The Forgotten City XXXIII
General Summary
The Ghul reared up from the rat it gnawed on as the light of Antonious' torch came into view. Elissa noted silver bracelets and a thick-linked gold chain with an ostentatiously large key hanging from it glittering in the lamplight before she braced herself for the inevitable charge and paralysis from the ghul's touch, but Khufu pushed his way to the front of the group holding aloft the scarab pendant holy symbol and crying out to Xam that the foul undead creature be driven from his sight. His invocation inundated the room with the ordered and benevolent presence of Xam and the ghul wailed an unearthly wail and fled down some stairs further down the hall. Khufu and Riven searched the alcove where the ghul had waited in darkness to attack passing prey and Riven's keen eyes noticed the glint of something metal, she fished in fetid pile to withdraw a signet ring with a detached finger slack with rot in it. She tilted the ring and the bones and liquefied flesh slid through the ragged end of the finger, a quick jerk and the hollow skin and nail followed it to the floor. She looked that the sign on it and handed it to Antonious who took it, confused for a moment before noticing the sign was of the Lampadephoroi with dawning horror he realized the ghul had once been of high status in his order.
As Khufu drove away the ghul, The Jiam communed with a nest of rats. Felt their hunger and thirst to live even in that hostile environment. Most of the rats became calm, but some still eyed him as food and he backed out calmly as not to start an unnecessary fight.
They approached the stairwell and found another chamber past it, inside were piles of bones and tangles of entrails in various states of decay. The Jiam listlessly scattered a pile of bones while Riven stared into the deeper darkness of the cavern. "The dust moves oddly here," she muttered The Jiam and Elissa stepped deeper into the cavern to see what breeze would scatter the dust before the Keb cousins Herk and Khufu could warn them to stop. Part of the cave ceiling fell and Elissa barely managed to jump free, but The Jiam was hit by stone and he was bloodied and his arm was broken. Khufu attempted to set his arm, but failed. Antonious laid hands and acted as a vessel of theurgy and restored some health and knit the wounds but his arm remained broken.
The group decided to descend the stairs, wary of the ghul that had fled that way, the stairs opened onto a chamber in which the ghul cowered in the center and rubble was strewn across the floor. Elissa noted the rubble and falling rocks and asked if the Keb could engineer a controlled collapse that would bury the ghul and perhaps make the room safer for them to traverse; Khufu was delighted by the question but when he began with "mitigation requires identifying and addressing a combination of potential sources" Elissa knew that the answer for the purposes of their current need was "no."
Riven, Herk and Riven again fired at the cowering ghul in rapid succession. The second shot from Riven causing the ghul's rotten skull to collapse in on itself. Antonious knowing that he had been a Lamplighter quickly moved into collect the former man's effects and narrowly missed being crushed by more rockfall. Herk and Khufu wondered at the foolishness of races without stone sense. Antonious moved ahead finding a room filled with corpses strewn throughout the room, perhaps felled in battle. As the rest of the party moved past the rockfall area there were narrow misses. Elissa searched an alcove before hurrying after the departing group and arriving in time to see the corpses awaken to the searing pain of Antonious's aura.
Riven drew her sword, enchanted in unknown ways, and sliced at the first zombie, decapitating it with little effort. The Jiam loosed a stone which struck true to the spongy loose flesh of a zombie and fell leaving a bruised dent. One lunges against the holy energies exuded by Antonious and fails to snatch at Khufu, who returned with a hammer strike. Khufu heard a satisfying squelching sound as his blow landed but the undead creature seemed unfazed. Antonious and Khufu each called on their god to drive back the foul undead, but were unable to. Herk struck and killed one with a mighty blow. Elissa jabbed with her spear but was unable to slice at the flesh of one near her. The Jiam landed another blow with his sling leaving another bruised dent. One raked at Riven injuring her, but she retaliated by decapitating it in turn. Khufu and Herk both struck, Khufu's hammer doing minimal damage, but Herk's slice doing much harm. Antonious moves to aid Elissa and slices a few fingers off of a zombie, while Elissa again failed to land a blow. Riven Killed another, Antonious landed an incredible blow dispatching another, Khufu was struck by one but Herk dispatched it in revenge. The looked around the now quiet room but found nothing notable.
They passed down a hall filled with jumbles of bones. Antonious mentioned that the ossuary did not seem like a Rexan style burial, but bristled when Khufu mentioned that Rexan conquerors often built on top of the structures of the conquered and he was glad that the graves below seemed not to have been descrated. As they passed out of this hall they came upon another scene of carnage. Limbs and blood strewn everywhere and relatively fresh footprints. Large piles of bones were in each alcove.
