Time for another session recap. Lots of combat in this one - 4 encounters in 4 1/2 hours, and a 5th one introduced. I'll summarize as best I can - let's get to it.
The party started as they'd ended the previous session, having just jumped down into the catacombs. A quick journey to the north showed the staircase which had been sealed off - the way down into the catacombs from the monastery. Heading south, the party found their first encounter of the night in the next corridor - a horde of decrepit skeletons and a skeleton archer at each end of the corridor. This encounter wasn't too hard, as Mika's area effects cleaned up the decrepit skeletons quickly and from there it was just a matter of chasing down the archers. Most of the party hit level 2 after this encounter, and we took a break to allow everyone to level up.
Once the break was over the party continued on their way, finding a side passage that led into what appeared to be a tomb for children. A dire rat awaited the party, and they rushed forth - only to be attacked by a pair of child skeletons known as bonewretch skeletons. These proved particularly disturbing as one carried a teddy bear, and the other had rotted strings of hair with bows and a broken teacup in hand. Adrie was quite disturbed by these skeletons and the childlike screaming they did as they were attacked; Erik took a different route, and convinced himself he was fighting spiders, not the skeletons of children. The bonewretches proved to be somewhat effective and kept Iados and Erik slowed for much of the encounter - the dire rat, on the other hand, proved utterly useless, failing to hit even once and failing to dodge even a single attack. Stupid rat.
Inside the tomb the party found some treasure, including some new armor for Mika. Pressing on, they encountered a skeletal patrol - three warriors and a pair of archers. This encounter proved quite taxing on the party, as the warriors held them off while the archers peppered them from a distance. Drained as this left the party, it could've been a lot worse - the DM's dice went cold for the archers and they missed at least half of their attacks through the whole encounter. The archers led the party into another tomb chamber, this one for Cairnstone's wives. Before they could explore it further, however, the party decided to take an extended rest.
Yet again, they found themselves attacked by skeletons, as a group ambushed the party during their rest. This group proved easy to deal with, however, and though the archer made an attempt to kite, he was caught and killed just as the other two were. The party finished their extended rest and set about exploring the tomb.
The chamber had eight sarcophagi in it, and an altar bearing four urns in the middle. An inscription on the altar told them that they would have to awaken the wives together using their "ashen attendants"; these turned out to be the urns, filled with the cremated ashes of said attendants. Four of the wives Cairnstone hated, and four he loved - through history checks the party discerned that Cairnstone loved his 3rd and 8th wives, and hated his 1st wife. They debated for a long while on whether they had all the necessary information to solve this puzzle, but discovered upon trying to return an urn placed by the 8th sarcophagus to the altar that they had to solve it. This was my intention - if the party had rolled well enough on their history checks they would've figured out which wives (and thereby which sarcophagi) to place urns by, though they would still have had the task of figuring out which were which. Admittedly I should've placed numbers on the sarcophagi, but I suppose I was rather married to the thought of them guessing as to which urns to put where.
The party ending up getting 2 out of 4 right; they found an amber in one sarcophagus and a pair of magic gauntlets (a rare item!) in the other. As for the other two, one contained a jar which has begun releasing a poison gas into the room, and the other contained a boneshard skeleton - an "old friend" of the players who has caused many a death with his nasty explosion ability. We stopped here for the night.
Next week's session may be in jeopardy as Sal's character Iados will not be present; I am unsure yet whether I will be going ahead with three people (which I could do) or not. I'll provide notice to you all as soon as I can. Until then, maybe I'll have a certain backstory to post to tide you all over...we'll see (right Sal? ;D)!
Yea yea, the backstory is coming.
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