Saturday Night Dungeon: The Halls of the Dead

 During our last quest night, our brave heroes were knocked unconscious by the foul Bellthor's mind-numbing breath. Bellthor was defeated, but the four heroes were taken captive by the Witch Lord!
The Wizard and the Dwarf wake up, and find themselves locked up in a small cell that reeks of rot and decay. "Oi me 'ead!" says Butchmath the Dwarf, "where be we, Wizard?". "Shush!" Eddy whispers, "I think I heard something..."

 Mentor's voice suddenly sounds in their cell: "Heroes! Your companions, the Elf and Barbarian, have been captured by the Witch King, and are being thrown into the pit to feed his pets. You must save them quickly! I will use a spell to unlock your door. Your equipment is outside. Go now!"
As Mentor's voice fades away, the cell door bursts open, and Eddy and Butch quickly grab their gear. "Where's me gold!?" the Dwarf cries. "The jailers must have taken it" says Eddy Wizzard "come on, let's get out of here!"

 Eddy prudently searches for traps and hidden doors first, and he finds a secret door, opening into another cell with two zombies. Unfortunate prisoners who have fallen under the Witch Lord's evil spell, no doubt. Butchmath steps in, but his first attack is blocked. The zombies are most likely still disoriented from the sudden light entering their cell, because both miss their attacks on the Dwarf.

 Eddy attempts a diagonal attack with his staff, but the zombie blocks his attack easily. The Dwarf is unsuccessfull again, his attack is blocked. The first zombie manages to steal one body point from Butch, but the other fortunately misses.
Our new dice tower is working brilliantly!
The next round is better: both heroes manage to kill a zombie each, and so Eddy searches for traps ans secret doors again. He finds another door! This one leads into a larger room with another zombie.

 The Dwarf doesn't wait for it to attack, and moves into the room to kill it. Fortunately, he doesn't trigger any traps and slays the zombie.
Eddy finds another secret door out of the room, and finds a stairwell out of the dungeon in the next room!
Butchmath enters the next room, and does another search for traps and doors. Yet another secret door opens into the corridor outside. There he sees a brutish Chaos Warrior, accompanied by 4 skeletons.

 The evil minions walk inside, and surround the Dwarf. The Chaos Warrior misses, a skeleton attacks but is blocked, but a second skeleton takes another body point from the Dwarf.

 Eddy meanwhile takes up a strategic diagonal position next to the secret door, and uses Fire of Wrath on the Chaos Warrior. It bursts into flame and crumbles to the ground. Butch attacks a skeleton and kills it. Then he takes a step back so he can take the enemy on one by one.

 A few turns later all the remaining skeletons are dealt with. The corridor is now free to enter.

 Eddy heads out, and finds a spear trap, a pit trap and a skeleton on the far side of the pit trap. (A minor error by Morcar enabled him to search for traps while the skeleton was there)
Butchmath decides to check the other side and spots two skeletons down the hall. This prevents him from searching for traps.

 The two heroes decide to go east, because they know there are no traps there. The skeletons advance, but take another route to cut off the heroes.

 As they near the next corner, the Dwarf spots two zombies down the hall, and a door. The undead stay put however, giving the impression that there might be some traps ahead.
Butch quickly runs back to the west corner, because now that the skeletons have moved on, he can search for traps. None are found.
The heroes decide not to risk traps near the two zombies, and disable the pit trap first.

 The skeleton on the east moves in, and attacks, but is blocked by the Dwarf. Eddy tries killing it, but misses. But the Dwarf swings his bastard sword and reduces the skeleton to a pile of broken bones.

 He then turns and moves towards the zombies, hoping he doesn't set off any traps. The tension rises as Eddy also moves in...
As they reach the zombies, they attack, and kill them both. No traps have gone off... As the tension subsides, they open the door to the west, and search for traps and hidden doors inside the room. Two spear traps go off, but do no harm.

