24 Ardor 508

After an uneventful night of camping, the party is ready to return to the cursed monastery. They journey down through rooms that they’ve already cleared out until they come to unfamiliar territory. Lenoria casts hide from undead on the party, after casting make whole on Rhain’s broken axe. Tag leads the way inside, looking for traps and items of interest. Along the way, he checks some stuck doors for traps, which Rhain takes his time to use his brawn to un-stick.

Arriving at an unfamiliar room, Tag enters followed by Regna. The room, like the one before it, is unadorned. Tag is brought up short by the sight of six gaunt humanoid creatures with long, sharp teeth, pointed ears, and long, pointed tongues. They have clawed hands and feet and their pallid flesh is stretched tight over their starved frames. The creatures, ghouls, are wearing tattered monk’s robes. Two of them hiss and start coming toward him, while the rest seem oblivious to their presence, thanks to Lenoria’s prayers.

Tag and Regna, blocking the doorway, take on the ghouls. In the course of combat, Regna is paralyzed by one of them. Tavayne begins playing his fiddle to inspire their courage.

Rhain starts cutting through adjacent rooms, trying to come up to the ghouls from the other side. He walks into a large room where murals depicting dreaming monks line the walls. Old straw mats are littered about the floor. And seven shambling figures are milling about the room, tattered monk’s robes hanging off of their rotted, zombie, bodies.

Meanwhile, Tag attempts to use his acrobatic skills to push his way through the ghoul to make room for more comrades to join them. He fails to find an opening, but follows up with an attack with his mace.

Rhain, depending on his hide from undead spell, passes through the zombies unscathed, and arrives at another room. Here, rotted straw mats litter the floor. Murals on the wall depict Shandor in various poses of meditation, as well as serene landscape scenes. He starts passing through that room to the room with the ghouls.

Tag continues to attack while Regna stands helpless as the ghouls rake her with their claws. Lenoria bestows on tag a bit of luck, while Rhain comes up from behind and slaughters one of the attacking ghouls.

Rhain then steps forward and attacks the other ghoul, obliterating the walking corpse. Lenoria casts healing on Regna.

The rest of the ghouls have now noticed the party and begin to close in. Rhain attacks while Tag utilizes his wand of magic missile. Regna continues to stand helpless.

Rhain and Tag continue engaging the ghouls. Regna finally shakes off the paralysis. She then belches fire at the nearest ghoul, burning it to cinders. Lenoria channels positive energy to heal her comrades.

Rhain then turns and disembowels the last ghoul, spraying thick, black ichor all over the room. He yells to Regna that there are zombies in the next room. Regna makes her way so that she can belch more fire. She puts herself into position in the large room and lets go with a belch of fire, engulfing two of the zombies. As the zombies begin to close in on her and her friends move into position, she attacks again. Tag flips into the room, turns, attacks on the flaming zombies, and puts it down. Regna belches forth more flame and injures two more zombies. Lenoria channels energy to harm further harm the undead shamblers. Rhain ambles up and finishes off one of the flaming undead.

Lenoria once again channels the energy of her goddess to attack the zombies. The zombies attack the party, doing minimal damage. Rhain steps up and slaughters another of the walking corpses. Tag manages to down another zombie. Regna, with a mighty blow, manages to fell the last zombie in the room.

The party takes a moment to recover, casting healing spells and remove disease on Regna, hoping to prevent her rising as a ghoul. They then follow the corridors to another room where they have not explored. Tag checks the door, finds nothing, and peers inside.

He sees what appears to be a kitchen. The center of the room is dominated by a large counter. Cabinets line the walls. There are kitchen implements littering the floor, rusted and useless. And, of course, there are the 4 skeletal occupants of the room…who don’t appear to have noticed him as of yet.

Lenoria casts weapon of awe on Rhain’s axe and the party opts to use her hide from undead again to avoid the skeletons. They move through the kitchen cautiously toward a door at the end of the room leading to more unexplored territory.

Along the way, Tag looks for traps and items of interest. They pass through a corridor and then through an empty room, finally arriving at another door. He cautiously opens it and sees that it is a room with murals on the walls depicting monks in combat with shadowy forms. In the center of the room is the wizened form of a mummy in tattered monk’s robes.

