Chapter 1: The Knaves Visit the Spudfields

[ +- ] PC Status Tracker

Endrei
Hit Points: 2/5
Status: Diseased - cannot recover HP by resting until healed, Con save each day or lose 1hp.
Copper Coins: 3
Light Source: None
Brigandine Armor Quality: 2/4

Elius Wax
Hit Points: -11/2
Status: Violently Deceased
Copper Coins: 3
Light Source: None

Clomm
Hit Points: 1/4 (-1 for poison gas, -3 from the wight's projectile bile)
Status: A Clouded Mind (-1 Wisdom)
Copper Coins: 2
Light Source: Candle

Audree Watters
Hit Points: 3/5
Status: Normal
Copper Coins: 4
Light Source: Torch
Axe Quality: 2/3

The wailing staff quiets when Audree drops it and grabs her axe. Clomm sputters and chokes on the floor as the brightly-garbed woman plants the weapon deep in the chest of her frightful foe, breaking its breastbone, smashing its brittle ribs. The axe is stuck for a moment, leaving the brave adventurer closer than she'd like to the rotten teeth and glowing eyes of the sinister warlord. One awful hand comes up, claw-like, reaching for Watters's tender flesh, for her pink cheeks -- before Endrei's hammer comes in like a thunderbolt, smashing the fiend in the face, crushing its skull against the stone wall behind it.

"Nooooooo..." it says with a rasping, reeking gasp, sliding down the wall as its caved-in skull lolls about on its neck sickeningly. As the monster slumps to the floor the two-handed sword clatters on the stones and the light in its broken eye sockets dims. It is defeated but still undying, like its brother, who still writhes and squirms on the floor nearby, like a worm chopped into many pieces.

Breathless, Endrei and Audree dare to share a look with one another. Have they... survived?

And at that moment, a bark resounds in the ancient chamber -- loud, echoing, resounding. At the top of the stairs, the same ones the explorers had descended, a ghostly apparition stands, its ethereal form shifting in the guttering torchlight. It's a mastiff, a big one, and looks alert and on-guard, like it's protecting something as it growls lowly.

The phantasmal mastiff cocks its head and just looks at Audree for a moment when she crosses the floor, ignoring Clomm's gurgles and wheezing. When she raises the bone, though, the vile remnant that pulls free from one of the defeated brothers with some difficulty and a sickening slurp, the dog growls at her and barks -- a bark loud enough to hurt the woman's ears and cause dust to drift from the ceiling...

The moment Watters lifts the metal staff, the head of the powerful thing wails again, as though it loathes the woman's touch. The screaming is short-lived as she throws the staff forward, towards the big hound, but even that brief outburst is enough to set the dog off. Barking and growling, it bounds down the steps and stops at the foot of the stairs -- where it keeps on losing it's thundering woof, so loud in the small stone chamber. It's the staff that has raised the ghostly mastiff's ire, and in-between barks another sound comes to the adventurers: a child's calling voice.

"Doris? Doooooris!"

The dog perks an ear, turns, then races up the steps, into the other room and out of sight. It all happens so quickly -- and just as Clomm is coming to...

A wheezing hiss comes from the floor then, as both brothers claw and snap at the air in what looks like slow motion, their decrepit bodies ruined, but moving and shifting still. The taller of them, the second to fall -- he reaches vainly for his sword, even as his dark sibling stretches pale and hideous fingers for the staff on the floor...