Adventure recap: Enter the Barrowmaze! As told by Wilmott Groot Crikey! So a bunch of us decided to seek out the treasure filled tombs
in the Ettinheight. A place some call
the Barromaze! The place has a deadly
reputation but forewarned is forearmed and luckily we had someone who’d been
there before, a strange feller called Gravedigger. More on him later. The rest of the crew were a couple of half elves, Elurna and
Arvan, a cat person called Bean, a skinny Gith called Xahdahn, a foxy fellow going
by the name of Kael and finally, me!
Wilmott Groot, outdoorsman and sharpshooter at your service! We started our adventure by spending a day in the freezing swamps
circling the town of Hope. We ended the
day barely any closer to our destination than when we started it. Still, that night we got to learn a little
about each other, in particular that Bean is unable to escape boxes. I fear a run in with gelatinous cubes could
spell the end for her… The following day we got our bearings and managed to clear
the swamps and make good progress to our destination. Some time that afternoon we spotted the entrance
to a tomb with a bunch of undead types shuffling outside. We approached stealthily, or would have if
our mate Gravedigger hadn’t trod on a dry branch and alerted some of them. Anyway, we decided to put the undead buggers to rest and it
was quite the fight to do so. The zombies weren’t too quick but they had a leader who was a
bit more nimble and cracked a few of our skulls with real force. We managed to put him down but wouldn’t you
know it, he jumped right back up again! I
guess it’s true, the undead never really die… Anyway for some reason the spectacle really frightened some
of our crew, including, inexplicably, our necromantic Gravedigger! Talk about someone who’s picked the wrong
occupation! “Just between you and me,
I don’t think he’s all there” . The
battle got a bit more complicated after that with half of us running all over
the shop in terror. Ardan really led the way though, casting a spell to make some
of them easier to hit and charging into the middle of the undead mob. They pounded at him for ages but fortunately
he blocked most of the attacks with his armour and shield. Slowly we got ourselves organised and rallied to join Ardan
in the thick of the fray. Elurna turned
into a huge wolf which isn’t something you see every day. Eventually we put them all down (though they
had the nasty habit of jumping up again), though there wasn’t much loot to be
had from the corpses. Kael turned into
a fox and he and I squeezed our way into the zombies’ tomb but the place had already
been looted. By Gravedigger it turns
out! Though he only remembered after we came out. Turns out that our tall necromantic chap has the sort of
memory that only fires after it’s too late to be helpful. “Oh yeah, there’s a pit trap ahead”, he
might say, just after someone plunges to their death. He also has a fascination with corpses and he
dragged one with us for the rest of the day.
I was afraid he was thinking of having if for tea but ‘fortunately’ all
he did was animate it with a magic whistle.
I didn’t sleep too easily that night, let me tell you! The next morning we upped the pace of our march and finally
reached the Barrow Downs. It’s a huge placed that’s littered with tombs. Lacking any real direction we picked a tomb at
random and found a room with a large hole leading down. Someone had been down there before as a rope
was lashed to a metallic tripod. Gravedigger
finally remembered that this was indeed the tomb he’d visited before. Elurna was in tiger form at this point and loath to change
back, she decided to climb down in that form despite lacking opposable thumbs. Well, it was a rapid descent, let’s leave it
at that! The rest of us joined her and
started to head down a dusty corridor.
Gravedigger woke up from his mental coma to warn us about the gigantic
minotaur skeletons that roamed the place.
Thanks mate! It was at this point we got into a bit of a pickle when we
set off a trap that split the party with half plunged in the dark and being
attacked by a mob of heavily armed dwarf skeletons. We eventually managed to get ourselves
reunited and reorganised but poor Ardan copped some fearful blows that put him
at death’s door. Cometh the hour, cometh the man (or in this case a
fox!). Kael turned the tide in
spectacular fashion, charging in amongst the skeletal dwarves and felling three
of them in as many seconds. The fight
was over soon after that and we paused to look over our spoils. The main treasure was high quality arms and
armour carried by the skeletons though we also found a magic key that
Gravedigger quickly claimed. Let’s hope
it’s a key to him recovering his memory!
That’s all the story there is to tell, at least to this
point. Most of us will be stay on to
explore further, what could possibly go wrong?