As the party lines up to enter the room, with Regna in the lead, the mummy spots her and starts to move in. As Rhain moves in, he is overwhelmed by despair and cannot move. Tag attempts to use his wand of magic missile, but cannot manage to make it function. Regna is on her own. Tavayne begins to play.

Regna attempts to trip the mummy up with a thunderstomp spell, but it maintains its footing. It moves in and strikes Regna, imparting its rotting disease on her. She returns with a magic missile of her own. Tag flips into the room and into position to surround the creature. Lenoria casts invisibility on herself and makes her way through and positions herself behind the mummy.

Rhain shakes off the despair and attacks the mummy, while Tag does the same. Regan attempts to aid Rhain and Lenoria casts a healing spell on Regna. Rhain attacks again and Tag aids him, causing a distraction. The rest of the party attempt to aid Rhain as well, but with little effect. The mummy strikes Rhain hard for his trouble, also imparting his rotting disease to the barbarian as well.

Rhain takes a mighty, two-handed swing with his greataxe—and wedges the head of his axe into the floor. Lenoria channels more energy to damage the mummy. Tag steps up and misses the mummy with his mace. Regna activates her magic boots to get some speed, but does not manage to hit the mummy.

The mummy, for its part, hits Rhain again, hard. Then he hits him again.

Rhain draws another axe and attacks. So do the others. The creature is eventually brought down. Tag searches the room, but finds nothing of interest. They move on, with Lenoria reapplying the hide from undead spell.

Moving down the corridor, they come across another door. Tag checks it, finds nothing and carefully opens it. Inside he sees a lone Wraith floating ominously in the center of the room. He quietly shuts the door.

They opt to take another route. Turning up, they go down a short corridor and find another door. Tag manages to disarm the trap on this one and then carefully opens the door. Inside he sees another gathering of ghouls. He shuts the door and the party regroups.

Rhain proposes a plan in which they lure the ghouls out to the larger room. Regna and the others are on-board with this plan, So Tag positions himself at the bend in the corridor with his crossbow, while Regna moves forward to burst in on the ghouls to draw their attention.

Regna makes her way and busts open the door, following up with a spell that fills the room with rocky debris, slowing the corpse-eaters down. She turns and runs down the corridor, with the ghouls hissing and clambering behind her.

Tag fires on the ghouls as Regna runs down the hall. One of the ghouls falls in the corridor. Regna takes up her new position in the ambush room. The ghouls continue to make their way down the corridor, slowed by the debris and having to climb over the body of their comrade.

Tag takes up his position in the ambush room and everyone waits. Eventually, the first ghoul enters and the party surrounds the interloper and attacks! Short work is made of the ghoul. As the ghouls begin to enter the room, Tag moves bodies out of the way to make room as the party slaughters the ghouls one-by-one. Eventually, no more of the creatures enter the room.

Tag makes his way back down the corridor into the ghouls’ room. There he finds a secret panel with a treasure chest inside. The chest is full of coin, gems, and other items. The door on the other side of the room leads into an area the group has already explored.

The party determines that the only rooms left are the one with the Wraith, the room behind that, and the kitchen where they left the skeletons. Tag is convinced the Wraith is guarding something interesting, so they move on to its chamber.

After a brief battle with the incorporeal, life-sucking fiend, they manage to bring it down, with Lenoria casting a holy javelin and finishing it off. They search the room and find nothing of interest—save for a portcullis leading to the last room (save the kitchen). Tag peers through the bars and sees something laying on the floor up against the back wall. There is no way he is leaving without knowing what that is.

They eventually find a panel with the portcullis mechanism inside and open the gate. Inside, they find an empty cell of a room, save for a ornately carved wooden staff. Regna examines the staff with her arcane powers and determines that it is a Staff of Charming. Tag recognizes that the staff most likely belonged to an adventurers by the name of Leyla Halasi, an Acheran wizard. She went missing some one hundred years ago. Convinced that they have a valuable artifact, the party takes the staff.

At this point, after assessing their various wounds and healing capabilities, the group debates on whether or not they just want to take their booty and leave or clear out the monastery. Rhain wants to take the money and leave, but he is out-voted. Everyone else wants to be able to say that they fully defeated the Monastery of Punari. So they head in to take on the skeletons in the kitchen. Rhain is convinced that they are risking their skins for nothing, but goes along.

