Whispering Cairn, Part One: Face in the Darkness (Session Four)

Whispering Cairn, Part Two: The True Tomb
Whispering Cairn, Part Three: Tomb Stories
The True Tomb was started tonight and Tomb Stories was completed.

20th day of Readying, 595 CY (October 15th Game session)

The unlikely band of heroes awake in the morning, having had no encounters through the night. After a brief discussing on a course of action, they decide to try the underwater area they avoided yesterday.

They make their way down to the level and check the area they already cleared. All seemed to be as they left it. They then make their way water filled stairwell. They decided to send Ozzie into the water to scout it out. They tie a rope around him in case he gets into trouble so they can pull him out.

Ozzie makes his way down the stair into the water using his darkvision to see where he is going. He checks to the right and then left passages at the bottom of the stairs. He chooses to head left. Making his way around the wall he comes to an opening leading off to the left. At this point he gets slammed in the head from behind. He turns to run, using the rope to pull himself along faster. The party on top of the stairs figure he is in trouble, start pulling the rope in. He gets slammed one more time before getting up the stairs and out of the water. Whatever hit him does not follow him out of the water.

A quick debate and they decide to send Alex, Ozzie and Wilhelm in to kill whatever is down there. Wilhelm positions himself at the bottom of the stairs so that they can not be attack from behind. With Alex in the lead, carrying the everburning torch, they Ozzie and he make their way into the center of the room. Just as they are getting close to the center a swirling vortex of water engulfs the torch, quenching the magical fire, plunging them back into darkness.

The water elemental swings and strikes Alex with a smash to the head. Ozzie and the water elemental then exchange attacks, with Ozzie doing some minor damage to it. Wilhelm comes around the short wall to back them up. Alex backs off from the creature and lights up a sunrod. Ozzie and the water elemental exchange more attacks and Wilhelm comes in and strikes it with a hard blow staggering it. It makes one more attack on Ozzie and then dissipates in death.

The trio then make their way out of the water so they can catch their breath. They then head back in and make their way to the passage Ozzie had discovered before being attacked. They find a room with at the end of a short passage. It has four benches and several niches along the walls. The niches do not reveal anything important but they find a corpse on the floor. They drag it out of the room and up the stairs.

Searching the body, they find a set of masterwork leather armour and a magical shortsword. Inside a backpack, they find the missing red lantern. Mason checks the body further discovering that the some of the bones are cracked and the marrow has been sucked out of them. He is disturbed by this.

Alex convinces the rest of the group to head back into the water to explore it further. Exploring the rest of the first room they discover a passageway opposite the one where the body was, and a door across from where the stairs are. Alex also notes that in the middle of the room on the pillars is some spigots of sorts, only bigger and the ends has several small holes in it. They surmise this must be where the water is coming from. Right now there is no water coming out of the spigots.

They then head down the short passageway to a small room exactly like the one they found the body in. As Alex enters the room first a ghoul attacks him and he receives a nasty slash to the arm. He briefly feels the loose of his body control but shakes it off. Ozzie moves in and strikes it with a heavy blow and Wilhelm finishes it off with a stab of a halberd. They quickly head back out to catch their breath again then head back to the room and do a quick search of it finding some coins of various denominations and a gold ring with a personal signet on it.

They then decide they are too depleted of spells, healing in particular so they call it a day and decide to camp out back up in the sarcophagus room.

21st day of Readying, 595 CY

After an uneventful night, they party decides to try hanging the red lantern and lighting them all to see what happens. Ozzie and Alex climb up to the tunnel in the blue lantern hall. They notice right away that the face has changed. Where the mouth was is a big dark opening. Alex goes and tries to set off the trap with the bag of rocks trick they tried earlier and nothing happens. He then goes down the tunnel to the pressure plate and steps on it. Again, nothing happens. He and Ozzie make their way down to the mouth opening and look in. They see a room that is twenty feet wide and fifty feet long. The floor appears to be ten feet below them but is covered by what appears to be round, orange sized, metal balls. The ceiling is about twenty feet above them. There is a narrow, about three feet wide, beam of petrified wood heading off into the darkness. Ozzie with his darkvision sees all the way across the room. The other end of the beam is a metal door.

The rest of the group joins them at this point. They scoop up some balls using a bag with the mouth propped open and some rope. Investigating the balls they find them to be made of iron. A plan is hatched to take them out and sell them for gold.

Alex checks for traps at the entrance finds none. In a fit of paranoia checks again and still finds none. He decides to step slowly out on to the beam and see what happens. After a few steps he hears this phump noise and starts to duck but gets hit by a metal ball, similar to the ones below, nearly knocking him off the beam. The ball seemed to be launched out of some geometric designs carved in the walls on either side of the room. He runs back to the entrance, and as he does, hears a voice saying “coward, that almost got you”. The voice sounds like a young teen male.

