3 months later ...
After the Mage Hill dungeon crawl, the party took a well-deserved holiday in Marchion. There were some teamwork benefits that they wanted to acquire, and Lukwind wanted to build a theatre on the site of the warehouse fire. Rohit & Helena sailed south to the metropolis of Laveril, where they constructed a mobile stronghold (using the rules from the Stronghold Builder's Guidebook).
The land was still covered in snow when Martok received a sending from his uncle, Halcyon Volraith: "Increased Drow and undead activity in the region. Might be suited to your talents. I will arrange transport with the Wayfarers' Society if you're interested." At that point, the party was in the middle of training for a teamwork benefit, so Martok didn't think they were ready to return to adventuring just yet.
About a week later, however, Garyn's contact in the Seekers of Truth alerted him that the hamlet of Silver Plume had been attacked. There appeared to have been about fifty survivors, but they headed all headed into the alps, having apparently been taken captive. The local rangers set out to follow the trail, but haven't been seen since. When he mentioned this to Martok, they concluded that the drow were most likely responsible.
Garyn & Martok called a party meeting and shared what they knew with the rest of the adventurers. Lukwind, Helena, Elsa & Clicker would travel to Silver Plume aboard the mobile stronghold. Martok's uncle offered to pay for teleportation with the Wayfarers' Society, so Martok, Garyn & Rohit chose the quicker option. Once they had arrived in the town of Silverthorne, it took them a little while to find Martok's uncle, Lord Halcyon Volraith. Using scrying and other means, Halcyon had managed to track the drow to the Dodrien Crypts, about 20 miles away. However, he suspected that the drow have become suspicious of his meddling, placing him in danger. He urged them to investigate the crypts and try and find out what had caused these drow to come to the surface.
The mobile stronghold arrived in Silverthorne late that afternoon, having burrowed at 10mph all the way from Marchion. By then, Garyn & Rohit were feeling light headed due to the rarified air at this altitude. The town of Silverthorne was 8700ft above sea level, high in the Peloponnesian Alps. However, by standing on the platform of healing inside the stronghold, they were soon put right. They traveled the 47 miles to the hamlet of Silver Plume, but decide to wait until morning before investigating.
Garyn finds that there was a snowstorm five days ago, and yet he could see fresh tracks in the snow. He contacted the agent in Silverthorne via sending and asked how long it had been since Silver Plume was attacked. She replied that it had been two weeks. From that, as well as a few other clues, they deduced that the drow clerics had returned to the hamlet to turn some of the dead villagers into zombies. Even through the snow, it would have taken them less than 5 days to return to the Dodrien Crypts. Of course, burrowing through the rock, it took the mobile stronghold only a few hours.
There were two mausoleums still standing outside the entrance to the crypts proper. One was sealed shut and obviously hadn't been recently opened. The other was dusty and contained piles of refuse from previous inhabitants, but looked like hadn't been occupied in years. Moving on, they found that the large, stone doors in the side of the mountain wouldn't budge. Clicker used his ring of blinking to phase through the doors and found that they were tied with chain on the other side. He phased back out again and lent his ring to Rohit, who was able to pick the lock on the inside and let everybody in.
40ft down the corridor, they found the bodies of five dead drow outside a door. Elsa took one of their tabards as a disguise. Rohit opened the door and found that the room was full of zombie villagers. Although he was a cleric, Clicker was unable to turn undead (Charisma too low) but Helena managed to destroy many of them. Martok, Rohit and Elsa waded into the room amongst them and swiftly mowed through the animated corpses.
Another 60ft down the corridor, it bent around to the right. There was another door, which Martok flew through. A glyph on the floor flashed brightly, summoning two golden lions that savaged him with their claws. Rohit, Elsa and Garyn charged into the room and managed to slay the lions, then they began investigating the sarcophagi in the room. Meanwhile, Clicker went further down the corridor, where he found another door. This one had been plastered shut, but he used his ring of blinking to phase through it. Inside the room was a large statue of an elegent lady. Four doors led from the room.
Clicker phased back out through the door, but he was pursued by the horrifying sight of a ghost. He phased through the wall beside him, back into the room where the rest of the party were still rifling through the sarcophagi. "G-g-g-ghost!" he exclaimed.
For a few tense moments, they watched the wall that Clicker had phased through, expecting the ghost to appear. However, it eventually became evident that she had given up the chase.
