Skeleton Smackdown

Second Session - March 24, 2013

The party heads back to Ruhd to recover from the battle with the gargoyles. As night falls, the sky to the north is glowing red (in the direction of the temple... that we never reached). A terrible storm is seen to be brewing to the northwest and heading our way. Tunnely looks to the sky and says, "Yep. This is how it all went down before."

Preparing for an evening of undead goodliness, the party builds a stout fire in the cooking pit of the abandoned house in which we are staying for the night. We set up patrols in shifts; Solara does the same with her men.

Near sundown, the storm hits, and it's a doozy. In the middle of the night, Swifty takes his shift on watch duty, patrolling the perimeter of the house. Lightning flashes are common enough to provide sporadic views of the fields surrounding the house. Midway through Swifty's shift, he spots a humanoid figure standing with arms outstretched by the well, 50 feet behind the house. A lightning bolt strikes the staff that is being held by the person by the well, who then strikes the ground with the staff. A dull gray-blue light is seen to emit from the end of the staff and spread across and into the ground in all directions.

Swifty yells out, "We've got a wizard by the well." The rest of the party rises from sleep, along with Solara's men. Tunnely comes running out of the house, sword and shield in hand, and yells, "They're here!" He rushes the figure by the well. Swifty runs to the well and notices that the figure is a tall emaciated human. He has all the earmarks of a necromancer. Tunnely bowls into him and melee begins. The necromancer casts Fear; Swifty and Scar wet themselves and start running away.

About this time, hundreds (not making this up here) of skeletons begin to rise up out of the ground in a 100-foot radius surrounding the necromancer. Baldemar and Jax go back-to-back outside the house, joining Solara and the rest of her men at the house, who have formed a phalanx just outside the front door.

After recovering from the fear spell, Swifty turns back to head back to the necromancer; Scar runs to the stables along with Leif to help out Solara's men there.

There are only five of Solara's men left standing in the stables by the time Leif and Scar arrive. Scar decides that the best plan of action is to mount a (spooked) horse. After fitzle-futzing around with a horse for a few melee rounds, he decides to get back onto the ground and help out Solara's men who are knee-deep in kimchee at this time, having their hands full with skeletons.

Swifty clears a path back to the necromancer, turning skeletons every round along the way. Tunnely and the necromancer duke it out one-on-one. Tunnely holds his own pretty well for a halfling. Leif, back at the stables, noticed that the troops stationed there were slow to rise and refused to leave the stable to help out with the main fighting, claiming that they are going to set up and hold their defensive in the stable.

After several rounds of fighting, the battle starts to swing in the favor of the party. At this time, the necromancer puts a big hurt on Tunnely, knocking him down. He has also summoned a dust-devil by this time, which doesn't help matters. After Tunnely slowly regains his feet, the necromancer backs away from the fight, heading north into the forest. The skeletons that are still intact also break off from the fight at this time and slowly make their way north as well.

The party decides to let the necromancer and the skeletons go, and regroup to lick our wounds. It turns out that the town of Ruhd is built on top of where a great battle was once fought. This would explain the plethora of skeletons in the area, ripe for being animated. The killed skeletons all bear the Chessarian crest, which is one of the two armies involved in the big battle.

After the excitement dies down, Leif pulls Solara aside and informs her that Guydean (her second in command) dropped the ball concerning how he handled his men in the stables. We rifle through the destroyed skeletons and find a whopping 9 silver pieces and 36 copper pieces.

Swifty recalls that the necromancer had a skull (human-sized) mounted to his staff. The party also recalls that the pile of villager bodies found two days prior were all beheaded. Given the casting ritual that the necromancer used to raise the dead, we deduce that he requires human skulls to cast the mass raise dead spell.

Thinking that we need to find a way to consecrate the ground in this village in order to thwart future dead raisings, Jax climbs down the well to see what it looks like down there (maybe we could bless a large quantity of ground water). It turns out that the well opens up onto a subterranean river in a natural underground cave. However, the cave doesn't lead anywhere.