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gaeleth:campaigns:campaign_ix:ix-4-66

Campaign IX, Chapter 4, Session 66

Title: The Weavies' Lich

Characters: Greff, Felix, Corrin

Date: Late Davor, 1332 Avard

Synopsis: Under the home of the Weavies, the team finds a lich under water.

Story

Morning of the 22nd of Davor, 1332 Avard.

In a chamber under the Weavies' abandoned home, Felix pressed the team to investigate an undead-infested ruin that let under water. Felix had an arcane spell that would allow all of the team members to breathe underwater, and after ten minutes of preparation, they were ready.

Greff and Greff alone was affected differently by the spell, perhaps due to the presence of so much nearby transmutation magic. He grew gills, where the rest of them had no visible change.

Despite the lack of effect on the others, Felix assured them that the spell had taken hold. Greff, despite having gills, was unwilling to enter the murky waters leading down.

Sir William de Grace bull dogged his way down the steps, first, trusting in Felix. Sir William took a deep breath, and then plunged under the dark waters, forcing mudding liquid into his lungs, trusting in Theren to heal him if things went horribly wrong. Moments later, he resurfaced, spitting out muddy water and waving for them to follow him.

Kralik and Johr together swept up behind Greff and bore him and themselves down into the murky waters. Theren and Corrin followed with plenty of light, followed by Felix.

At the bottom of the stairs, there were centuries of light mud that stirred up with every step. It was easier for those without armor to swim rather than walk, and their movements, too, stirred up the light muck. There was almost a foot of slime at the bottom, and the light penetrated bare yards around them.

There was a bricked chamber, with large flagstones under the muck. Corrin quickly determined that one of the flagstones had been a trap, years before, but the muck had gummed up the mechanism rather effectively.

There was an eerie blue sparkling from something ahead of them in the chamber, and the group spread out, seeking to investigate the room – and realizing that they had trouble communicating, or hearing one another with any clarity.

Corrin, light as she was and in light armor, swam upwards towards the blue-scintillated light. There was an air pocket in the top few feet of the twenty foot chamber. The friezes around the edges of the wall were horrid – scenes of torture, intestines being pulled out through navels, flesh being eaten alive, and other terrible visages.

Corrin's attention, however, was on the chandelier that was throwing everyone's light around the room. The chandelier was made of three inch long pieces of sapphire – fully a hundred of them, each nearly transparent in its middle and a rich blue along its edge. The halfling checked for traps, and could only find a strange hole in the ceiling, several inches wide. Whatever the hole was supposed to do, its mechanism was likely long since corroded, and within an eyeblink, the chandelier was inside her bottomless bag.

Sir William was investigating the remains of corpse along one wall, mud and muck hiding many of its features. Kralik and Johr kept to the middle, somewhat beneath Corrin, trying to take in everything. Theren moved off to one side to investigate a large object on the floor made of stone. Felix and Greff held back a bit, trying to get a feel for the situation.

Visibility was terrible, despite the lights from multiple sources. Sounds were muffled and distorted, making the place even more eerie and creepy than it should have been. And then there was an indistinct grunt from one or another members of the party. There followed a sound like stone grinding on stone. Another grunt, and another grinding of stone. Another grunt, and then a thud, carried easily in the water, the shockwave of the sound visible amongst the swirling lights as everyone tried to discern the source.

And suddenly there was danger. Theren had recognized the stone as a sarcophagus. As a devoted antagonist of the undead, a sealed sarcophagus older than than the time of Demik, Theren knew there had to be an unholy monster within the sarcophagus either strong enough to ignore the call of the Book of the Dead, or that had returned to its resting place in the aftermath of Demik.

The lich resting inside of the sarcophagus had awoken, and in one powerful swipe, thrown Theren back fifteen feet through the water. Greff arrived not long after, and the sheer evil of the thing, bones with a hint of red energy lighting its skull and glinting from its amulet, made them all seem as drunkards, sniveling in fear in the underwater tableau.

Battle was enjoined, despite the terrible fear of the lich. It struck at them with claws of bone, and it hurled waves of necrotic energy at them. Sir William became overcome with fear, voiding his bowels in the water and fleeing the room. Corrin managed to swipe the lich's amulet, and it stunned her with a thousand images of the life of the man that became the undead monster they faced.

Greff took the battle into three dimensions, swimming up over the lich, and attacking from above. Kralik and Theren, together with Felix and Corrin, finally weakened the lich enough to destroy its corporeal form. Corrin tossed the amulet to Felix, and it sailed through the water to land in his own bottomless bag. The spirit of the lich began to search fruitlessly for its amulet, the bag's magic hiding everything within it.

A bolt of terrible white light dropped down from the ceiling, where the chandelier had hung. The bolt began as a pencil thin beam of light, and grew in brightness, diffused by the water.

Understanding seemed to pervade them all – or fear – and they fled. The necrotic energy dropping from the hole over the chandelier would have been amplified by the sapphires, restoring the lich and helping it to animate the many, many corpses along the back of the room.

The party swam as fast as they could out of the underwater chamber, erupting out of the muddy soup at dead runs. Felix stopped long enough to blast the entrance with arcane powers, and he was almost too slow. The necrotic energies had made even the soup of the water into a slimey, undead ooze.

Felix threw every spell he had at the home of the Weavies, hoping to seal the terrible undead powers below, forever.

From the sarcophagus, they had managed to pull four items: a spear of such unholy power that it seared living flesh, a ring, a belt with a dozen diamonds upon it, and a tome of unimaginable power. The belt proved to be a restorative that could have replenished the lich, if it had had time against the seven of them.

The tome, however, had the power to destroy one's mind if the reader was not considerably cautious – and lucky. Felix was eager to explore the tome more, and threw caution to the wind, opening it quickly. Luck and skill saved his soul, but only just. The tome had many mysteries within it, and perhaps even the history of the lich beneath the Weavies'.

They rested then, recovering, Sir William the hardest hit – by both the fear and the shame of his fear.

Noon of the 22nd of Davor, 1332 Avard.

Behind the Scenes

Date: THU12APR2012

Joe (DM)

Dinner was sausage dogs. Writing on this several days later, it just dawned on me that we ate the dogs, and then put them in the oven to keep the Saint Bernard from eating them. I don't think we remembered to pull them out of the oven…

Game Information

RPG System: Dungeons and Dragons, 4th Edition.
All characters are 16th level.

Bill (Greff)

No comment.

Ross (Felix)

No comment.

Sommer (Corrin)

No comment.

gaeleth/campaigns/campaign_ix/ix-4-66.txt · Last modified: 2021/09/28 15:51 (external edit)