.
Martin stepped away from the rope and cast his shield spell, while Jeremy moved to the rear of the shaft to pick up the enchanted javelin.
“Derek, come down here!” Jeremy called up to his new friend. “We’re bringing the fight to these undead suckers!”
Derek deftly came down the cracked stone side of the pit and then leapt from the wall with a graceful flip. He landed on the balls of his feet and turned to the open door.
Beorth stepped into the room as well, the light of the javelin now in Jeremy’s hand only illuminated a bit more, but he could see that a zombie had made it up the stairs, ignoring Ratchis. The paladin slammed it in the neck with his staff.
The Minion ambled backwards now, trying to stay out Ratchis’ furious reach. More zombies burst from beneath here and there and blocked the way.
As Jeremy stuck the javelin into his pack so he could still use his swords and have light, Kazrack and Ratchis struggled with zombie limbs, exchanging blows. The Neergaardian re-drew his short sword and made it to the door, as Belear stepped up and called to the dwarven gods as Kazrack had. Five of the zombies suddenly shrieked and then vaporized. The sound of the dirt that had been on their bodies rained across the ground, even as their clothing flared up and burned away in a second. Jeremy, who could now see into the room (but was still too far away to see the Minion), gasped.
Beorth began to move down the stairs, and the Minion pointed up at him. Wordlessly, it sent two more bolts of black light slamming into the paladin’s chest.
Ratchis roared and ripped through these gray zombies dressed as servants, running towards the armored Minion. Kazrack also came running, but Beorth sped past the short-legged dwarf with an unusual burst of speed for the paladin. The dwarf still wore his harness, and he had jerked back as he had reached the end of it length. He cursed.
The ghost-hunter’s staff dented the thing’s armor and it shuddered. In a moment Derek and Ratchis were beside the paladin, an Jeremy was there as well. The Minion took a swinging chop at Beorth, that the paladin ducked, and then it jerked backward allowing Ratchis and Beorth an opportunity for a devastating blow. Beorth, however, was off-balance and his staff spun wildly. Ratchis’ long sword ripped a section of armor off its shoulder.
The Minion had stepped back between two of the large pillars that looked a dark dark blue in the bobbing light of the javelin. Ratchis stepped forward to press the attack, but as he stepped between them there was a barely audible zapping sound accompanied by a flash of black and blue light that shimmered back and forth between the pillars in an instant.
Ratchis a deep shock to his system, followed by cold, as the negative energy passed through him. He shuddered.
“Well, that’s not good,” Derek muttered.
Martin hurried behind Beorth whose shoulders were hunched in pain from the wounds to his chest. “Distortus, the watch-mage muttered, casting Blur on the paladin.
Derek and Jeremy stepped up to the edge of the space between the pillars afraid to pass through. Watching Ratchis as he still moved to attack the Minion, which was ready to parry. More of the room was visible now. There was a crude painted wooden statue of a gnoll with blue skin holding a feathered and hooked scepter or rod. It lay on it side was twelve feet long and two feet wide.
Beorth made his way around the other side of the pillar, running to join Ratchis in his battle, but essentially he was now running between this pillar and another equally spaced pillar also on the left side of the room. There was another sizzle and flash of black and blue light.
With a ‘yerk!’, Beorth dropped to the tiled floor, unconscious.
“Beorth!” Derek cried out.
The Minion swung its long sword at Ratchis, who pulled back parrying the blow with his own sword. Kazrack took that moment to move into a flanking position, but his halberd went through the thing as it was suddenly ghostly. Ratchis’ riposte also eerily swung through the thing’s body.
The smell of rotting and death seemed to waft up from the spot where the tiles had been smashed from below. The dirt below it was a rich red-brown, and full of dark stones, worms and maggots.
Derek chased after a zombie that threatened to make its way to Beorth. He cartwheeled over the large wooden statue, laying a hand on it for support, but as he flipped over it. He heard it creak and lurch as the floor below it gave. In less than a second the young warrior’s feet were on the floor on the other side of the statue, but he could see now that the tiles in this area were already all shattered, and the floor was not stable. He felt the floor give way beneath his feet, so he hopped awkwardly further into the room, and to the edge of the light. Here the floor was sturdier, and he chopped at a zombie with his battleaxe, which had never left his hand.
