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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Wulf Ratbane" data-source="post: 136453" data-attributes="member: 94">SESSION SEVENTEEN-- friendly fireKELLAN’s SEVENTEENTH SESSION JOURNALWe began to interrogate the prisoners for more information. They claimed that orcs from the "old temple" were responsible for the attack on the caravan, and claimed no knowledge of any paladins with the caravan. Being depleted of spells and needing some recuperation, we tied up the prisoners and placed them outside the tower, where they could be watched by us from the tower at less risk to ourselves. At some point during the night, they were able to disappear - probably with some assistance from someone else we had not yet met, as another spell of darkness helped cover their escape. Seeing that they were gone, we decided to probe further into the complex.After travelling deeper underground, we came upon a meeting room, with papers strewn about as if left in haste. While they were in a language we could not immediately decipher (Jorie eventually determined it was a form of Draconic), the imprint of Iuz was clearly in the signature at the end. What little Jorie could read said that the writer would rather "....your eyes would be burned by the rising sun than to cast your gaze across my operations." Some Verbobonc trade bars were also found further into the complex after much searching. One especially disturbing discovery was a passageway filled with decaying corpses, located across a large pool of tar that was only crossable over an old log - unless one has a companion who can fly, like Nikolai. He flew me over, and I proceeded to search the hallway extensively for evidence of Stirling Dale, but with no success (for which I was partially glad, as I would not have wished such an illustrious member of our brotherhood to meet such a gruesome end).We decided to rest once again in the more easily-defensible exterior tower. During the watch Jaag and I took, I remember seeing a pair of glowing eyes outside the arrow slit, and the next thing I knew, I was running out of the caves towards the outside. I vaguely remember Jorie trying to stop me, but the force that dominated me compelled me to swing at him, and I actually hit the steadfast gnome. Luckily, I was able to force off the domination after only running several hundred feat, and Nikolai (who had been similarly affected, and who had also thrown off the domination) cast a door to dimension door us back to the top of the tower. There we found our companions fighting a huge snake-man; thanks mainly to Rodrigo's firepower (which unfortunately claimed the life of Jorie's wolverine companion, Darkclaw), we succeeded in reducing the creature to mist. It began to dawn on us that this was no ordinary creature, but probably an undead, perhaps even a vampire!We did out best to follow the mist as it sought its coffin to regenerate. We saw it disappear down the corpse-filled corridor I had earlier searched; the two captains that had earlier escaped waited there for us to cover their master's escape. Rodrigo quickly dispatched them with a fire spell, and after we cleared the corpses into the tar-pit, it was obvious it had escaped through small holes into some space beyond. It remained for us to decide how best to come to grips with the nearly-defeated vampire before it successfully returned to full power...*****DM's SEVENTEENTH SESSION NOTESA vampiric yuan-ti abomination. Very nasty. The way their racial abilities stack and combine with the vampire template proves very formidable. Just not quite yet:With two party members dominated-- the paladin and the cleric, the only healers-- it would have been quite easy to finish them off; fortunately Rodrigo kept up the heat with fireballs and magic missiles until he was able to reduce it to mist form. In the end the only casualty was Jorie's wolverine, who unfortunately didn't understand what "Fire in the hole!" meant, exactly; Rodrigo was in no mood to risk his own life for one of Jorie's big doggies.But I pulled my punches a bit, letting the party slowly realize what they were up against before I really put the fear of God into them...Wulf</blockquote>

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