The Infernal Syndrome - Session 31: Into the Heart of the Nessian Spiral

Dramatis Personae

Alfaren “Alfred” Eredel – Elf transmuter

Alizander Carmelizzia - Human (Varisian) sorcerer

Boecca – Half-orc inquisitor of Erastil

Carlos Santiago - Half-orc (Alkenstarian) evoker

Slavé/Jancen – Tiefling (in guise as a human) rogue/assassin

Tavo Dechirent - Human cleric of Pharasma

Oathday, 16 Calistril, 4709 A.R.

While Carlos, Alizander, Alfred, Tavo, and Jancen examine Vheed’s drawings and scrawls and determine some of the Nessian Spiral’s inner workings, Boecca makes his way back to the group, trying to come to terms with what happened with Joraviah. He finds the rest of the Returners and presents the Stygian Keyrod. Jancen and the other Returners ask Boecca where he retrieved the object. The half-orc’s hesitant response puts everyone on edge; Jancen in particular finds Boecca’s story that he single-handedly wrested the object from a group of tiefling tunnel rats suspicious. After several tense minutes of questioning that nearly comes to blows between Jancen and Boecca, the half-orc breaks down and admits that he was given the object by a beautiful, angelic creature with silken wings sprouting from her back. Tavo, Alfred, and Alizander quickly deduce that Boecca ran afoul of a demonic succubus from his description, and from his praise of the creature believe he is somehow love-struck with the creature.

Upon admission of his deed, Boecca doubles over in pain. He hears Joraviah’s voice in his head, admonishing him for his insolence and cursing his weak half-orc blood. Now under her full control, Boecca unleashes an attack upon his friends. Jancen fires a crossbow bolt at Boecca, and the others quickly join in, attempting to subdue the half-orc and determine a way to remove the succubus’ taint from their companion.

As the fight to subdue Boecca rages on, Joraviah herself joins the battle, her calm, alluring demeanour given way to a righteous indignation at the Returners’. Joraviah screams prayers to the goddess Nocticula to rain destruction on the Returners; she tears her profane gift from Boecca in a fit of rage, stunning the love-sick half-orc and sending him into emotional anguish as a result. The Returners respond by firing spells and arrows in her direction. Joraviah gets close enough to Alizander to reach out and strike him, feeding upon his lifeforce and bolstering her own. Ultimately, the battle turns in the Returners’ favour, and Joraviah falls, her body dissolving as her diminished soul is called back to the Abyss from whence it came.

The party backtracks to Joraviah’s den. Jancen and other party members negotiate with the near-feral tiefling caretakers, convincing them that they are absolved of their duties and free to leave the Nessian Spiral. The Returners find the near-comatose Sascar Tilernos, daughter of House Tilernos, tied up in Joraviah’s den. They free the noblewoman and escort her out of the Nessian Spiral and the ruins of Aberian’s estate, where a crowd of citizens and dottari have gathered. The crowd cheers as the Returners appear, pointing to the clear sky behind the party, devoid of the frightening pillars of fire now that the cooling chambers have been disabled. The party takes the time to deliver Sascar to the dottari and accept her invitation to visit her estate in the near future before heading back into the Nessian Spiral.

Back in the Nessian Spiral, the Returners move quickly through the remaining three cooling chambers, dealing with a Stygian-tainted water elemental trapped in one and deactivating each chamber using the Stygian Keyrod along the way. Finally, the party comes to a mirror-smooth red door – the entrance to the Nessian Spiral’s containment area, according to Vheed’s drawings found earlier in the complex.

With a touch, the door opens to a wide flight of black stone stairs, leading down to a stone archway. The Returners pass through the archway to behold an incongruous sight – a ten-foot-wide, thirty-foot-long banquet table floating in the air five feet above a black cobblestone plaza in the middle of a bustling city under some sort of martial law, as armies of devils dressed in iron march to and fro through the streets along the plaza’s edges. The sky above is red with dark clouds, while the surrounding cityscape is composed of sharp iron towers and spires – a view obscured only to the south of the table, where a churning wall of fire blocks the only street leading away from the plaza.