They then move on to the kitchen occupied by four skeletal monks. They cautiously enter the room and engage with the skeletons, making quick work of the creatures, despite their efforts to stun the party with their Stunning Fist techniques. They find nothing of interest in the room.

Rhain mocks the party incessantly about the all the treasure they gained by risking their lives against those skeletons.

Satisfied that they have assailed all threats in the monastery, the group makes its way to the armory they discovered early in their exploration. They begin loading the various weapons onto their carts. Finally, that afternoon, they start making their way down the mountain pass away from the cursed monastery and back into the jungles of Achera, making their long way back to Asdari.

28 Ardor 508

After a couple of days of travel through the jungle, the party continues to slowly roll its way through the dense overgrowth. Later in the afternoon, Tag and Lenoria spot a structure overgrown with vines and foliage. Tag immediately wants to check it out. Rhain, exasperated, goes along. He just wants to get on to his payday.

The structure is not large and has an open arched doorway leading inside. The doorway is lined with etched hieroglyphs. Tag manages to decipher that they are both a welcome and a warning. Lenoria determines that this may be an ancient temple to Azunapath, though it is built in a fashion no longer used by that sect.

Tag heads inside, with the others following and Lenoria lighting his way. Inside the structure is are four support pillars and, in the center of the square building, a diamond-shaped pool of clear, blue water. Before the pool is a bronze stand with a round, shallow, top, seemingly designed to place something in. Tag examines the pool closely and determines that it is fed by an underground spring. Regna determines that the waters are, in fact, magical. He takes a drink of the water and, while cool and refreshing, it also makes him feel warm in his belly, a pleasant warmth. After they search out the structure and find nothing else, they move on.

30 Ardor 508

On this day, the party stumbles across the remains of a battle. Rhain is convinced that it is the site where they had previously encountered the dire apes. Tag wants to be sure and examines the signs. Sure enough, he comes to the same conclusion. After Rhain mocks Tag for a bit, they move on.

5 Longday 508

As the party continues their long slog through the jungle, Tag and Lenoria halt the party to point out a body that has been nailed to a tree by a spear. The body is rotting and the spear appears to be of orc-make. Vowing to be on their guard, the troupe continues forward toward Asdari.

9 Longday 508

On this day, as they are making camp for the evening, Lenoria finds a rusty spoon buried in the camp. Tag is fascinated, thinking that perhaps it is an artifact or relic of some sort. Rhain mocks them, calling back to the “treasures” not found in the kitchen back at the monastery and that now, at last, they have a kitchen utensil. Tag asks Lenoria for the spoon and she gladly gives it over to him. Tag is now convinced that he has “the Spoon of Punari.”

15 Longday 508

Finally, after nearly three weeks, the party emerges from the jungle and arrives at the gates of Asdari. They head into the city with their laden carts and find lodging at the Topaz Dagger, though Tag desperately wants to stay at the Wand of Fire. Tavayne proposes that they stay at the Topaz Dagger, but later go for drinks (on him) at the Wand of Fire.

They party spends the remainder of the day cashing in their found treasures and splitting their loot. they hit upon a new way to split their magic items, but first Tag gets to pick first, as it was promised last time. Rhain is against this, but he outvoted again. Tag, of course, picks the very expensive magic staff—which he can’t use very well. Rhain grouses the entire time about what the halfling managed to pull off—now he’s just going to sell off the expensive magic item for a haul of money that won’t be part of the general shares.

Eventually, the discussion comes (prompted by Tag) about including Tavayne in the cut—he was very helpful, after all. Rhain is against it—if he wanted a cut he should have negotiated beforehand. As the discussion becomes heated, with Tavayne carefully remaining neutral, Tag convinces Rhain to let “Lenoria’s goddess” decide. He’ll roll a die—if it comes up even, Tavayne gets a cut. If not, then they negotiate for next time.

Rhain, still in disbelief at the turns the conversation has taken, observes as Tag rolls the die. It comes up even—Tavayne gets a cut. The bard bows with a low flourish and thanks the party for their generosity.

The party then gets cleaned up and ready to head downstairs and then to the Wand of Fire.