The Campaign With No Name - Jan 26th

The party are continuing their exploration of the Bloodtower on the Moors, and, after deciding not to sleep in the barracks they find,continue heading up the stairs. The next floor up was a much more opulent sleeping quarters, and a quick search found some gems and gold hidden beneath a precious bowl filled with expensive soap. Again, they decided not to take a group bath and spend the night there, and headed further up the tower.

The next level up had a locked iron door which the Warlord kicked down. The room was roughly semi-circular and contained lots of empty shelves and chests. A thorough search found a magic ring that had been missed by whoever had cleared out the room, and a secret door to the other half of the level. This room was bare apart from three circles of intricate runes and sigils inscribed in the floor. After some studying,Chuck deduced these were teleport circles and carefully made a note of the "co-ordinates" in order to be able to teleport back to here should the need arise. Then they went up the stairs to the last floor.

The stairs came out in the middle of the open plan room which contained only a sarcophagus and another teleport circle as its defining features. Apart from three skeletons, a boneclaw and a human woman dressed in black robes, that is. Obviously having been waiting for the adventurers to emerge, the skeletons were quick to attack: shrieking in such a manner that chilled the characters to their bone before moving in for the kill. The party reacted quickly, trying to damage them as best they could with the sounds of their horrible shrieks still ringing in their ears. The boneclaw moved to the top of the stairs where it could hit them with its huge claws whenever they moved or were distracted by attacking at range. On being hit, the human turned into a flock of ravens and flew to the other side of the room then later targeting the two spellcasters with her own magic. The Warlord was able to help slaughter the skeletons before going to take on the boneclaw: Chuck holding it in place for him. The party found the necromancer's spells to be quite damaging, even over a short time, and when Mouse swapped places with her, a spectral tendril emerged from the floor and caused the elf to fall, unconscious and with her life-force draining away.

The Warlord skewered the boneclaw and shouted at Mouse to get up, rousing her. Despite their best efforts they failed to be able to stop the necromancer fleeing to the teleport circle and, muttering the word "Ometh", disappearing. Quickly realising that it must be a short-range teleport, Chuck and the Drow deduced she must be just downstairs, so while Mouse got to her feet and raced downstairs with Cat, they went through the teleport circle themselves. The Warlord, unconcerned with chasing after fleeing enemies, shrugged his shoulders and investigated the sarcophagus. It contained the perfectly preserved body of the former leader of the group of necromancers that called the Bloodtower home. After careful prodding to make sure he really was dead, he searched the body and collected all the expensive jewellery he could find.

Meanwhile, as Mouse was clattering down the stairs, Chuck appeared next to the surprised mage in the teleport chamber, and blasted her out of the room. The Drow then appeared and also blasted her. She hit back at the Drow and Mouse who had just emerged from the stairwell, both of whom promptly collapsed. As she made a beeline for one of the other teleport circles, Chuck tried desperately to stop her while also feeding the Drow a healing potion. The fight then became an undignified bout of pushing, both magically and bodily as they scrapped over who got to stand on the wanted teleport circle. The Drow helped, while also going to get Mouse up, but got dropped again. The necromancer got onto the circle but paused to try and find a piece of paper, giving Chuck time to push her off and then trap her with a wall of fire. The desperate woman stepped into the wall of flames in an effort to escape but died before she could utter the keyword. Unfortunately, the paper she carried was burnt to a cinder.

Shortly after this,the Warlord made his way down to help patch them all up, and they decided to head down to the bedroooms and sleep before exploring the underground portion of the tower.