Seated around the table, locked in a heated argument as they feast on a banquet of victuals too terrible to repeat, are six diabolic horned creatures seemingly carved from a deep ochre-coloured stone. While the creatures argue and eat with all the grace and decorum of high-society aristocrats, their craggy visages and fiendish wings betray their bestial natures.

“Ah, we have visitors,” rumbles one of the creatures. “Come, do join us please. It has been some time since we had newcomers to debate with. You have arrived at just the right moment. Our discussion has progressed from the politics of Dis to a somewhat more vulgar, but infinitely more interesting subject: whether or not one can actually taste the difference between a virgin’s and a trollop’s heart.”

“Grick here prefers the trollop’s heart, and insists that it has a quality of earth and iron much more preferable than the virgin’s heart. I must confess, I don’t notice the difference myself, but Grick has always been a connoisseur of such things. Perhaps you can settle the argument for us? Here we have the finest quality in heart-of-virgin; one plucked from a boy only three days past his thirteenth birthday. And to compare, a slightly withered, yet no less tasty, example from an old crone – and trollop of the highest order – from a city called Westcrown, recently delivered to us by a very cooperative barbazu named Saszmir.”

Treasure

· From Joraviah

o +1 Studded leather armour (worth 595 gp)

o +1 Frost hand crossbow (worth 4200 gp)

· From Nessian Spiral – Joraviah’s Den

o +1 Keen mithral dagger (worth 4250 gp)

o Jewelry and silks (worth 2000 gp)

· From Nessian Spiral – Ruined Workroom

o Lyre of Building (worth 6500 gp)

Experience Awards

· Joraviah – xp was factored into session 30 story award

· Story Award (freeing Sascar Tilernos) – 7200 xp

· Story Award (deactivating remaining cooling chambers) – 4800 xp

· Story Award (deactivating the Infernal Capacitors) – 4800 xp

· Stygian Water Elemental – 4800 xp

· Total – 21,600 xp

· Per PC (6) – 3600 xp

· Fame Point (for saving Sascar Tilernos and getting her out of the Nessian Spiral) – 1

· Fame Points (for deactivating the Pillars of Fire) - 2

Current XP Total per PC

· Alizander, Carlos, Slavé – 56,935 xp each

· Alfred – 54,400 xp

· Boecca – 54,180 xp

· Tavo – 53,190 xp

· Nagiphax – 31,657 xp

· Damien Hellbent (cohort) – 22,360

· Total Current Fame Points – 18

The Sixfold Trial - Session 14: The Asmodean Knot, Part IV

Dramatis Personae

Alizander Carmelizzia - Human (Varisian) sorcerer
Carlos Santiago - Half-orc (Alkenstarian) wizard
Slavé/Jancen – Tiefling (in guise as a human) rogue

Tavo Dechirent - Human cleric of Pharasma
Vaeden Corleone - Human rogue

Oathday, 29 Neth, 4708 A.R.

The Returners proceed through the heart of the Asmodean Knot, wending their way through its impossible angles and infinite staircases until they finally make their way through and into the final stage of the demiplane. Moving past half-finished areas of the Knot, the party meets a formidable challenge in the Flawed One – the mummified and animate corpse of a former servant of Dargentu Vheed. The Flawed One surprises the Returners in an old storeroom within the Knot, and gets a solid strike against Vaeden before being eliminated. Vaeden’s arm turns an ugly purple where it was hit by the Flawed One, and the weakness spreads quickly through his body, bringing Vaeden to the verge of death.

