[Previous session]

29 Greening (continued): After the fight with the skeletons and zombies, the party took only a brief rest for first aid and to clear away the twice-dead bodies. They pressed on before too many more scavenger birds collected about them, and before another unit of dead arrived.

The ruins were in the valley about one-quarter mile to the east. The central structure was a two-step pyramid with a broken obelisk at its peak. The bottom level had some kind of doors on the western side (towards the party's position) and a row of tumbled animal sculptures lined the path to the doors for about a hundred feet out from the building. Just beyond each of the four corners was a much smaller pyramid; the two on the west each had a statue upon their summits, while the eastern two were collapsed heaps of rubble. The valley floors around the ruins provided practically no cover. As they debated how to approach and enter, Laylah channeled the words, "There is another door." (This was the first time she had spoken prophecy aloud without blacking out--perhaps because of the brevity of the message?)

They mounted up and went to the ruins. As they approached, they split into three groups to investigate: Darra, Corben and the archers approached the obvious door, while Laylah, Pelmark and a few other men circled to the north and Fazia and a few men circled to the south. The outer groups each saw one statue closer up: a stern-looking mother-goddess figure and a humanoid monster enveloped in flames (the gods of earth and fire?). Darra sensed danger as she approached the door, so circled left to climb the first step of the central pyramid instead.

Darra approached the obelisk from the western side as Laylah did so from the east. Fazia followed slowly, due to her injured foot. The obelisk was made of a dark, hard stone and had broken off halfway up; the upper half lay in rubble around the base. The carvings resembled those from the other ruins, depicting processions of men and animals, but were better preserved in this hard stone. The eastern side was marked by a large sunburst, which Laylah guessed to be important. She and Darra poked and prodded at it in search of secret panels. Finally, the center of the design pushed inward, and a door-sized piece of the rock face slipped inward a fraction of an inch. At the same time, the doors to the west clanged open! Members of the company shouted alarms and the PCs heard the sounds of bow-shots. Corben shouted battled orders and told Fazia to protect the women at the obelisk.

They pushed the panel inwards and found a shaft with handholds going down. Pelmark cast a Light Jet spell and checked for a door at the bottom of the 10' shaft. At Darra's warning, he cast a Shield spell before pushing the second panel inward.

He stumbled through, and a blade struck him from behind. A living (?) cry of triumph reached the others' ears. Darra jumped down to help, and recognized the black-robed, goateed man holding the scythe which had struck Pelmark. She charged and wounded the black-robed man, screaming incoherently the entire time about what he had done to her as a child. [This man is her father; she has some explanations to make--or avoid--next session.] Fazia was helped down by Laylah, who followed and watched from the shaft. Fazia came to help Darra, and managed to chop the blade away from the man's scythe. As she did so, reinforcements arrived: six of the superior type of undead warriors. One group of three attacked Pelmark and Fazia, while the other three attacked Darra and Laylah. Darra took a crippling thrust to her weapon arm, so dived under a table to get under cover. This allowed the black-robed man to flee while his minions kept the heroes busy. Darra shapeshifted in the hopes of being able to burst through and catch up with her enemy.

Laylah prayed to Rashira for help while dodging her attacker's thrusts.  She used her acrobatics and the narrow shaft to escape her attacker (and perhaps had some subtle divine protection?).

Pelmark used his brawling skill to defend himself, then belatedly took the offensive and neutralized one opponent long enough to take its sword away and destroy it. Fazia was wounded and went berserk, and downed the other two foes on that side of the battle. Darra rejoined the battle and, with Fazia's help, destroyed two more undead. Darra then tried to find where the robed man had fled.

Laylah fled from her attacker by leaving the obelisk. She found a wounded Corben directing the battle between his company and more skeletons and zombies. He helped her knock her pursuer down the shaft, where Fazia dispatched it. With no other foes in sight, Fazia snapped out of the berserk state, but succumbed to her wounds and died.

Pelmark joined Darra in going downstairs in search of the black-robed man. They found a room with bone-covered altars at ground level, and another room with blood-stained altars below that.  This lowest level had several secret rooms: necromantic workrooms, storerooms, and a recently-used temple of Shulkor, Prince of the Undead (complete with an idol fashioned of human bones wired together). They searched the ground level again, finding that it was a catacombs with no exit other than the western doors.

Pelmark sent Gorm to continue in his place so that he could help Corben and Laylah tend the wounded. Bran had collapsed from his wounds as he downed the last undead in the surface battle. Laylah tried to comfort him as he lost consciousness.

Further searching by Darra and Gorm revealed another secret room on the bottom level. This room contained a stone sarcophagus (which they were careful not to disturb) and an underground passage which came up to the surface about a quarter mile to the east. They found a piece of a black robe on a thorn bush there, but no discernable tracks. They returned to the central ruin, where Darra's wounds and fatigue caught up to her.

[Next session]

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