Events+of+Hammer+8-Hammer+10+1374+DR

Lia was in and out of town on the ninth and tenth day, and by holiday Vytorrin decided that the Spiked black Dragonhide shield had more appeal than his bulwark being repaired. In any case, they all had one another's addresses and understood that they were still a company. They set out to return to the Elmanessee Village.

Hammer 10
The Company decided it would be more expedient to return to the waypoint that Martinez had given the party at the threshhold of Myth Rhynn than to return to the edge of the village. With a pair of teleports, they arrived on-target that day. A hike into the mythal, which extended 3/4 of a mile from the edge of the necropolis proper, revealed the salient undead which would trouble them that day - Dread Warriors. These undead guardians, dead elves which retained their martial skills from life, were neither challenging nor total push-overs.

The encounter started out predictably, with the Dread Warriors hidden behind a pair of trees, watching as the party chit-chatted over the idiosyncracies of Myth Rhynn's Mythal and what they could expect within. Lia kept watch and alerted them to the presence of undead and was able to inform the party that they were weaker than the skills of her companions, so she paid them little mind as she continued scanning for other, bigger threats. She knew full well that her friends were more than capable of handling such foes.

The dread warrors were fair archers and got off a pair of shots as they cunningly skirmished the party, moving to obstruct charge moves in the dense terrain of the forest. After several rounds of beguiling the party's fighters, Marcus Artonus managed to draw a bead on both combatants and successfully turned one of them. In response, the steadfast foe dropped Marcus to the ground, thanks to a badly pierced calf which kept him tied up for a few moments. The rest of the party maneuvered into position and opened fire with minor magic, obliterating the not-skeletons. Nevertheless, they demonstrated their cunning, something that the party noted for later use, as the steadfast one was able to slow his routed companion by tripping him repeatedly while using his downed ally as a shield against any charge by the closing warriors.

The city was vast, a half-mile across at its widest. For those that knew, it echoed the demonweb pits, or perhaps someplace mechanical. A hex-grid of elder trees had been petrified to support tombs above the forest floor. They stood at the margin and admired Myth Rhynn's unique feature--tomb streets stacked one, atop another, so that the ground looked up onto an upside-down avenue of tombs that reached for an invisible pane where false gravity met real. Above the upside-down tombs lay another tier of tombs reaching for the sky.

Working with her familiar Saker to avoid the dead-magic zones in the mythal, Lia flew a quick circle around the eerie quiet, while using Locate Object to 'ping' the ancestral staff she sought. After a few tense minutes of searching the undead ladened grounds she finally located her staff. It rested in one of the upside-down tombs above them. As Lia returned and led the party to the vicinity, a halo of undead -- shadows, spectres, murks, and other weak ghosts -- crowded about them in a cloud. There could have been a hundred of them, but perhaps sensing the power of the living beings they harried, they stayed a safe distance away, biding their time, waiting for a weakened soul to snatch up. With this spooky inducement to make even Vytorrin's clanky feet walk quickly, the company was poised underneath the not-street where the tomb stood. With a quick set of wand-waves, her companions were standing, facing the tomb's lonely entrance. Thanks to the reversed gravity, which allowed for the tombs to rest upside down, the party looked up at the ground below where they'd just stood.

The entrace had what Kethiel was apt to call 'some THICK magic' warding the door. Moments later, after several casts of Dispel Magic, they banged their heads against the wall of a difficult enchantment. One lucky dispel with Marcus's wand nixed the weaker of the two auras, but the greater remained. Stymied, the party recalled they that greatest of all assets (tomb-raiding) at Vytorrin's side, an adamantite weapon. With some swift sword strokes, Vytorrin opened a way into the mausoleum and discovered a Wall of Force obstructing the way deeper into the tomb. After deliberation over whether lowering a rope for non-flying party members was worth the effort, the company assembled on the roof and hacked through the weathered stone. Thankfully this time they were not greeted with a Wall of Force; instead, they were poised to burgle the sarcophagus that revealed itself as the vessel which held what they sought. A statue of an eldritch giant stood nearly twenty feet in height, suggesting what they might have fought if they'd gone through the door which holding the strong ward.

As soon as Dacker's feet touched the ground, Dread Warriors, mounted in mechanical niches in the floor, deployed one at a time to fight the party -- evetually there were four of the skilled undead foes. As before, they were all too easy to deal with. They were slowed by a clever casting of a Wall of Force, a turning by Marcus, and a winy bull rush evoked by Varishka, and Lia was able to snatch the contents of her families' ancestral sarcophagus, both the staff and a box of letters, while Vytorrin and Dacker chopped apart the foes one by one. Marcus, mostly unneeded during the battle, busied himself by removing the armor and weapons, untouched by time, from the undead corpses, and placed them into his handy Bag of Holding.

Recalling the massing undead outside the tomb, the party hastened their way out of the pilfered tomb, and with uses of the Benign Transposition wand and her flying Lia was able to get everyone back to solid ground. A hasty retreat out of the teleport dampened environ of Myth Rhynn completed the first stage of their quest.

Their next step was to trek through the woods to return to the Elmanessee Village, tol plan the next step in their quest -- returning to the dead-infested not-city to confront the Vampire, who they've been tasked to lay low, and recover the companion Elven Court Blade to the one that rests on Dacker's right hip.