Siegfried took a moment to survey his surroundings
as he pulled the last strands of sticky spiderweb from his clothing. The
building had obviously been a nest for these spiders for some time – there were
webs in every corner, and gruesome, desiccated body parts hanging from strands
attached to the building’s sagging ceiling. A scattering of coins, weapons, and
bits of armor were mixed up with bones and molted chitin. Standing amid the spiderwebs was the impassive form
of a petrified ash ghast. Siegfried took note of it but did nothing. Erwen-Bear snorted and pawed the ground outside the
ruin. He turned and took in the frozen form of an ash-covered ghast and roared,
bounding towards it and falling upon it in a blur of tooth and claw. The noise of the wildshaped druid’s attack
attracted the attention of three zombies, who spilled out from the entrance of
a small shack to the southwest. Hearing the approaching undead, Siegfried exited the
ruined store and hexed one of the zombies, swinging Lightbringer at the nearest
undead, catching it full in the face. He then danced away, hoping to lure one
of the creatures away from his companions. The zombie swiped at him
ineffectually. Erwen-Bear bit deeply into the ghast, shaking his
head back and forth until he could smell the fire igniting within the undead
creature. The ghast tried to bite back, but the druid’s barkskin barding held it back. Varien strode out from the ruin and brought Fiendsbane
done on the ghast that Erwen-Bear had thrashed, spinning about and uppercutting
the creature again before throwing the undead creature off his sword to land on
the ground. Not
bad, whispered Fiendsbane. Varien moved to an approaching zombie and attempted
to shove him away, but the undead held its ground. Could
have been better, opined Fiendsbane. A second ghast emerged from the gloom, cackling
gleefully. Radegast slid her rapier deftly into the undead’s sternum. “Varien,
head’s up!” she shouted in an effort to aid the paladin. Alec swung his greatsword, missing, but on the
backswing he struck the burning ghast with an uppercut, smashing it down into
the pile of ash on the ground before him, snuffing out its flame. The zombie menacing Varien struck him true with a
slam attack, rattling the paladin’s teeth. Erwen-Bear rushed at the nearest zombie, biting
down hard. The undead creature exhaled a cloud of ash that enveloped the druid
and the paladin for a moment.
The goggles on Varien’s ghast mask were coated in a wet muck, and his breathing
tube was clogged. Choking and disoriented, Varien stumbled away from the
undead, wiping ineffectually at his mask. “Gross!” he shouted. “I can taste it!” Erwen-Bear disdainfully backhanded the unlucky
zombie, sending one of its limbs pinwheeling into the ashen haze. The creature
spun about, slumped to the ground as if dead, and then slowly began to get back
to its feet. Siegfried somersaulted and sprung into the fray,
turning the resurrected zombie’s head into a muddy paste. Pivoting on one
bootheel, he unleashed a wrathful smite on the next zombie. “Enough!” he
shouted. Varien followed through with two quick strikes,
laying the undead creatures out. Radegast sighed as she squared off against the
ghast. “Just die already,” she said, casting a word of radiance . The undead creature obliged, crumbling to dust. Radegast entered the building the zombies had just
stumbled out of. Taking a quick look around, she surmised that it had once been
a smithy. A variety of old
tools-tongs, bellows, hammers, and a pair of iron anvils-were scattered around
the interior of this building. Radegast
looked around to see if anyone was watching, and then picked up a pair of tongs
and a hammer. She placed the tongs on the nearest anvil and with a quick strike
of the hammer shattered them. “Let’s
keep moving,” Bob said, heading east. Siegfried and Alec moved to follow. Varien
took in the building’s wide chimney and the rotted piles of firewood jumbled
outside the walls of the sagging building and figured it once belonged to a
blacksmith. He poked his head in the door and saw Radegast leaving from another
exit to the east. He followed. “If
we’re quiet and careful, we can move around these frozen ghasts,” Bob whispered
to his companions as he pointed out the statue-like figures that cluttered the
laneway ahead. At the outer edge of his driftglobe’s illumination, he could
make out the shape of another, smaller structure. “Let’s
go, quietly,” Bob repeated. Erwen-Bear
snorted and tackled the nearest ash ghast. Bob
rolled his eyes, and kept his eyes on the prize to the northeast. From
the doorway, Varien fired an eldritch
blast at the struggling ghast. Staggering
and punch-drunk from Erwen-Bear’s punishing blows, the ghast began to smoke. “He’s
gonna blow!” Radegast shouted. The
ghast exhaled a breath of embers, smoke and cinder that struck Erwen-Bear and
Siegfried, though the bard was dexterous enough to ward off the worst of the
fiery attack. Erwen-Bear was not so lucky, taking the brunt of it with a roar
of pain and surprise. Radegast
sighed again. “I’m so, so tired of this,” she said with another word of radiance that finished off the
ghast. “Do shut up,” she hissed at the dying creature. Bob
frowned at the two ghast statues that stood between him and the door of the
small building. He used his misty step
ability to close the remaining distance and found himself standing over the
threshold, looking into the ruined interior. This
ruined shop was cluttered with sagging storage shelves and broken furniture.
Shards of glass and pieces of pottery glinted in the weeds and rubble next to
rotted books and casks. The books themselves smelled foul and were unreadable
masses of rot, while the reagents and concoctions once stored here had long since
been ruined. Bob
felt his spirits soar as he took in a faded placard above the shop’s counter,
which bore the faint outlines of a potted fern. “I
think I’ve found the Dendrar’s shop!” he hissed to his companions. Bob
looked around at the damp, dingy interior. The roof of the narrow building had
broken in places, but the longer Bob gazed at the damage, the less natural it
looked. In fact, the long rents in the roof looked like they’d been made by the
claws of a large creature. Similar
gashes and gouges in the warped floorboards looked too deliberate to have been
caused by the ravages of time and weather. Bob
rubbed his forearms absently. Moving behind the counter, he spied the ring-pull
of a trapdoor in the warped floorboards. He bent down and pulled the trapdoor
open. The rotted wooden door splintered as he wrenched it from its warped
frame, and bits of wood fell into the darkness below, landing with a splash. “Oh
great,” Bob said as he caught a foul blast of stagnant air. “Dark spaces and
sour smells. Just perfect.” He
figured the trapdoor led to a cellar of some kind where the shopkeeper would
have stored more sundry items. He crawled down the decaying ladder, each rung
protesting under his weight. Sure
enough, the waterlogged cellar’s walls were lined with more shelves. Mushrooms
and luminescent fungi now grew where once dry goods were stacked. Bob stepped
off the last rung and plunged into a waist-deep slurry of rotten reagents and seeping
groundwater. He tried not to think about what this muck was doing to his robes. Bob’s
sharp eyes picked out what looked like a hidden compartment beneath one of the
shelves. Grimacing, he put his hand into the small slot and felt his fingers
brush an oblong wooden object. Grasping it, he pulled it out. It
was a small jewelry box. Bob
sighed as he opened it and took in the golden necklace within, from which hung
an emerald pendant. “Mrs.
Dendrar, we’ve found your family jewels,” he said to himself with a smile.