SessionThirteen

December 6, 2008

Osrik leads the party as they approach the base of the Temple, where there is an entrance passage, and within it they immediately encounter three zombies. +oh, joy+

Alecsa begins the encounter by slashing a zombie with her shortsword. Osrik hits the next one with a reaping strike. Chaedi casts the ever popular cloud of daggers, causing later damage when the stupid thing doesn't move. The first zombie hits Alecsa. Gloriana turns one of the zombies, leaving it stunned. The other zombies miss their targets.

Alecsa successfully hits her zombie again. Osrik hits again, leaving his zombie "bloodied." [Really, there's no blood to speak of. He's dead!]+I believe we decided "chipped" was the proper term, here.+ [That is for skeletons, not zombies.] Chaedi once more uses cloud of daggers. Alecsa's zombie hits her again. Gloriana attacks with wrathful thunder, killing her zombie. Osrik's zombie misses him.

Alecsa slides back and performs a healing surge, while Osrik slides over to cleave his zombie, killing it. Chaedi misses with her cloud of daggers. Gloriana moves to the remaining zombie and hits it with righteous brand, giving Osrik extra strength on his next attack.+That was really handy, Glo, you can repeat any time you want!+ [Glo?! What the hell is with the nicknames?!]

Not wanting to get any closer to the zombie, Alecsa moves a bit to get a clear shot but misses with her shuriken. Osrik kills off this last zombie, thanks to the aid of Lir. [Gods come in handy.]

With the zombies out of the way, the party can see a corridor beyond them. Osrik and Gloriana lead the way down the hall. They quickly come across a room with three skeletons, a flaming skeleton, a prisoner, and two other skeletons coming down the hallway toward them. Chaedi and Alecsa discuss which spells Chaedi should use initially, Alecsa opting they try to take out the flaming dead guy.

Osrik begins the attack against the two "tatty" [DM word, means something along the lines of decrepit] skeletons in the doorway, killing two of them with a cleaving blow. +Ha! That was beautiful!+ The fiery skeleton hurls a fireball at Osrik but misses. Since Alecsa can't really see into, much less get into, the room, she opts to shoot a skeleton down the hall with her hand crossbow. Chaedi, standing right behind Osrik, casts icy terrain at the flaming skeleton, which it dodges. +Totally drat!+ With a dwarf blocking everything in the room, Gloriana goes up the hall to turn those skeletons, successfully immobilizing one and pushing it farther up the hallway. The non-turned skeleton moves up and hits her. The last tatty skeleton in the room misses Osrik when it attacks him.

Osrik then does a reaping strike at the skeleton but misses. The fire-skeleton hit Osrik with a fireball, catching him on fire. +Grrrrrrrrr....+ Alecsa takes a hit as she moves behind the mobile skeleton, hoping they can take it out before the other can move again. She hits it with her shortsword in a "sneak attack." Chaedi casts cloud of daggers on the flaming skeleton, while Gloriana hits her zombie with wrathful thunder. It takes a swing at her in return, but misses. The tatty skeleton misses Osrik again.

Osrik finally bashes that stupid skeleton to bits. He's still on fire, though. He steps through in time to have the flaming skeleton claw him. The once turned skeleton comes back to hit Alecsa and then backs off. Alecsa hits the first skeleton with a torturous strike and destroys it. She gets a "Way to go 'Lexa!" from Chaedi. [Yay. A nickname.] Chaedi uses her "boring" cloud of daggers again on the flaming skeleton, missing because "she's worried about the prisoner." +She used the cloud of daggers because using either freezing cloud or thunderwave would hit the prisoner. It had nothing to do with missing. That was just Chaedi's unlucky dice skill.+ [Yeah, right.] Gloriana moves over to the remaining hall skeleton and whacks him with priest's shield, giving herself and Alecsa some more protection against the skeleton's attacks.

Osrik does a minor bit of healing and hits the flaming skeleton with brute strike. He also finally manages to put out that fire. [Wonder how much beard is left...] +Plenty! Never mock a dwarf's beard!+ [Touchy touchy] The hall skeleton swings at Gloriana but misses. Alecsa zips behind Gloriana to do a healing surge. Chaedi's next round of daggers misses. Gloriana again hits using priest's shield.

Osrik attacks the flaming skeleton with a reaping strike, and it finally goes down! The skeleton in the hall attacks Gloriana but misses. Alecsa takes down the last skeleton with riposte strike.

Seeing no other undead at the moment, Alecsa and Gloriana retreat to the room where Osrik and Chaedi are. They untie and look over the prisoner, who doesn't seem too injured.

The prisoner turns out to be the ever-popular Dex Riley! Alecsa and Chaedi interrogate him and learn that he's been separated from his party for some time because he had returned to Vim to help out in the goblin war. He says Osrik's father, Vellerik, went with his party to Alcon. He did not recognize the description of the tomb from the vision but said the diary should be able to tell them. The diary is either in Alcon or back in Tisloch with someone named Styles, their "scout", since the stoned druid didn't have it. He knows nothing about bug women. He also talks about the tomb of Balzak Balrog's Bane, king of Civay and wanting to head straight out to Alcon. Alecsa informs him they will head to Alcon when they get good and ready, and he can leave if he doesn't like that.

When asked about the proliferation of undead in the area, Dex says there is a rumor of some ancient death magic that keeps raising them. When asked why they thought running off to Alcon was more important than looking for the source of this undead problem, he claimed they were more interested in finding the keystones, which will open something he knows nothing about. Violet would know, he says. He tells them to go check out the stone ruins +What stone ruins? The ring of stones outside Lad?+ [The same.] to find out, the bastard. Pretty ungrateful for a rescued guy. He also says the journal supposedly talks about them, too.

At the end of the conversation, Alecsa comes to the conclusion that Dex's whole party must have smoked or sniffed something because this guy is almost as difficult to talk to as the druid. And where they hell is Cinoi?!

SessionFifteen