Finally, the party enters the final chamber created within the Asmodean Knot by Avengen Doskivari – the Crux Sanctum – a huge cavern half-filled with a nauseating grey-green sludge. The party fights the guardian of the Crux Sanctum, a strange and rare creature featuring traits of both a bearded devil and a sewage-loving otyugh. Szasmir recognizes in the creature certain characterstics of an old colleague, the bearded devil Molikandus, another former servant of Dargentu Vheed who betrayed his master long ago. Molikandus sends a small retinue of lemure devils against Tavo, Carlos, Vaeden, Jancen, and Alizander, all of whom are experiencing significant fatigue after their trials in the Asmodean Knot. With the help of Szasmir the group manages to defeat Molikandus and his lemure servants, and at last discover the object of their quest into the Asmodean Knot – the Chelish Crux. The Chelish Crux appears as a wooden and metal dodecahedron that measures about six inches in diameter. Each face of the 12-sided crux is carved with a different rune, and when one looks upon the thing, the observer has the unsettling sensation that he can see too many or too few sides at once. Alizander tosses the crux on the floor in an attempt to discern the method of opening it, to no avail. Exhausted after their time in the Knot, the party makes its way out of the complex. Szasmir takes his leave of the Returners, declaring their contract to be fulfilled, for now. Tavo, Vaeden, Carlos, and Alizander use a room discovered within the Knot that allows them to instantly teleport to their respective homes, while Jancen (Slavé) decides to make his way back through the Knot and into the Lord-Mayor’s villa. Jancen is confident that the revelers of the previous night will likely be still at the mansion, either comatose or just coming to following the night’s events, and wishes to speak to return the bust of Asmodeus to Crosael and speak to the majordomo regarding Sian Daemodus.

So ends The Sixfold Trial, part II of the Council of Thieves.

Treasure

· Rope of climbing (from the Flawed One)

· From the Crux Sanctum:

o +1 keen short sword

o +1 defending short sword

o +1 cold iron light mace

o +1 returning javelin

o Necklace of fireballs III

o Ring of protection +1

o Ring of feather falling

o Wand of cure moderate wounds

o Wand of rusting grasp

o Golembane scarab

o Scroll of contagion (CL 9^th)

o Spellbook with 30 spells

o 1300 gp

o Andoran philosophy book (worth 200 gp)

o Illustrated book on Osirion (worth 230 gp)

o Libra Malfactum (3 volume work on the teachings of a spirit naga) (worth 400 gp)

o Ivory box (worth 800 gp)

o The Chelish Crux

· From earlier exploits in the Asmodean Knot:

o Pearl of power II (recovered from dead elf, formerly unidentified)

Experience Awards

· The Flawed One (mummy) – 1600 xp

· Lemures (4) – 1600 xp

· Molikandus, the Outcast King (barbazu-otyugh amalgam) (reduced for assistance from Szasmir) – 2000 xp

· Story Award (recovering the Chelish Crux) – 4000 xp

· Story Award (fulfilled contract with Szasmir) – 1500 xp

· Total – 10,700 xp

· Per PC (5) – 2140 xp

· Fame Points (infiltrating the Knot without direct observation – rumours that Aberian’s Folly has been “cracked” by a group of insurgents spreads over the next couple of months) – 2 points

Current XP Totals per PC

· Alizander, Carlos, Slavé, Vaeden – 15,695 xp each

· Tavo – 15,040 xp

· Nagiphax – 9135 xp

· Croso, Orem – 2875 xp

· Total Current Fame Points – 10

The Sixfold Trial - Session 13: The Asmodean Knot, Part III

Dramatis Personae

Alizander Carmelizzia - Human (Varisian) sorcerer
Carlos Santiago - Half-orc (Alkenstarian) wizard
Slavé/Jancen – Tiefling (in guise as a human) rogue

Tavo Dechirent - Human cleric of Pharasma
Vaeden Corleone - Human rogue

Oathday, 29 Neth, 4708 A.R.

