19th of Marpenoth, 1376, Year of the Bent Blade

 We continue and some clouds seem to come in really, really fast, and it gets really cold really fast. We hear sobbing.

Vondal leads us off the path and straight to the sobbing sounds. We see a farmstead, and blood, and the ghost of a little boy. The boy is grotesquely injured. Vandederp seems truly frightened - it almost looks like he has aged somehow.

I ask the little boy ghost what happened to him, and he talks about claws and the claws stealing his mom and dad. I doubt we can save them, but perhaps we can stop it from happening to some other family, and maybe give him peace so he can continue on. I ask where, and he gestures down a path of broken branches and blood stains. We leave the boy and go along this path. At the end, we find a little sunken area and a door to what must be a burrow.

Vondal and Vandederp try to open the door and fail. Vondal laments needing to break such a lovely door as he takes a pick ax to it. Eventually, we get through, and we see stairs going down.

We follow Vondal - apparently his mace glows in the dark. We get to the bottom, and see a huge room, being held up by 4 columns, and a whole bunch of sarcophagi along the edges of the room. There are footprints everywhere in the dust. We hear voices in the corners, and sarcophagi opening. There are zombies everywhere. I go to the center of the room and see a sort of black ghost thing. I go for them, though I know I should stick with the others and kill the zombies. But these look nastier and harder to kill. We manage to kill them all, and look around, at the sarcophagi that didn't open. We don't dawdle though, and go to a door that had been behind the ghost things. Vondal opens the door by pulling it off its hinges, and starts to tear up at destroying another beautiful door. If he is to ever settle down, perhaps I will get him a door for a gift.

We go down a hallway, and we hear a soldier voice yell out "Soldiers! We can reclaim Glory!" Well, I guess it's another fight! There was a ledge above, and we need to kill the soldiers up there as well. Vondal went up one side and cheered as he shoved them off the ledge. If only I were that strong! And I suppose Vorest turned to an earth elemental, for she traveled through the wall to arrive on the ledge - I did not know they could do that!

After we kill them, we continue down the hall and find another door. Vandederp opens it, perhaps to spare Vondal the agony of breaking another door. It is more hall, this time with doors to the sides. Vorest, as the elemental, points to a door and signals 3, and tries to point about where they are. One is close to the door and we all go for that one. They have terrifying faces... eyes? and it is hard to fight them while looking at them - not that it is easy averting ones eyes! We manage to kill them.

 We leave and go to another door. Vondal says there are machines working inside. We enter and we are on a chunk of floor with holes in it - it's not connected to the rest of the floor chunks. Below us, there is a floor covered in spikes. Across the room, we see a platform with a chest and 3 flaming skulls. We jump across the platforms, and fight the skulls. Some of the platforms would smash against the ceiling, and some thrust spikes up, so I decided that it would be best to stay on the walls. Vorest made a tunnel to the chest, and after beating the skulls and getting the treasure, we leave in Vorest's tunnel.

We go in the hallway and continue to the end. We open the door and see a room with marble columns, and a floor with really fancy tiles. The door slams shut behind us. Across the room is another door. There are four sarcophagi around each of the 4 columns. Vondal goes forward and finds a puzzle. 

Four by Four, Heroes in Rest  

Names long Lost, in Sigils they're Dressed

 

Three with Three, and Six with Four,

Four with Five and Three with More

Press the Four, and Pass without Harm

Take your Time, and Sound the Alarm

We look around and after noticing the designs on the sarcophagi, Vandederp manages to figure it out. While we are following his directions, we are attacked by ... something. After our answers are chosen, the invisible things just go away. The door at the far end opens, and the bright lights go away. 

We continue through the door and find more doors. We choose one and go through. There is a lot of death in this room. There is a weird flower on the ceiling. It looks like it has corpses in its vines. Vorest looks overwhelmed by the smell, but thankfully got over it quickly enough. We kill the flower, who was making zombies (or something), and continue to the next room.

We enter and the room feels circular. We see sarcophagi in the center, surrounded by bones and fat ghouls. We hear voices towards the far side, happy to have more food. A giant bone monster appears to materialize by the bones opposite the ghouls. It grabs Vondal, and declares it has food for "master." Vondal and I attack it, but unfortunately we don't hurt it too much and it vanishes with Vondal. After a bit we manage to defeat them all. We see a dais in the centre, with stars carved in a grid. On the side, Vondal and Vandederp read out another puzzle.

