Scions of Punjar, Session 6: Skeletons in the Closet

Aletha, Regnor, Chiana, and Corvus faced Cadavra across her inner sanctum. She stood well away from them, across a narrow stream of icy water that flowed through an iron grate set in one of the cavern walls. Between them was a massive black iron cauldron adorned with symbols and pictograms depicting the reanimation of corpses and their subsequent terrifying and consuming of the living. A foul smelling miasma bubbled and leaked over the sizes of the cauldron, covering the ground around it in a greenish mist.

Cadavra taunted the party, "Ee-hehehe. You're too late, my lovelies. My creations are already in place and will attack when the moon is no more. My vengeance will be complete and there is nothing you can do about it. Now I will destroy your spirits and your bodies will join my growing army!"

Before they could react, the zombies shuffled forward at Cadavra's command and corralled the party at the stairs. A couple of the animated corpses must have been soldiers in life because they wore mud covered armor and wielded rusty swords, as if their gear had lain in the ground for a period of time. Most of the others appeared to have once been commoners and were dressed in the clothes they were buried in.

Cadavra shot out lightning from her finger-tips which struck Regnor and then forked and burned Chiana and Corvus. Then the party watched in horror as the massive bulk of a large humanoid with greenish and dripping skin broke the surface of the liquid in the cauldron and stood forth. Necrotic sludge dribbled down from its sharp toothed maw and it's hands ended in vicious looking claws. Cadavra had found or captured a marsh troll and revivified it as a foul hulking brute under her control. The creature began slowly climbing out of the cauldron as the liquid contents sloshed about onto the ground.

Corvus decided it was time to do something about all these undead blocking their path to the evil witch. Invoking the power of the Raven Queen, he sent out a wave of rebuking divine power that washed over the zombies and the cauldron troll and drove them backward. Many of the commoner zombies were destroyed outright and the soldier zombies were damaged and driven backward, giving Regnor, Chiana, and Aletha some space to maneuver. The undead troll was caught with one leg out of the cauldron and was knocked over by the wave of power, tipping the cauldron and spilling the rest of its foul contents onto the stony ground. The liquid followed the slope of the cavern floor and poured into the natural stream to be carried away through the iron grate and into the city's water supply. The undead in the blast were all dazed from the attack, but several motes of greenish gas floated away from the troll where it was wounded and hovered toward the party.

Regnor and Chiana killed the remaining commoner zombies and closed in on the zombie soldiers. Aletha cursed and blasted the troll. More motes of necrotic gas were expelled from the creature each time it was wounded. Cadavra shouted curses at the party about their destructive behavior in her home. Fresh corpses laying about the cavern stood at her command and shambled forth to take the place of those that fell. One of these new zombies appeared to be relatively fresh, possibly the missing girl who had come to the windmill in search of easy prey. Cadavra used her necrotic powers to bolster and heal the zombie soldiers and the troll monster so they could continue to fight for her. Finally she followed up with a blast of ice, catching all of the party in it and slowing them down.

The zombies and cauldron motes closed in around the party and continued to harass them. The troll stood up and spewed forth a vile goo from its maw onto Regnor and then reached over the backs of the zombies to slash at him with a claw. Regnor dodged the claw, but felt the vile goo eating away at his flesh between the scales of his armor. The pain drove Regnor into a dragonborn fury and he cleaved about him dropping a pair of zombies. Chiana was forced to lend a majestic word to Regnor and keep him in the fight. Corvus and Aletha destroyed the floating motes of gas with their ranged attacks and then the group turned on the remaining troll beast.

Cadavra, sensing that the tide of battle was turning against her and knowing that her arcane resources were quickly dwindling, cursed the party's impudence one last time before turning herself into a living shadow and swiftly fleeing through the grate and down the stream toward the city. The troll blocked the party from getting to Cadavra before she escaped, but they quickly brought it down with their combined focused attacks.

The adventurers could not follow Cadavra down the stream, due to the passage rapidly narrowing. They instead turned their attention to searching and looting the caverns and the windmill lair above in the hopes of finding something useful or a clue as to where she would turn up next. Among the witches personal effects they found gold coins, a small statue of a raven, a suit of shadow warlock leather armor, a suit of astral fire chainmail, Cadavra's ritual book, and a book entitled "The Necromantic Devices of Illserves". Aletha took the shadow warlock armor and Corvus took the raven statue and the suit of astral fire armor.

Chiana spent some time examining the books. Cadavra's ritual book contained her favorite spells, but also served as her personal journal. Chiana skimmed fragments of the witch's deranged past and learned that Cadavra was really once Lakasia Dev'shir. She wrote of how she hated her older sister and killed her in the stable fire in the hopes of becoming the next heir to the family fortune. When her parents named her younger brother as the heir instead she flew into a jealous rage and attempted to kill her entire family, but she was young and easily overpowered. Her parents packed her off to sanitarium in another city to forget about her and then spread the rumor that she had died in the fire along with her sister.

