RPG Recap: Beyond the Temple of the Abyss, 2012-02-11
Saturday, the 7th day of the Red Moon, 937
Back from Drake’s Rest, the group was read to get back to the Gladwell place and undeground. Jared and Derick parted ways with the group to secret the coin from the sale of the font. Jared would lated catch up with the party, but Derick didn’t make it. He had some important drinking to do.
Before heading across the river, the party decided it would be a good idea to get a dwarf to come along. It was easy to decide who to ask: Torben was the only dwarf around, and after some convincing that there’d be plenty of treasure (of which he’d get a favorable share), he agreed to come along, and brought his halfling friend Mero the Deadly, to whom nobody seemed to give a second thought. Worried about leftover toxic gasses, Lyweylln also bought a canary and tied it to his wrist with a piece of twine – the last bird cage in town had just been bought the day before.
Torben had heard some scuttlebutt about Alp the Acolyte socking old Agbert Gladwell, and pressed Alp for an explanation. Alp explained by noting that there was a tunnel leading from the chapel down into the dungeons. When Torben, nonplussed, pushed for more information, Alp clambered down the tunnel. After a few minutes of puzzled silence, the rest of the (huge) group followed: Torben, Mero, Lyweylln, Delian, and the three hirelings: Rocky, Rigby, and Sadie.
The group headed southwest through the ruined kitchen and down the tunnel into the river cavern. Everything seemed to be as they’d left it – apart from the hallucinogenic blue smoke, which had cleared the area. The group surveyed the area, but found nothing much of interest. Torben grumbled, wondering when they were going to get to the mines. There were mines, right? All he could see were natural caverns, pathetic burrows, and some probably-human stonework.
Everyone kept on following Alp, who lead the first group up to the complex junction. Sadie (et al.) explored the unmarked passage and determined it to be a dead end. From there, the whole party trooped up to the big room with the big round table. Torben asked about the the boarded up passage at the east end, but Alp and Delian said that while they’d been through there, neither could remember what they’d seen there.
Lyweylln decided it was worth investigating, and he asked Rocky to axe down the barricade, which Rocky did happily. Delian, Lyweylln, Rocky, Sadie, and Mero made their way down the walkway behind it. Three zombies were loitering at the end of the hall, and things got complicated. Delian’s Protection from Evil probably saved his life, but not enough that he wasn’t badly hurt, so he shoved his way out of the melee and back to safety with Torben, Rigby, and Alp.
Rocky felled one undead man-eater while Sadie fought with another one, but she was quickly overpowered and laid low. Lyweylln and Mero loosed a series of arrows at the creatures. Over and over, Mero hit his marks. Lyweylln, though entirely ineffective, didn’t give up.
Meanwhile, Jared had arrived and was looking around the caverns for the rest of the group. Hearing the dim sounds of struggle from up above, he made his way up the tunnels toward the table room. He ran into Alp, and after some respectful punches of greeting, they ran into the melee. By the power of Ibrim, the undead were cowed and send scurrying back down their hole.
After a bit of standard looting of Sadie’s body, along with the reading of hurried last rites, Alp and Jared declared their intention to pursue the shuffling corpses down the hole. Down they went, followed by the rest of the group. Another handful of zombies waited in the room below, glaring at the clerics from the shadows. Alp brandished his silver star, but his faith wavered, and the undead were enraged rather then repelled.
The struggle became ferocious: Alp, Jared, and Lyweylln were tackled by zombies while Mero landed shot after shot. Too much damage had already been done, though. Lyweylln managed to drive his dagger through his attacker’s palate and kill him, but Alp and Jared were not so lucky, and were sent to meet their master. With their bodies looted, the party was left deciding which way to go: down the nearly-vertical drop at the east end, or back up and out of the zombie pit. (Well, except for Torben, who was more left wondering whether he’d ever figure out what happened between Alp and Agbert.)
In Memoriam
R.I.P., Jared the Acolyte
R.I.P., Alp the Acolyte
R.I.P., Sadie the Soldier (hireling)