Continuing the 15th of Summerbloom

The three of us are gathered around the monastery

• Weather is cool and foggy… visibility of about a mile to a mile and a half
• Raylek notices someone approaching
  • Tall, thin, brown beard, wearing a cloak, appears to be carrying a blade and bow
  • Waves at Raylek, who informs John
  • John doesn’t recognize him, so we draw weapons and approach the interloper
    Koreloff Sagitta greets John, seems to know him
• John now remembers him as an occasional visitor to Ametes’ Hope, a trapper or something
• John asks why he’s here
• Koreloff says that he was sent by “the crooked man”
• Was asked to provide “an update” and assist with the monastery quest
  • Koreloff arrived earlier (about a month ago) and saw 3 men arrive at monastery a few weeks prior
    • They wrote some stuff on paper
    • Shortly thereafter one man ran off
  • Last night, 4 men and a woman arrived on horseback
  • He later saw some strange flashes of lights
  • The new visitors appear to be aggressive and “protective”
• John mentions Koogel’s strange dreams
  • Koogel mentions some brief highlights of his dreams
    The four of us return to the monastery
• Near the courtyard entrance, we see hoof prints in the mud and the rusted remains of a gate inside
• This used to be a monastery for the war god, now abandoned since shortly after the fall of the gods
• Koreloff climbs the wall to view the guard, doesn’t recognize the guard
  • Guard wearing dark, unadorned tabard, helmet
  • Guard is half-heartedly keeping watch, but more interested in activities down the stairs
    John decides that we’re going to try to subdue the guard
• Raylek grabs a snake and gets in place by horses, others get in place
• Raylek throws the snake on a horse, the horses become agitated and stomp the snake
  • The guard yells at the horses, but isn’t too concerned
• Raylek attempts a coyote bark, rather poorly
  • Guard calls down stairs that he’s going to check something out, heads toward horses “with a purpose”
  • John hits guard with a crossbow, Raylek cuts him with a shortsword, the guard takes a beating from all
  • John tells him to surrender and drop his weapon
• We notice skeletons rising from piles of rubble on the ground, two have shortswords
  • Koreloff gets a fantastic whiff while attempting to hit one of the skeletons
  • Arrows don’t seem effective, especially when they’re shot this poorly
• Koogel and Koreloff see two figures coming up the stairs slowly
  • Koreloff recognizes them as two of the guys that never left the monastery, but they appear to be undead now
  • A woman between the zombies seems to be unfazed by all the undead
    • Calls to Koogel: “That’s my horse, if you don’t mind.”
• Two skeletons flank the battered guard and attack Raylek
• Woman throws bluish-black energy toward Koogel, but it flashes past him as it misses
  • John believes the woman is using necromancy magic
• Near John, a small ball of blackish fire expands into a vaguely humanoid fire-like creature
  • John commands the elemental to attack those who are attacking John
• The battered guard is heading toward the horses
• As Koogel is being attacked, he notices three more guards rising from the stairs
  • The woman has a large, smokey-grey gemstone that she’s using to cast spells
  • She casts a small, darkish-blue sphere that expands to about 5 feet as it flies over his head
  • She commands the guards to “just kill him!”
• Raylek decides to runs after the guard, and switches from shortsword to bow
  • The black elemental has obliterated the skeleton by John and attacked one that was after Raylek
  • Koogel retreats from his situation and attempts to tackle the running guard
    • Koogel stumbles and falls prone several feet from the guard
• The woman attacks Koogel again, and misses again
  • She calls to her group, “Let’s just get out of here.”
• Raylek takes out the guard leading the horses to the woman
  • The other guards bring one horse to her, help her mount
  • She spurs the horse and quickly retreats toward a breach in the wall
  • Raylek notices that the crystal she has looks very similar to a reddish crystal he’s seen previously
• Battle continues… we aren’t showing all that well
  • Two guards are mounted and retreating after the bitch
  • Koogel is on horseback chasing after the bitch
• Koreloff gets a good hit on the last mounted guard, prevents him from retreating immediately
  • After taking some damage, the guard spurs his horse and takes off
• Eventually, we take out the last of the skeletons and zombies
  • Koogel returns about the time that we wrap up the last of the bad guys
    • Claims that they were heading north
      We gather up the “bodies”
• Koogel retrieves the guard from the other side of the river
• Raylek binds the two guards
  We begin interrogating a guard (Lewin) that John revived
• “”/campaigns/laslos-land-of-the-dead-gods/characters/lady-death-artissa" class=“wiki-content-link”>Lady Artissa said we had to come here to get something."
  • None of us know of Lady Artissa
• Claims that she got the artifact from the tombs
  • A “crystal globe,” which was the smokey crystal she was using against us
• Guard was working for Lord Ulrich, who has a large horde heading this way
  • Not sure where Lord Ulrich is from
  • Claims that Lord Ulrich is coming here to conquer this land
  • Supposedly he is currently in the vicinity of Boneburn Desert (about 500 miles away)
    • Koreloff claims there is only one pass through desert, unless they go south
• Claims that Artissa was only interested in this single item in the area
• Artissa performed some magic to prevent the skeletons that arose from attacking her party
• They went down to the bottom of the stairs and didn’t search anywhere else
  • She seemed to know exactly where to go
    We search the bodies
• Zombies have money purses
  • 5 silver, 23 copper
• Guards have
  • 35 silver total
  • 2 longswords
• About 3 weeks worth of rations on each of the two horses
  • Also 2 bed rolls total
    We head toward the tomb
• We take the guards with and try to find a room in which to secure them
• Koreloff tracks where Artissa and her crew went
• At the bottom, we find an alcove with a small platform that has a small circular void in the dust
• Off of the landing is a corridor on either side
  • Corridor on right has several hallways coming off
    • One has room containing numerous sarcophagi / crypts
      • We take an ornamental sword that we find
  • Both corridors have similar rooms and layout
    • Most rooms contain only ancient sarcophagi
    • We find chainmail in excellent condition, unlike the rest of the rotted equipment
    • We also find a ring in remarkable shape, probably magic, has rune for “armor” on it
      We depart for Amete’s Hope
• The next couple of days are foggy, but relatively warm and uneventful

We arrive at Ametes’ Hope — Evening of the 17th of Summerbloom

We go to sell our booty

• We get 3 silver, 50 copper for the ornamental sword
• Jerinoo, the blacksmith, evaluates our swords
  • 6 silver for both longswords and the crappy shortsword
  • 7 silver for the chainmail
  • Raylek negotiates to have Jerinoo’s apprentice work through the night to clean up his “new” shortsword by morning
• We separate, plan to start out for the Earth Temple tomorrow
  Raylek heads back to Paradise Inn
• Greets everyone, tells Seamus that he’ll be heading out again the next day
  John heads to Spirits
• Passes along info about the quest, Lord Ulrich and Lady Artissa
• Stanzi mentions that Lord Ulrich sounds familiar
  • He’s heard rumors that Ulrich may cause us trouble, may have other motives
• Stanzi says there seems to be a lot of activity around locations that have magic items, probably what Ulrich’s people are seeking
  Koreloff seeks out Klintos
• Explains the adventure, asks about Artissa
• Klintos says that things are going to heat up soon
• Plan was to help collect some of these artifacts in order to support the cause
  Raylek buys himself a horse, saddle and tack, to pick up in the morning

Planning to head out to the Earth Temple the following day