Frontier Pathfinding - Sunday, June 30th, 2019

Returning to the scene of the fight, they dragged the bodies into one of the ten foot by ten foot rooms and blocked the door. However, after some arguing over it, they agreed to follow Schmidt's recommendation and haul the bodies out.

While Izelda dragged the bodies out, the rest of the group started down the other corridor from where the grate could fall and block the way out.

The corridor did twist around a bit, but after only about 30 feet, the group decided that between depleted spells and some remaining injuries, they really did need to go back to town. With that, they gathered up much of what they had collected much of what the bugbears had and made the treck back to Homlet.

When they got into the merchant's shop, Locke decided to detect evil while Deserea was talking about what goods they had to sell and discussing price with the merchant. Deserea decided they could get a better price taking items elsewhere or waiting until later, and wasn't really comfortable with the way the merchant talked about what he did with these weapons and who he sold them to and when.

They trudged on up the hill to the church and were greeted by the acolyte. his suspicions raised, Locke decided to see if he was evil as well, but the priest, as expected for a priest of Iomedae, was not.

The priest did have some news for them. The symbol on those cloaks was one of the icons used by an old evil temple outside of Nulb, about a day away. The temple had been supposedly crushed more than a generation ago, so nobody really thought about it any more, and many of the details were hazy.

From various questioning from Deserea and Locke, they did get that the keep the group had been investigating was an old outpost of the temple, and that crushing the temple took armies from the capitol as well as their allies.

Deserea hired a messenger from the temple to go to the capitol and hire a scribe in the royal library to produce a copy of all the information available on the temple and the eradication of it and its cult.

A couple days later, having fully recovered again, the group was heading back out to the keep when they came across a merchant with a cart full of produce.

Deserea bought some apples for everyone. The merchant seemed a little distant, but overall happy and pleasant. After some conversation with the man, Deserea decided to purchase his whole lot and have it sent to the church in Homlet. She provided the merchant instruction that the church should use what they need and distribute the remainder to those in need in the community as they saw fit.

When they got to the keep, they agreed again to enter through the rubble into the old bandits' room but then to cross the great hall and go down the stairs where the rats had been. Getting into the keep and down the stairs without incident, they headed to the column to get back to the crypt. As they came out of the door into the crypt, Schmidt thought he saw something move at the edge of the torchlight.

They cautiously crossed the room, Schmidt specifically ready for something to attack. As he moved toward where he thought he saw the movement, Locke whispered to him, "Wasn't the back of that nook knocked out?"

They moved toward the damaged nook, Deserea hanging back about twenty feet so she could see better away from the torch.

One at a time, Schmidt, Locke, then Deserea stepped through the hole in the back of the nook. It opened into a low ceilinged natural looking cave. "This wall may have only ever been plaster, making it easy to knock through," Deserea commented.

As Schmidt and Locke made their way further into the cave, they got to a point where they could stand, between the floor dropping a little and the ceiling rising. As the space started to open up to the left and right, Schmidt saw something, and as it clawed at him, he swung his scimitar into it. He was wounded in the scuffle, but he killed the thing that hit him. "Ghouls," he said, stepping across the entryway where several others were closing.

Locke stepped up behind Schmidt, and placing his hand on his friend's shoulder, healed him of some of the damage from the ghoul. Schmidt stepped up to the approaching ghouls and struck one of them. Deserea started singing encouragement to her colleagues. The ghouls stepped up and bit, clawed, and tore at Schmidt, but only one hit him. Unfortunately, that was enough to paralyze him.

Locke stepped up and hit one of the ghouls. Deserea fired an arrow into the fray, but missed. The ghouls all turned on Locke now, having a moving target, and he was bitten several times.

Seeing that Schmidt was frozen in place, Locke smote one of the ghouls, then power attacking clove clean through that one and another. He then stepped back and Deserea healed him. The remaining ghouls stepped forward to the paladin and one of them clawed him. The one who couldn't reach the Locke swung at the already paralyzed Schmidt, paralyzing him further.

Locke swung at the ghoul who had hit him, connecting solidly, and Deserea healed Locke again from behind. The ghoul again hit Locke.

Locke again hit the ghoul, this time dropping it as the other stepped up. Deserea again healed Locke magically. The remaining ghoul attacked Locke, but could not connect.

Locke swung again and connected with the last ghoul, severing its head.

Locke stepped up to the paralyzed ranger and again laid hands, healing him further.

Cautiously moving further into the room, Deserea found an old pile of bones between a couple natural columns. Scattered among the bones, there were several flasks of holy water, some scrolls and some potions, as well as a fair amount of silver.

As Deserea was telling Locke across the room what she had found, Schmidt finally started stirring. They hadn't heard any noises, nor had they seen anything, so they settled down for a bit to inspect their remaining wounds. While they could bandage themselves up fairly well, they realized they were in no shape to deal with another significant opponent. While they were taking turns inspecting each other's bandages or bandaging each other, Schmidt did see some gold coins maybe fifteen feet down a narrow, low ceilinged cavern heading off to the west. However, with the agreement that they were again in no shape to handle a fight, they agreed to head back to town.

The walk back to town, moderately injured and depleted of spells and magic, was uneventful. However the group did decide that maybe they needed to get to a larger town or a city and see if they could find an alchemist to get some healing potions or something so they didn't need to keep heading back to Homlet after each fight. With two days in town again to heal, they had plenty of time to discuss which direction they wanted to head and how long it would take to get there and back; As well as how much was likely to change in the keep while they were gone.

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