Orhan 1 Day 49 TE 6054

Having waited a few days, we decide to go back... But first prayer. Haeraan and Imre pray to their various patrons. They are overcome by a sense that their prayers have been heard by *something*, but don't have any details.

With this good news, we charge in. Heading up to the evil wall, we short door through. Inside is some horrid painting on the wall, but we ignore them and press on. Sneaking through the town, we get to the door of the skull without incident. Next, we short door through. Success! Inside, it's pitch black. D. mentions that there are five undead snakes sneaking up on us. Oathar makes a light, and Haeraan drops some repel undead mojo upon them. Two explode right then and there, and one more flees. We attack. Haeraan and Kyrik finish them off handily.

We head around to the auditorium and get to the black curtain. Pulling aside the curtain, there's the black skeleton. We bash it some. It makes a reasonable bit of noise. The skeleton doesn't fight back so we pound it. Behind it is a secret door. We open the door and slip through before the reinforcements arrive. Imre leaves an illusion of an intact standing skeleton in the way, and Oathar seals the door with a stone wall sealing our hearoes in the dark hallway lined with niches with sarcophagi. Each one has a terrible figure carved on it, noble elf lords, warrior maidens, writhing skeletons, death with scythe, etc. Oh dear.

We search like mad, hoping to find the passage to the library before the sarcophagi spring open. Imre discovers something, but before he can do anything about it, the statue in front of the secret door animates and attacks. The party is hard pressed dealing with the Iron golem, but it is put down before too much damage is done to our fighters. D. listens at the secret door. She opens it, but sadly it appears to lead off in a direction no one was expecting according to Haeraan's dream, so we ignore it and finish the other niches first. No secret doors discovered though. Haeraan gets the idea that we need to open some of the 9 sarcophagi. Ick.

Haeraan picks the sarcophagus with the warrior maiden and inside is a mummy. Just the regular dead kind. Searching, we find a needle trap on a button. Imre uses the backscratcher to TK the button avoiding the needle trap that D. revealed. Inside seems to be an opening or passageway or something. Oathar goes over and covers the entrance with a second Stone wall as the pounding started getting louder. Opening it, Haeraan finds another trap. D. gets to work on it and disarms it handily. Haeraan pushes it open. There's a wooden door about 15 feet down.

Inside this door is a T shaped room. It's a small sitting room scented with lilac blossoms. Oh dear, it's probably something terrible like Mistress Furanifer's study. Yup, there's the woman with the leather bodice, short cape, and a wand. We cast, she casts, it's all bad. Stalwartly, we all resist her first spell. Then we attack. Haeraan and Kyrik get in a few good blows, then their swords start passing right through. How strange. She's an illusion, but something was certainly casting. Kyrik thinks the door to the right is ajar so we burst in. Inside is a huge room filled with bookshelves and books. Haeraan thinks one particular section of books is about right. D. examines it with her critical eye and yoinks the right book out of many. D. and Imre get teleported to the boat. Next round Kyrik follows. Haeraan drops some holy water and finally, Haeraan and Oather teleport out.

Upon arrival at the ship, we hoist anchor and sails and start sailing.

Examining our prize, we find lot's of references to fire and the undead, fire-phantoms, etc. Searching through, we find the right page and locate the Forest of Ash. It's a dead forest. all that is left are burnt skeletal trunks of trees. In the center of the dead zone is a tree on a mound where the cataclysm that created the forest was probably originated. The author notes that the mound is surrounded by undead and he was in the forest studying, but started to get sick, so he believes the place is unhealthy even for the living. The book indicates mostly undead fire-creatures. Ick.

We sail around the swamp to go pick up our horses and check in with the Temple of Rianne in Ardenia, and then start sailing around the continent to get to the final quest location in the Forest of Ash. We have to pass by Selkai on the way, so stopping seems reasonable. While we check in with Rianne folks, we discover that the forces of Rianne earlier this year sacked the first necromancer dude ranch, so this one is the only one we know about remaining. Woo!