Waking up from a good night's rest, the Swords are once again facing the enormous doors leading into Zi'kath, the Black Fortress.
Torn and Truxas take a look at the magical barrier that is in front of the door, and come to the conclusion that the barrier is made to hold undead creatures out - or in. Either way, physically walking through will break the barrier.
Using magehand, Torn opens the door, and Truxas concocts a scheme to port them all through the barrier, without actually breaking it. Once inside, they head down the large corridor which is adorned with ancient Primordial glyphs. There are several side-corridors all along the main corridor, and the Swords decide to check the first one out, just in case there was something down there.
Following the corridor to the side, and some stairs down, they end up in what appears to be a small crypt (no, not the toilet Carric) with four sarcophagus at the center. As they enter the room and debate what to do, the sarcophagus burst open, and 4 mummies attack the Swords.
The battle is fairly short and easy, but Carric and Gnoguh are both hit by the mummies, and they realize that they have contracted Mummy Rot, a very lethal disease that impedes their healing.
Right after the fight, Carric begins to cast Cure Disease, in order to remove the nasty affliction. But after only a few minutes, before the Swords have had any time to rest, Torn hears some shuffling coming their way. They close the door and hide, hoping that whatever is coming will not find them. But alas, Avandra is not listening. The door opens, and in pours around 20 mummies.
The fight goes well, but some of the mummies manage to escape. Fearing they will warn whoever is in charge, the Swords of Drahar take a short rest and pursue them down the corridor, towards a huge set of doors.
Arriving at the doors, the Swords can hear clear and loud chanting on the inside. Suspecting that letting the chanting finish will not be beneficial to them, they burst in, finding a mummy high priest and his 11 cohorts in the middle of chanting around an ancient symbol of power. The fight is on. At first, it looks good for the Swords. Mummy after mummy fall, but suddenly, the fight shifts, with Carric going down (several times) and especially the High Priest causing them a lot of grief. Slowly running low on healing and health, the Swords finally manage to kill him, when Torn imprisons the poor man (mummy) in a wall of fire, and Truxas tosses his mini-fireball in there, hitting him squarely in the face.
For a second, you could see the smiles on their faces. Then the High Priests comes crawling out of the Wall of Fire, reaching for the ancient symbol in the middle of the room, before he collapses, more ash than linen.
Then all goes to hell.
YOU HAVE DEFILED MY TEMPLE AND KILLED MY HIGH PRIEST! SUFFER MY WRATH!
The very loud voices sounds more like thunder than anything else, and the Swords turn towards the center of the room, where an Earth Titan has arrived.
The fight is long and ugly. Gnoguh goes down, Carric goes down (twice), Torn goes down (twice). A mix of potions and sheer luck (at least two rolled a 20 on their death save) they manage to claw themselves to a victory. After the Titan is dead, they are totally out and exhausted (between 4 characters, they had at-wills and 1 utility left, 2 people down and 1 at 1 hit points. And 3 surges all together).
And they thought they were past the worst...
They still had to remove the disease that by Carric's estimates would kill them within 48 hours. Unfortunately, Cure Disease is risky business, and due to the strength of the disease, there was quite a good chance (risk) that one of them would die (any roll of 1-3 on the heal check would kill the one being healed). Fortunately, Kord had decided not to call any of his favorites to him today, so everyone lived. But it was close ;)
Once they were done curing and healing up, they hid in the small crypt where they had first killed the 4 mummies, casting Eye of Alarm in the corridor outside, Arcane lock on the door, before casting Rope Trick and hiding in the extra-dimensional space until they felt better.
Torsday 27th Yanoar, Year 26
The very next morning, they took a look at the trinkets they had found in the Mummy High Priest's chambers, along with 34,000 gold pieces.
+4 rod of the bloodthorn (100)
Vampiric Gauntlets (137)
Crown of Nature's rebellion (138)
Fireburst Boots (129)
All 4 items in the candy book
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