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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Iron Sky" data-source="post: 5400827" data-attributes="member: 60965">Session 11Thoon was actually here briefly (his player had to go study for a final).We camped out at the "oasis" to the sounds of wailing in the distance.The next morning, we headed towards the distant spires of Bodach and very soon found ourselves crossing a brittle crust of rock over boiling waters - a fact we discovered by Eberk falling into them.  Jinn and Kyden promptly threw him a rope to haul him out while Thoon scouted the area carefully looking for a navigable route.  Athletics for Kyden (aided by Jinn), Perception for Thoon, and Athletics for Eberk trying to hold on and swim/pull himself out of the water.Result: Eberk got a bit scalded, but we pulled him out before he took too much damage.  We continued on through the waste, the intense desolation inciting a set of individual Endurance skill challenges.  As expected, Kyden and Thoon failed, loosing a surge each.We did make it out of the salty wastes into fields of ash and reached a wall varying from 25-50 feet tall, a mixture of natural terrain and crumbling stone.  Kyden used his +13 Athletics to handily climb the wall, dropping a rope to let everyone out.Beyond the wall was a silent city of immense stony spires rising from a plain of twisted, petrified bodies, all coated in ash.  We pushed through the eerie place, our Geas pulling us towards a huge ziggurat very similar to the one in Tyr.We followed a pathway to the top, leading to a small room containing only an altar and carved symbols.  Thoon, with a 28 Perception, found a secret door amidst the carvings.  Thoon tried to jimmy it open (with some failed untrained Thievery), then Kyden broke Eberk's backup warhammer trying Athletics.Note: Sanzuo mostly uses "traditional" skill challenges (x successes before y failures) on individual tasks (climbing a wall, picking a lock, etc).  For larger-scale he'll use Obsidain.We figured we had a few hours before dark, then headed into the nearest spire finding ancient bodies all over the place, sprawled about as if this were some ancient battlefield.  We found stairwells leading up and down and indecided to go up(rolled a dice).As we searched the next floor, Thoon spotted a humanoid figure down at the end of the hallway that disappeared without a trace as we searched for it.  He spotted it again and lost it again, but found an obsidian idol sitting on a pedestal.  Thoon pulled out handy sack of sand, tossed it a couple of times in his hand to measure it, then rapidly swapped the sand for the idol - which had a handy star-shaped base.  A 9 Thievery wasn't enough to back up his action and he triggered the trap anyway, dropping everyone but Kyden and Walter(who just stuck to the wall) into a pit full of snakes - very very ancient, dead snakes.  Thoon also managed to land on the idol and break one of the points off.Leading out of the pit was a treasure trove, with literally more wealth than we could carry.  We then had to decide how much treasure to take, with Jinn rolling up a Streetwise to figure out what was the most valuable - determining that the idols and artwork would probably be harder to sell but worth far more.We hauled up over two hundred pounds of treasure, deciding not to ditch any survival days since we'd need those on the way out.  As everyone was loading up treasure and Kyden was hauling it up, he was attacked by an emaciated, skeletal figure that touched his arm that attacked him for massive necrotic damage (instantly bloodied) and slowed and dazed.He followed up before Kyden could even react, nearly killing him instantly(2 hp from -bloodied).  Walter scurried off to warn Thoon, who looked up to see it dropping Kyden.  Jinn climbed up the rope and healed Kyden who second winded.  The figure ran as the others began to climb up, unleashing an ineffective gaze attack at Eberk (who was near the top of the rope) before taking off.Eberk chased it down, took another hit from it, and it escaped.  We returned to gather the treasure to the sounds of distant sobbing.  The sun was low on the sky as we run for the ziggurat, seeing the petrified bodies in the shadows beginning to stir.We hauled up the ziggurat and huddled inside the upper chamber as terrible things began stirring outside.  Out of desperation, Kyden and Jinn literally battered and clawed our way into the hidden door and moved in.  The labyrinth of passageways beyond were still immaculate, the stone polished to a mirror sheen.  We hurried through, following the pull of the Geas, eventually reaching a frigid chamber with a walkway leading to a raised dais and altar over a bed of strange, glowing, silver sand.As Eberk warily entered the room, an elf-like apparition appeared, demanding that we leave.  Our response was predictable.Strategists Epiphany from Kyden to let the group go first and the group rushed in, hitting him with several dailies before he got to go, doors on either side of the room opening to let chillborn zombies in.  Fortunately, Sanzuo was rolling terrible, missing the first couple rounds until he crit(and dropped) Kyden at which point the party began missing terribly.Suddenly, figure that dropped Kyden back in the loot-spire appears in the doorway... and charged one of the zombies, its necrotic damage largely negated by the zombies necrotic resist.  A few rounds later, the mysterious helper is running off with a dying Eberk while Kyden is running off with 1 hp, 1 THP and Jinn on his back.The pasty figure asked Kyden, "if I get the scroll, can I drink?" pointing at Eberk. After a bit of consideration he said yes.  The figure ran in, somehow got the box with the scroll from the spectral guardian and took off with it.  The spectral guardian chased after, only to disintegrate when reaching the door to the room. After several 5 minute rests, Kyden was out of surges, the others low but back to full health.  We followed the thing that stole the scroll back to the top of the ziggurat to find the figure had opened the box and taken everything out of the box.In exchange for one of Eberk's surges worth of blood, we got the scroll and everything that had been in the box including... a level!It also had a cracked urn of some sort, a big obsidian lens, and an iron key.Meanwhile, outside, the moaning undead of the night approached on all sides of the ziggurat, cold blue eyes staring up at the group.Session end.</blockquote>

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