 Butch opens the door and spots the two skeletons from before. He decides to search for treasure first, but unwittingly sets of a magical fireburst trap! Morcar searches for an explanation of this exotic trap, but doesn't find it. Apparently the trap had been mixed in a little prematurely, so Morcar quickly houserules that each hero must roll one combat die. On a skull they lose one body point. Both heroes roll shields!

Next, Eddy is feeling brave and enters the corridor, thinking he can easily overcome a measly skeleton. He attacks the first one, but misses! The Dwarf steps in behind him, but can't attack yet, because Eddy is in his way.
The front skeleton attacks back, but also misses, so it steps back and lets its friend have a go at the wizard. It hits, but Eddy deftly blocks the blow.

The Wizard tries another attack, but misses again, so he steps back and lets a true warrior handle this. Butch crushes the skeleton utterly, and the last skeleton misses him on the next round, so Butch destroys that one too.
Now it's time to see what's behind the door to the central room... Butchmath positions himself in front of the door, with Eddy behind him.

Inside are the Elf and Barbarian, in chains, held captive by the Witch Lord and his cohorts!
The evil Witch Lord curses the two heroes, and disappears in a tornado of smoke. Suddenly the chains fall off, be it by the Witch Lord's disappearance or a spell by Mentor nobody knows. Seeing their chance to escape, the Barbarian and Elf dash out of the room. Without their equipment they feel safer letting the Dwarf and Wizard take care of the bad guys.

Quite a challenge awaits them as two Chaos Warriors look at them threateningly, and 12 skeletons rise up to attack!

The Dwarf quickly searches for his Ball of Flame scroll that he found earlier, and casts it on one of the Chaos Warriors. It incinerates in a blast, but all the other monsters slowly advance, but stay away from the open door...

All heroes wait for the enemies and skip a turn... The tension rises...
Again, the Dwarf uses a scroll he found, this time a Fire of Wrath scroll, on the second Chaos Warrior: FOOM! Up in flames it goes.
With the largest threats gone, the heroes wait for the skeletons to advance, but they don't... The Witch Lord obviously has control over them, and is using them strategically.

It is clear to the heroes that the stalemate has to be broken, so the Wizard formulates a plan: he casts Stone Skin on the Dwarf, telling him to go inside and block the door. The Wizard himself takes position between the chest and the Dwarf, so only one skeleton can stand in front of him. Both he and the Dwarf may attack diagonally, so they both attack the skeleton on front of the other hero in turns, trying to minimize the number of attacks the Wizard must defend against.

The Dwarf on the other hand must deflect 4 attacks per turn as 2 skeletons attack, retreat and swap places with 2 others. But the Stone Skin spell does its job extremely well, and with 7 defense dice rolling down the new dice tower, the skeletons don't have a chance. The Wizard loses some points, but he uses a small healing porion he found some quests ago to heal 2 lost body points, and after about 7 tense turns, the undead are vanquished!

Both heroes catch their breath and wipe the sweat off of their brows... "Phew! 'T was a tough battle, but ye stood yer ground well, me pyama'd friend!" "You weren't so bad yourself, thanks to my spell, Dwarf!" after a short staring contest, they laugh and clap eachother on the backs.
The Wizard finds all lost equipment from the Barbarian and Elf, but no gold...

"Durned wretches! They took all our gold! We better go and find some loot then." The others quickly agree, keen on getting some revenge, and the party continues searching new rooms.

The Dwarf searches for treasure in the next room, but trips a spear trap, and consequently loses his handy stone skin spell... A mummy and a zombie in the next room attack the Elf (she missed her shot) but she blocks one attack and the other misses her. Butchmath helps her out by attacking diagonally and slaying the zombie

The Wizard also steps in and uses his Ball of Flame spell on the mummy, incinerating it.
Meanwhile, Sjengis Khan the Barbarian enters the corridor, hoping he doesn't step into a trap.

He sees three skeletons, and rushes towards them, killing one with a fell swoop of his recently recovered bastard sword. During the next round he successfully defends against the other two skeletons, and the Dwarf takes out a second skeleton.

