Friday, January 06, 2006

Elient 26 - Wolf Hills, Treasure Caves, and Much Undead

In the morning I could tell that Galton was excited that the Band of the Hand actually met with him. He went on and on about how others have gone out into the Wolf Hills and not come back. It was all a little boring. After all, had not the Band of the Hand faced down the evil druid? Granted, we lost Urky and didn't kill the druid, but we survived a nasty ambush and managed to survive. I was not too concerned about a few undead wolves.

The rolling forest around Fornlar quickly gave way to more pronounced tree-covered hills as we headed north down an old, battered brick road. Eventually the bricks became buried by the
overgrowth. At this point Christina made another comment about the lack of game animals and had an uneasy feeling about the environment. I am really glad she is with us. I apparently cannot tell the difference between north and south, and our urban ranger is all but useless in the wild, but Christina set us straight on a path to the caves. Could it be that she had grown even more beautiful in the years we have been apart? Am I beginning to feel something more for my childhood friend?

After about an hour of traveling into the woods down the path (although not much of a path at all), we were set upon by a group of three ghoul like wolves. Christina quickly prayed to Tyr and was able to cause two of the wolves to turn tail and flee. She really has become a remarkable woman. The remainder of the party moved into action to kill the third wolf. I bagged another platinum collar and asked Aramil to cast read magic - revealing the runes are from a discharged animate dead spell.

About noontime we came to a spot on the map where we found ourselves on wooded hillside overlooking a set of three smaller hills topographically lower than the surrounding area which looked to match up with the map. Going to the hill coordinating with point B on Galton's map the band quickly found ourselves in a vast cave with a three foot stream running along the
southern portion. The cave was wet and fungus filled with little critters running around the floor. Stalagmites and stalactites were numerous throughout with several connecting into column formations.

Christina thought she saw some shadows behind one and being a bit cautious took a good look at the others and whispered to the party that she thought there were shadowy figures behind three of the larger column formations. I felt that they were probably small, terrified Kobolds or perhaps Goblins, so I strode forward and asked them in common to come out. That action quickly brought out three pairs of grey, fleshy, humanoid figures with mottled skin and long nailed claws.

Once again Christina, resplendent in Tyr's glory, prayed for and received the power of her deity to turn the undead creatures into the far corners of the cavern - there we slew the foul creatures. In one corner of the cave from where the stream emerged Talin noted that there looked to be addition caverns for exploration upstream.

For how, however, we moved into the northeast corridor of the cavern and were greeted with two rooms - one to the north-east which looked to have broken chairs and tables and one to the south-east which had four slabs with what looked like bodies.

I decided to move into the south-east room where the four 8'x3' slabs were located. On
each slab was a moldering body with worms crawling from the eye sockets and skin. Each appeared to have sliced marks across their bodies. Also, each body was wearing a tattered black robe with necromantic symbols on it. I prayed to my god and then threw a torch on one of the bodies expecting it to burn. Instead the corpse rose from the slab, and in a moment of weakness, frightened me so much that I found myself fleeing the cave. It slammed into Christina, and she also fled. The only two not scared were Beldak and Talin. In the ensuing battle, Beldak was slammed and then about choked into his deathbed by the living corpse. However Talin was able to fend off the creature. Once we returned, I decided that since Christina seamed to be in good favor with Tyr that she should try to turn the remaining undead creatures.

Again she was blessed and immediately the remaining creatures rose from their slabs and cowered in the corners where they were quickly dispatched. A quick search of the
room found nothing more.

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