Elsa opened the remaining eight sarcophagi and Rohit put all of the treasure in their bag of holding. Martok identified a wand as having 6 charges of neutralize poison, which was sure to come in handy against the drow and their spider minions.
Clicker showed Rohit the door to the ghost's lair and he was able to find the slay living trap. Before he could disable it, the ghost reappeared. Having cast tongues, Lukwind was prepared to have a conversation with the ghost and reassure it that they meant no harm. Using rapid diplomacy, he changed her attitude to indifferent. She warned them not to touch the door and asked them to begone and leave her in peace.
In the meantime, Garyn moved to the top of the stairs and examined the multitude of footprints. They were dry, which indicated that it had been at least 24 hours since anyone had come inside from the snow. There was a short hallway at the bottom of the stairs, which opened out into a natural cavern. There was also an invisible Maurezhi demon, but even with his see invisibility potion Garyn didn't notice it. Wisely, he decided to wait until Rohit was ready to search the stairs for traps. With his ring of darkhidden, Rohit was just as invisible to the Maurezhi as it was to him. Neither realized that the other was there until Rohit touched its foot.
Rohit somersaulted to the bottom of the stairs, just before the Maurezhi (in the guise of a half-elven ranger) flailed wildly at his previous position, thereby cancelling his invisibility. Lukwind tried to have a conversation with this "half-elf," but he just sneered and turned invisible again. Rohit could now see the telltale shimmering that gave away the Maurezhi's location, and could hear him as he walked into a cavern and attempted to hide. Rohit followed, sending updates to Lukwind via message. "Look, we know where you are," Lukwind called out. "There is no point in hiding from us. I suggest we just talk. Like I said, we could have attacked you a lot earlier, if we'd wanted to." Since it was painfully obvious that his hiding place had been discovered, the Maurezhi moved through the cavern, into the next chamber.
When Rohit followed, he saw that there were alcoves carved into the walls, containing a jumble of bones. The center of the cavern was dominated by a huge statue of an insectoid creature, like Clicker only uglier. The Maurezhi touched the bones in the alcoves beside him, then moved across to the other side of the cavern. The bones assembled themselves into skeletons and got to their feet, just as the marble statue came to life. Unable to find the invisible necromancer responsible, it decided to attack the skeletons instead, lashing out with its 15ft reach and smashing one of them to pieces.
Rohit'd had enough of this dodgy "half-elf" and his spell-like abilities. He drank a potion of see invisibility from his bandoleer and then spring-attacked the Maurezhi. With his sneak attack and skirmish damage, he was able to hurt the demon in spite of its massive damage reduction. Lukwind, Martok and Garyn appeared at the cavern entrance, although with Martok's walk unseen and Garyn's ring of darkhidden, the Maurezhi was unable to see them. The party was fortunate to have the Infiltration teamwork benefit (from the DMG2), otherwise they wouldn't have been able to see each other!
Helena grabbed Elsa's hand and the two of them dimension doored to the other end of the cavern to cut off the "half-elf"'s escape. The demon used its fear ability, but everyone succeeded on their saves. Next, he headed towards Lukwind, but provoked multiple AoOs from the invisible Rohit. Garyn fired arrows at him and Lukwind used his assassin's whip, while Rohit drew his sap for one final spring attack. Between them, they did enough subdual damage to knock the demon unconscious.
Meanwhile, Martok had used his eldritch chain to take care of the animated statue and skeletons. Rohit removed the Maurezhi's armor and weapons, then Lukwind tied him up with rope and dispelled his assume shape ability, revealing his true form. Helena cast cure light wounds, intending to interrogate the demon and find out what he knew. However, as soon as he regained consciousness, the Maurezhi bit Helena, paralyzing her. Unbeknown to the characters, he used his telepathy to call the zombies that he had waiting in a nearby cavern.
Standing guard, Rohit and Martok heard the echo of shuffling feet approaching them down the twisting tunnel. Next, the demon attempted to summon ghouls, but failed his concentration check. With Elsa standing over him, he couldn't risk an AoO. As it was, she swiftly pummeled him back into unconsciousness.
Six zombie varags shambled past the invisible Rohit and Martok, followed by a pack of zombie wolves and half-dozen zombie rangers. This is what had happened to the previous excursions that had been sent to investigate the drow attacks. Elsa picked up the paralyzed Helena and carried her out of the cavern, just in time to keep her out of reach of the fast-moving zombies. Garyn cast a fireball and Rohit used his blast globes to destroy most of the undead. Martok's vitriolic chain took care of the rest.
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