15: KANG DOESN’T RUN AWAY (BARELY)

* **Back to the barrowdowns! The doorway has been left open for a few days, which means all sorts of mischief and madness has wandered out into the countryside. That won’t come back to bite us in the ass later.**
* **We cross the water elemental’s pool – Fina freezes for easy passage – and end up in another watery chamber. A horrible green light begins to radiate from Tarlenheim (who fails a WIS save), who is immobilized and desecrated (??) by the necrotic damage. Kang waggles a toe enticingly over the threshold…and a TERRIBLE DESICCATED GRAY FIGURE RUSHES OUT OF THE HALLWAY and begins to tear and claw at Kang’s leg. The ghast slashes his leg, and Kang begins to feel his flesh deteriorate. He ducks back behind the threshold to alert the party. It’s initiative time, baby.**

* + **Tarlenheim remains paralyzed by necrotic power.**
	+ **Adele wallops with her warhammer…and crit fails. Her over-enthusiasm causes her warhammer to slip from her hands. She identifies that we are fighting a ghast and two ghouls. Their eyes shine with a “glinting, black malevolence.”**
	+ **Oris casts the image of an illusory commoner in front of the ghasts/ghouls, who are unaffected. Their eyes have long since rotted away, so they rely on Lifesense. They rush through the illusion and begin to shred Tarlenheim’s skin and shove it in their mouths. There was a reference to spaghetti. It was gross.**
	+ **Fina casts gust, blowing Tarlenheim into the water (while he’s paralyzed, so he may drown). The ghasts follow. Praxis fires his longbow into the back of the head of the ghast, skewering his noodle.**
	+ **Kang beats the ever-living shit out of the ghast with his awesome new Dorje (thanks, Eric!). Except it wasn’t alive. So I guess he beats the ever-dead shit out of the ghast? Kang stomps happily on the corpse, shouting “THIS IS FOR MY FOOT!”**
	+ **RECTON: Adele has the great weapon proficiency. She has not lost her weapon.**
* **As the ghast dies, Tarlenheim is freed from the necrotic curse! He still has two ghouls ripping his flesh off, though. He swims across the moat, stabilizes himself, and fires his burning-hands-blunderbuss, blasting a cone of fire at the ghouls.**

* + **Oris lays a guiding bolt into one, radiant energy tearing the flesh from the ghoul’s “corpulent husk.” Adele crushes it’s jaw (and skull) with the warhammer. The remaining ghoul pivots to Kang, slashes at him, and paralyzes him. Fina unleashes a scorching blast of fire into the ghoul’s chest. Praxis longbows again, pushing over the beast and causing it to crumble. “Nothing is certain except death and Praxis!”**
* **Kang stomps on bones, revealing a scroll. Oris unleashes a wave of holy energy in the area of heal Tarlenheim; as he does this, Oris feels somehow that his magic is dampened by the evil aura of the area. He recognizes this as the effect of an Unhallowed place, which weakens his power. As this wave rolls out across the party, a radiant aura briefly appears around Adele’s head.**

* + **Kang hands the scroll to Oris, who learns Twilight Knife. Oris recognizes Adele’s aura to be the consequence of angelic blood running through her veins – and tells Adele so. “You got angel blood.” “Cool. Fuck yeah. Let’s do this.”**
* **Oris grabs a femur, casts Light (“Fliggledyboo!”). Kang chucks it down into a hallway, through one room and landing in another. The bone clatters into the room, clattering among what sounds like a further pile of bones. The party sees the shadowy impression of movement.**

* + **Tarlenheim scopes the first room. Nothing happens. He begins to scope the second room and is asked to make a Wisdom saving through, which never goes well for him. Thankfully, he rolls a natural 20 and feels very, incredibly certain that something dire is in the room ahead. His soul is screaming “No! Stop! You fool!”**
	+ **Oris pulls a tuft of fluff from his Bag of Tricks, which Tarlenheim chucks into the room. It manifests as a brown bear. He is named Bernie Kardashian.**
	+ **Four long-fingered specter (that basically move, look, and sound like Dementors) are compelled to attack the bear. They beginning to inhale deeply, sucking the soul out of the bear. The bear, instinctively afraid of the undead and not a complete idiot, barrels out of the room and dashes 80 feet for the exit.**
	+ **Kang notices these are noncorporeal ghost beings and begins to move into flight mode.**
* **Fina casts magic miss-ile (“miss-aisle”). Tarlenheim charges in, shouting “Nobody lives forever!” and slashes with his rapiers. He retreats to Kang, placing a comforting hand upon his shoulder. Mayhem continues to be dealt, and the DM implies that these baddies have low total HP.**

