Averlorn Campaign: Return to the Barrow Mound of Gravemoor

Recap from 1-21-2011

After resting up for a few days we returned to the Barrow Mound of Gravemoor in search of the loot that we knew had to be there somewhere.  The cleric memorized Locate Object and two Augury spells to aid us in our search.  We entered through the secret door in the rear of the mound and went into the hallway between the lab and the prison chamber.  We debated what to try to locate with the spell and finally decided to locate gold coins but we had to take all of the gold we had with us outside of the radius of the spell so that it wouldn't locate them.  Brummbar cast the spell and didn't locate any gold coins within the radius.  In retrospect, he should have tried to locate gems since we never found any gold here but more on that later.

Next, we went to the pit off of the laboratory where we fought the Vrock demon last session thinking that maybe there was loot stashed in the webs below, at the bottom of the pit, or in hidden nooks in the wall of the pit.  Brummbar cast Augury and Morridin's answer was a resounding "WOE".  That was good enough for Arceus who didn't want to risk life and limb climbing into a pit that smelled of reeking sulfur like the bowels of Hades itself.  The GM told us later that it would have teleported us to a rather large dungeon which was the location of the primary Temple of Orcus in this world, Rapan-Athuk (yeah, that was a major WOE) and that the Vrock was the guardian of the portal.

Next, Brummbar cast his final Auguary spell on the tunnel we found under the water of the reflecting pool and asked if it would be good or bad if Arceus searched through it for loot in the immediate future.  Morridin's answer was "WEAL" so in he went with two 50' ropes tied to him.  He went a ways and found an air pocket.  He stopped to breathe a bit and then had to untie the rope to go further.  Then he found another one and another one and eventually exited out of the back of the Barrow Mound into the morass of the Gravemoor.  So we determined that this was not a tunnel leading to the loot stash but merely a bolt hole to be used to escape the place in times of trouble.

So having searched the entire second floor thoroughly (you could even say we "Greyhawked" it) we turned our attention to the stairs leading up.  We went up the stairs which ended in a wall where we found a secret door.  We went through the secret door and into the hallway beyond where we found a door on the right side of the wall.  We opened the door and were greeted by a female Satyr that appeared to be chained to the far wall who said “Oh help me from the terrible demon in the room here with me that is holding me captive”.  As we contemplated this, a shambling monstrosity consisting of multiple different sets of bones that appeared to be stuck together with swamp muck rose from a pile of bones on the floor and started attacking the group.  Meanwhile, the Satyr starting chanting and cast hold person on the Paladin who froze.

The group started attacking the monster and hit it several times but then it attacked the frozen paladin who was helpless to do anything and killed him where he stood.  Seeing this, Cyrcla cast her web spell on the evil fey creature and the shambling monstrosity in front of us trapping them both within the sticky webs.  The group continued pounding on the bone golem thing with sword strokes and arrows while Teth-en-Aire starting shooting at the evil Satyr with his bow.  Twice, she tried to pull out a potion and twice, Teth-en-Aire rolled a 1 on damage and got an unusual result which knocked the potion out of her hand.  The group finished off both opponents and as the bone golem was dispatched several magic items fell out of its body onto the floor.  We searched the room and found that the Satyr priestess was trying to quaff a potion of gaseous form in an attempt to escape the webs before she was prevented from doing so by the Elf’s archery.

We moved the fallen Paladin to the landing on the stair case beyond the secret door and continued our search for loot.  As we went down the hallway, we noticed a secret door opening up ahead of us.  When we went to investigate, we were attacked by three wights, two to the rear of the group and one in front in the hallway that were trying to surprise us.  Since we were not surprised, Brummbar pulled out his holy symbol and managed to turn the two in the rear while Lucias slew the one to the front.  One of the fleeing wights was killed as it tried to escape and the other fled away down the hallway.

We opened the secret door and found the treasure room that we had been seeking!  There was no gold but some platinum and other coins and there was quite a haul of gems and jewelry plus a few magic items.  So we gathered up the loot and headed back to the stairs to retrieve the fallen paladin and head back to town.  We made it back to town through the moors and pondered what to do about Lykaos.  We reasoned that his order would have no problem raising him from the dead but because we couldn’t get him back to a larger city outside of the trench in less than a couple of weeks (either by carrying him ourselves or waiting two weeks for the returning air ship) we were in a bit of a bind.  The only way to raise him would be to use the much higher level resurrection spell which can take place far longer after a character’s death but requires a priest of very high level to perform.

We did have the evil artifact that had the ability to raise a character from the dead once, since it was used recently to raise an army of the dead from a battlefield, but it had to be used within the next day or so or the power would be lost.  In addition, Brummbar thought that the Paladin would not be happy at all about being raised from the dead by an evil artifact of the demon prince Orcus which had recently been used to raise 300 zombies from a battlefield giving it the ability to raise him.

The group decided that he had no choice in the matter (since he was dead) and since we had few other options except maybe for leaving him dead for a while (or forever) that we would go ahead and use its powers.  We also reasoned that using an evil artifact for good purposes wasn’t such a bad thing.  So Arcues used the power of the Midnight Opal to raise the fallen paladin Lykaos.  He wasn’t happy about it at all when he found out what was done but there wasn’t much he could do about it at that point.  He said he heard the voice of Athena when he was raised who said that he wouldn’t be allowed into Elysium for this but we weren’t exactly sure what that meant.  He was still a Paladin and he was still alive so that’s all that really mattered for the present.

So once we were ready to go, we headed off overland back to Limus Town.  We had a few wilderness random encounters to deal with and made it about two thirds of the way back but had to end the session there.

TO BE CONTINUED...