Experience point awards & Character Status

Liana Ashwood - Fighter/M-U
Total EP’s       9013 EP
Spell point total:      32 / 32
Hit point total:          35 / 35

Kieren Urquhart – Ranger
Total EP’s     8301 EP
Spell point total:    12  / 12
Hit point total:     40 / 40
 
Tarl Tallows – Cleric/Th
Total EP’s       8013 EP
Spell point total:    25 / 25
Hit point total:     38 / 38

Rhyawdd MacPherson – Rogue
Total EP’s       7926 EP
Hit  point total: 66 / 66

Liothien Snowhawk – Fighter
Total EP’s    4512 EP
Hit point total:   65 / 65

Cedric – Fighter
Total EP’s   4007 EP
Hit Point total:  29 / 29

Treasure:
Kieren - Wand of Paralyzation , Liana -Sheet of Smallness containing Glass of Preserved Words, Rhyawdd - Vial of Curdled death, Rhyawdd - potion of super glue, Kieren - Shard of Healing, Liana - Two books from Necromancers Lab

Synopsis:
Session begins with the party in the necromancer's keep.  Rhyawdd and Tarl have completed their plunder of the library.  Liana is recuperating from her injuries caused by the golem.  Kieren and the party have decided to spend the night in the tower to heal up before making the trek back to Killilan.  Guards are posted on the roof and at the main gate.  The evening proves uneventful.  During this quiet time Kieren studies Estelle's spellbook and learns several new spells

The following morning is warm and drizzly.  There is a very low cloud ceiling and a warm breeze blowing from the west.  Visibility is limited to ~200 yards.  The priests in the party spend the early morning hours healing the party’s wounds.  Everyone is healed to full HP.  Most of the party begins packing treasure and provisions for the trek back to Killilan.  Eli, the captain of the guard, lets the party pack two of the four available horses with goods and treasure.  Rhyawdd take a light crossbow from the armory.

Tarl and Rhyawdd decide to investigate the magically held door in the wizard's bedroom.  They are unable to open the door, however they do notice that the door is located in a wooded partition.  They enlist Liana's help to use her wand of  earth and stone to create a passwall in the wood partition.   The door leads to a small alcove with a spiral staircase leading up. Rhyawdd ascends the stairs which lead to a trap door in the ceiling.  He checks the door for traps and then opens it.  The door leads to a circular chamber with fireplace.  The only notable objects in the room are a magic circle inscribed in the center of the floor and a large cauldron that is located in the center of the circle.  The cauldron is empty and the room appears to have been unused for at least two months.  The party thoroughly checks the room and finds nothing of value. They do not disturb the circle or cauldron.

Liana, Tarl, Rhyawdd, and Kieren proceed to the necromancer’s laboratory and check out the door.  The door is unlocked by Rhyawdd but cannot be opened because it is magically held.  Fortunately, the door is set in a wooden partition, and Liana uses her wand to create a passwall through the partition.  Kieren casts a detect magic and scans the laboratory before entering it.  He notes several magical emanations in the room: at least 2 on the wizard’s workbench, one in a cabinet and another on bell jar holding a skull.  Kieren cautiously enters the room and looks at the items on the table.  There is a folded piece of canvas the radiates magic as well as a flask of liquid and a 4"x6" piece of  polished quartz. Kieren moves over to the cabinet to check it out while the rest of the party begins snooping around the room.  Kieren finds a vial of liquid that emanates magic.  While he is examining the vial, the bell jar explodes violently showering the party with glass shards.  The skull inside levitates and trails wisps of fire as it darts around the room. The floating skull turns to face Kieren and two bolts of magical energy shoot from its eyes and injure him.  The skull then turns to face Rhyawdd and Liana and two gouts of flame erupt from its mouth to burn them.  Tarl hides under the wizard’s workbench to avoid any attacks.  The party swings at the darting skull with their swords and eventually manage to shatter it, but not before both Liana and Rhyawdd are burned by two more gouts of flame.  Tarl throws his hand axes at the skull and misses it.

