Session 11 - They came from below Report

General Summary

Freeday, 14th Reaping of 784, early afternoon

Ghouls and Ghasts with unusually green bright eyes storm the main chamber of the Temple of Wisdom;
The Ghouls attack anyone in sight, trying to paralyse and then grab and drag whoever they can back to the side chamber they burst from, two Ghasts stand guarding the door to where they came from, showing a strange intelligence for this creatures;
The heroes give all they could and manage to kill most of the ghouls and ghasts, but not before two acolytes were taken downstairs and from all indications into the well below the temple; two other acolytes lost their lives in the onslaught, and two others were left badly injured;
Each undead corpse had a pair of small emerald stones instead of eyes, and stopped glowing a few seconds after being destroyed;
Tibalt Throgsden, head acolyte, currently replacing the missing Father Baird, shared with the party that Baird recently discovered some ruins under the well and had spent some time investigating, he also forbade Tibalt to talk about it with any of the acolytes to avoid accidents;
Tibalt quickly came to the aid of the injured acolytes and begged the party to pursue the monsters below, they accepted but first Camie Flickerjewel made sure that, if needed, Tibalt would vouch for them if authorities inquired about the fight and spells cast inside the temple, he agreed and promised they would have nothing to worry;
Investigating the well in the storage room revealed that it lead into a chamber with side passages dug into the stone and dirt and a strange stone door with arms holding a bowl as handles and an inscription;
At the same time, Galar Granito-Negro with the help of Aphelios and Finnan Wildbridge donned his armor;
Using ropes one by one they all descended into the unlit chamber;
Aphelios read the inscription on the stone door, written in Infernal it said: "Pay now the toll of the living lest ye enter the domain of the dead too rich in life."
They also noticed the stone thumbs of the hands in the handles of the door were very sharp and could be used to cut;
They started to cut their hand palms filling the bowl with some of their blood;
Galar shouted at them arguing it was pointless and dangerous and should focus on exploring the side passages dug into the earth
After some cuts, the door opens, revealing a corridor with four alcoves on each side, each alcove had a skeleton standing and holding a rosary made of humanoid teeth, Camie took all the rosaries; at the end of the corridor a small chamber with a stone brazier with a green magical flame and a large statue of an humanoid creature covered with a cloak looking down at the brazier;
The stone brazier had some sort of tarry reddish liquid at the bottom;
After some investigation they discovered that leaving one of the emerald in the brazier for some time made them glow;
Aphelios tried to fit one emerald on one of the skeletons eye sockets but found no way of fixing the stone into that skeleton eye socket;
They decided to explore one of the path cut into stone and earth;
While exploring in the distance they heard something that sounded like a rush of water;
In the cavernous corridors they spot a hole at one intersection, they try to peek into it only to discover the fragile earth around it, Vala , Camie and Galar are pulled into the hole;
After a strenuous half hour, they finally are able to bring everyone up, Galar being the one stuck the longest and his body used as some kind of spade to enlarge the hole; The hole grew so much to the sides and it ended up occupied the whole of the intersection, so they tried exploring another branch of the cavern;
At the end of one of the cavernous corridors, they find a ruined mausoleum, sporting various dug out stone coffins, all of them opened and empty;
Not far from there, another hole in the ground, from it came sounds not unlike the grunts other ghouls made before;
After confirmation that it was indeed a ghoul inside it, and that the creature was injured and was failing to bring itself back up, without hesitation Galar started dropping large stones from the ruined mausoleum until the creature was destroyed;