Brave warrior met demise foretold, Their secret kept shall yet unfold, If crowns placed correctly on the shrine, Celestial beds for four of nine.

We manage to solve it, and the side of the dais opens and a hammer shows up. Vondal squees, grabs it and we go back to see if we missed anything important. We get out, and Vondal closes the crypt. We go back to the kid, but he is not there. We decide that it's an okay enough place to camp for the night.

 

3rd of Eleint, 1376, Year of the Bent Blade

 We arrive in Velen early enough to spend some time. We manage to find 14 zombies somehow. We kill them, hopefully they don't have someone raising the dead here.

7th of Kythorn, 1376, Year of the Bent Blade

 We are still walking. We find more "guards" - they don't have the insignia that the guards yesterday had - and they are demanding that we pay tolls. Vondal argues with them, and we end up fighting. They are pretty good, but not good enough. We tidy up a bit - we don't want to leave the road impassable. 

Overnight, we are attacked by about a dozen zombies.

4th of Kythorn, 1376, Year of the Bent Blade

 We are starting to see outskirt farms of Waterdeep. It looks like rain. 

We run into a pack of zombies that are eating a cow. After we kill the zombies, we notice that there is no movement. Vandederp mentions that he thinks that the scarecrows are watching us. That's a bit creepy. Vondal wants to go to a homestead. He knocks and we get no answer. We go to the scarecrow in his field, and Vandederp talks to it. I poke it with my dagger. Nothing happens. I take another look at the cow, but there is nothing to see there either.

We continue on, and start seeing even more scarecrows. But no more people or animals. And it is getting scary dark.

We see a dark tower off the road a ways. We head towards it and see spooky green lights. The horses aren't happy and time feels weird. We see a flash of "normal." The horses stop and we get off. We go forward and look back and our horses are gone. This is like one of those dreams where nothing is going right, but you just can't stop, a right nightmare.

The scarecrows start to come for us. They get beat up, but it was weird - they even threw their heads at us! We enter the tower, where else could we go? It is bigger on the inside than the outside. And it is full of zombies. We kill them and look at the chest, when it attacks us, as well as some other furniture. When Vorest's moonbeam travels over them, they melt into a blob. When they are a blob, you stick to it, and it is very unpleasant.

After defeating them, we find some stairs. Up it is, I suppose. There's a fog that is following us, so even if we try to take over this dream, we still have no option - that fog does NOT look friendly!

Up the stairs we go, and we find a werewolves. I'm not dealing with a were curse again!

Up again, we find a golem or something that looks like a bunch of different people or monsters stitched all together. Who would do something like this? We kill him and go up the stairs again.

This floor looks like a slaughter house. There is blood everywhere. There is a devil wrapped in chains. Or not - the chains start moving and grow barbs. I tell the devil to go home, but he would rather flail us. Well, he had the choice before we killed him.

We feel oddly rested on this trip up, and this time we emerge onto the roof. From outside, this tower was not this big! There are torches, and around the tower we can only see the fog that has been following us. In the center of the roof is a patch of darkness. Out come 6 smaller black ghost guys fly out. When the black patch died, a horn fell out of him. We pick it up and time goes crazy on us. 

The stones start fading, and the fog shrinks. We run down the stairs. As we run, the stones disappear. The lights blink in and out. We get to the bottom and everything is gone, it is daytime, we are in the middle of a wheat field. There is even a farmer here, and seems very confused to see us. There is no evidence of what happened. Even our horses are right there, on the road.

Vorest asks the horses what happened and they said we just wandered off, and disappeared. And happily, reappeared.

12th of Mirtul, 1376, Year of the Bent Blade

 We go to the address we found yesterday. There are cultists here, which we take out quickly, though Vorest gets pretty badly hurt. We search upstairs and find a letter addressed to us. We bring it to Captain Darren's to open it up. Maybe it'll have evidence - it's for sure from Hondal.

Vandederp opens it and it says:

Then the letter explodes.

Captain Darren is annoyed. We are annoyed. Barnaby runs in and announces that his troops are being attacked by zombies, where they are burying Crymson Starr.