Things quiet down and the party members put out and smoldering remnants of fires caused by the skull.  Tarl heals up the party members and they continue their search of the workshop.  Liana examines several tomes on the bookcase and discovers that they are the wizards notes on various ghastly experiments he has conducted on both the living and the dead.  Kieren opens up the magical canvas on the workbench and finds that it contains a wand.  Curiously the wand is larger than the folded piece of canvas.   Kieren experiments with the canvas and determines that it can hold one magical item within its folds.  The weight and size of the item becomes insubstantial.

Rhyawdd checks the two padlocked doors within the wizard's lab.  He finds no traps.  Tarl checks the doors and discovers a trap  which he attempts to disarm. Rhyawdd picks the padlock  on the un-trapped door and opens it.  Cold mist flows out from behind the door and dissipates to reveal several stone slabs with partial corpses on them.  Rhyawdd is startled by this and tries to close the door.  Before he does however, a disembodied skeletal arm wielding a broadsword rises from the nearest slab and flies toward him slashing him viciously.  Rhyawdd's wound has a burning sensation which may indicate that the blade is envenomed.  Kieren and Rhyawdd draw their swords and attack and destroy the skeletal arm, but not before it slashes Rhyawdd a second time.  Tarl checks Rhyawdd's wounds and heals him .  The venom from the blade does not appear to have poisoned Rhyawdd.

The party gathers up the magical items from the laboratory while Rhyawdd unlocks the remaining padlocked door.   Kieren then ushers everyone out of the lab and ties a rope to the door.  He uses the rope to open the door remotely, which turns out to be a good idea.  As the door opens a javelin flies out and impacts the wizard’s workbench.  There is a rope attached to the javelin which draws taught before pulling the workbench across the floor towards the doorway.  The party hears the sound of the workbench impacting and shattering followed by the sound of large stones impacting each other.  Kieren reenters the room and checks the shattered workbench and the space beyond the newly opened door.  There is a small alcove with a 5' square pit in the floor that opens into a room 15' below.  The alcove contains a spring loaded javelin launching mechanism that was triggered by the door.  Kieren looks into the pit and sees a 5' stone cube with sharpened iron spikes protruding from the top of it.  Impaled on the spikes are the rope and javelin as well as part of the wizard's workbench.  The party lowers Tarl into the pit on a rope and he checks out the room below.  It is one of the cells in the dungeon  below the wizard’s workshop.  It is unoccupied and otherwise empty.

The party reassembles by 10:30 AM and begins the overland journey to Killilan.  They decide to take a circuitous route from the wizard's keep to avoid the undead that are reported to be in the nearby swamp.  As the party begins to make its way around the swamp  Kieren notes that a group of undead (11 ghouls?) is charging toward them from the swamp which is about 100 yards away.  He cries out an alarm and then casts a lightning bolt against the undead.  Four of  the charging ghouls are vaporized by the lightning. Strangely, there appears to be some backlash from the spell and Kieren is slightly injured.  Gawain casts sunscorch at another ghoul and blasts it out of existence .   Liothien drops one of the ghouls with two well placed arrows.  Liana wipes out the remaining ghouls with a well placed lightning bolt.  Magnus takes some note of Kieren’s spell casting during the battle and leers at him suspiciously. He says very little to Kieren for the rest of the trip.

The party regroups and continues its march out of the Valley of the Dead.  The trip is uneventful until they reach the entrance to the valley. As they reach the valley entrance, nine skeletons arise from some distant rocks and converge on a point about 150 feet ahead of the party.  One of the skeletons swings its bone club through the air as if it is attacking someone.  Shortly afterwards, Brook pops into view amidst the skeletons. Magnus sees Brook appear and goes into a blind rage as he charges to attack Brook's flank.  Magnus is cursing at  the sidhe and accuses him of conspiring against the party.  Agate and Kieren rush forth to restrain Magnus. The priests in the group advance and turn eight of the skeletons.  Liothien, David, and Cedric are unsure of what is happening so they ready their missile weapons and aim them at the sidhe and the assembled party members.  The remaining skeleton attacks Brook and injures him, at which point the sidhe disappears.  William and Tarl cast sunscorch on the remaining skeleton and destroy it.  Magnus continues cursing at the sidhe, calling him a coward and challenging him to fight. Brook responds with taunts.