The group decides to leave the chain-room and heads up the stairs into the room labeled ‘Observation’. There they encounter Livia, an unusually talkative (and perhaps half-mad) imp and former familiar of Darghentu Vheed. Livia claims to have been continuing Vheed’s work since his disappearance decades ago, and bids them enter the phobia rooms and retrieve ‘prizes’ from each for her. In return, they will find themselves cured of their insanity (of which they were unaware they were suffering from….) and she will answer for them six questions. Alizander, Jancen and Szasmir head into the phobia rooms, facing several creatures (vipers, spiders, stirges, and small fire elementals) while Tavo stays behind with Livia.

Szasmir speaks to Jancen, indicating that he knows that he carries a heavy burden (the runecurse), and that he knows of a way to be rid of the curse altogether. Jancen seems interested, and Szasmir says that he will tell him how to get rid of the curse if he will locate a person for him, a young girl he once had the pleasure to meet in Westcrown by the name of Amra Tailor. Jancen suggests that Amra may be dead, or very old, by now. Szasmir smiles and says, “Indeed, her body may have aged, but the soul remains the same.” Jancen agrees to help find her location and inform Szasmir when he finds out. Szasmir, pleased with the agreement, tells Jancen that the surest way to remove the runecurse is to turn it back on its creator by tricking them into accepting it. Szasmir says that he recalls the grey-skinned, red-haired woman who let Eliandru free referred to the elf as an ideal carrier, and believes that she may have been referring to the runecurse, in which case she could have been involved in its creation.

Meanwhile, Carlos, in disagreement with Alizander’s decision to parley with the imp, leaves the Observation room and heads further into the Knot, with Vaeden following. Carlos and Vaeden find a large cavern featuring a small lake of rank water, filthy with sewage and detritus. Carlos reads a magical aura on a small island in the middle of the lake, and succeeds in using magic to transport the item across the lake without venturing into the putrid water. Carlos and Vaeden are attacked by a elemental presence within the and Vaeden is hit by a watery appendage before the two manage to escape the room and leave the elemental behind. Carlos examines the item recovered and discovers that it is an unholy symbol of Asmodeus. As he analyses the symbol, he can feel a brooding intelligence within it, and is somehow possessed of the sure knowledge that the symbol contains a fragment of the spirit of its creator, Avengen Doskivari, the first mayor of Westcrown after the Thrune Ascendency and a powerful priest of Asmodeus. Carlos senses that he could communicate with the intelligence if desired, but quickly pockets the unholy symbol instead.

Alizander, Jancen, Szasmir and Tavo are successful in retrieving Livia’s ‘prizes’ (small gemstones) from the phobia rooms, and Livia rewards them by using magic to commune with dark powers. Jancen, Alizander, and Tavo ask her a number of questions and learn several items of information, including: that the shadow creatures stalking the streets of Westcrown were brought into existence by the breaking of an artifact called the Aohl into its twin components – the Morrowfall and the Totemrix; that the writhing chains in the room nearby hold a creature called a kyton and that it powers the Asmodean Knot by acting as a conduit to the Nessian Spiral below Aberian’s villa; that there are three fragments of Avengen Doskivari’s spirit in the Knot – a red crystal glaive, a book about a drowned adventurer, and Avengen’s unholy symbol; that the Chelish Crux (the object of their quest in the Lord-Mayor’s villa) is located in the Crux Sanctum, through the heart of the Asmodean Knot; and that one of the obstacles the party may face in retrieving the Chelish Crux is a creature called the Flawed One, which may be distracted by one or all of Avengen’s spiritual fragments. Finally, Jancen asks where he might find the woman Amra Tailor, and learns that she still lives in the Rego Sacero region of the city. Jancen gives this information to Szasmir, thus ending the deal made with the bearded devil.

