session recap, 10/28/2013

CAST
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Gutboy the Cleric (6), his henchpeople Trezgar the Elf (2) and Bunny the Thief (4), and his blink dog Rufus II
Pai Mei the Wu Jen (3) and his stuntman, Colt "Rottweiler" Seavers the Type III Bounty Hunter (2)

Having explored a series of unoccupied and featureless rooms to the north of the chapel, Gutboy and Pai Mei turned their attention to the bronze door with no handle.  Next to it were stone basins, built in to the wall, each full of teeth.  They looked up at the toothless skulls hanging by chains from the ceiling, and a thought occurred - "What if we added fresh teeth?"

A quick scan of the room provided one likely candidate: the dead grad student.

Pai Mei (to living grad student):  "You!  Go yank out his teeth!"
Grad student:  "What? No!  NO!  IT'S TOO MUCH!"

The constant life-threatening abuse overwhelmed the grad student, and he threw himself at Pai Mei in a burst of psychotic rage.  Colt Seavers quickly stepped in, hurling his bola at the student's feet, incapacitating him.  The student curled into the fetal position and became unresponsive.  Not even threats to his grades by Madame Prepin could make him respond.

Bunny pulled a set of pliers from her thieves' tools and yanked out the dead student's front teeth.  She tossed them into the basins, and the door clicked open.

The tunnel beyond had several bronze doors, sealed with valves.  They opened the valves, and found crypts beyond, full of thousands of bodies.  The few crypts they inspected had but a few gold coins (in addition to their non-zombie occupants) each, so the party decided to ignore the crypts, and sealed them shut again.  Madame Prepin was becoming increasingly outraged at the non-shambling-and-brain-eating behavior of the dead within.

They also found a small room with four bloodstained stone slabs.  Next to the slabs was a podium, and upon that was an aluminum book, filled with glowing green alien letters, and occasional simplistic anatomical illustrations.  The contents were a mystery, until the party stumbled across another room containing something that looked like a jeweler's loupe sitting on a pedestal, and more leatherbound books in the same alien writing.  Bunny was able to use the loupe to read the alien writing, although it gave her a headache - the aluminum book they had taken earlier was a manual for the revivification of tortured dead flesh, and the leather-covered books were "The History of Duvan'Ku", volumes one through eighteen.

In a room nearby, they found another podium, with an alien inscription ("Oh brave ones, mark your defiance against the ones who oppress!"), atop which were needles and a vial of glowing green ink.  Surmising it was for tattooing, Pai Mei took the needle and inscribed "Do Not Resuscitate" upon the comatose grad student's chest.

Along the long tunnel, they also found more basins, apparently full of coins, and tossed more coins in, to little effect, and then tossed a corpse in one of the basins, also to no effect.  Finally, the corridor ended at a room stuffed full of a strange plastic-like vine or hose, covered with holes, thorns, and cobweb-like material - the source of the strange whistling noise.

Pai Mei approached, using the comatose grad student as a human shield between him and the plastic vine.  He shone a flashlight through the vine, and saw that it was the same room pictured in the painting in the cabin above, with the skeleton and altar.  There was no door next to the altar, just a blank section of wall - perhaps a secret door would be found?

Bunny started poking and prodding the vine with a 20' extensible pole - and the vine lashed out.  It only had a short reach, about 5', so Gutboy bravely lobbed oil at the vine.  Eventually the party was able to burn the vine away entirely, leaving patches of melted plastic on the floor, and the crypts were now eerily silent.

The party approached the altar, and found a pair of golden goblets atop it, along with an alien book (titled "The Book of Unspeakable Shame", and full of descriptions of shameful acts perpetrated by the cult that worshiped at this site).  Inspecting the skeletal statue, Pai Mei found an inscription detailing a ritual to open a secret door, involving a living sacrifice.  He eagerly began to push the grad student towards the altar, but was dissuaded when Gutboy easily found a second secret door where the opening was shown in the painting in the cabin above.

As they discussed what to do next, a soggy-bottomed corpse meandered into the room, groaning "braaaiiiiins" - the same corpse they had stuffed into one of the basins. Madame Prepin was ecstatic, and shouted "Behold!  The Goonies have arisen!  A new Golden Age of Prosperity awaits us!"

Colt Seaver easily captured and bound the "Goonie".  As he tied a rope leash around it, the banging of fists on bronze doors was heard from the tunnels - the thousands of dead interred within the crypts had surely arisen.  The party decided to make a retreat through the secret door.

Following the ancient stone corridors, they passed several barred doors, most with corpses banging on the other side.  Finally, they reached an unbarred door, and opened it to reveal a mist-filled room, with a stone sarcophagus in the center.

And that's where our tale (and its accompanying run-on sentences) ends - for now.

Gains: Two gold cups, Build-Your-Own-Frankenstein book, Book of Unspeakable Shame, glowing green tattoo ink, Loupe of Comprehending Alien Texts, a single "Goonie" on a leash
Kills: None
Losses: None