"We're learning a lot about the undead," one of our heroes noted in last night's game.
Our heroes continue their trek through the Dead Valley. They wake up after an uneventful, if smelly, night in the Ettin Love Nest, put themselves together, and soldier on (Aisling stops to cast Prestidigitation a couple of times to mitigate the smells on them).
They pass by where they fought the empty armor and the glowing skull, and find that while the armor is still there, the skull fragments are not. Clara examines the armor and figures that it must be pretty expensive - it's heavy plate, inlaid with red embellishments. Whoever made it was not only a skilled smith but an artist as well. They know that the skull called the armor-creature "Gárbhan", so figuring maybe they could determine who that is at some point, they divide up the armor pieces and take it along. Zook takes the helm, Aisling takes the chest pieces, Clara takes the legs, and Dara takes the arms.
They press on, and in the distance they see a group of very tall people. No, as they get closer, the people aren't especially tall, they're just standing on a long, flat chunk of rock (think "butte" if it was only 10 feet off the ground). The figures are ashen grey and standing stock-still.
This spooks them - everything they've seen here has been dead, hostile, or both, so there's no reason to assume this is a meditation circle. They quickly discuss what to do, and Zook is very much in favor of throwing a fireball into their midst and letting the chips fall as they may. But while they discuss it, a familiar, cackling voice arises from the canyon wall.
"Oh, this is boring!" shrieks the skull. "HEY! WAKE UP!" The grey figures rise up to their full heights and turn towards the heroes, and Zook hurls his fireball.
The blast explodes in the midst of the creatures, burning them and driving their stench out with delightful notes of burnt hair. It doesn't kill them, however. Dara calls down a moonbeam and fries a couple of them, and Clara sprints to the skull, leaps up, and punches it, cracking it. Aisling beats on her drum and throws bane spells at a few of the monsters (and the skull), but the skull responds with fire.
Specifically, it spits a green fireball at the heroes. Clara is safely out of the way, and Aisling is quick-footed enough to catch only the edge of it, but Zook and Dara and felled immediately. The creatures charge into battle, but most of them were far enough away that they can't reach the heroes. A couple of them get to Clara, however, and Clara notes that one of them is bigger and nastier than the others...and its stench is burning her nostrils.
However, Clara is a halfling, and halflings can power through poison stench. She leaps up and roundhouse-kicks the biggest one, breaking its neck. Aisling beats her drum and wakes up Zook, and then throws a hypnotic spell at the monsters, which...doesn't do anything except get their attention on her.
The skull laughs and spits magic missiles at her, and the creatures attack. One of them claws Clara and she feels her muscles try to lock up, but she powers through. A few of them bite and snap at Aisling, but only one gains purchase. A couple of them claw at Zook, but he quickly casts a shield spell and they harmlessly gnash against it. Dara, however, is still down, and so one of them pounces on her and starts gnawing. She won't last long this way!
Zook downs a healing potion and casts a pool of grease under the feet of the ghouls (that's what they are, OK, they're ghouls) attacking Clara. They slip and land on their butts, and Clara stomps their heads into mush! Aisling, figuring when all else fails, use magic daggers, puts up a cloud of said daggers and shreds a couple of them, and calls a healing word over her shoulder to Dara. The skull laughs and spits fire at Clara, and the ghouls continue their assault, this time dropping Aisling.
Dara gets up and turns herself into a crocodile, and grabs a ghoul in her mouth (the taste is awful, but the ghoul yelps in pain). Other ghouls continue to attack, and Clara stomps another one's head to paste. Aisling pulls herself up, but the skull casts a magic missile at her and drops her again. One of the ghouls claws Zook and he collapses, his muscles seizing up. He manages to stand back up again, though, and throws scorching rays at them, while Dara snaps at one in croc-form.
Clara runs to the main melee and finishes off the ghouls attacking Aisling's prone form and trying to chew croco-Dara, and Dara, realizing she has no enemies in reach, changes back to her elf-form. The skull, now the only enemy present, cackles maniacally, and Clara runs at it, leaps up, and delivers two decisive punches, shattering it.
And now it's a pile of bone fragments...again. Zook gathers them up, grinds them in a pestle, mixes them with water in a bottle, and puts it in his bag. That oughta do it.
The heroes move on a bit, and then rest. But as they are rising from their rest, Zook feels the bottle in his pack start shaking. He looks, and the bone powder is reforming! He smashes the bottle and stomps the bones back to powder, and then splits it up, buries it, and Aisling says mean things over the mounds. He keeps one bone fragment on him, just to make sure that it can't reform. That oughta do it!
Moving along, the heroes reach a point where the canyon walls get narrow. In a very small passageway, they start to smell something foul.
Most things here smell foul, actually, but they've started to pick up the nuances. There's the biological, sweat-and-other-fluids stink of the Ettin Cave, the chemical putrescence of the ghouls, but this just smells like old blood. They notice that the ground slopes away into a pit along the side of the canyon, and at the bottom, coagulated blood, flesh, tissue. Aisling guesses this is some kind of disposal pit for undead creatures that have been hacked or decayed beyond usefulness, but wonders if it might serve as a regeneration or spawning pit. Either way, they aren't interested in leaving it as is.
Zook wonders if it might burn, and hurls a firebolt into it. He gets a response - a head bobs to the surface, but then they realize it's attached to shoulders, and then a torso, and finally a very large humanoid body, stitched together with thick black thread, surges up out of the blood pit!
It charges up the embankment at them, and Zook immediately recognizes it as a flesh golem - dead meat animated by evil magic. "Use magic!" he yells, knowing that conventional attacks won't hurt it, and throws magic missiles at it. This works - the missiles leave wounds in muscle and flesh, and it howls in pain. Following his lead, Dara calls down a lightning bolt...and the heroes watch in horror as the wounds heal.
Clara realizes that unfortunately, as mighty as her punches are they aren't going to do much here. Aisling casts a cloud of daggers around the monster and the daggers cut its flesh, so that works. The golem reaches them and slams its massive fists down against Dara and Clara, and Zook throws more missiles at it. It moves out of the cloud, and Aisling yells at Clara to knock it back in. She wall-runs around the others and kicks it, but it's too sturdy and doesn't stumble.
Dara calls down a moonbeam, and that works, too; it sizzles the creature's flesh. But it keeps lashing out - but cutting words from Aisling ("Yer just a pile o' flesh!") make it miss. Clara grits her teeth and kicks it again, knocking it down and into the daggers, and Dara shifts the moonbeam.
But still the golem attacks! It punches Aisling and then grabs her, trying to drag her back into the pit. Dara drops the moonbeam, not wanting Aisling to get burned, but Zook throws caution to the wind and throws scorching rays at the monster.
It lets Aisling go and howls! The fire melts the stitches holding it together, and it collapses into parts, its head rolling down the hill back to the pit.
The heroes fall back, not wanting to navigate the narrow pass in their state. As they rest, the bone fragment Zook was carrying starts to hum, limned with green fire, and then flies off into the distance. Dara figures that some kind of magic to break the curse animating this thing is going to be necessary - but do the heroes know that kind of magic?
In the distance, they hear a familiar cackle. The skull isn't done with them yet.
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