Martin hurried over to the fallen paladin. In the bobbing light he could see dull bronze glyphs etched into the columns facing each other. The watch-mage found that Beorth was still barely conscious. He flitted in and out of awareness. (2)
“Beorth, stay with me! You have to stay awake, Beorth,” Martin shook the blanch-faced man. “If you go to sleep you could die.”
Over the sound of Kazrack and Ratchis roaring at the elusive Minion, and Derek’s axe cutting deep into necrotic flesh and withered bone, could be heard more shuffling of undead sandaled feet, and that droning moan. It was coming from the hole in the floor beneath the statue (which was now a quarter of the way sunk into the floor at an odd angle). There were dozens more zombies milling around beneath them!
The sound of steel on steel rang out as Ratchis parried another of the tenacious undead warrior’s blows. There was another metallic cracking as Kazrack drove the point of his halberd into seam in the things arm and pried back. A rain of pulverized bone burst out and the thing sagged. Ratchis tried to take advantage of its hesitation, but again his sword went right through it.
Jeremy turned from the harmless, yet disturbing, still flailing limbs of a zombie he had butchered in time to see come around Martin to put himself between the watch-mage and the cowering zombies on the other side of the statue. What the Neergaardian had not noticed, were the minute cracks now spreading out along the tiles. The floor gave out beneath his booted feet and he yelped, twisting his body to jump back to where he had come from. Instead, he disappeared into the darkness below.
Martin and Derek both called the blonde warrior’s name, as the only light source tumbled with him.
Kazrack turned thinking that Jeremy had fallen to some wound, “The power of my gods will save him… Uh, where’s Jeremy?”
“He fell in the hole!” Martin screeched hysterically. “I heard things down there.”
Kazrack looked away again, seeing that the Minion he and Ratchis faced, turned to hurry away from them. He slashed his halberd through the thing’s side, sending it to the cracked floor in a rain of bones and armor.
Belear had finally made his way to Beorth, with Blodnath guarding his flank. The elder dwarf laid his hands on the human paladin and spoke to his gods, “Mistress Rivkanal, please give me your healing powers that I may heal this brave warrior of the human jackal-god that we may smite this undead menace.”
Beorth felt the warmth and discomfort of his wounds closing, and the burns on his skin from the black lightning lessening. He sat up.
“That you for reviving me,” he said to Belear. “The blessing of the dwarven fathers are much appreciated.”
Ratchis was handling the last of the zombies that were not cowering, while Kazrack walked over to aid Belear and the others with Beorth.
Derek carefully moved towards the dim light emanating from the hole in the floor. He looked over the edge of the hole and called down.
“Jeremy? Do you need back up? There are more of them down there!”
When Jeremy fell through the hole in the floor he felt the jarring pain of stones and dirt momentarily impeding him and then giving way, causing him to tumbled wildly and be knocked back and forth in the opening and ruinous shaft. He slammed past what seemed like limbs and roots that were protruding from the dirt sides of the hole and landed heavily.
Jeremy shook off the pain and was quickly on his feet. What he saw was a chamber with a ten foot high ceiling that reached into the dark in all directions, but he was able to note two things. First, the columns above seem to spring from the this lower chamber, and second that the ceiling of this chamber and the floor above were the same chunk of dirt and stone, with long wooden supports. Most importantly, the living dead were encased in this dirt and as far as he could see the legs, arms, torsos and heads of zombies that had been buried alive here stuck out of the ceiling. The instability of the floor above extended to the ceiling down here, and several zombies were shaken loose. Dressed in tattered and rotting workman’s clothes, they ambled towards the warrior, black wiry hair protruding from their nearly fleshless heads.
Jeremy had a sword in each hand. He heard Derek call from above.
“I know, I got four of them in front of me right now,” Jeremy called back. “I can take ‘em.”
He stepped forward and cut one across the forearm as it reached for him, but did not notice that in the hole above, a zombie had finally been able to pull itself free of the dirt and was climbing to the chamber above.
Kazrack crawled towards the hole on his belly, trying to distribute his weight to keep more of the floor from collapsing. He peeked over the side in time to see a zombie arm come reaching up to pull its body up and out of the hole.
