Death & Rebirth, Chapter 3

General Summary

The party wakes early to a light rain and sunrise. The campfire has been put out and the party decides what to do next. They have a quick breakfast (Relentless asks about Medericus’s keytar which was apparently made in Aerilon) and decide to follow the tracks Tally had found the night before. Medericus tells Aungor about the missing dwarf woman (one of the hunters who are married to each other).
They make their way deeper into the forest and come upon a marshy, muddy grove that stinks of rotting vegetation. A large white figure comes into view and the party recognizes it is a unicorn, but… its body is not whole. Parts of its skeleton are showing and it is very obviously undead. It slowly turns its pale gaze upon them and makes its way over with menacing purpose.
Aungor instantly uses his wild shape to turn into a bear, lumbering up to the unicorn and biting it. Medericus attempts to use magic to incapacitate the unicorn with laughter but it fails, but he still gives Kitrick inspiration (sings “Sweet Child o’ Mine”). Kitrick casts minor illusion to give the unicorn the appearance of having a flaming mane, but the unicorn seems not to care about this development. It kicks out with hooves and gores Aungor with its horn, damaging the druid enough to force him back into his dwarven form. Havine moves forward and uses radiant magic to damage the unicorn, then summons a Spiritual Weapon to help attack it. The unicorn, as a Legendary Action, summons a dark shield of blackness that forms to its skin. Tally pulls out her longbow, and though there is a lot in her way she is a sharpshooter and she manages a hard-hitting sneak attack arrow. Relentless casts Shatter to do thunder damage to the unicorn. It uses another Legendary Action to draw the life out of nearby flora and heal itself. The sickly aura of its corrupted magic poisons both Tally and Relentless.
Aungor casts Barkskin on himself. Medericus tries to use Vicious Mockery on the unicorn which fails, but uses Healing Word on Aungor (“Hey, I just met you, and this is crazy, but here’s a healing word for Aungor maybe”). Aungor does the “thanks, brah” head nod. Kitrick climbs into the unicorn’s ribcage and attempts to saw at its spine to cut it in half from the inside. It’s a slow process and doesn’t work on the first turn. The unicorn makes a braying noise, similar to a horse but awful and distorted with its ruined throat. An undead bear lumbers out of a nearby cave to aid in fighting. The unicorn charges at Medericus and knocks him prone. The bear attacks Aungor and misses on the first swipe of its claws, but catches him with the second. Havine heals Medericus and Aungor. Tally shoots the bear with her steel arrows with sneak attack damage. She tries to stealth but fails to find anywhere suitable to hide. Relentless casts Dissonant Whispers, doing some minor damage on the unicorn.
Aungor casts Lightning Bolt and kills the undead bear and heals Medericus. Medericus decides to try and mock the unicorn (“It’s a good thing you’re dead, because your father would be very disappointed in you”) but it does not seem to understand it is being mocked. Medericus sings “Captain Tally Alexander” and gives Tally a d6 of inspiration. Kitrick keeps trying to saw the unicorn in half, manages to loosen a vertebra, and ducks out of the ribcage. The unicorn casts Entangle and manages to root everyone but Medericus and Kitrick. Havine is close enough to hit it and makes it stumble to one knee. Tally makes the killing shot, severing what’s left of its spine with a steel arrow (“That’s for my friends, asshole!”)
The shimmering form of the unicorn’s spirit appears and thanks them for releasing it from a necromancer’s spell. He says that a necromancer named Chogrim had been trying to use animals in the forest to begin his undead army a few weeks ago. Albion (the unicorn) had tried to fight him but lost, resulting in the undead form. Chogrim would not answer any question in regards to who he was working for, if anyone. Havine offers to do something else for Albion but he says that defeating the undead body was enough. He blesses them with immunity to the next poison check that happens (of the players’ choices). The party deduces that the necromancer must be in Stonebend after Aungor says there’s been nothing new happening in Dunn’s Gate.
They ask about the missing dwarf hunter and Albion shamefully admits being the one to kill her in his undead form. He points her out nearby. Her hawk is above them, watching. The party decides to take her body back to Dunn’s Gate. Relentless asks the woman a few questions (since his patron allows him to do so with dead people). He checks out a nearby cave and sees a bunch of dead bear cubs (he does not understand death so he believes they are sleeping). He harvests a few wild strawberries.
Medericus tries to trick Havine into looking away while snapping the unicorn’s horn off to take it with them and fails, resulting in Havine’s disapproval. However, when convinced by Kitrick that it may be useful, and Aungor agreeing that there was no need to let the dead body go to waste, she takes it and puts it away to make sure Medericus doesn’t try to hawk it at the Dunn’s Gate shops.
The party heads to Dunn’s Gate carrying the body of the missing dwarf woman. While in Dunn’s Gate, several characters go to take care of some business. Relentless haggles with Elssol for the amulet that has charges of Detect Thoughts and gets it for half off when he claims it is for university research. Medericus and Tally ask the guard about their reward, but Tally only takes half, saying that the job is unfinished until they get rid of the necromancer. Medericus pouts buts relents to Tally’s honest reaction to the situation. She goes to give him a little extra from her own cut, but he refuses it. She insists that she’ll “buy him a drink later”. When they head back to the inn, Jasttor isn’t anywhere to be seen; Ilweth is with one of the dwarven druids (the one with all the birds) to let Jasttor get some rest since he’d been too stubborn to go to sleep. Tally goes out to buy some arrows and finds that the vendor recently got in some special ones, so she buys all three of them.
Relentless starts to read some of the book he’d found on the “borrow library” shelf aloud to Kitrick who happens to be there. It ends up being a trashy romance novel. Tally buys everyone drinks later on in the night and a lively party ends up happening with all the party members and the Dunn’s Gate tavern dwarves.

Report Date

15 Jan 2017