Lost Mines of Phandelver : 16 – So Many Undead
Our heroes:
Euphemia “Mia” Tosscobble, the Halfling Rogue,
Count Erspell, the Elvish Mage,
Kui-Kui, the Human Noble Fighter,
Viggo, the Human Druid,
Dave, the Human Folk Hero Fighter,
& Eorlund Granitefella, the Dwarvish Cleric
The party was hurting after the surprise attack from the gricks. They needed to take a moment to tend to their wounds. As Kui-Kui was the least injured, he volunteered to stand guard while the rest of the party bandaged themselves up.
The group was only just ready to make moves again before Kui-Kui heard moaning noises approaching them. Getting into a ready stance, the noises and the smell of death came closer as two monstrous, undead humanoids approached the party.
Viggo quickly morphed into his giant frog form. Although his wild shape ability gave him a much better chance in combat, his spatial awareness left much to be desired, because the giant frog form took up the entire hallway, leaving no way for the rest of the party to get through to attack the ghouls.
Kui-Kui and Erspell remembered the nearby passageway in the maze looped around and ended up in front of Viggo, so the pair of them ran around, while Mia saw her chance and slid under the frog.
The party are a lot more used to the layout of the maze this time and have a far easier battle with the undead, and with a few slashes and stabs, the ghouls are quickly defeated.
Eorlund, who held back during this fight, decides to rush ahead to scout out the caves ahead. But the dwarf doesn’t pay any actual attention to his surroundings, runs up a stairway and walks into a large cavern, full of ghouls, all which then turn towards the dwarf and attack.
Hoping to hold the undead off until his friends arrive, Eorlund draws his war hammer, and swings at the ghouls, only to lose his grip and send his weapon sailing down the stairs, almost hitting Kui-Kui in the face. Kui-Kui caught Eorlund’s hammer while running up the stairs, and tosses it back to the dwarf before drawing his own sword and lunging at the zombies.
Kui-Kui landed a few good hits onto the zombies, but the undead had him surrounded in no time. The monsters clawed at the fighter, breaking through his armour and scratching his skin, causing his body to seize up.
Hoping to get some breathing room for the party, Eorlund called upon his god to try and scare off the zombies. While a good plan, his channeled divinity only seemed to work on a couple of the undead.
Kui-Kui meanwhile, has become completely paralysed due to the continuing onslaught from the zombies. He fears for the worst, but a voice shouts in the back of his mind “Useless mortal, I’ll show you how it is done!” as Kui-Kui soul is suddenly ejected from his body. He watches as his body moves, almost like it were on strings, and slice through half of the zombies attacking him.
With the horde thinned slightly, it left an opening for Mia, Dave and Erspell to enter the room. With extra arrows and spells flying throughout the room, the zombies were quickly dispatched, and the fight was over.
The party scorned Eorlund for running off alone but were relieved the dwarf was alright. The group turned to try and help Kui-Kui, who had now returned to his body, but no-one had a way to heal his paralysis. Viggo looked at his brother’s wounds and determined that it would pass in an hour, so the group took a rest as Kui-Kui recovered.
Once Kui-Kui regained mobility, the party packed up their gear once more and headed further into the cave. It wasn’t long before the party was stopped again as me and noticed bodies on the floor in the room up ahead. Telling the party to hold a back near crept up to the entrance way and so many bodies lying on the floor and a large floating skull surrounded by green flames floating around near the ceiling. Finally having an opportunity to get the drop on their enemies, the party decided to plan what their next action should be, but Eorlund wasn’t having any of it, as he fired a sacred flame shot at the skull. The attack failed to hit but it definitely got the skulls notice. As it roared, the bodies strewn around the floor started to stand up. The party looked on in horror as a small horde of zombies marched towards the party. Cursing Eorlund for his impatience, the party ran into the room and started attacking the zombies. The skull was out of reach for the majority of attacks but it suddenly started to glow as 3 bolts of light shot out from it hitting Erspell, Mia and Kui-Kui. The skull could cast spells.
Erspell and Viggo tried to act out as much of their plan as they could, as Viggo took a form of a giant gecko and Erspell granted him the ability of Dragons Breath. Viggo climbed the wall onto the ceiling so he had a better chance of hitting the skull. Dowsing the skull and several zombies in an acid breath. While the skull took a lot of damage from the acid breath attack it wasn’t enough as it started to glow again and a huge fireball erupted, dealing large amounts of damage to party members and zombies alike. Hot dog and Byron, unfortunately, succumbed to the fireball and were both killed.
While the school had been flying around the room quickly had been studying its patterns noticing at one point depth down several feet. Timing it just right, Kui-Kui quickly left towards the skull managing to grab it mid-air sailing across the room with it slamming it into the ground stunning the skull temporarily.
This is the party’s first encounter with a spell caster and they don’t have a great track record with zombies will they survive
The adventure continues…