The remaining two hour walk to Killilan is marred by persistent taunting of  Magnus by Brook.  Magnus appears extremely agitated by the taunts and does not hide his obvious disgust with Kieren for bringing along the sidhe in the first place.  The party arrives in Killilan around 2:30 PM and rejoins Torun MacKenzie (their guide) at the Sea Trout Inn.

Eli, Deirdre, and the others from the necromancer's tower tell Kieren that they intend to press on to Balmacara, a MacDonald settlement that is 3 hours away on Loch Duich.  They intend to spend the night there and travel on to Kyle of Lochalsh where they can hopefully find a ship to return them to Deirdre's clan (clan Campbell) on the Isle of Mull, which is a day's travel south by boat.  Eli and Deirdre express their gratitude to Kieren and the party for their rescue from the Valley of the Dead.  Rhyawdd gives Eli a bag of gold to cover travel expenses for the group (the gold is from the wizard's library).  Eli and Deirdre are very appreciative, and they tell Rhyawdd and Kieren that they will always be welcome by clan Campbell on Mull.

Malcolm MacDonald of Clanranald (prisoner in necromancer's tower) decides to stay with Kieren and the party.  Malcolm tells Kieren that he is very knowledgeable about the Isle of Skye and the sea lanes around the island.  He assures Kieren that he will be useful to the party in their expedition to Skye.

Kieren and the party press on to the village of Dornie (2 hours away), where they take lodging at the inn there.  The party settles in for the night which proves uneventful.

The next morning, October 24, it is still warm and drizzly with a breeze blowing from the west.  The rain clouds appear to be dissipating.  Kieren, Rhyawdd, and Liana go to visit the witch Gerdie, while the rest of the party takes some R&R at the inn.  Gerdie receives them and is very interested in the stories of their adventures in the necromancer's tower.  Kieren shows Gerdie the shard from the dragon amulet and she is visibly pleased.  She tells the party that they are brave and resourceful and may yet prevail against the dragon's forces on the Isle of Skye and rescue Kieren's daughter.  Gerdie removes a second shard of the dragon amulet from her robe and attaches it to the shard that Kieren has given her.  She hands the assembled partial amulet to Kieren and tells the party that she has given them the shard of healing, a powerful talisman that can heal wounds, cure disease, remove curses, and raise the dead.

Kieren thanks Gerdie for the second shard and inquires about the remaining shard.  Gerdie tells the party to seek out 'Old Cud' the woodcarver in the village of Achintee.  Cud knows the whereabouts of the third shard.  She cautions the party that their task will not be an easy one because Cud is purported to be a crazed old man who is prone to violent fits for no apparent reason.   Achintee is about a days march to the north.  It is a village at the end of loch Carron, which empties into the sea near Kyle of Lochalsh.

The party members thank Gerdie for all of her help and end their visit by asking her to look at the magical items that they recovered from the necromancer’s keep.  She is able to identify the quartz crystal as a Glass of Preserved Words.  She  says the wand is a Wand of Paralyzation.  She refuses to check the potions for the party members, but she does caution them that the vial of purple liquid appears to be a substance known as ‘Curdled Death’, an extremely poisonous substance.  She advise the party to get rid of the purple liquid.  Kieren checks the flask of clear liquid and determines that it is a very strong, fast-acting adhesive ala ‘super-glue’.  Fortunately, Gerdie comes up with a solvent to dissolve the glue on Kieren.

Tactical maps:

Map of Surrounding area: