Session 5: Search for Shards

General Summary

After travelling for two days to make it back to Crackstone, with a skeleton whom they tied to a stick and carried between themselves, they finally returned to the dwarven hold. Inside they made their way immediatly down to the crypts to perform the ritual in order to save the noblemans life. Down there they met up with the toragian cleric Father Bennil who guided them through the process. With his aid the crucified the skeleton in the middle of a ritual circle. Father Bennil then began to funnel dark energy from the insectoid noble and into the skeleton, and when he was done the Umber Hulk was gone and left was a naked, thin, and starved Arasim Flatchin. He collapsed and with father Bennil, they carried him back to the temple of Torag. But not before utterly destroying the undead.    When they had left the nobleman at the temple they went back to the Broken Book, where they met up with Pander, who had managed to retrieve Hanz' Crossbow. He had also managed fetch a book that told of the nature of the shard that Lazarus had stolen.    The shards of Reimars hammer, which was actually Torag's hammer, gifted to the first emperor by a dwarf who had been saved by Reimars father. The hammer was no ordinary hammer, it was an ancient heirloom passed and hidden through hundreds of generations of dwarfs. The Hammer was a personification of Torag himself, first gifted to his Avatar thousands of years ago. It gifts its wielder with a fraction of the powers of Torag himself. Just before his death, Reimar shattered the hammer into seven pieces and gifted the shards to his subjects, except for one, which he gave back to the dwarves of Dhil Ahldur. The shard of Dwarvenkind which was held in Crackstone. This piece embodied Torags role as the father of dwarvenkind.    With this information they decided to go look for the rest of the shards before Lazarus could find them. And with the first already stolen, thy decided to try and beat the vampire to Brandedheim and look for the second shard there. Thomas, who had studied in the city in order to learn the art working blackpowder. In an attempt to beat the vampire, the gang decieded to head back to Üsterheim and go by boat. But before they left they procured the promised 3000 gold from the Duke Fireforge. When they arrived in Üsterheim they recived another 4000 gold for their original mission.    Before boarding ship to Reimarshamn, in order to quickly make it to Brandenheim, they shopped around a bit for equipment. When they several days later arrived in Reimarshamn, they bought three horses and a pony. Pander, who bought the pony, also managed to find a pair of magical stirrups, that allowed him to teleport 300ft back onto his saddle.    When the party arrived in Brandenheim, they were led by Thomas to his favorite tavern, where they decided to stay during their mission. They also met Durkon, a dwarf and a fellow student of firearms. Druing their dinner, Ushrir managed to detect an undead spying on them from the window. He rushed after it with the rest of the group.    They managed to track the being into a nearby house, where Pander kicked down the door into a family home. Inside they found the pale undead holding a dagger to the neck of two children. Ushrir divinly commanded him to drop his weapon and the party jumped him. With several gunshots fired and a radiant beam from the roof above. The radiant energies burned the undeads skin and flesh until he collapsed into a burned pile.    As the party tried to corall the children and found out that the pale one had been their step-father, panic had broken out outside and they were inturupted by several guardsmen who ordered them to drop their weapons. They were told that they were under arrest as more guards showed up. Pander clicked his heels and was teleported to his saddle almost 300ft away, only to see his part being put under arrest under the suspicioun of murder.