Elly the Elf searches the green room for traps, but finds none. Now Eddy can safely look for treasure and finds 50 gold!

At the corner of the corridor, Sjengis spots a skeleton at the far east end. It advances towards him, but is still too far too attack. Meanwhile, Elly enters the cell where the Wizard and the Dwarf were held captive, and finds 10 gold.

Butch opens the next door, and sees a mummy inside. He cuts it in half with his sword easily. The Barbarian is wary for traps, and decides to let the skeleton come to him instead. Eddy catches up with the Dwarf and searches the room for traps, but there are none.

Elly continues on her own looting trip, in search for riches, but stumbles upon a wandering monster: a skeleton attacks her from behind! Elly manages to block the attack, and on Morcar's turn it misses her.

Now the Dwarf also searches for treasure, but another wandering skeleton pops up! It savagely stabs the Dwarf, who loses another body point. Eddy Wizzard steps in to help, and smacks the undead monster on the head with his staff. It crumbles to the floor.

Meanwhile, Elly struggles with the skeleton in the cell room, but it blocks her attack.
The skeleton in the hallway has almost reached the Barbarian, but Sjengis Khan uses his bastard sword to attack diagonally and kills the monster. Then he proceeds down the hallway, planning to enter the next door, and assist the others from there.

The Dwarf enters the next room, and attacks the mummy inside from a diagonal position. It blocks the attack though, so the Barbarian bursts through the other door, and utterly destroys the mummy with 4 skulls versus zero black shields.
Eddy decides the Dwarf could use some healing, and casts Heal Body on him.

Elly the Elf meanwhile escapes into the adjacent room, and searches for treasure there, as she can't get a proper line of sight on the skeleton. She finds 40 gold, but it's scattered around, so she must skip a turn to collect it all... Not a good thing with a wandering skeleton nearby.

The skeleton near the Barbarian attacks him, and takes one body point! The skeleton near the Elf also manages to damage her one point! But the Dwarf kills the skeleton and the Barbarian disables a dart trap. While Elly is still occupied, the skeleton near her attacks again, but misses her as she bends over to pick up another coin. "Ooh! More gold! Oh, wait, there was a skeleton here!"

As the Dwarf enters another room with a mummy and manages to kill it too, the Wizard makes sure the previous room isn't trapped. The Barbarian does a search for treasure and finds a Spell Scroll of Chill. Elly fires her crossbow at the skeleton as she backs awat from it into the exit room, but it blocks again! It attacks back, but is blocked by the Elf.

Butchmath checks the corridor outside, but finds nothing. Sjengis and Eddy pass him into the corridor. Elly finally manages to kill her persistent skeleton.
The others find another room and head inside.

The Dwarf opens the door first, and Sjengis heads inside and takes down a mummy. Elly finds another 20 gold near the exit, and steps outside into the hallway.

The second mummy attacks Sjengis, but he blocks the attack. Butch steps in as well and kills the second mummy. Eddy looks for traps inside, so Sjengis can search for treasure safely. He finds 25 gold!

Elly passes all the rooms the others forgot to search for treasure, and finds... Another wandering monster! It attacks with 2 skulls, but Elly rolls 2 shields and suffers no damage. She mumbles something about not getting a break. It attacks her again on Morcar's turn, but misses.

As the others enter the hallway again, Eddy scouts ahead, thinking to way to be clear, but a sneaky Chaos Warrior has been hiding there.

Eddy quickly casts his Genie spell, and with three skulls versus 1 black shield it is killed.

Elly takes a step back and shoots the last skeleton. It seems the dungeon is cleared!

As Butchmath passes Eddy, he decides to check one last time for traps, and it proves a wise decision, as he finds a pit trap. He disables it clumsily, losing a body point, but now the heroes can all return to the exiting stairwell to continue their quest against the evil Witch Lord...


Stay tuned for more adventures!