Green Pass Campaign IV: Lich, Please

GM Note: This adventure will have a single experience-point award at the conclusion of the expedition, to be divided among the survivors (if any).

October 29, Caudex Annales, 70 AUP

After advancing on the ruins of Centerpost, the party elected to send out a scouting party of stealthy types, along with the invisible skinscribe Scriptus and his hidden wife. Following one of the farm-to-market roads, the scouts soon spotted a herd of bizarre herd of thirteen gaunt creatures (demon swine, or Gehenna-goats) unlike any natural livestock, being herded by a vrock (vulture demon). The Gehenna-goats easily penetrated the invisibility spell with their otherwordly senses, and moved in hungrily to graze on delectable mortal souls.

Recognizing that the demons had them outnumbered, the scouting party quickly created warded themselves with a protection spell. The furious fiends danced around the perimeter, gnashing their jaws and waiting for an opportunity to strike. The vrock goatherd attempted to attack across the barrier, but succumbed to the ward's holy power and felt his weapon arm melt away into the void. Shrieking in terror, he flew away into the night, as the party slaughtered his charges with magic and steel.

The scouts advanced as far as the wall, scaling it to peer over the side. The landscape below was laid to waste and ruin, and devoid of life... but also bereft of corpses despite other traces of battle. In the distance, strokes of green and orange lightning fell on the city square a half-mile away, descending from the cyclonic vortex in the sky above, and a swarm of circling dots filled the air above. The location of the nearest sky-beam (the one green in color) seemed to be the Centerpost chapel, close to the west wall. Everyone knows that giant glowing sky-beams are always bad news!

Shut it down, quick, before the world ends!

After the return and report of the scouts, the party deliberated over the best vector of attack -- eventually settling on the strategy of tunneling rapidly under the walls using High Jellomancer Spinel Pyrope's gloopy army of slimes and puddings. After several hours of rapid rock removal, the tunnel connected with a tomb vault in the the crypts below the chapel. Even after slamming open the stone

vault door, the crypts seemed empty and silent... until the part rounded the corner and found a host of undead waiting for them: a mummy, four spectres, four dark-skinned zombies, eight zombies with glowing orange eyes, and four skeletons -- not naked, but with their burnished black bones clad in full armor. Behind them stood a frail and withered woman, her skin rotted away at the joints, waving a gnarled staff of ironwood root -- a lich!

The party divided into three groups to flank around the two great central pillars in the center of the chamber that housed the most important tombs. The specters to the north went down first as a priority target, before they could bring their energy draining attacks into play, thanks to the work of a couple henchlizards. The south flank, however, made the unwelcome discovery that their zombies were somehow ensorcelled with fire, exploding into a raging pyre after each strike that burned all those adjacent. Even worse, the central group's slimes discovered that the pillar crypt tombs in the center of the room contained a pair of tight-formation skeletons with spears, ready to crush the casters from behind with bristling phalanxed spearpoints. Some of the skeletons were black, and others were unarmored but had strange gems set into their skulls. Warriors and slimes moved to block the ambush.

Ambushed from out of the the walls!

The zombie guards around the lich fell quickly, in a great inferno of flames, and she was quickly surrounded. Before she could be slain, she cursed the intruders and shattered her staff, consuming the entire northeastern corner of the crypts in a tremendous fireball. Most of the slimes were instantly vaporized, and the saurian vanguard was terribly scorched with the blast, at the cost of one henchman.

The spirit of the lich fled her smoldering body, shrieking through the ceiling into the troubled skies above. The remaining skeletons in the alcoves quickly collapsed back into bone, no longer bound by the will of their disembodied mistress.

The party gathered its wits and nursed their wounds, resting for about an hour, before exploring the stairway into the chapel above.

Experimental undead types discovered: 

• Funeral pyre zombies - These zombies are otherwise typical but burst into flame when struck, burning all those around them.
• Juju zombies - These sturdy zombies are durable and move with alarming speed, with even the ability to scale walls.
• Black skeletons - These skeletons are armored and enormously durable.
• Skeletal phalanxes - Ordinary skeletons, but organized to stand in a virtual wall of bone, bursting with spears at anyone who comes too close.
• ?? - Skeletons with a curious blue gem set into their skull.