Whack! Derek sunk his battleaxe into its skull, sending it plummeting back down the hole. Whack! Ratchis’ blade echoed the blow, as the half-orc moved about the room decapitating cowering zombies. They still shivered in mindless fear of the divine might of the gods of good.
Jeremy was bobbing and weaving and knocking dead flailing limbs away from him with his blades. There was the sound of shifting dirt and stone and in the cloud he made up two more forms coming out of the darkness. He looked to his right and there was another he hadn’t seen before. He was surrounded.
Jeremy sheathed his swords and in one smooth action leapt straight up driving his hands into the dirt and scrambling to gain purchase with his feet. The zombies grabbed at him as he leapt, but it was too sudden a move, and their slow undead bodies could not react in time. He hustled up the hole, holding himself on either side.
“Somebody give me a hand!” Jeremy reached up and found Kazrack there to haul him up. Derek and Ratchis finished the last of the zombies.
Ratchis lowered his sword and wiped sweat and gore from his ridged and swollen brow. He walked back towards the others and then started at some movement near the back of the chamber where they had entered.
“Is everyone alright?” Beorth was asking Kazrack, who had walked over to check on him.
“There’s another one here!” Ratchis cried out seeing what it was that had caught his eye. It was another of the black armored skeletal Minions lurking to the left of the entrance, shadowed there at the edge of the light.
Kazrack hurried about one of the pillars in time to join his companion in seeing the Minion take a hack at one of the chains attached to the counter-weights. There was a metallic snap and the chain flew back, and the metal door to chamber jerked and one side dropped considerably. The metal creaked and squealed in protest.
“Beorth, can you stand?” Jeremy threw out an arm and helped to haul the paladin to his feet.
“Jeremy, get me my staff,” the paladin asked, calmly.
Kazrack ran to towards the Minion, roaring, and chopping into it with his pole-axe.
Ratchis came running to join him, but at that same moment, the divine fear that had filled the remaining cowering zombies left their dead limbs, and one turned, slamming a fist into the half-orc’s face. Ratchis retaliated with a deep chop of his sword, which made blue-black embalming fluid begin to spurt from the thing’s neck, but still it did not let him by.
Martin moved to stand by the remaining, chain. He gulped, knowing that he could not do much to slow it if it got past Kazrack.
Derek hacked another zombie, as the armored Minion ignored Kazrack and moved past him towards the other chain.
“We can’t let it trap us in here!” Martin cried out. Kazrack swung his halberd backhand and chopped into the thing again, but it did not fall as the armor absorbed most of the blow. Belear hurried over and his warhammer slammed into the thing as well, but still it did not fall, nor did it even look at its foes. Whatever it had that passed for a mind was focused on the chain alone.
There was a loud ‘clang’ as the undead thing’s sword slammed into the second chain. Luckily, the link the blade hit was only scored and bent, but did not give.
Jeremy tossed Beorth his staff.
The Minion deftly parried more blows from both Belear and Kazrack. Martin suddenly remembered that he still had his shield spell up and stood so that his body touched the chain. Now the magic shield also block the chain. The Minion’s blade bounced off the invisible shield, but then was amazingly in position to ward off Derek’s axe, as the young woodsman had come running over.
Ratchis still struggled with the remaining zombie.
Jeremy drew his long sword and charged the thing, having to push past Derek to get his blow in, which crunched the thing’s skull easily. It crumbled to the ground. As if in echo, the great metal door groaned again as it settled more, but the remaining chain still held.
Beorth hobbled over to aid, Ratchis and slammed the thing in the head. It turned slightly, as if to regard this new danger, and Ratchis removed its head with his own sword.
The chamber was quiet for a moment.
“Hey there are door over here,” Blodnath called from the far end of the chamber.
“Are you alright down there?” Captain Adalar called from out in the shaft, he was finally getting to climb down into the pit.
“Yes,” Jeremy called back, but added sarcastically. “Thanks for asking.”
Below, more zombies shuffled mindlessly and droned their undead moan incessantly.
End of Session #43
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Notes
(1) Derek’s species enemy is the orc.
(2) DM’s Note: Beorth was at exactly zero hit points.
- but because it refers to specific stuff. . Hand-forged, you have a lot more ass-kicking to look forward to - trust me.