D&D: The Fall of Madoc's Keep

At last, our heroes escape from the lair of the undead! 

Now, what's the quickest way home? Back through the cave?

Here's last time.

Our aforementioned heroes have camped for the night(?) in the Bone Organ room (that sounds worse than it is, maybe). After they've rested, they talked through their options. 

They know the room with the marshy pools of corpses on chains has a couple of exits that lead deeper into the keep, but they also know there's a hallway off the junkpile room that probably leads closer to the beginning. There was a room with three ghosts arguing that they never entered (because at the time they didn't feel like fighting more ghosts). 

After talking it over, Zook uses his augury spell to see what happens if they go back rather than deeper. He sees flickering images in his keek-stane, but hears voices talking over each other. He realizes that if he focuses, though, there's one voice that becomes clearer and he figures that voice might have something important to say. 

That's good enough for the party - they head south, through the junkpile, and back west into the ghost room.

The three ghosts - Conor, Finn, and Sean - are arguing endlessly. Conor insists that Finn killed him with an ax, and so he didn't see what happened to Sean. Finn says he killed Conor with a sword in self-defense, because Conor had just killed Sean with an ax, but he has no idea how Conor died. And Sean insists that the other two ganged up on him and beat him to death with clubs.

The ghosts continually argue these three mutually exclusive points of view, as they clearly have been for years ("I've no language left to say it!" says Conor in exasperation at one point). But the characters talk them through it and Aisling eventually gets them to consider that maybe there was an outside cause of their deaths. They remember that they died near a pub in Cian. Clara realizes that the clothes they're wearing (spectrally speaking) are well-made, but not the kinds of fashion she saw in Cian. Aisling asks who the current Monarch is; they think it's King Auric. Aisling realizes that they died close to 40 years ago.

When she points that out, the scales start to fall away. The ghosts remember that the adventurers killed them - not literally them, but people like them. Why? "Well, it's a bit embarrassing," says Finn. "We were what you'd call scoundrels." "Highwaymen." "Bandits." 

Zook notes that it's far too late to scold them for their activities in life. The ghosts remember that they died, and Madoc brought them here and took out their spines to make his bone organ. The heroes ask if taking that thing apart would make it easier for them to pass on, but none of them much care; they aren't attached to their spines anymore. They start to fade away. The adventurers have time to ask about Madoc, and they tell them that Madoc dwells in the bottom of the keep, and he has some kind of invisible servitor bodyguard working for him (which they've never see, because...obviously). Finn is the last one to fade, and before he does, he tells them that Madoc sometimes talks to someone he calls "the Lord of the Dead."

Dara, the closest thing to a religious expert the party has, thinks about this. There's not a specific deity of death in Abhaile; the people don't really worship gods directly very much, and to the extent they talk to "Death" it tends to be in a defiant "Not today!" kind of way. Might he be referring to Orcus? Possible, though he's not referred to by that title in the tablet they found. Curious.

There's one more door off this room that they haven't been through. It's locked with an intricate mechanism, but Aisling picks it easily. She opens the door - and a spectral woman wails at the heroes!

The wail chills them all to the core, and Zook actually collapses, already near death! Dara calls down a moonbeam to burn it, while Clara punches the ghost, splattering ectoplasm. Aisling heals Zook a bit to let him get up, so he can throw firebolts at the thing. It claws at Clara's brains, chilling and nearly deafening her, but between the four of them they manage to melt it away to nothing pretty quickly.

In the corner of the room, they find a stone chair, upon which is a skeleton (Dara guesses it to be an elf's). In the dust around it, she finds a set of beautiful silver combs. Dara pockets them; with a bit of cleaning they'll look nice in her hair. The heroes rest and recuperate, and then descend to face Madoc.

They enter the deepest room, a large and echoing chamber. At the end of it, they see the man himself, a decaying corpse sitting on a stone throne, still wearing rusted chainmail and a helmet. He looks up at them with a sneer of hatred.

"Why," asks Zook, "are you still here? What are you-"

"Cian," he spits. "You things from Cian. Crude and proud creatures baying."

Zook tries to protest, or parlay, but Madoc waves his hand. "Circos, kill them."

Something punches Clara and Dara in the head, rattling them both. But Dara was prepared for this - she casts faerie fire, illuminating a creature with a strong, humanoid torso, but two sets of legs coming from its waist. Aisling banes it, and Clara goes to work on its kidneys. Zook hurls magic missiles and firebolts, and the creature glances at Madoc and says something in a language none of the characters have heard. 

Madoc responds "oh, you're doing fine!" and the invisible stalker snarls and continues the fight. Madoc does, at one point, raise a hand to cast a spell at Dara, but Zook counters it, and Aisling rebukes him "Performance issues, eh?"

The stalker falls, disappearing to gusts with a sigh of relief ("you're welcome!" calls Clara). Madoc descends from his throne, walks through the cloud of daggers and moonbeam waiting for him, and shushes the heroes. 

Everything goes silent. Zook, unable to cast under such conditions, scampers forward and puts a crossbow bolt in Madoc's throat. This breaks his concentration and the silence falls, and his lips curl back in hatred. He casts another spell, one Zook has never seen, and wisps of spectral energy rise from the ground, surrounding Madoc and tearing at the heroes' flesh.

Clara beats him with her monkly fists, and Dara continually moves the moonbeam, but Madoc keeps his head and simply moves forward. He raises his hands and bashes Clara on the head, dropping her, and his spirit guardians take Aisling down. Zook, likewise, is nearly gone, but Dara grabs him and yanks him back out of the effect...but Madoc walks forward and the attack continues.

Zook realizes that if he and his compatriots stay in this death zone, they'll all be dead quickly. He takes a calculated risk - he throws a fireball. It explodes behind Madoc, catching him, Aisling, and Clara in the blast, but only just. It's enough.

The driftglobe that was illuminating the room falls, and everything plunges into darkness. Dara casts spells and awakens her friends, and Aisling reactivates the light. Madoc's charred body lies on the floor, but the heroes, having seen it start to regenerate during the fight, wonder if they need to do anything else. 

Aisling relates tales of revenants, people who died with such hate in their hearts that they carried revenge back to the land of the living. But a true revenant only has a year from death to exact that revenge...a year, Clara and Zook point out, that was extended eternally by Madoc's contract with Orcus. Dara says that they need to drag him out of the keep, and they do, hauling his body up through the other rooms, using a spell on a scroll Zook found to portal their way past the floating whisper-skulls, and out into the valley.

The instant Madoc's body clears the threshold of the keep, it disintegrates. The valley seems somehow...fresher, more alive, and a pleasant breeze blows. 

The heroes, chuffed, return to Madoc's room and find his treasures, probably harvested from other adventures. Money and jewelry, sure, but also a small statuette of a humanoid dragon sort of creature? Zook suspects it might be a demon, but evil monsters aren't usually depicted in proportion or in well-made armor. Also, what the hell is this thing made of? Dara thinks it feels like bone or antler, but it's too thick and too white.

They also find a cloth sack, which Zook pegs as magical and Aisling identifies as a bag of holding (which is good, because gold is heavy; no word on whether it contains wooden demon-dog statues). They also find one more exit, that they hadn't noticed before... 

The exit leads to a small alcove, colder than the rest of the keep. They feel a crisp breeze from a tunnel, and Clara says that it smells like mountain air, which of course isn't something you tend to smell in caverns. Zook works a quick augury and confirms that following this tunnel would be weal (not woe), so, after a quick rest, they continue on, into the unknown by away from Dead Valley.