Session 4!

ADVENTURE 4: VIOLENCE IN THE HALLS: Gladly for them, however, the skeletons were in pretty bad shape from the ball, worse than the characters. Several undead were taken out quickly, with some good hits by Karosian and Karl, although Tyro had a nasty surprise when he cast a cause wounds spell, completely healing a skeleton. The battle raged on, and eventually, the skeleton with the darkness was slain, revealing the battlefield to all. Kerit and Tyro were both taken down, but not out, while Karosian was sent fleeing in fearbut by that time, there was only a single black skeleton left, which was easily dispatched. Afterwards, most of the characters decided to rest near the ball, figuring most monsters would avoid the lethal trap cycle. Karosian, however, decided to go completely mad. At first wanting to kill the wounded Kerit, he was stopped by Karl, though he nearly attacked the archer as wellfor no real reason. Then, in a bout of utter foolery, he decided to wander off by himselfand as he went down the hall, he ran into a large patrol of goblins, who were individually weak opponents, but turned out to be rather tough when they completely surrounded the fighter. A few skilled criticals and it was overthe goblins took down the brave warrior, ending his life and dragging his body and loot off to wherever they made their homes. The dungeon had claimed its first victim from this party. The others knew that he had gone to his doom, and did not follow. After a peaceful rest, the group gathered themselves together, thankful for their lives, and decided to explore the rest of the dungeon level. They first investigated the tomb south of the ball room, and Kerit was shocked when a horrid grub of some kind crawled under his flesh when he tried searching the corpse in the coffin. Happily, he was able to burn it out before it got fully inside, with some help from the cleric. They discovered some more of the tiny pests, and torched both bodies in the room, finding some money on the smaller one. Then they took the left archway out of there, following in Karosians footsteps, though the only sign of him was a faint trail of blood. They soon found themselves back in the entry room, stairs leading back up to level 1. The PCs then went north, finding a door with a handaxe lodged into it, and strange scratches covering itnot a good sign. The key was still in the door, so they opened it and went on, into the hallway beyond. Here, they ignored the right path and went left. Kerit and Sithdar sneaked ahead, and found a room with a man huddled in the corner; a sickeningly muscular fellow, with a wild beard and hair, who muttered strange, insane words to himself. He failed to see them, so they decided to go back and leave the man alone, searching the southern areas instead.
There they discovered a secret door, at an apparent dead end. Inside, it stank of carrion, and Kerit could hear muffled footsteps further inside. They crawled in, coming to another door. Karl used a grease spell to grease the hinges, as Sithdar silently opened it and peered inside: it was a star-shaped room, filled with all manner of coffins, a demonic pentagram in the center, where lurked many ghoulish beings: undead. At first, the PCs went inside, but quickly turned back when they saw how many were in there: over twenty of the wretched things, all stinking to high hell, and all clearly hostile. They ran back to the entrance, where they got in formation and waited for the monsters to follow, so they could pick them off in a more narrow corridor. The battle was a success. About ten of the ghouls were slain, along with several of the larger, stronger ones. But no more came; the rest of the horde being content to wait. The PCs decided to wait too, and rest some more, while Tyro recovered his spells. That night, nine ghouls attacked them. The party was looking hurt, when both Ashrem and Kerit got paralyzed, while surrounded by ghouls; and yet some luck and skill allowed them to come out on top of this battle too, none of them yet dead, though many wounded. And there they stopped.

DM COMMENTS: The players did a good job, surviving one of the hardest encounters on the level, and generally kicking some ass. Of course, we did have our first death of the campaign! It was Karosian, a character described by his player as being ‘unkillable’ :lol
This guy was seriously min-maxed, a fighter with 18 str, 18 con, 16 dex, and a 5 int, 6 cha. He was basically a shared character, given to our occasional guest players, guys who didn’t show up too much. The current guy playing him, Dave, was a terrible role-player. He almost got into a fight with the group, and then wandered off alone–a thing you just don’t do in RA. So he died. All his high stats couldn’t save him from two criticals from lowly goblins, who then took his gear and dragged his body to level 4, so the priests could make him into an undead servitor Still, he’ll probably never play again, so it’s for the best. We’re all still having a great time with the dungeon.