Once back they decide on a new plan that involves tying a rope around the beam and then to Alex so that he could not be knocked off. They then decide against that and instead send Ozzie down to the floor level to walk across on the balls.

Ozzie gets lowered to the bottom and finds he sinks about a foot or so into the balls. He begins to walk across them towards the other end of the room. He gets about ten feet when a monster, which looks like a worm with four nasty tentacles and a mouth like bird beak. The mouth is lined with teeth. One of the tentacles strikes Ozzie and the fight is on.

The monster attacks Ozzie again, Analyn fire at it and misses, Deanr casts an enlarge spell on Ozzie making him quite a bit bigger and stronger. Alex jumps down to join the fight and lands poorly, falling on the balls. He gets up and readies himself to attack. Mason casts a spell and gets ready to cast another one. Wilhelm jumps down and lands poorly as well, falling and having to get back up. The child voice continues to taunt the heroes as the fight the monster, saying how they are all dead now, no one has been able to kill it.

Ozzie then attacks with rage, making a huge swing, cutting the head off monster. The boy’s voice goes silent for a moment then says “WOW, no one has done that before. Maybe you are the ones to help me”.

A ghost of a teen boy materializes next to Ozzie. He is in tattered clothes and looks like his neck is broken. Ozzie asks him, “who you”? The ghost replies he is Alastor Land, and he begins his tale of woe. How he ran away from home and got killed here. How he now knows his family is all dead and he should never had abandoned them. He is now cursed to remain here until he rights what he did wrong. He then asks the group to help them. He wants them to take his bones to his family’s farm near Diamond Lake. He says that he needs to be buried with his family, and then he can go to his eternal rest.

In return for doing this, he says that there is a latch on the other side of the metal door that will open it. He tells the party he can get through and will open the door for them. Then he will go to his final rest. The party agrees to do this.

So, Alastor shows them where his bones are and also a few more are found. They collect up some coins of various types and a fine suit of banded mail, masterwork in quality. They hide the lanterns in various places with in the Cairn, taking four of them with them. They then leave the Cairn and make their way to where Alastor said they would find the farmstead. They make sure they avoid town and people on the way.

Finding the farmstead and doing a quick look around, they find the grave plots complete with headstones. Five head stones with the names Anders Land: 531-564 CY; Bermissa Land: 534-576 CY; Coldaran Land: 550-576 CY; Gertia Land: 563-576 CY; Alastor Land: 552-. Alastor said he ran away in 565 and died that same year. The problem that the group finds is thus; all the graves have been dug up and the bones are missing. They have discovered a wrinkle in their plan, without the bones of the family; Alastor would not be buried “with” them. That was what he wanted. Now they must find the Land family bones. The question they have is; who would dig up the bones of a bunch of farmers?

Alex scouts around checking for tracks and find that there are some heading back to town and other heading to the farm house. They head to the farm house to look to see if the bones are there. Alex listens at the door and hears some low grunting and other guttural noises from with in the house. The door has already been kicked in. The band of adventurers starts to make their way cautiously into the house. Analyn is watching from a broken window. Around the corner shambles a large bear like creature with feathers and an owl appearance with what looks like some injuries already. Ozzie uses the readied action he had to hit it with his spear and then they fight begins. The Owlbear moves to attack Ozzie striking him very heavily almost taking him down, and in the process grabs him and pulls Ozzie in. Ozzie drops his spear and strikes at it with a shortsword missing. Mason and Wilhelm move to attack it, doing minor damage as Analyn shoots it with an arrow.

The Owlbear then bites Ozzie, knocking him unconscious and leaving him on deaths door. It then tosses Ozzie aside and takes a swipe at Mason, missing him. There are more attacks on the Owlbear, all which it shrugs off with minor damage. Analyn moves into the room and casts a heal spell on Ozzie, healing some damage, but Ozzie is still unconscious. The Owlbear attacks again, doing damage to Mason and then Wilhelm hits it solidly, staggering it. The Owlbear makes one last swing and then falls over dead.

Searching the room, the find a baby Owlbear and some bits and pieces of what was once a human. It looks as though the Owlbear has been feasting on human flesh. There is an intact arm there. Mason inspects the arm and finds a tattoo on it. After some debate as to the origin of the tattoo they finally remember where they had seen it before.

It is the same as the one on the forehead of Kullen, the albino half-orc thug that knocked out Alex on his first night in town. What to do next?

They gained 500 experience points for the night.
Total to date; 1500 experience points each.