Carlos and Vaeden rejoin the group at this time and the party continues its journey through the Asmodean Knot. They soon come to the heart of the Knot – a series of endless shafts stretching into oblivion above and below, with twisting stairs up and down that impossibly lead back to each other. Each circular chamber features several stone archways that are either open or sealed shut with stone masonry in random patterns, depending on when the party enters each chamber. As the group makes its way through the puzzling Knot’s Heart, they hear a raspy, female voice, “I see you managed to convince someone to set you free devil. Well, it is their mistake.”

“And who are you, anyway? Did Crosael send you? She has been far too concerned with my doings these last several weeks. I’m sure she wonders where I have been for the last two days. No matter, I shall dispose of you, learn whatever secrets you have discovered in here, and get out of this place. Crosael can put her mind at ease.”

The owner of the voice is none other than the grey-skinned, flame-haired tiefling woman spoken of by Szasmir. She attacks out of the darkness of the shaft, accompanied by a shadow companion. The party attempts to manoeuvre around the narrow steps to fight the woman and her shadow companion. Jancen decides to play the coward, and recoils from his attacker. He removes his backpack and tosses it to her, “Here, take it, you can have what we’ve found in here, just don’t kill me!”

The woman catches the backpack and slings it over her shoulder, spitting at Jancen in disgust before slashing at him with her barbed short sword. “You sniveling fool, stay there on your belly while I take care of your friends. I’ll deal with you momentarily.”

The tiefling woman dances around the confined battlefield in a dazzling display of swordplay. Finally, however, Jancen’s daring play comes to fruition. The runecurse in the backpack takes effect on the woman, and the bone devil Nyxervex steps from the fiery pit of Hell to claim its victim. The tiefling gasps in dismay, looks over her shoulder at the backpack slung over her shoulder, then to Jancen. Her screams echo up and down the infinite shaft as Nyxervex tears her into shreds before disappearing from whence he came, leaving little behind except the few items she carried.

Treasure (from Sian Daemodus)

· Spider venom (5 doses) (save Fort DC 14, frequency 1/rnd for 4 rounds, effect 1d2 Str damage, cure 1 save)

· Potion of Cure Moderate Wounds (2)

· Potion of Gaseous Form

· Potion of Invisibility

· +1 Leather Armour

· +1 Short Sword

· Masterwork Hand Crossbow (19 bolts)

· Hat of Disguise

· Bejeweled bust of Asmodeus (worth 800 gp)

Experience Awards

· Giant spiders (2) – 800 xp

· Stirges (6) – 1200 xp

· Small fire elementals (1/2 normal due to help from Szasmir) – 600 xp

· Story Award (parleying with Livia and earning her aid) – 1500 xp

· Story Award (retrieved Avengen’s unholy symbol and avoided water elemental) – 800 xp

· Sian Daemodus (tiefling woman) – 3200 xp

· Story Award (avoided runecurse by turning it back on Sian Daemodus) – 4000 xp

· Per PC (5) – 2420

Current XP Totals per PC

· Alizander, Carlos, Slavé, Vaeden – 13,555 xp each

· Tavo – 12,900 xp

· Nagiphax – 9135 xp

· Croso, Orem – 2875 xp

· Total Current Fame Points – 8

The Sixfold Trial - Session 12: The Asmodean Knot, Part II

Dramatis Personae

Alizander Carmelizzia - Human (Varisian) sorcerer
Carlos Santiago - Half-orc (Alkenstarian) wizard
Slavé/Jencen – Tiefling (in guise as a human) rogue

Tavo Dechirent - Human cleric of Pharasma
Vaeden Corleone - Human rogue

Wealday, 28 Neth, 4708 A.R.

Vaeden empties a bag of marbles on the stairs, sending one of the lacedons tumbling back down to the first landing. It doesn’t take long, however, for the rotten, bloated undead to reach the prison cells, where battle begins in earnest. Alizander and Vaeden fall prey to the lacedons’ diseased maws, and are stricken numb by the sickly poison oozing from their black, rotten fangs. Jencen begins reading from the book recovered earlier in the Knot, and succeeds in distracting the leader, whom the group assume to be the Drowned Jabe referred to in the book.

