Terra Povos: Show us some spine

We are back in the shrine to Durest. Whisper is looking over the urns; there are two large ones, a medium one, and a small one. Whisper searches the medium urn for traps. He finds no traps; it appears to be filled with ale. 

James tries it. It’s old and yucky but appears to be safe to drink. 

Whisper moves on to the small urn. It has a foul-smelling liquid in it, and no apparent traps. Maybe very foul ale? The larger one has rancid, spoiled food; so does the other larger one. Amergin looks at the small, foul-smelling one and identifies it as a manufactured poison. 

Lithos detects magic. The chair has lost its magic, the weapons are gone, but the skull pile still has some kind of magic; the urns and the chest are not magical. Amergin claims the poison jar. 

Whisper prods the skull pile with the ten foot pole. “Eh! What’re ya doin’! Quit pokin’ me!”

Lithos: “Hey, those skulls are magical! I think it might be necromancy.”

We interrupt the skull’s nap, and it floats up out of the pile. “Hey! You’re interruptin’ my nap! Look, you don’t bother me, I don’t bother you.”

It burrows back down into the pile. “Leave me alone or I’ll suck out your souls.”

We give up on trying to talk to the skull. Whisper goes to check the chest, which is of course trapped. It’s a poison needle arrangement, but Whisper is hopped up on antitoxin and goes in to disarm the trap. He succeeds, and makes a point of breaking it; he then spends some time working on the chest. Inside are twenty acid flasks, which can be thrown to deal acid damage. We hand them out to everybody except Lithos. Baldy has the glass sword. We consider whether or not to dip the glass sword in the poison, but Amergin points out that it’s an ingestion poison. 

We start looking at the puzzle. Lithos positions himself in front of the mirror, looking at the reflection. He tries splashing the candles with acid but only dissolves them. We get some more candles and try again; Whisper takes the other clues, scoots Lithos aside, and then traces his away around the room following the clues. He ends up facing a wall with an illusionary center. He tries the ten foot pole, and clanks something. Finally he reaches in and finds a handle. He pulls it, and after a certain amount of clanking a secret door opens. He probes the floor with the pole, and blocks the door with the pole, and then checks the chest. It looks just like the chest in the cage. Whisper opens the chest and finds a +1 mace of undead bane and disruption.

Whisper takes the mace. 

Lithos: “So maybe the pick wasn’t the weapon.” After some discussion – none of us are particular strong or martial – we hand that off to Amergin.

We consider the chest in the cage. It appears to be identical to the one in the secret passage. We try lifting the cage, but it won’t budge for us. Amergin tries doing it backwards and finds another illusionary pocket. He pulls that lever, and the cage goes up. We pull another identical mace out, and pass it off to James. 

We offer the skull a chance to come with us; we can put him a very nice hat box. He’s… interested. His name is Snort. He opens the bottom of the Durest shrine for us, and a little drawer pops out; it has ten black onyx. He then ensconces himself in Lithos’ backpack. “All righ let’s go!” 

Lithos gathers up his scattered stuff, bags it, and hands the bag off to Whisper. We head back around through the broken door and down the narrow passage to the spot on the wall where it says “don’t keep going unless you have the weapon”. Scratched on the wall is a note that says “giving up freedom opens all doors.” Lithos: “You The Adventures of Lady Ariana in the Flesh Pits of Sol Povos? Giving up her freedom sure opened up all her doors.”

An Allip phases through the wall and Lithos spins around and throws acid at it – and actually hits. 

Amergin yanks Baldy out of the way and steps into his place. Amergin is still sickened from the vipers’ venom, so he isn’t at full strength. Whisper continues to the door and checks it for traps; he doesn’t find any, so he opens the door. 

There are some zombies inside.

Baldy fires off a magic missile at the Allip; James moves in and attacks the zombie but doesn’t hit it. Lithos fires off a Magic Missile at the Allip. It steps into the wall, provoking an attack of opportunity from Amergin, who misses. The Allip is now flailing at Lithos from inside the wall, but Amergin clocks it and it explodes. Whisper slips in the door and slices a zombie; another zombie wanders over. One tries to hit Whisper and succeeds. 

Another Allip appears and hits Lithos, draining four Wisdom from him. Amergin slips into the room and positions himself beside the Allip. Snort is giving helpful suggestions to Lithos: “Her! If you go down, I can drive you!” 

Lithos: “No! No! If I go down, you bring me back as an all-powerful djinn or something like that!”

Another zombie comes through a door, but that closes two other doors. Lithos fires off Magic missile and steps back; the Allip whacks him again. Amergin smashes the Allip, and it explodes. 

Whisper slashes the zombie again. James smashes zombie again, but hers doesn’t explode. Lithos throws acid at the zombie James is fighting. Amergin turns and mauls the same zombie. He whacks it, and it collapses. Whisper slashes his zombie again. 

