Another day, another descent into the Mountain of the Mad Marquis. This time four adventurers left the camp to delve the ruins.
- Al-Hafiz, Level 1 Fedayeen
- Jack Fatherd, Level 5 Survivor
- Laguna Tempest, Level 1 Warcaster
- Protesilaus Poliorcetes, Level 1 Acolyte
They were accompanied by Gowonry and the centipede woman, two Mutoids recruited on a previous delve into the dungeon. Laguna had some boards to cross the broken bridge in the bone pit, and the group hoped to retrieve the duck signet ring from the Marquis' tomb so they could progress to the next level of the dungeon. They decided to go down the fast way, using the one tun barrel and the rope around the tree. They all hopped into the barrel and left the centipede woman on the surface to lower them into the pit. It was a risky move, with their combined weight she could just barely lower them into the pit without dropping them. She wouldn't be able to haul up more than a couple people at a time.
The gang saw before they got to the bottom that something wasn't right. The plants in the cemetery sinkhole were trampled and the doors of the makeshift inn were smashed open. Whoever wrecked the place went through the South door, and the gang followed their footsteps to see what was going on.
The corpse preparation rooms were all fucked up. Someone smashed open the closet where Thelema kept all the soap, and they killed the carrion crawler snuffling around in the flesh boiling tub. The sound of cracking bones echoed from the bone room, along with curses in Northern languages. Al-Hafiz boldly led the group into the bone room to confront the intruders.
There were fourteen berserkers, led by a barbarian with a small disenchanter on a leash. They were carting chunks of stone in from other rooms in the dungeon to throw into the bone pit, crushing the huge pile of animated skeleton bits into powder. The Fedayeen challenged the berserkers with an intimidating display, inviting them to surrender and convert to the God of Mercy. The barbarian laughed and led his thugs forward, eager for a fight.
The adventurers opened up with ranged attacks and magic, keeping the horde of barbs from immediately flooding over them. The disenchanter went to suck the magic out of Protesilaus' magic Drow hot pot and missed, falling into the bone pit. Laguna dropped a Sleep spell that took out most of the berserkers, but the wounded barbarian leader ran back and picked up the heartbeat drum off one of the unconscious warriors. His pounding on the drum woke up the sleeping fighters, but a volley of arrows and sling bullets ended his life before he could buff them. Another berserker took up the drum but was silenced again when Jack Fatherd put an arrow through the skin. The warriors surged forward a second time and knocked Al-Hafiz down with an ax to the chest. Protesilaus dragged him out of the fight and the gang sounded a general retreat. The disenchanter climbed out of the pit and stood atop the corpse of the barb, trumpeting in dismay.
The whole group was too heavy for one person to haul up the cliff. Jack and Laguna climbed in and frantically signaled the centipede woman to slowly haul them up. Protesilaus and Al-Hafiz took hits of smoke to heal their wounds and used the terraced gardens of the sinkhole to juke the incoming berserkers, fleeing past them back to the bone pit. They made a running jump over the broken bridge and both failed, falling into the bone pit. They were scratched, gnawed and crushed by the heaving pit of skeletons, then suddenly tossed up onto the other side by a wave of bones. Thelema the Gravewarden was waiting for them. She told them to get moving before the berserkers caught up and hit them with a thrown brick.
Thelema led the group through a handful of tombs to a larger chamber, where a couple orcs and a ghoul stood guard over a door. Thelema explained that the door led to a section of the crypt taken over by the dragon cult. She used to have more undead to guard the room but she threw them all at the berserkers. The orcs were Holy Mountain worshipers, among the last survivors of the tribe the berserkers exterminated. Together, the gang contemplated a plan to deal with the twelve remaining warriors. They debated asking the dragon cult for passage through their stronghold, but Thelema warned the cultists aspired to be like the red dragon slumbering under the dungeon in his stone egg: treacherous and greedy. They would bargain only if they didn't think they could just kill you and take what they wanted.
On the surface, Laguna and Jack left Gowonry with the centipede woman, in case the other adventurers came back and needed the barrel hauled up in a hurry. They went around to the staircase Laguna excavated on the first day, hoping to find another way into the Necropolis. Laguna recalled that there was a room with an inscription about descending into the Holy Mountain on the Level 1 Gaol. One of the big stone floor tiles in the room was smashed open, revealing a staircase down to the next floor. The berserkers had finally solved the puzzle, despite being able to read the wall carving.
