In Horrorem: XIII Capitulum Report

After the mechanisms of the two smaller disk keys began grinding, the party returned to the alchemy lab where they suspected another hidden door might be found. After much fruitless searching, including some out-of-the-box work by Kegho and Alex, Amma realized a breeze was blowing in from the northern door where Zhuge and Elissa had been searching. Zhuge convinced Amma to help him search for a hidden door into a hallway with passages to the south and to the north. The party went south first, finding an empty room with sweet water dripping in and pooling on the floor. Alex stopped at a door part way down the hall which had swollen shut. Kegho made short but noisy work of the door and the party found two religious codices, polished coral prayer beads and vials of plain water which Zhuge and Theo recognized as holy water. Theo safeguarded the religious texts, took 3 of the four vials and a string of prayer beads. Alex pocketed a string of beads for his own eclectic religious practices, and Zhuge kept a vial for research practices and a string of beads. Alex estimated the value of the contents of the room as approximately 200 auron

The group then headed north to a room in which a table with a chest stood in the center. Theo was at first befuddled by the sigils inscribed on the table. They were profoundly familiar, yet seemed distant and ancient. He turned his mind to their ceremonial function and the meaning snapped sharply into focus. The table had been an instrument in the binding of Vargus! Alex reached out to touch the table at the same time Theo reached for the contents of the chest - a third small disk key. Upon taking the key, the room filled with with noxious purple fumes released by a trap set almost 1,000 years ago. Kegho, his dog, and Theo responded instinctively dragging the rest of the party out of the room as the air became filled with the irritant.

Frustrated they still had not found the last second large disk key, the party returned to the room with the pooling water, thinking that there must be some open space on the other side of the wall. As they entered the room, Miniho began scratching at a seemingly normal spot in the wall and Zhuge, who had been hungrily trailing the dog, noticed certain irregularities in the wall. Eventually, he was able to find a place for the third small disk key and a hidden door. In the hallway was a beautiful statue of a priestess of Naeia presenting the second large disk key.

Returning to the large stone doors before the inner sanctum, Theo was given the honors of inserting the disks into the door. They spun quickly before coming to a stop. The doors opened into a staircase of ancient wide steps descending into the original inner sanctum of Vargus! Steeling themselves against the putrefaction wafting up from the chamber, the party descended to find two reanimated skeletons, lacquered in crimson, and a hulking abomination sewn together from the corpses of many goblins who wore a crudely forged crown of iron on its head and gripped a large battle axe in its hands.

Taking the undead by surprise, Theo attempted to call on Maya to turn the dead, but in the dark sanctum, her power felt too far away. The rest of the party lept into action. Using the false Tarn's mace, Kegho battered one skeleton with force enough to slay many smaller foes. He inflicted major damage to the skeleton, and then Zhuge finished it off with a blast of eldritch lightning. Meanwhile, Alex attempted to knock the iron crown off the abomination's head from a distance with his sling, but failed. Elissa and Amma lept after the other skeleton necromancer, but their attacks were deftly swatted away by their foe. Theo used all his strength to throw a vial of holy water at the shambling mass of rotting goblinoid flesh, and to his delight it exploded in a spray of holy flame, doing much damage to the horrid thing. Kegho dropped his mace and took the opening to employ his axe to lop off its right leg and, on the back swing, slice off its face. The undead abomination collapsed into a pile of rotting flesh after it was slain. Zhuge and Kegho then finished off remaining skeleton necromancer. As they began patting themselves on the back for their victory and collecting their gear, the first felled skeleton reassembled itself and the incarnadine, malicious glow returned to the sockets that had once held its eyes.