* + **Oris casts guiding bolt – the spell initially fizzles, but a tiny paw reaches out of his pack and touches him on the shoulder. The spell hits! He also uses a bonus action to cast spiritual weapon, manifesting in the image of Kang’s dorje. He shouts “KANG! LOOK AT YOUR WEAPON! LET IT GIVE YOU STRENGTH! DON’T PLAY FOOL’S ADVOCATE!”**
	+ **Adele readies her warhammer by the door, and Kang readies the Greataxe of the Sylvan Sovereign on the other side of the door. One passes through the doorway, and Kang slashes it with his axe. Adele crits on an attack against the second through the doorway and crushes its incorporeal skull. Kang and Adele clink weapons. There is much rejoicing.**
	+ **The third specter turns to attack Kang, while the fourth begins to attack Adele. The third misses, but the fourth successfully lands a blow on Adele (who is fortunately resistant to necrotic damage). Praxis longbows it. Fina casts witchbolt. Tarlenheim gives the third a stabola, leaving it with a single hit point god damnit.**
	+ **Oris begins to interfere with their horrid business by using his spectral weapon to smite the third. Adele polishes off the last specter standing.**
	+ **Tarlenheim, Praxis, Oris, and Kang all search the room for traps. We take a good fucking gander and find the bones of what appear to be an elephant. Kang’s heart is broken.**
* **Loot:**

* + **Kang takes a giant elephantine femur bone.**
	+ **Tarlenheim takes a number of elephantine vertebrae.**
	+ **Oris/Fina finds a scroll of Haunting Mists.**
	+ **Adele finds an infinitely-lit lantern.**
	+ **Praxis finds a tarnished ring, which he slides onto his finger after asking everyone to leave the room. As he slides it on, another mind attempts to supplant his own! He’ll have Nimrond identify that later…**
	+ **Fina finds a centuries-old, trampled playing card (nat20 investigation). It is crusted over with grime, which cracks and flakes off as she handles the card. On the card is a picture of a wise man. It is labeled The Master. Fina gains one level but loses her most prized magic item. :( :( :(**
	+ **Tarlenheim finds a tiny, pale green prism no more than an inch in size. He feels the natural power of this gemstone. He asks Gilda the cat if she knows anything about it. As she peeps her head out to investigate, Adele notices that Gilda’s eyes turn exactly the same color as the prism. Gilda sniffs and suggests that Tarlenheim “throw it.” Tarlenheim does so…and the prism begins to orbit Tarlenheim’s head.**

* + - **Kang takes the femur bone and knocks the prism out of orbit. It returns to orbit and will forever do so until he plucks it out of orbit. He gets +1 proficiency while it orbits his head.**
* **We retreat down another hallway through magical darkness. Adele brandishes her lantern through the darkness, stopping a horrible thing from happening to us. After an unseen servant opens a door and we do some trap investigation, Kang smashes open a barrel of raw copper nuggets.**

* + **Everyone scoops some handfuls of shinies.**
* **The unseen servant opens another door. Holding up a large mirror, the unseen servant enables the party to see a golden altar in pristine condition in the center of the next room. The room is lit by dim light of the ancients. Kang dangles his ankle over the threshold and, when nothing goes poorly, moves in.**

* + **The altar is basically the Ark of the Covenant. Kang picks it up and asks Adele to open it. Inside is a censer with chain, a scroll of Consecrate, and a scroll tube containing a scroll of Hallow. The two candelabras are solid gold worth 50gp.**
	+ **Items are in pristine condition. Ark is worth 2000 gp; censer is worth 200 gp.**

**XP for the session –**

* **Ghast + two ghouls = 450 + 400 = 850/6 = 142xp per person.**
* **4 spectres = 800/6 = 133xp per person**