D&D: It's Specterin' Time!

Once again, we explore the Dead Valley...and this time, we very nearly become part of it! Here's last time.

Our heroes, having fought and bested the flesh golem in the Blood Pit, decide to fall back and rest. Aisling advocates (strenuously) for going all the way back to the Ettin Love Cave, but the party feels that's too much of a backtrack, so they just go back to the butte where they fought the ghouls. They put their backs up against the butte, and Zook casts an alarm spell. 

And he's glad he did. Near the crack of dawn, the spell activates. The heroes look up in horror and see a horde of spectral creatures appearing out of the gloom! Dara quickly casts a wind wall, hoping that the creatures are even affected by such things. Fortunately they are, and several of them are buffeted and battered. But they can still power through it, and the spectres descend upon the characters.

A couple of them strike at Clara, and she feels not only her flesh chill but her soul darken - these things can kill much more swiftly than other foes they've fought. She lashes out and finds that she can punch them, though she has to hit harder than usual to do any real damage. The other characters, though, find that magic works well against them - Zook hurls firebolts, Aisling calls up a cloud of daggers.

But then another spectral being, this one made of grey smoke, flows over the battlefield. It strikes at Zook and fells him, and hovers above, chuckling gently. Dara casts a spell and raises Zook back up, but the heroes start to realize that they need to end these things quickly. 

Clara leaps into the air and bicycle-kicks the wraith into the wind wall. The spell tosses it up into the air and clearly harms it, but does not kill it. The spectres press their attack and Zook throws fire at them, dropping a couple more, but Aisling falls to their assault. One of the spectres lingers over her, siphoning away her life.

The wraith swoops back and drops Zook. Dara drops her wind wall and calls down a moonbeam, destroying another spectre, but the remaining ones attack and fell her as well. Now only Clara remains, facing two spectres and the wraith.

Clara strikes both spectres with all of the ki she can manage, destroying them, but that leaves the wraith. It looks around at the three dying adventurers, and says "Which of them is your least favorite?"

"You," replies Clara.

The wraith chuckles like a sack of dried bones. "I am not such a glutton to eat the entire feast myself, but you have depleted my chosen. I will take one and leave the rest to live. Which?"

Clara considers the question...and then leaps up and spin-kicks the wraith. She manages to surprise it and knock it back, and then lands and strikes again. The wraith laughs. "So be it! You will all be my chosen!" It lurches forward and strikes, but Clara manages to cling to consciousness. Knowing that this is her last chance to save herself and her friends, she strikes...and knocks the wraith into nothingness. Falling to her knees and spitting blood, she stabilizes Zook, and then pulls her friends' bodies up against the butte and passes out, hoping that nothing else finds them for a while.

They manage to rest and recuperate enough to wake up. "I hate everything about what just happened," mutters Aisling. "Yeah," says Zook,"but we lived." They all agree that if Zook hadn't cast the alarm spell, they would be dead, and that Clara's tenacity saved their lives.

They discuss what to do next. Aisling ventures that maybe they're aren't quite prepared for what lurks in the Dead Valley - they could go back, resupply, and return. They are, after all, running low on rations. Dara points out that food is easy, as she can cast a goodberry spell and keep them fed, but whether they can survive what awaits them is another matter. Zook consults his magic and learns that going back now would be disastrous - the only way out is through. Aisling once again suggests falling back to the cave, but the others would rather press on past the Blood Pit - maybe there's a good spot to rest, and they can't keep backtracking.

They get around the Blood Pit; Dara loses her footing, but Zook catches her just in time. "Thank you, I don't think I'd last in there." "Even as a crocodile," Zook replies. They enter the central part of the Dead Valley, a wide, flat plain with jagged, rocky walls. Everything is eerily quiet and still, like the eye of a storm. They spot a small, square, stone building...but just then see movement out of the corners of their eyes.

The floating skull with the green-fire eyes they've fought a couple of times now emerges from a narrow crevice in the rock. Aisling motions for everyone to hide, but the skull doesn't seem to be looking for them. It floats across the plain to the building, its eyes flare up, and a stone door at the front scrapes open. The skull floats in, leaving the door ajar.

The party decides to find a place to camp out of sightline of the door, and rest. They'll need all their faculties before going into this keep, and they note that nothing stirs in this valley. If everything is afraid of what lurks in the keep, this might be a safe(ish) place to rest. 

They take shifts, and Clara dreams of sinking into icy water, her soul freezing up as her body dies, but wakens rested and refreshed (this was apparently the lingering effects of the spectres' attack). The adventurers head for the door, and Zook calls up his familiar, Edna the spider, to scout ahead.

Edna enters a room with a bunch of floating skulls. They aren't doing anything, just...hovering there. Zook describes this and Aisling surmises that they might be there as a first line of defense or as an alarm, but in either case they don't react to Edna. Zook spots a door to the left, and has Edna check it out. In that room, Edna (and thus Zook) finds a bunch of chests, smashed open and splintered, with weapons, clothes, and coins littering the floor. 

Satisfied that nothing is going to immediately attack them, the heroes enter. As they approach the floating skulls, they can hear whispering - very quiet, too quiet for Edna to have heard. Aisling casts a spell to comprehend languages and gets close to one, and hears it whispering about "Orcus, the corpulent lord of deads, god the dead, giver and taker of unlife." The words bore into her brain and leave shadows and rot in their wake...Aisling backs away. She informs the others that listening to the skulls is dangerous.

Zook notes a door to the left (the one Edna saw), and then another one further into the room, leading off right. The heroes pick their way through the skulls, trying not to get close enough to hear them, but they all winding hearing a bit more blasphemy than they'd have liked. They reach the further door and hear people arguing in the next room. 

"You killed me! You killed me and then you killed him!"

"No! He killed me and then I don't know what happened to you!"

"You're both idiots! You both killed me!"

Zook sends Edna in and she sees three ghosts, bickering and arguing about who killed who. The party decides to check the other door, rather than potentially get into another ghost fight. They pick their way back through the skull room (and, again, the whispers prick at their minds), and enter the room with the smashed-up crates.

They start to investigate, and Aisling bends down to brush some of the debris aside. And then something behind her screams "NO!", and an unseen force picks her up and throws her across the room into the far wall!

The heroes see a spectral figure flicker into visibility, not dissimilar to the spectres they fought, but somehow more grounded and solid. "Good," mutters Clara, "should be easier to punch." She races over to it and kicks it. Zook hits it with fire and Dara whacks it with her shillelagh, and the ghost vanishes into nothing. Aisling picks herself up, and the heroes get back to the search.

They find a lot of silver and some gold, but also a matched set of gold bracelets and a couple of scrolls (which Zook eagerly takes). They also find a skeleton under some rubble, still wearing a vestment inlaid with gold. Most interesting, though, they find two statuettes of carved bone, depicting a man and a woman. The woman wears robes, but the man wears armor - the same armor they fought in the Valley. Might the woman, then, be the owner of the floating skull? Dara pockets the statuettes, Aisling takes the money for later distribution, and the heroes move on.

Well, the scout-spider moves on. The next room contains an organ - a pipe organ, but the pipes are skeletons (partially, just rib cage, spinal column, and skull). The spider gets close enough to see arcane markings above the keys, but Zook can't decipher them. "I don't read music," he mutters. 

"My skills are needed, then?" says Aisling. Next time, we'll see if she can play this organ.