In the heat of battle, no one notices the exchange between Jencen and Alizander, and are not there to intervene when Jencen shoves Alizander into one of the empty cells with Drowned Jabe, barring the door closed behind the stunned sorcerer. Jencen mutters a curse to Alizander through the door, damning him for passing the runecurse on to him, before turning away. Alizander manages to escape and, for the present, puts the episode out of his mind.

The lacedons’ paralyzing attacks begin to take their toll on the party, and Tavo brokers a verbal deal with Szasmir in a risky, last ditch attempt to save his companions. Szasmir agrees to the hastily-worded terms, and gives Tavo his word that he will assist the group to navigate through the Asmodean Knot, with the understanding that they will help him to destroy his former master, Dargentu Vheed. In the event that Vheed is no longer present, the party and Szasmir will agree to part ways, never to see each other again. The deal signed with a word, Tavo releases Szasmir from his prison. The mad devil destroys the remaining lacedons with glee, and the strange red crystal glaive he weilds seems to absorb the creatures’ thick, black blood.

With the drowned ghouls defeated, the party decides to shore up defenses in the prison cell area and recuperate for a time. Szasmir paces and mutters to himself throughout the night, setting most of the party members on edge. The bearded devil frequently slips in and out of lucidity, speaking to himself or his red crystal glaive at one moment, and calmly asking Tavo and other party members if they have had enough rest the next. The party discerns several names from Szasmir’s mutterings, including that of Molikandus, who they determine may have been an associate of Szasmir’s at one time, and Elandriu, an elfin thief that the party decides must have been the dead elf they discovered in the Knot’s entrance. Szasmir also refers in spits and curses to a silent, slight woman with blood-red hair, skin the colour of brushed steel, and a mouth and eyes that glow as red as the pit of Hell. The woman apparently set Elandriu free, deciding that the elf might be a useful carrier (whatever that implies), but dismissed Szasmir outright.

Oathday, 29 Neth, 4708 A.R.

Upon waking, the adventurers continue deeper into the Asmodean Knot with Szasmir at their side. They move quickly through the damp, rank room with the pool that hid Drowned Jabe and his brethren, and thence down a rough hewn, steep tunnel. There, the party comes to a doorway leading to a series of steps – one leading up in the centre and two leading down to either side. Vaeden briefly explores a side passage leading to a deep, red-glowing pit with a mass of iron chains writhing above it, seemingly attached to shadowy stalactites thirty feet above. Within the tangle of chains appears to be a mutilated humanoid body. Bits of flesh, torn muscle, and splinters of bone seep through the links in the centre of the sphere of chains.

Experience Awards

· Drowned Jabe (lacedon ghast) – 600 xp

· Lacedons (3) – 1200 xp

· Deal with Szasmir – 1600 xp

· Total – 3400 xp

· Per PC (5) – 680 xp

Current XP Totals per PC

· Alizander, Carlos, Slavé, Vaeden – 11,135 xp each

· Tavo – 10,480 xp

· Nagiphax – 9135 xp

· Croso, Orem – 2875 xp

Total Current Fame Points – 8

The Sixfold Trial - Session 11: The Asmodean Knot, Part I

Dramatis Personae

Alizander Carmelizzia - Human (Varisian) sorcerer
Carlos Santiago - Half-orc (Alkenstarian) wizard
Slavé – Tiefling (in guise as a human named Jencen) rogue

Tavo Dechirent - Human cleric of Pharasma
Vaeden Corleone - Human rogue

Wealday, 28 Neth, 4708 A.R.

