Session 37: The Rematch

March 25, 118

The party feel that they are too weakened to face the mysterious figures in the city above, so they decide to rest for the night. They return to the aboveground shrine and barricade the doors so the figures can't get in.

Before resting for the night, Ellyanna returns to the pool for one last experiment. She throws a flask of oil into the pool and ignites it. The oil seems to float above the other black liquid and it burns away cleanly, leaving only the same black film behind. Reusing the oil flask, Ellyanna fills it with the black liquid so she can experiment with it later.

March 26, 118

After an uneventful night, Ellyanna tells the rest of the party that she received a message from her professor back in Ember during the night, having updated him before going to sleep. In it, he commented on what they'd found in this area, telling Ellyanna that the presence of Zargon might be the disturbance that he had felt which caused him to send her to investigate in the first place. He has commanded her to continue investigating and, if necessary, stop whatever Zargon is doing.

Well-rested and refreshed, the party return aboveground and prepare to face the hiding figures. Once again, they send Ellyanna out first, hoping to be able to communicate with them. This time, the plan works, and one figure steps out to speak with her.

As soon as the figure begins talking, they recognize the voice - it is the undead woman who they fought in the dragon's lair. She tells Ellyanna that normally she would simply kill them, but she has received orders to the contrary. Her master ("General Cyrus, commander of the Imperial Legions") has instructed her to take them to him. They can either come with her willingly, or be taken forcibly.

Ellyanna tries to get more information out of the woman. She tells them that Cyrus is about a week away to the north (or two weeks for the living, who need to rest at night), but otherwise, she is tight-lipped. Ellyanna decides that she doesn't trust the offer and instead attacks, firing a trio of Scorching Rays at the woman.

As the rest of the party rush forward to help Ellyanna, the black-cloaked woman's allies also show themselves. A second black-cloaked figure steps out from a nearby building, a half-dozen skeletons rise from the ground and begin advancing, and two hulking undead ogres burst out from underneath nearby piles of rubble.

Ellyanna is dropped by a barrage of arrows from the skeletons, but Calanon hurls one of the beads from the Necklace of Fireballs, incinerating half of them and hitting the black-cloaked woman as well. Kaplan moves forward to hold off the two black-robed figures while the rest of the party heal Ellyanna and take on the skeletons and zombie ogres.

The party continue fighting until all of the undead have moved close enough to Feyrith, who invokes her god Soloneth and unleashes a wave of holy energy, driving the creatures away as she did when they first met her. Only the few remaining skeletons manage to resist; the rest of the undead begin to flee from the holy power.

The party make short work of the skeletons, and as the woman flees, Calanon throws a second bead from the necklace at her while Ash-Daughter attacks with her bow. However, the woman escapes their range before they are able to drop her, and she is faster than anyone in the party, so they have no hope of catching her.

The party know that the undead will only flee for about a minute before the effects of Feyrith's invocation wear off. Since they all ran in different directions, they decide to chase the second black-cloaked figure. They are able to keep pace with it, but it has a head start, since they finished off the skeletons and attacked the woman before giving chase.

They pursue the creature until it regains its senses, but once it realizes that it's all alone and sees the party charging towards it, it decides to keep running anyway. Realizing that they can't outrun a tireless undead creature, the party give up the chase.

However, by chance, they spot one of the ogre zombies nearby. It has also regained its senses, but appears to be just standing in place now. They charge the creature and attack it. Although it hits hard and takes a lot of punishment, it's no match for the seven of them on its own, and they destroy the creature without too much trouble.

Rushing back to the shrine, the party find that none of the undead creatures have returned and they are alone. However, they're worried that either of the black-robed creatures might return with reinforcements at any time. So, they decide to collect the White Elf commoners from below and make a run for it.

Since they need their supplies in order to keep following the bone compass, they need to return to the White Elf village to retrieve them. They ask Feyrith how they could get back there, and she suggests two options. The safer but slower option is to walk around the lake, which should take about two days. The faster but riskier option is to return to the eastern slopes of the mountain and steal the boats they arrived in. That would allow them to get to the village in only one day.

The party decide to attempt to steal the boats and, along with the four commoners, head out for the east side of the mountain.