You’ll Never Have Lunch in this Town Again
In which our merry band makes a great deal of trouble and no friends.
Yes, we were stupid enough to into the Ghost Lord’s lair.
Twice.
Urgon was of a notion to rid the world of the Ghost Lord; Darya was happy simply to keep him on the sidelines. Urgon got pretty insistent, though, causing Darya to throw up her hands and exclaim “Give him a lich and he has to scratch it.”
The reptilian receptionist turned out not to be a blue dragon, but some sort of intelligent, magic-using, and eminently cranky forty-foot-long demon with far too many legs and a spine like a slinky. It took some doing—
“If you can’t reach the back, bang the hell out of the sides,” someone suggested.
—but we dispatched it, and only two of our number were swallowed whole and had to cut their way out. Needless to say, we took its stuff and proceeded further into the lair. Blue shoes, matching blue handbag, and full set of blue luggage, YES!
Therein, we found goblin guards (now deceased), Madame Stormcaller (also now deceased), a recently-used sacrificial altar, complete with handy-dandy in-floor blood drain, causing much discussion;
GM: The room smells of decay and death.
Urgon: What an interesting smell you’ve discovered.
Darya: I’m going to call it “Jersey.”
And, in reference to the aforementioned oubliette
Medrin: Keep watch and make sure that nothing comes out of the hole.
Mal: What hole?
Darya: ANY hole!
We also found a shrine to Tiamat, strength-and-stamina draining feline ghosts (guess who found that out the hard way?), and a room full of fog, really unpleasant undead with screechy voices, a dire lion apparently content to stay at the bottom of a glowing pool, and some predictable art. Our mages had just long enough to look at the floating stone cube that displayed pictures of increasingly-agitated feline ghosts before we decided that a strategic retreat from the undead was in order.
Having already taken some damage from the ghosts by the time we reached the screechy undead, (”Take backup that isn’t me,” Darya muttered before they entered the room) we spent some time hiding in an extradimensional space in order to heal up and restore ourselves to our complete faculties and strategize. As undead don’t provide any decent footwear material, Darya suggested a simple, straightforward method; “beat it until it stops moving and then we can set it on fire.” Then, we went back in to confront the Horrid Tabernacle Chorus. We managed to hold them off long enough for one of our mages to attempt to destroy the floating cube. Mind you, this is the same mage who’d earlier said that he needed “boots of screaming and fleeing,” but nevermind that now.
That got the Ghost Lord’s attention, which was a damned good thing as all we’d wanted to do was talk to him in the first place. He wasn’t feeling terribly chatty, but we did manage to get him to listen to our offer. He was willing enough to stay neutral in the war in return for his phylactery, and Darya remembered to include safe passage for the group in the deal. That last part was agreed to only grudgingly, particularly as it applied to the mage who damaged the cube. Still, mission accomplished, and we left without further delay. We could hear extremely unpleasant things beginning to happen to deceased goblins and Madame Stormcaller on our way out. Darya’s not convinced that the Red Hand’s army is going to see that as remaining neutral, but hey, confusion to the enemy. So long as big, bad, and deadly leaves her allies alone, she’s happy to look the other way.
Cedric, our halfling priest, had some serious qualms about dealing with the undead that he hadn’t voiced strenuously until the critical moment. We managed to convince him to go along with it for now, but Darya owes him a postwar return trip to the lair in order to Deal with the Ghost Lord Once and for All.
Fine, whatever. When the time comes, she’ll go in, but she’ll go in with every priest, mage, and warrior that she can beg, borrow, beguile, bribe, or bully.
All we have to do now is survive the war. Or, as Anja said to Darya, “We’re off to kill red shoes!”
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