Dungeons and Dragons Encounters: Undermountain Week 8 (spoiler alert)

A Slaughterhouse of Undead Necrotic Evil

Rotting necrotic shadow death fell magic - and zombies!

Tonight our doughty adventurers faced a veritable army of undead, arrayed in militaristic might. To the rear were the heavy hitters, the corruption corpses hurling gobs of rotting necrottting goo. In the middle were the wraiths, insubstantial and dangerous. Zombies held one flank and in the center was the dark shadow, beckoning, then promptly vanishing and only his deadly death-magic betrayed his presence.

The party of adventurers gathered into marching order in the hallway. In the lead, as usual, were the two insane brawlers, Hax and Torak. Hax and Torak have literally hax’d and torak’d their way through every encounter with wild abandon. Before the fight even began Torak would zoom his maximum range into the thick of it as some kind of battle-mania I guess, since he sometimes literally danced his enemies to death. And Hax used his powers like an executioner, methodically slicing and dicing his enemies as he waded through them, hip deep in blood and gore.

Next in line we have the ardent, who in all ways is the spirit of the group. Ardents inspire others to greatness, which Kantash can do with his healing and his pole-arm waving about. His moment of greatness came that time he hit an enemy, we still talk about it today. Beside him stands the archer, the elven ranger who may or may not be named Stu. And lurking in the shadows behind him is Stilgar the brutal rattling rogue. He thumps his enemies with a mace to great effect. And two newcomers stride forth from the shadows cast by some large odd looking crystals. In fact one of them is a crystal, the Shardmind Psion Ishunu joined the group (replacing Shivra) along with his ally, a new incarnation of the eternal champion githzerai monk Kalla.

The party was surprised at first, thinking that the zombies had to be minions, but they were tougher than expected. Then the main bad disappeared and let his necrotic aura do its trick as many of the players took damage from him that first round. But unfortunately, the rogue bumped into him, and he had no choice but to swipe out with an opportunity attack, thus revealing his position. He, who was meant to be the nuclear bomb that slew half the battle suddenly became an exposed weakling with half the initiative order left to pound into him. Needless to say he did not survive to take his turn in the second round, as the elven ranger used his daily power and missed but then used elven accuracy to roll a naturally 20 which dealt around 41 points of damage. His insubstantiality did not save him from that massive attack, what kind of arrows does that elf shoot? Maybe he ties sticks of dynamite around Dukes of Hazzard style.

The zombies were tough, but easy to hit, and Torak and the monk battled with them around the stairwell. Eventually the monk knocked one into the stairwell, killing it, but it severely damaged another zombie on the way down. At least two of the zombies were slain by critical hits.

The swordmage charged across the room to engage the wraiths, and slew one, only to find they were minions, and he was now in the debilitating aura of the corruption corpse. He used his aegis to good affect, and teleported multiple times throughout the encounter. Meanwhile the shardmind let loose a ranged burst to slay a wraith and damage some zombies. The wraiths retaliated by sending one through the party to the back lines to attack the psion and fail miserably. It did force the psion to move, though.

The spectre’s head was exploded by the ranger, but the corruption corpses were the real threat now. Zombies were falling right and left, the wraiths were history, and then one of the corpses blew up, damaging everyone, and soon after, the other one left his last mark on a party dazed, but intact.

It was 3 rounds (maybe 4) of intense undead action. Limbs flew, auras crippled, damaged, and slowed, but the PCs fought through it with great success. 4 of the characters gained a level: Stilgar the rogue, Kantash the Ardent, Hax the swordmage, and Torak the battlemind. These 4 earned every one of their 1,000+ experience points with grit and determination. They all have scars from the battles they have survived. But tonight it took teamwork and all 7 of them working together, so lets give a nod to the 270 experience points earned tonight by Ishunu the shardmind psion, Kalla to the monk, and the Elf Ranger.

The characters earned an extended rest, perhaps to compensate for the lack of treasure. Is there treasure inn the room? No, you searched it already. What about on the enemies? No, you searched THEM already too!