I did not find the time to blog for many weeks now, so here are two sessions collected in one post:

Continuing after the discussion with the kobold tribe, Gim the kobold showed us the way inside and warned us not to walk directly underneath the pet green slime of the tribe. We saw a chest with a dead human body in front of it. Gim explained that this was an evil man who wanted to steal from the Kobolds: “This is what happens to people who steal!”
Elyndor reality check: “Like the scouts who steal from the farms?”
“No! We don’t steal. We just take.”
Elyndor: “I see, I see. Not the same at all. Good to know.”

Finally Gim pointed out where to keep going and advised us to keep south to find the undead, and definitely not to go into some small crawl . Farin handed out food in liberal quantities as usual. Hermione went ahead to scout. At a closed door on the way we heard sounds of life, like playing kids. Overall, the tunnel was narrow and confining, so we discussed how to work with that.
Farin suggested he could wait at a corner while I could go forward. Should I meet with the undead and fail to drive them back, I could fall back until I reach his position, where he could support me. I did not feel that plan; among other things because if I were to fail to drive them back, they would strike me down, I would be dead and I would never fall back to his protection. But even if I could make it, then I would stand between him and the pursuing undead, and what then? He was sure it would be fine and stayed at that spot. The rest of us kept going.

And so we discovered a door blocked with a makeshift stick barricade that looked like it was going to succumb to any strong blow. And then blows were falling against it from the other side.

Flesh against Bone

We arrayed ourselves as good as we could, with Willem in the center, me to the left and Elyndor to the right, in a T-junction, so we could work three against one.

Then we kicked away the flimsy barricade and let the skeletons come. As they did I raised my holy symbol and called for the fiends to begone!

But to no avail. They ignored me and my chanting. My friends started stabbing the skeletons and found out that their swords were only medium effective against bare bones, while Farin yelled from way back: “Fall back, fall back!”, which was hard to actually do in such narrow spaces.

I switched to my maul and Willem chose to use the flat of his blade to fight the skeletons – not really more effective than the point. Lots of beginner mistakes that experienced adventurers should never fall for.

Hermione was aware from the sounds and yelling that we needed help, so while Farin repeatedly called for us to follow his plan and fall back to return to his position, she squeezed past the dwarf to shoot stones at the skeletons as best she could, although that was not very good given Elyndor blocking her view.

In trouble

Then a skeleton hit Willem with a strike that would have felled any lesser man: But he kept going and pushed against them! Sadly, that way he blocked the door and stood alone where we could no longer support him in combat. I used a cantrip to heal him back 1 hp, then a skeleton hit him again for that exact hp.

I shouted: “FARIN! TURN THEM!”

So he came, but could not see them well in the scuffle, so instead of turning he healed Willem for another 1 hp … only to see him take another fell swoop of 6 damage that brought our strongest warrior down. Willem was out!

Hermione quickly grabbed Willem’s leg and pulled him back down the corridor. Elyndor, Farin and me were waiting for the skeleton to come forward, to use that 3:1 advantage. Finally it came – I fumbled and hurt myself, but Farin shattered the creature with a solid blunt hit.

Now we could flood in and turn the tide! Farin cared for fallen Willem to give him bonuses for his death save, while the rest of us, Tah willing, managed to somehow smash the foul abominations one by one before they could bring us down. The dice were with us, otherwise the campaign might very well have ended right here in this dank room.

Licking wounds

We were all bloodied and ailing, but Willem made his roll and survived, barely. And apologized for failing us in the hour of need.

One of the fallen skeletons had a light mace, which we gave Willem, so his next encounter with skeletons would see him better equipped. We discovered that there were two doors in here. The western door was made of metal, and locked. The northern door was old wood and but stuck. So we blocked that with two iron spikes and retreated to lick our wounds.

Plan:

• Go home to Wildehaven,
• report,
• get money,
• buy Holy Water,
• heal up,
• and come back to seek out more undead.

We explained that to the happy kobolds who were very thankful for our intervention. They allowed us to rest the night in their entry hall by the outer door, so we could avoid nighttime encounters – then on the next day we went home.

Tales tall and small

Turned out our story of undead warriors was partially believed and partially thought to be nonsense, depending: few if any in the village had ever seen a walking dead, so it depended on their faith in fairy tales.

Either way, the kobold attacks ended after this expeditions, so bullshit or truth, we received our promised reward from the village elder.

We trained where we could, healed, rested, bought holy water. And we spoke to people and learned some lore: that back in the days of the demon war, the Triad of Holy Light that had attempted to strike back had used three blessed weapons, a Sword, a Mace and a Lance, forged by the best blacksmiths of that past age. Interesting to know, and worthy questing objects.

Also, we learned that down in Darkmoor there is an Elf Ranger by the name of Myrelin Orym, who may be a great help – if she can take time off from her duties, as she leads the suspicious baron’s scouting squad.

Return to the Warren

Next session: One week later, healed back to max, we returned to the kobold warren, but found the atmosphere somewhat darker. The main hall deserted, only a smattering of guards, none of whom could speak common – but they knew us as friends and let us back into the warren.

There we found fresh blood and scattered bones – not a good sign. We tried to communicate in some way with the guards to find out what had happened, but no useful info was forthcoming.

Merrick provided light from his lantern, and Elyndor crawled into the small tunnels with a torch. He discovered lots of bones and two chained-up skeletons. Then some of the bones moved, and Elyndor quickly retreated.

A skeleton crawled after him, but Willem smashed it to pieces before it could do any harm. Lucky that we had given him that mace! Elyndor went in a second time to see what had changed, and found that multiple skeletons had started to pick their bones up and assemble themselves, and the two chained ones had broken free!

Holy Water in the Hole!

But he could not retreat, because Willem had crawled after him and blocked the way. Elyndor chucked a vial of Holy water into the fray, but smashed it uselessly against the crawlspace’s wall with a natural 1! In the nick of time he threw a second one thanks to winning initiative. Thus he killed the first and wounded two more skeletons – for enough room to unplug the narrow crawl space. In the combat that followed, Willem got hurt plenty once more, and received 2 hp from Farin and Merrick, just like last time. Farin also chucked in a vial of Holy Water and took out two more skeletons, and with that lightning of the pressure, and Willem’s strength at arms, we won!

Elyndor praised Willem a true hero, but he humbly deflected and shifted the praise to the clerics, who in turn thanked the gods. It was discovered that Willem carried a symbol of the reformed Church of Tah, which he sheepishly hid from view, and nobody pressed for information why he acted this way.

We scattered the bones to make sure none of the fiends would arise again, and Farin sprinkled holy water on them for good measure – to the displeasure of Merrick, who pointed out that we should safe our Holy Water for moments of dire need. But Farin explained that he had collected a lot of it and there was no need to be stingy.

Elyndor found a weird dark bronze idol in this room, depicting a bearded, human-ish warrior. Merrick wrapped it up for later investigation and stowed it in his pack. And one more light mace was found among the fallen skeletons, so now Elyndor too has a blunt weapon.

There was a door south here, which we opened. It led somewhat in the direction where we used to hear the kid noises a week ago, but now it was very dark and some of us had a weird feeling or heard scuttling and crawling – a hint at terrible tragedy: who can know what happened here in these dank halls since last we passed them. We quickly closed the door on the grounds that we were here to fight the undead human bodies, not natural insects or spiders.

And so we went back southward, where we had fought our battle a week ago, to see how the land lay now, and what we might find beyond those doors, metal or spiked as we left them.

More Wildehaven