The party takes some time to discern the properties of the items taken from the dead elf. Alizander is shocked when he realizes that the tattered parchment he withdrew from the backpack is in fact the vehicle for a runecurse – an insidious curse that subjects the one who accepts the cursed item to some future calamity (often a hostile visitor from Hell or something equally as undesirable). The infernal text on the parchment indicates the name of an osyluth devil – one Nyxervex – as the one to carry out the curse. Alizander pockets the parchment, knowing that unless he can somehow get someone else to accept the item, this Nyxervex will come for him.

After consoling the shaken Varisian, the party continues into the Asmodean Knot. The hallways beyond the entrance are guarded by a trio of large, spine-covered hellish hounds that bray a maddening, incessant howl. The howlers send Alizander into unconsciousness before finally being dispatched. In the shadowy hallways that the howlers prowled, the party finds a collection of books focused on methods of torture (both as a means of interrogation and entertainment). One book in particular stands out for its relative newness and lavish illustrations – Drowned Jabe and His Miserable Brothers and Sisters. Jencen (Slavé) peruses the work; it tells the tale of a thief and his companions who came to the Asmodean Knot and drowned there, only to live on after death as ‘Drowned Jabe.’

The party moves deeper into the Asmodean Knot, navigating through a mind-numbing series of rooms featuring shafts and stairs that, impossibly, seem to twist and turn back upon themselves. The party narrowly avoids the undead shadow beasts that guard this bewildering place. Indeed, Tavo succeeds in bending one of the shadows to his own control, and bids it follow them as they leave the looping shafts and enter an old, forgotten prison are of the Knot. Within the prison, the party finds only one surviving inmate – a leering, rambling, somewhat insane bearded devil gone mad from years of imprisonment. Jencen is the first to spot the barbazu, and immediately thinks the runecursed parchment may be linked to the devil. Alizander (still somewhat delirious from the howlers’ braying, and increasingly distraught by the runecurse) offers the parchment to Jencen, who, in a moment of addled wits, accepts it, and thereby transfers the curse from Alizander to himself. Alizander skips happily away, eager to leave the devil behind and continue into the Knot. Jencen, realizing his error, watches as Alizander disappears down the hall, his eyes like black daggers. Tavo, Vaeden, and Carlos come down the hallway and join Jencen. They turn their attention back to the barbazu.

The devil holds and caresses a strange, red crystal glaive. He slips in and out of lucidity, one moment shouting in rage at ‘Lord Vheed’ (whom several party members recall as the former mayor of Westcrown, prior to the current Lord-Mayor Arvanxi) for some past slight, and another begging for release. The party learns that the barbazu’s name is Szasmir. Tavo, Jencen, Vaeden and Carlos debate over the wisdom of making a deal with the devil, while Alizander leaves the prison and continues downstairs, arriving in a large and dank room featuring a large pool of churning, muddy water. Alizander fires a bolt of electricity into the water and is answered by a trio of rotting, waterlogged ghouls dressed in tattered rags that burst out of the muck. The three undead creatures are followed closely by another, larger drowned man with empty, black eyes. The stench that emanates from the larger one is overpoweringly horrid. Alizander bolts from the room and runs upstairs, waving his arms and gesticulating wildly before slamming hard into the half-orc Carlos. The drowned undead quartet follows close behind.

Treasure

· Book – Drowned Jabe and His Miserable Brothers and Sisters – 400 gp (grants +2 competence bonus on Knowledge (religion) checks made on topics relating to undead)

· Handy Haversack – from session 10

· Scrolls (chill touch, command undead, ray of exhaustion, vampiric touch, false life) – from session 10

· Wand of Restoration – from session 10

· Runecursed parchment – from session 10

Experience Awards

· Howlers (3) – 2400 xp

· Shadows (2) – 1600 xp

· Total – 4000 xp

· Per PC (5) – 800 xp

Current XP Totals per PC

· Alizander, Carlos, Slavé, Vaeden – 10,455 xp each

· Tavo – 9800 xp

· Nagiphax – 9135 xp

· Croso, Orem – 2875 xp

· Total Current Fame Points – 8