james_davis_nicoll | Adventurer Conquerer King: Session Twenty Two

Another straight forward session:

Sage Renaldo Hashton Bryce
Scout Otho
Vault Guard Iatro Sirequake (NPC)
Former Legionnaire Titus
Cleric Patience (NPC)

I missed all of January so the session count may be off.

Lights up in a large cavern, one that feels dangerous to Otho and the others. Ohto points out the party has an amulet that can detect Evil. The group is thrilled to discover they are in a target rich environment.

Although the group has a dwarf, he is an NPC so it was Otho who checked out an odd glow. Turned out to be glowing moss at the bottom of a natural airshaft currently home to a lot of bats.

The next cavern has stairs cut into it. More glowing moss but with giant fungi to break up the monotony. There is evidence of giant rats but no actual giant rats. Turns out the party ran into that last session, like all the rats suddenly left.

There is a wealth of dead end tunnels.

The was a strong sense of evil from the south end of the main cavern so Otho is sent on ahead to look into it. He is not happy when he discovers there's a sudden 15 ft drop. He manages not to fall over it but it means when he runs into the Evil Thing(s) an advance to the rear will be harder.

Exploration leads to a roughly hewn room. There are large stone shapes in room. These prove to be sarcophagi. They are also one of the sources of evil and as soon as the paladin gets close the party finds out why: each sarcophagus has an undead in it. Surprise surprise.

A certain amount of violence occurs at this point. I was very pleased to roll a natural 20 on initiative because that meant Otho had an initiative of *31*. Go him! Sadly, almost everyone else did better in the whole "handing out obscene amounts of damage" field. The Paladin and the Cleric both handed out 33 points of damage in one go and the soldier 39. What Otho does is hand out small amounts - 14 or 15 HP - very reliably and at twice the rate of the other now. And run away to avoid hand to hand combat but I think that is made up for by him being in front all the time.

After a rest, the party examines the remains. They are of a legion known to have been lost in the area.

A group of wandering giant rats have great misfortune to run into the party and since Reynaldo is available, he nails them with sleep. The rats were then all humanely dispatched; Otho felt like it was cheating and apologized to the nature gods of his people.

More searching takes the group over another ledge and into another burial chamber filled with coffins. Otho explores room, unhappily because the rope is back at the last ledge. There are no (visible) undead., just scattered bones. There are silent moving shadows, about the size of giant rats and supernaturally good at staying just out of the light. Reynaldo carries out a bit of recon by magic missiles one, and not totally surprisingly, the shadows scream and stream towards the group, ignoring pesky things like the laws of physics on the way.

Otho retreats, helped back up over ledge by Titus. Patience, perhaps seeing the shadows more clearly than the rest of us, says "Oh, dear."