The Death of Oliver and Gillard

Dear Mrs Smith and Mrs Mathieson,

May I introduce myself: Myrtle Rust, Priestess of Vingt-et-Un, and adventurer companion to Mrs Smith's son Oliver and Mrs Mathieson's daughter Gillard.

It is with great sorrow that I write to you two ladies to bear the sad tidings of the tragic deaths of Oliver and Gillard.

While we have yet to recover the bodies of the two party members, it will only be a matter of time. I will personally ensure that their corporeal remains are returned to you as fast as possible. While Gnome Post will not handle the transport of living beings, the gnomes are well-equipped to action the speedy delivery of mortal remains, be they in lead-lined coffins, embalmed with formalin in leather satchels, or pickled in 180-proof rum in barrels.

I am sure you wish to know how this tragedy happened, so I shall endeavour to relate the last few hours, leading up to the two awful deaths.

Mrs Smith's brave son Oliver was the leader of our adventuring party, and Mrs Mathieson's brave daughter Gillard was a leading fighter of the group too. The party, named "The Party", consisted Oliver Smith [Jeff], mage of great power; Gillard Mathieson [Kevin] halfling fighter of superb renown, myself 21 Priestess Myrtle Rust [Andrew], elf fighter of dexterity Tu Pointy-ears [Shane], great fighter Nicholas "Bear" Stravos [Ian], esteemed ranger Dexter [Jamie], sneaky halfling thief Scuttle Stoutfeet [Chris], archer-thief Ouzo [Darryl] and blind busty bimbo bard Debbie O'Nair [Steven].

We were exploring an abandoned mansion in the city of Toluene, hot on the trail of an evil Malechai coven of witches.

The story began when we were camped out at the top of some stairs, after passing through a one-way portal. We had just slain two skeletal dogs of great power.

A third skeletal dog approached, twice the size of the other two. We were doomed, but brave Oliver discovered a new use for his cursed boline knife.

Oliver's cursed boline knife

Cursed knife? Oh, you didn't know about that? 

Well, Oliver has a malignant and sickeningly evil magical boline knife that is, ...well... parasitically attached to his mortal soul. Not only does it turn the flesh on his arm black, it makes him feel ill when scratched and very sensitive to REAL's light. He cannot enter holy temples and has to skirt wide girths around paladins. No, it was not this knife that killed him. 

Apparently, the boline has some beneficial side-effects too: it vibrates whenever undead are near, and, as Oliver discovered today, allows him to command the undead necromantically - the brain-dead ones.

Oliver shouted some orders at the skeletal dog, and it obeyed him! Thank Vingt-et-Un's luck! Our group would have been hard-pressed to fight it. You see, our best fighter, Bear, was nearly dead from a deep rat bite.

While Oliver kept the beast at bay, we all made our way down the endless stairs to a room at the bottom. The only exit was a tough locked door that was way beyond our thieves Scuttle and Ouzo's skills.

Bear shoulder-charged the door, then all the fighters, one at a time, made their own attempts to break it, but it was all too strong for them. Until party bimbo bard Debbie tapped her boob against it, and lo and behold, it splintered, the iron-bound hoops broke, and pieces of the door scattered down the passage.

Down the passage, at the corner, there was a pit trap. It had been set off by some hapless fellow weeks ago. His emaciated and rotted body was impaled on a spike inside the pit. No, this was not where Oliver fell. Nor Gillard. 

The corpse had 12 magical arrows, a magical dagger and a magic cloak. Scuttle donned this cloak and it shrunk to fit his morbidly obese halfling body - tight as a drum.

Alcove skeletons

Further on, was a corridor with eight skeletons in alcoves, four a side. The fighters started to battle these, and destroyed four of them before Oliver arrived on the scene and held the others at bay with his boline knife.

It seemed, if one attacked a "held" skeleton, it would fight back, and then Oliver could never again gain necromantic control over it.

Shadow

In the next room was a slab of obsidian, large as a table - a Malechai shrine. There was another exit (door) and a barred trapdoor in the floor. But three shadows, hidden against the far wall, attacked us. They can only be hit by magical weapons, so Gillard, Dexter, Bear and myself engaged. Debbie whistled up a rousing battle hymn with her flute. No, this was not where Gillard fell. 

After a tough fight, we prevailed and destroyed them. We were all hit by them, draining us [ shadows drain STR, not hp ], except Gillard(!). So, we needed a good rest to recover this weakness. Sleep was not possible near the obsidian block, which radiated cryogenic evil, so we withdrew back to Pit Corner.