The staircase led down to a room Laguna had explored the previous day. The duo decided to revisit the chamber with the plate armored skeletons, since there was a door there nobody had opened yet. The four skeletons had been smashed to pieces, along with two of the berserkers. The duo gathered up their weapons and pried the gold damascene out of the skeletons' decorative plate armor. They went through the door and found a hallway filled with bones, water-termite exoskeletons, and a pair of human corpses. At the end was a stone head, eyes closed. Jack carefully hooked one of the corpses, a dead barbarian, with his polaxe and yanked it toward him. He found a few silver pieces in the guy's belt pouch. Since nothing bad happened to him, he went forward to investigate the next body. The statue's eyes opened and Jack was paralyzed by its gaze. A door behind him swung open and twenty two zombies staggered out.
A lesser man would have been chewed to death, but Jack called on the power of the Grain Goddess and the Liberator to unfreeze him and turn the undead. Unable to flee properly, the zombies milled around aimlessly while Laguna and Jack chopped them to pieces. Jack used his superior climbing skill to cross the chamber on the ceiling instead of the floor. He avoided triggering the stone head and tied a blanket over its eyes, preventing it from paralyzing anyone else. He looted the other corpse in the hall, finding money, healing potions and a holy symbol of the Grain Goddess.
The t-junction beyond the hall was full of skeletons, guarding a row of crypts. Laguna recalled that Thelema told the skeletons to guard the halls against intruding water termites, and decided to explore the other end of the passage. The next room was bisected by a twenty foot high wall of packed mud, crawling with giant water termites. Water dribbled from the other side of the barrier, flowing across the floor and through cracks in the South wall.
On the other side of the complex, the gang came up with a new plan. Thelema commanded the bones in the bone pit to suddenly stop moving, so the berserkers thought they destroyed enough of them to de-animate the entire pit. They waited for the berserkers to lay down one of the boards Laguna dropped, and then Thelema commanded the skeletons to rise up like a wave and knock the improvised bridge over when half the warriors crossed. Thelema, Protesilaus, Al-Hafiz, and the pair of orcs Chernobog and Zog rushed the six berserkers who made it across the bridge. Zog took an axe to the throat, and Thelema was clouted viciously with the haft of a weapon, but the gang made quick work of the 'zerkers.
Al-Hafiz wrestled the only surviving fighter of the six to the ground. He convinced the barb to convert to a lawful alignment with a simple theorem: the berserkers worshiped the Strong Man, and had been beaten by a servant of the God of Mercy (nevermind that the servants of Holy Mountain had killed more warriors than him). If they joined forces, they could fulfill the berserkers' mission of cleansing the dungeon's evil together.
Jack and Laguna didn't like their odds of waiting out the lizards. They went around the other way, back to the chamber with the staircase up to the Gaol. They decided to explore the dragon cult stronghold, a zone Laguna had briefly peered into but not fully mapped. The dimly lit chamber with the carven image of a dragon led into a long room with a locked door, sporting a viewslit. The pair snuck across the room and peered down the hall. There was a hexagonal chamber with a domed stone altar, like the top of a black basalt egg. It was smeared with blood and there was a lizardman sleeping on it.
The duo stole past the chamber into the hall beyond, where mist seeped out of a doorway filled with rubble. They heard the sound of bubbling water beyond, similar to that from the crocodile cave earlier. A sound like hummingbird wings came down the hall, followed by the sound of scaly feet. The duo fell back and watched as a pseudodragon came bumbling down the hall, bouncing into walls as it went. The creature was clearly in severe psychic distress, like a cat with its whiskers cut off but telepathically. They didn't wait to see what was hunting it, but rather beat a retreat back the way they came.
On the other side of the dungeon, Thelema commanded the bones to rise up and make a bridge. Al-Hazif, Protesilaus, Thelema, Chernobog the Orc and Eric the Barb ran across the bridge and attacked the four remaining berserkers. The warriors didn't stand a chance, and the adventurers lifted various trinkets and the twin ruby to the one they found on day one from their corpses. The disenchanter was nowhere to be found.
The four adventurers, their henchmen and Thelema returned to the sinkhole, amid the graves and the handful of growing things the berserkers hadn't stomped to dust. Thelema told the group that from this point on, none of the undead of the necropolis would harass them, they were off limits. She handed over a further thousand silver pieces in gold as a token of gratitude. She reminded them that she could pay even more if they found her sister Endura. She had tried to convince her to come down for years, sending people up with messages. She hoped that, since the whole Vivisection project had been smashed to pieces, Endura would be willing to see her again. Then she went to clean up the crypt/inn the warriors trashed.
The adventurers gathered the plate armored skeletons and their weapons and hauled them, along with their treasure, back to the surface. The clerically inclined members of the group purged the smoke addictions of those who had partaken in the drug.
A thrilling tale. It's been two blog posts until the berserker vandals got their comeuppance. I was waiting for that. Credit to you for using giant water termites of all things as an dungeon dweller. That's pretty unique.
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