Green Pass Campaign II, Session 4: Grave Robbing

Note: I'm adding a cumulative +10 xp bonus counter for exploring rooms in a single expedition (i.e., the second room gets +20, the third gets +30, and so forth, up to +250 for the 25th room this week). Since this session was a continuation of last week's expedition, the counter wasn't reset.

June 10, Caudex Annales, 70 AUP
After dispatching a room of zombies, the party elected to break for a short lunch. Finkle the gnome had apparently wandered off (with Mort the wardog and his new pet rat) to do something odd and gnomish. Attempts to inspect the glowing gem in his pot resulted only in the immediate disappartion of the gem with a small 'pop'.

In a room beyond the zombies, searching revealed a set of strange boxes, each full of bones and a single right-handed glove with a weird demon face on them. After lifting the boxes the examine them, a set of four small levers were discovered under each box. Using gloved hands, the party successfully triggered a secret door into a nearby burial chamber containing the remains of a priest of the old nature god Silvanus, with a shrine beyond. The priest's vestments and cudgel were well-preserved, and stashed away for future study. The bard Piper left a small offering and received the blessing of Silvanus in return.

Progressing through a series of similar hidden doors to the south earned egress into a well-traveled hallway that led to a gruesome scene. Two grave-robbers were impaled into the solid stone wall by spears as a warning, their intestines ripped open and slowly rotting. There were also a set of peculiar tracks (definitely non-human) leading east out of the room. The party elected to split into two groups, one following the tracks, and the other positioning as a rear guard.

Following the tracks led to a strange little poltergeist shrieking curses in some lost language to break the silence of the dungeon, and hurling small bits of rock and pottery. A single arrow dispatched the creature. Beyond the ghost, a door led to a small cache of abandoned supplies, including a sledgehammer. Beyond the cache was a bricked door, easily dismantled. Inside the sealed room beyond they found a strange scrying basin surrounded by a set of six carved stone knights in alcoves sunk into the walls. Fearful of the guardian knights, the explorers elected to leave the basin (mostly) undisturbed and returned to the main party.

(Art: Thomas Denmark)

Just beyond the entry point, the party decided to explore up a short hallway... and discovered a pressure-sensitive plate that set off a portcullis. The front lines of the party were briefly cut off as a wave of skeletal guards poured into the room. A judicious application of lizardly force to the gate allowed for a swift reinforcement, although with a powerful incantation from Reed crushing most of the skeletons with earthen teeth, it was hardly an emergency.

After some reshuffling of party members, the exploring group found another bricked-up entrance that led into some private burial chambers. All three tombs contained minor bits of coin and jewelry, and only the middle one had any guardians, some recently risen skeletons. (Well, unless you count a cluster of those nasty little rats squashed beneath a saurian-opened door.) On the way back out the party was jumped by a few more zombies, but dispatched them with relatively little effort.

Feeling uneasy about emerging onto the barrow moors at night, the party elected to return to the Keep (and Centerpost) to recuperate. The sage, Fridaswitha the Scriptrix, identified the ring (as a ring of protection), the cudgel (as a simple enchanted club), the vestments (as an elementally-warded spidersilk robe), and the gem by reputation (clearly something cursed, and now bound permanently to Finkle). She looked with dismay at the small stone runic tablet recovered from the skeletons' tomb, on the grounds that it might contain useful information but would just as likely contain a horrible curse of death. Apparently the party will need to discover someone braver (or more gullible) than her to read it!

Terra and the barbarians continued to investigate the strange travelers passing through Centerpost from the east. Meros the nightblade found an underworld fence willing to purchase his dubiously pocketed gem.

The bard applied his considerable skill at seduction to arrange a charming dinner date with Frida (a perfect 10 on the Hot-or-Not Dice Check, just for the record), deciding only at the last minute that it
might be ethically dubious to propose marriage to her solely in order to get a long-term discount on magical item identification. For now.

Treasure and Experience
Coins: 400 gp, 30 gp, 20 gp, 91 sp, 400 sp, 123 sp, 300 sp, 200 sp (=> 561 gp)
Gems/Jewelry: 15 gems (200 each), electrum necklace (56), 2 electrum bracelets (52 each), silver locket (60), 2 platinum necklaces (174 each) (=> 3394 gp)
Trade Goods: 4 demon-face ceremonial gloves that are really good for disguising your right hand during... a puppet show, maybe?
Items of special interest: a magical ring, a glowing gem, spidersilk clerical vestments, a cudgel, a runic tablet, a pale grey potion, and a sky blue potion smelling of lilacs

Total nonmagical treasure value: 3955 gp, after -679 gp (20% fee) to appraise jewelry
Gold per share: 312 gp

Explored: 25 rooms (1 barrow mound with 3 rooms, 22 catacomb rooms)

Killed: 11 giant rats (55 xp), 7 skeleton guards (91 xp), 4 zombies (116 xp), 7 skeletons (91 xp), 1 noisy poltergeist (5 xp), 6 zombie patrollers (174 xp)
Turned: 7 zombies (203 xp)
Tricked into wandering off to certain doom: 11 tomb robbers (550 xp)
Squashed by a punched-in door ('saurian lockpick'): 8 giant rats (40 xp)

Total experience from treasure: 3955 xp
Total experience from kills: 1325 xp
Total experience from exploration: 3250 xp
Total experience: 8530 xp
Total experience per member: 741 xp

Note: Meros the greedy nightblade receives an additional 200 gp and 200 xp for his malicious act of thievery. And possibly also the eternal seething hatred of the rest of the group -- but, hey, shiny gem!