When we returned to the obsidian block room, an hour later, we first checked the barred trap-door in the corner. It lead down a long vertical shaft down to the sewer tunnels way below. We worked out that Scuttle had managed to get to the other side of this trap-door a previous time (some weeks ago), but on that trip, he could not get past the bar.

Next was the door from this room. The two thieves, Ouzo and Scuttle, checked it and quickly ascertained that it was trapped. This was a job for Debbie. 

Debbie was very lucky. Like me, her half-elven ancestry ensured that Vingt-et-Un looked fondly upon her, and graced her with good luck. But Debbie was half-blind too, having cataracts and severe astigmatism [ 3 PER ]. So, it was very easy to guide blind Debbie into doorways that were trapped, pressure plates in the floor, and tripwires, relying on her luck to save her. Hence, her epithet was Debbie "trap-springer" O'Nair. 

So, Debbie was guided to the door and she opened it, the trap went off, and a one-ton block fell from the ceiling, but :

"Whip whap wing!" 

Went the trapped door's spring.

But Debbie's excess luck, 

Meant she didn't give a fuck have to duck.

From the "whip whap wok!" 

Of the one ton block.

As it crashed to the ground,

Leaving her safe and sound. 

Behind was another passage through to another cavern and archway into another Malechai altar. The two thieves spotted a magical trap in the archway. I went through that, and got zapped by some lightning from above (this should have been Debbie's job). I, too, am lucky, so Vingt-et-Un decided I only be slightly burned. The altar in this room had 13 stools around it - the Malechai coven number. And on the altar there was a chalice and 13 sticks of incense. This chalice matched the one we were supposed to recover.

Bear tried to take the chalice, but got badly zapped and this knocked him down. I had to use two cures to get him up again. This should have been Miss Trap-Springer's job.

There were two portals on the wall here. These are the kind you have to commit to, and blindly (and blithely) walk through. We decided to use the one on the right, and whoever went through, the rest of the party would follow. So, I lead the way...

... and ended up back in the Cigar room of the mansion (right next to the one-way portal that placed us at the top of the stairs with the skeletal dogs).

Since we were back in the mansion, we decided to finish exploring it. We had yet to do the upstairs, so that is where we headed. 

The whole place was damp and musty and showing signs of decay, and had not been occupied in months, but the rot had set in long before that.

In the bedroom above the main dinner hall below, there were great holes in the floor. The 13 seats of the dinner hall below were still occupied by the animated corpses. Tu and Ouzo had an idea to throw two of the upstairs beds through the holes in the floor to try to destroy some of them. The "bed attack" plan seemed to work and broke up three of their bodies. But we found out later, when entering that room again, that they just reformed. Maybe because beds do not qualify as "magical weapons".

In one of the upstairs sitting rooms, we heard a woman's scream. We could not see what had made the noise, but there was a painting of a woman on the far wall. The floor around the painting looked rotten, so no-one was brave enough to walk close to check her out.

In another bedroom, there was a recently left lantern. Ouzo smashed it. Outside the window, from that angle and point of view, one could signal the abandoned quarter of Toluene, or maybe the town's guard-house tower in the distance.

In another sitting room we heard another scream, and this time saw some movement. There was another painting of that same woman, and a rotten floor. Gillard bravely traversed across to the painting and tried to pick it off the wall, but her hands sort-of got sucked into the painting. We had to pull her off. No, this wasn't where Gillard met her fate. Dexter stuck an arrow into the painting, with no effect.

We then had a party conference to decide what to do next. 

• No one wanted to go into the dining hall and take on the 13 animated corpses. Let sleeping dogs corpses lie.
• One group wanted to go back through the Cigar room portal, back underground, past the skeletal dog, past the impaled body, past the alcove skeletons, and back to the second Malechai shrine, and go through the second portal to see where it exited. 
• The other group (including me) wanted to get out of there, and investigate the fellow who sent us on this goose chase to get the chalice. If he had the Malechai symbol, we would turn on him. This option would also involve spilling the beans to REAL so that they could send their level 26 pope down here to cleanse the two Malechai shrines with holy fire (like they did with the other Malechai temples a few weeks back).

The second group won the vote, but It was at this stage that seeds for the tragedy of Oliver and Gillard unfolded, and why I am writing this letter.

Someone piped up that the barred trapdoor in the first Malechai shrine should be unbarred (we left it locked). The logic, I think, so that entry could be managed without going through the one-way portal. in future. Before it could be voiced that this might be dangerous, Oliver and Gillard ran off, back to the Cigar room and back through the one-way portal. They predicted the trip should only take 10 minutes, and they should re-appear in the Cigar room.

That was the last we ever saw of them.. 

Oliver and Gillard, R.I.P.