Vorest summons war horses so we can keep up to Barnaby. We get to the grave yard and see 14 zombies overtaking the guards that stayed. We beat the zombies and the guards say that some zombies took Crymson's corpse off with them.

We follow the zombies and catch up to them, as well as some cultists. We beat them and then burnt Crymson and the zombies. After this we start tracking the cultist that ran off during the fight. We follow the trail back to the city, where we lose it. 

We go to Captain Darren, where everything has gone crazy. Apparently Lord Thadeus was attacked by zombies at the temple of Ilmater, where he was saved by Hondal.

While talking about how weird the zombies behaved, we walked to the temple. We wonder around and then walk through the market and find Gwyneth. She mentions that she has gotten on with "Master Kensingley," and that he has shown her the "way" and insists on bringing us to meet him.

She brings us to a nice house. She acts like this is her house. She runs off to another room and shuts the door behind her. She comes back and beckons us on. The room is big, and there are balconies and doors.

And we see Gwyneth casting a spell and Hondal shouting down.

Well. Damn.

We manage to beat them, but Hondal has escaped. Again. Vondal is going mad trying to find secret passages. Vorest says that he could have possibly gone in the stone floor with a spell.

We wait, and Hondal eventually comes out of the ground. We beat him up, and Vondal mentions that Vorest should try Moonbeam on him. She does, her last spell, and he bubbles and burns to a crisp. We worriedly told Captain Darren. He searched Hondal's house and found dead people and an altar to Loviatar, and, eventually, thanked us.

10th of Ches, 1376, Year of the Bent Blade

We are still here, and we are going to go further down in this foul place. We found more skeletons and zombies - perchance my skills are improving, as I killed more skeletons than before, and once I hit what seemed faster than normal. I guess all this practice is improving! While we were down there, we found the fellow who wrote the letter somewhat explaining this insanity - Hondal. He explained that he was extremely hungry, and Vondal  gave him a set of rations. It didn't seem to ease his hunger, so we loudly suggested that it would be handy if the bear could turn "human" and create some goodberries. It is so odd how quickly something so bizarre becomes commonplace - as with Vandederp's firebreath. Did I mention this previously? It appears his draconic nature leaves him some benefits.

Hondal tries one of  the berries, doubt clear on his face. As he chews, his face changes to euphoric and he comments on how amazed he is to not feel hunger, a beast that has been in his belly for DECADES. I can not even imagine. He says when the undead came, he tried to plea for his life and protection to Loviatar, and she laughed and granted him a sort of immortality, for he cannot die, though he has tried - by his own hand, and by fleeing the zombies and skeletons. In thanks, he told us of a secret passage (though not the traps that lay within) and ran off into the distance - far from this place. I hope he chooses a good life after the trick his god played on him, I would not like to find him again, and have him my enemy.

 

His secret passage led to a treasure room, where magic slippers let you walk on walls and ceilings. The group decided that I would make best use of them, so I shall need to meditate to learn their ways. We also found a mace that Vondal was quite excited to use against the skeletons. Oh, and a significant amount of coin - it will be good to replenish our food and supplies.

We took a bit of a break to rest and heal up a bit. We also finished the goodberries.

After our break, we continued down the passage and found an absolutely destroyed laboratory. I am curious as to what they were doing, but this makes no sense to my mind.

 We are done the basement and on heading to the floor above, we are told that there is only one place left - the place that went up.

So we go there, and find the formal entrance to this place. There are columns dedicated to Loviatar, and they would be beautiful if I admired this god. We go to the exit and head back to the village. We will probably find somewhere to rest for the night.

9th of Ches, 1376, Year of the Bent Blade

We continue down the next hallway. We found doors that are beautifully - if horrendously - carved in honour of Loviatar, Mistress of pain and suffering. In front of the doors were a bunch of dead people. We opened the doors to a "church," and zombies and skeletons.

Then Vorest shouted "I'm a bear, suckers!" and changed into a bear! What!?! She seems more powerful than I previously thought.

After dealing with these, we found another room with more beautiful and horrendous friezes. We found cells of people, and a note explaining that they were the cause of all these undead. I shall show it here:

These undead are everywhere! I can understand his fear.

We took a break and then found some bedrooms, and a basement. The basement continued, so we'll explore that tomorrow. We are resting tonight in a room that suggests torture and prisoners. I look forward to leaving this place of pain, zombies and skeletons.