Episode 25: Of crypts and darkness

When last we left this crew had just gained a new member and successfully defended a tower while high level casters performed an important magic ritual at the top of the tower. As a reminder this crew consists of:

Unit 2408, the Warforged (humanoid living construct) Barbarian

Luthis, the Kenku (humanoid raven who can not fly) Blood Hunter

Dancing Wind, a Tabaxi (humanoid cat) Wizard

Morlech, a Human Druid with a penchant for fire

Evangeline, the Tiefling Paladin of Tyr

After the fight at the tower the party spent a few minutes on the bottom floor catching their breath, drinking water, and the like. Rubis joins us for a bit, and then states it's time for us to move to one of the encampments for our next assignment. Definitely a no rest for the weary sort of day.

Finding our way to the encampment was fairly easy and we reported in to the commander organizing the next phase of attack. The plan is to take back the grand cathedral. They have a main attack force to deal with the cathedral itself and to get Rubis and several high level adventurers up to the top to deal with the lich. Evangeline growls. She really wants to take on that evil lich, but she knows that our party isn't nearly ready to take on something so foul. Everyone tells her no, do not take on the lich. She just nods.

Our task is to report to one of the local nobles and go with him to secure the mausoleum beneath the grand cathedral. So we find him and he introduces himself as Sir Esteval. Everyone else goes with the nice to meet you pleasantries. Evangeline just gives him the warrior assessment stare. She's not impressed.

Him and two of his guards then lead us to behind the main force. There is, of course, a lot of undead on the other side of the Cathedral gates but once our forces break through we make quick work of the immediate threat around the gate. Some troops stay in the courtyard as we make an arrow for the Cathedral proper, making quick entry to the lobby.

At this point Sir Esteval and his two sidekicks indicate stairs going down to the mausoleum. Evangeline growls again, but Rubis shoos us off to do our part of this task. She does go, though she really wants to go after that lich.

Going down the stairs we find a small chapel that's been trashed, but no occupants. Inspecting the room further we do not find much of interest aside from a set of stairs further down. After a bit more investigation, Luthis does find a hidden room behind a giant tapestry. Inside this room it is clean, the enemy clearly hadn't found it yet. There was one coffin inside and some weapons against the wall. Evangeline very vocally said we shouldn't disturb this tomb, so Luthis and Dancing Wind just did a quick inspection then we shut the door so the enemy couldn't find this set of remains.

Sir Esteval orders his guards to block the stairs to the Cathedral lobby while the rest of the party ventures further into this area.

At the bottom of this second set of stairs we find the Cathedral's main mausoleum. It is large, it is dark - far darker than it should be, and it's clearly been desecrated. So Luthis scoots along the wall to get a better vantage point while the rest of us go straight into the middle of things.

There is, clearly, undead going on in here but also something else is afoot as it is far darker than it should be. In fact, past a certain point it's so dark that those even those with dark vision can not see. Which is quite alarming really. But there's also a low taunting voice coming out of the darkness, and we're sure it's a necromancer.

In an attempt to combat the unnatural darkness, Evangeline lights her hammer as she wades in to do her part of dealing with the zombies. Unit 2408 is also quite effective in this battle, but the chaos the necromancer keeps dealing is quite frustrating. He likes to pop out of the darkness and cast spells then hide again. Thankfully Luthis does manage to get some of his deadly arrows into the necromancer, though clearly not enough with the havoc he's causing.

Sir Esteval proved he is a decent fighter in this fight, as he stepped up and defended Dancing Wind when a zombie got in his face. Dancing Wind can do many things, melee is not one of them.

But we were successful against the zombies, so Unit 2408 and Evangeline proceed to blindly plow our way into the darkness. And while she didn't do well, Unit 2408 manages to stumble upon an odd large crystal in the darkness and proceeds to smash it a lot as he hears footsteps scampering off in the distance.

Luckily for us, the crystal was the source of darkness so once it was smashed the unnatural darkness went away. Unluckily for us, the receding footsteps was the necromancer.

And that's where we'll leave this one!