←

Session #21

→

Thu July 27, 1178 (18:00) - Sun July 30, 1178 (14:00)

Having arrived in Cuprium, the party takes a rest on the streets (not at the inn, that'd be too expensive) before continuing on their journey. Last session, Astrid studied in a central Aurium library to find the most likely location that the adventuring party that raided Zerendar's northernmost vault got lost in. She determined it was probably a region labelled "The Gray Lands" in the northern parts of the Mezdamol Flats. The party set out early in the morning to travel to the town of Gravesgate, the only settlement within the Gray Lands. This took them just about two full days to get to, taking a rest at a small town along the way where Carnage shared some fantastical stories of their adventures with a stunned audience at the tavern, earning a nice 20 silver pieces. At dusk of the second day, the party reached Gravesgate - just in time to see an execution beginning. They listened in, and learned that two resistance contacts they'd learned of in Aurium (the Raventrees) were among the people being hanged! Before anything could happen, the party scrambled to action, with Astrid turning into a bear to create a distraction, Fang and Korg running up behind the guards to slice the ropes, and Carnage helped pretend to attack the bear to make the party appear as heroes. While the prisoners were rescued, two unfornate town residents were trampled and died in the crowd running from the bear attack. Korg was asked by the town's gnomish cleric to help her carry the bodies out to the a distance beyond the town and leave them on the ground there. Astrid eventually tracked down the prisoners (who escaped and were nowhere to be seen) to a small abandoned house on the edge of the town. She tried speaking with them, but they did not respond except to ask she go away out of fear. The party then settled down at the town's only inn, paying a high price to stay there due to it being nearly full. There, the innkeeper told them to shut their windows, and shared the story of the "Dead Collector", a mysterious individual who comes by to pick up any dead within the town the night after they die. Fang, ever curious, looked outside his window all night to try catching a glimpse of this person. This was quite successful! He saw a figure dressed in a dark robe riding a wagon led by two horses, lit only by a single, dark green lantern, approaching from far up north all the way towards the town. Eventually, the figure reached the town, and rang a large bell, awakening the bodies of the dead and helping them climb into the wagon. This also awoke the disembodied arm in Teemo's backpack, which had to be stomped on to kill it, and Fang dropped it out their window. The Dead Collector came all the way up to the inn to pick up the arm, but then returned to wherever it originally came from. The following morning, the party decided to leave the prisoners to escape on their own, and chose to venture north to where the Dead Collector originated from, labelled as the "Ancient Crypts" on their map. It took a while to get there, travelling through progressively more gray land until no colour remained. Eventually, they reached it: A giant stone structure with large doors spaced along it, and not a single window in sight. Huge piles of bones lay before it, and a single title above its main entranceway in a language they could not decipher. They contacted Zerendar for help, who after hearing the writing described, explained he believes this to be the "Necropolis of Mezdamol": a crypt that housed the Kingdom of Mezdamol's "Undying Army" before the Unification.