Actual Play: Heroes of the Ashford Valley Session 4

Ashford Valley Actual Play notes from December 2012:

IN WHICH: A party of adventurers face a night attack and mysterious voices on the cliff-top, a merchant is encountered and a second descent into the cave leads to a monstrous encounter!

Jim Baggins, Quinn Quimby, Orin Copperhead and Giles Corey set up camp on the cliff-top and set watches, which Jim and Giles promptly sleep through – resulting in a close moment when eight undead skeletons attack the camp!

After a quick fight, the enemy is defeated and the party tracks the skeletons back to a one-way door that Orin guesses leads to the dungeon below.

At that point, the party notices the same voice coming from the birds and wild animals about the hill, all telling the party to flee before they are killed.

For three days, they wait for the water to recede from the cave openings so they look to the road and spot a merchant caravan traveling on it. Once off the hill, they find that the merchant is Mikan Roddin, a human merchant from Tradetown that has dealt with Orin in the past. They hail him and his caravan and talk for a bit – none of the guards are happy stopping so near to “The Haunted Hill” and little is gained in information about it but one of the ancient swords is sold for a good sum to Mikan.

Returning to the cliff-top, they see that the water has receded enough to spot the caves again and Jim speculated that this could be a defense mechanism for those who used the caves in centuries past – anyone on the hill causes the water to rise in a matter of hours, closing off the caves, while no one on the hill leaves the caves open.

Quickly, the party descends again into the cave, bypass the two pits on the stairs and encounter another set of the degenerate humans, this time an elite force in ancient armor and those strange eye-slit-less helmets. They defeat the subhumans and note that the armor is protected by the primitive fetishes. They discover that the statue again has been beheaded and their former prisoner is nailed to the wall, most likely as a punishment for failure to defend the last time the party was here.

Searching around for the statue’s head reveals it in the junk room and they recover it without taking too many wounds and replace it on the statue, where it again knits the stone together.

Proceeding down the last 20’ long side tunnel, they find themselves in a 20’ by 50’ room with a sarcophagus. Searching through the coffin, they find another valuable gem, a pair to the one they found before.

Finding a stone slab blocking their way, they moved it and followed the passage 20’ deeper into the dungeon, into a room 30’ by 40’, with two doors, one sealed and barred, the other opening into a short hallway with two doors, ending in a T. Looking in the two doors, they found some bare rooms but heard a beast coming from the T.

They quickly retreated to the larger room and an owl-bear burst upon them there. It was a long fight but they managed to bring the beast down, stabbing it to death as it’s roars echoed through the halls, waking who knows what other horrors that the brave adventurers will soon face.