Ironically, during her years at the sanitarium she slowly went insane. Lakasia was discovered by a mysterious group known as "The Sisters" who recognized her latent talent and paid to have her spirited away with them. She spent many years with "The Sisters" training and learning to harness her magical abilities. Lakasia renamed herself Cadavra and began plotting her revenge on her family. To this end she stole a tome from "The Sisters" and used it construct the Cauldron of Illserves with which she could raise an army of undead to do her bidding. She spent the last few months hiring grave robbers to bring her fresh materials from which to make her army. The last few pages of the journal were filled with cryptic notes and numbers on the progress of her army.

Chiana surmised that Cadavra had small groups of undead hidden in various locations around the city, all pre-programmed to attack on the next night of a new moon, which was in two nights time. The final page held clues as to what these locations might be. The group discussed these new revelations and talked strategy. Although the party was worn out and their resources were low they felt like they could still beat Cadavra in her weakened state if they could find her before she got a chance to rest. They hypothesized that she would have retreated to one of the hiding places in her journal, but they had no way of knowing which one she would flee to first.

After the group spent some time guessing, Corvus decided to invoke the Hand of Fate to help them decide. They asked the disembodied hand which location Cadavra will be at in an hour. The hand pointed at a symbol on the journal page marked "23GR" with the picture of a house and fifteen tick marks next to it. Pooling their knowledge of the city the group decided that the symbol must be a reference to an address on "Guilder Row", a major streets connecting the Souk and Wharftown districts of Punjar. They immediately set off for the city in the hopes of catching the witch off guard.

Along the way, Aletha, Corvus, Chiana, and Regnor, stopped by GoHAC headquarters, the abandoned and rotting Beggar King's mansion along Rat Catcher's Row. There they found Mina, Vismund, Rael, and Mike Mitchell just hanging around, so they enlisted their help to go warn the remaining Dev'shirs of the impending attack and to investigate some of the other suspected locations of hidden undead minions, including the well at Low Court and the Copse of Dead Jenys. Vismund, Mina, Rael, and Mike Mitchell happily agreed and went off to pursue their own adventures at the Dev'shir estate and nearby locations.

Aletha, Corvus, Chiana, and Regnor found a three-story townhouse at 23 Guilder Row. A sign above the door marked it as being "The Rudebakers' Residence". A candle shone through soot stained window on the first floor and perceptive members of the party could hear the mumbling of a woman's voice coming from within.

Regnor burst through the door, startling a young woman sitting at a table in the front room. The young woman screamed and called out "Mistress! Mistress! They're here!" and then cowered in fear as the rest of the party entered the building and questioned her. She called herself "Marie" and was a paid servant of the Rudebakers. A week or so ago, Cadavra came to the home with skeletal minions, killed the Rudebakers and made Marie her slave. Cadavra was now in the attic along with her minions and the reanimated bodies of the dead owners of the home.

The group told her to stay put as they investigated the house. In the back they found a small kitchen and access to a shallow root cellar. Chiana brought up some vegetables and potatoes from the cellar so Regnor and Corvus could make frittatas for everyone. After they'd all had a bite to eat, they took the stairs to the second floor.

On the second floor were the family sleeping areas. The back room contained a large wardrobe and a ladder heading up to the attic. The wardrobe contained a suit of dwarven drakescale armor that would fit Regnor. They took it for later use. Regnor then proceeded to climb the ladder into the attic.

In the attic Cadavra was waiting for them along with 5 skeleton warriors, 5 skeletal minions, and 5 rotting zombies, the shambling remains of the Rudebaker family. Regnor cut a path for his companions into the room while Cadavra commanded her allies to attack. Cadavra waited for Aletha, Chiana, and Corvus to enter the attic before she hit them all with lightning and ice attacks again. Corvus rebuked the undead in the room, destroying the minions and the zombies, and pushed the skeleton warriors back. Cadavra bolstered her warriors and sent them back into the fight. They all charged Regnor and cut him down. Chiana revived him with a majestic word.

The party fought past the warriors and backed Cadavra into a corner of the room. Corvus summoned his angel of fire to help surround and attack her. When cornered Cadavra fought like a wild thing, swinging a heavy wooden cudgel about her. Although she took grievous wounds she gave as good as she got. Corvus's angel was soon destroyed and Regnor was knocked unconscious once again. Aletha blasted the final skeleton warrior to pieces while Chiana revived Regnor one last time. Regnor stood up and delivered a fatal blow to Cadavra with his great axe, severing her head from her neck.

When the fight was over the group took a moment to congratulate themselves on finally catching and defeating the witch. After a brief rest they searched the attic and found an old whistling songbow +1 stashed among other old Rudebaker heirlooms. Chiana claimed it as her own.