A door opens and a zombie comes shuffling out. James turns and hits Whisper’s opponent (zombie). Archie fires off the Formorian crossbow at the zombie, tagging it with a magic missile. Lithos drops Mage Armor on himself (as he should have done before we marched in here). Amergin turns on the new arrival, smacks it, and does a big chunk of damage to it. It doesn’t explode, though. 

Whisper tries to attack, gets bumped at the wrong moment, and drops his knife. The zombie whacks him again. James smacks that zombie with her spiffy new mace, and damages him. Baldy fires off another magic missile and lithos follows with acid. Amergin swing, hits, and explodes the zombie. Whisper draws his kukri and slices the zombie; the zombie tries to slam Whisper but misses. James swings but misses. Archie shoots the zombie again, and lithos finishes ot off with acid. 

Amergin leads the way around to the open door; Whisper opens the closed door. That closes the door in front of Amergin. 

There are some stocks and a couple of piles of coins in the middle of the next room. There’s also a zombie around the corner. It comes over and attacks, but misses. James slips over and attacks; Baldy brings out his whip and tries to pull the zombie into the stocks. He misses. 

Another Allip comes out and hits James, draining some of his wisdom as well. Fortunately, he won’t miss it. Amergin moves back around and joins the rest of us. Whisper attempt to grab the zombie and wrestle him into the stocks. He fails. The zombie attempts to wrestle Whisper into the stocks. The frame falls closed and the lock clicks shut. 

All the doors open. Archie zaps Whisper with Cure Light Wounds.

James attacks the Allip, but misses.  Lithos throws acid at the Allip but misses. The Allip yanks down Whispers pants and the fazes back out through the wall. Amergin explodes the zombie, but another one comes over and starts caressing Whisper. James smacks the zombie before rigor mortis can set in. 

Baldy sees the dire straits that Whisper is in, and attacks the zombie with his rapier. “Behold my special attack,” cries Archibald. “FILLET!”

He hits, but fails to fillet. Lithos resists the call of the evil voice that seems to be coming from the Allip, and throws acid at the zombie. Amergin tries to smash the lock, and Whisper again tries to shake loose but fails. 

The zombie hits him with a powerful thrust. James hits the zombie, who does not explode. Archibald attacks with his rapier and the zombie keels over on top of Whisper. Lithos comes and tries to push the zombie loose… and knocks it right off. A zombie comes around the wall, and the Allip comes through the wall to attack Whisper. It drains some wisdom. 

Amergin whallops the Allip and it explodes. 

Whisper sheds a single, manly tear. The zombie pushes past Uncle Baldy and lines up behind a Whisper for a backstab. 

James attempts to open the lock, but doesn’t quite make it; Lithos is starting to wonder if James is under some sort of curse. Lithose throws more acid. Amergin explodes the zombie with his magic mace. 

Nothing is currently attacking us. We drop out of combat and Baldy heals Whisper, then does it again. We pause to collect the coins here: 220 gp, We move around and see massive zombies lying on the floor. Ogres? Probably. 

We settle back into an ambush, and Baldy shoots a magic missile at one of them. The ogre zombie wakes up as Archibald heads for the back of the crowd. As it comes around the corner, Lithos hits it with a Scorching Ray, then ducks back towards the hall. Whisper moves back into the hallway and readies a sling bullet. James lines up, and when it comes stomping through the stocks he swings and hits, doing some damage. It attacks with a giant greatclub, hitting James solidly – but James doesn’t quite go down. 

Amergin swings, hits, and fails to make the thing explode. He does some damage. James attacks and does some damage Baldy moves up and does Cure Light Wounds on James with his wand. Lithos moves back up and throws some acid. Amergin hits the ogre zombie and it explodes. 

Uncle Baldy slides up to the next ogre and shoots it, then retreats rapidly. We wait as the thing lumbers towards us, and Baldy takes another shot. It comes around corner, and Amergin hits hit, James misses, and Lithos blasts it with his remaining Scorching Ray; it clobbers Lithos and he goes down, but doesn’t actually die. James and Amergin swing again and miss as Baldy pulls Lithos away from the thing. Archibald cures him back to mobility, and Lithos crawls over and throws acid. Amergin hits him, doing a fair amount of damage. James hits him too, just not as hard. 

The ogre zombie hits Amergin, who goes down. Baldy moves up to heal Amergin, getting him back to consciousness. Lithos throws more acid; Amergin, still prone, attacks again; James smacks him and takes him down. James: “Finally.” He falls over backwards. 

Archie heals us back up. 

We proceed to the ogre room and check out the treasure there. The chest has no apparent traps; Whisper moves on to the bag and finds no traps; ditto the pile of coinage. He opens the chest and finds a bas relief on the inside of the lid; it shows a dwarf riding in the ribcage of a giant skeleton. It’s full of lollipops. Each takes one minute to eat, but heals one hit point; there are 1,000 of them in the chest. 

10,730 Gp, one wand of cure light wounds, and two vials of silversheen. With everything else, we have a total of 15,852 GP -- enough to resurrect Pythia and improve our equipment.