Now that Brother Bother is holding his rage back the group returns to make sure that the little demon is dead. She is floating face-down in the pool and not moving so they search her tiny body and find her magical returning dagger, a miniature tiara, a tiny black silk gown and what must be an obsidian unholy symbol. Bother’s insane rage eventually subsides but its effects leave him drained.
The two doors in the cathedral reveal empty store-rooms, the runes on the walls are indecipherable and the glowing pool doesn’t seem to be doing anything threatening so they head back to the round room with the red marble statue. Listening at the northern door, Brother Bother can hear some creatures grunting, snarling and chittering. They are some distance away so he opens it carefully; nothing attacks him so after a moment he steps in.
The door leads onto a wooden platform above a prison pit. The monks can just about make out a creature lurking under the rickety wooden walkway which leads off to the east, so Bother creeps down the stairs while Aric covers the room with his bow.
The lurking creature is a Sinspawn and there is another under the platform; as they both rush to attack the monk, Aric manages to get a good shot on one of them. Golden Chile leaps over the platform edge to join the fray but doesn’t land well and hurts himself. However, Bother manages to hit the wounded Sinspawn and Aric finishes it off with another arrow. The remaining creature gives Bother a terrible mauling, its bite causing sinful thoughts to rise in the monk’s mind – he is able to control these but is forced to concentrate on defending himself from further attacks.
As Aric puts an arrow in the second Sinspawn, Gol’den Chile comes to the wounded monk’s aid and batters the creature down, finishing it off.
The prison cells are all locked and contain nothing but ancient bones so the group heads across the walkway and into a disused torture room. A small room off this must once have been a library as it is littered with scraps of scrolls and books written in the same spiky runes seen elsewhere; Aric manages to discover an intact evocation scroll hidden under a broken chair but he is unable to decipher it.
There are three locked prison doors in this room but as they are unable to open them the party tries the eastern door. Bother can hear the occasional low moan some way beyond it, so he opens it and the group carefully creep up some stairs into a 20-foot high, strangely-cold vaulted chamber. Wooden lids cover nearly a dozen pits in the floor, from whence the moaning and some shuffling sounds emanate, but before Bother can take all this in a foul-looking, hideously-deformed goblin hiding round the corner vomits a stream of acidic blood at him.
Aric runs in and shoots the thing; Gol’den Chile follows him and thumps it. They both see that the pits each contain a single zombie, although these wretches are unable to do anything other than moan and wail and futilely reach out to the living things above them.
The goblin-thing has several sets of arms and legs and wields a sword, axe and silver dagger; he slashes Chile with all of these and wounds him, so the monk steps back to cast a protective spell. Aric shoots the goblin again but he responds by vomiting a vile stream of acidic blood at the half-elf. Bother, too weak to join the fight, casts several luck spells on Chile as he attempts to hit the monstrosity, eventually slaying it with an incredible blow to the throat.
Taking the thing’s magical longsword, masterwork hand axe and silver dagger, the group wait for Chile to painstakingly slay all the zombies with his rudimentary anti-undead magic before dragging their wounded, weakened and generally rather abused hides back to Sandpoint for some much-needed recuperation …
Experience: 800 each.
Session map:
