First Blood

The lair of the bandits was not hard to find. The party picked up the trail at the ambush site the merchant described to them, and skeletons apparently don’t do a good job of hiding their tracks. By mid-afternoon, the party spotted a cave complex in the distance that was clearly their destination. Hiding out of sight behind some boulders, they plotted their action.

“I’ll sneak around to the east towards that partially blocked entrance over there,” suggested Lancer.

“Fine, I’ll peek around the other side,” added Mica.

As soon as Lancer crept beyond the cover of the rocks, he spotted a skeleton at the edge of a copse of trees, brandishing a crude short sword. Lancer remained unseen, though. Taking careful aim, he unleashed an arrow, struck the skeleton in its skull, and it fell dead.

Unfortunately, skeletons have a penchant for dying noisily, particularly when their impaled skulls separate from their spines and roll away. No sooner had Mica peeked around the other side of the rocks, when she saw and heard a guard near the entrance cry out, “Enemies!”

Eberk sprung out from behind the boulders and charged the guard at the entrance. His hammer did what hammers do best, breaking bones, in this case about a dozen of them as the guard fell to pieces under his attack.

Tahuu’s wolf Whenua ran up beside Eberk to help cover the cave entrance, and most others in the party took up positions behind them, while Lancer continued to the side entrance.

Skeletons began to flock toward the entrance, and shortly their leader became visible in the dimness of the cave. Armed with an impressive longbow, he clearly was going to be someone to be reckoned with. Fortunately, his first shot only grazed Eberk for minor damage.

Mica fired her magic missiles into one of the skeletons, clearing a path for others to enter the main entrance safely, and then ran towards Lancer to provide assistance. Eberk, Tahuu, and Charcol pressed in to the cave complex, striking down skeletons to make their way toward the leader.

The leader’s second shot went wild, ricocheting harmlessly off the cave ceiling. He turned back toward the darkness behind him and yelled “Get up here!” to other skeletons, which soon appeared.

The leader then ran behind cover and up a tunnel headed towards Lancer’s entrance. As soon as he saw Lancer, though, he stopped and took partial cover behind a wall.

He left enough showing for Lancer to attack, though. The rogue fired an arrow at the leader and sheared off four ribs with a devastating hit.

Eberk quickly assessed the situation and decided Charcol could handle the remaining skeletons in the central corridor, and he ran down another corridor toward Lancer, Mica, and the skeleton archer.

Halfway there, though, an ugly maggoty mass – a rot grub swarm – sprang out from under a trash pile and attacked him, stopping his progress. Three grubs bit him, leaving a putrid substance on his skin that stung badly. The wolf Whenua ran up to help, too, and was similarly damaged.

Eberk hacked at the grubs, but they were surprisingly good at slipping out of the path of his hammer. He squashed one of them, but that was a pittance given the couple dozen others.

“Gah!” he exclaimed, “my weapon doesn’t count for much. Mica, ya got any tricks up your sleeve?”

“Coming right up,” she replied with an eager gleam in her eye. “Eat flame, maggots!” she cried, as fire shot out from her fingers and formed a pillar of fire on the rot grub swarm. High-pitched squeals were heard as the innards of over half the grubs boiled out of their mouths.

“Yeah, I’d say that worked just fine!” said Eberk.

Meanwhile, Charcol was busy with the other skeletons that emerged from the back of the cave, launching a series of eldritch bolts at them. Tahuu considered helping him, but turned instead towards Eberk and Whenua and did what he could to heal them of the ongoing damage from the goo on their skins.

The skeleton leader, having succeeded in luring the party to the rot grub swarm, turned away from Lancer’s deadly bow, ran back around the wall towards Charcol, and fired his own bow. His running threw off his aim, though, and the arrow sailed harmlessly past the warlock.

The rot grub swarm shied away from the still burning pillar of fire and headed straight for Mica. But it was unable to cause her any harm before her burning hands sizzled the rest of them to a crisp.

Lancer, seeing Mica devastating the grubs, ran back towards Charcol and the skeleton leader. He fired another arrow into the leader, finishing him off.

“The Raven Queen take you,” complained Charcol. “Why’d you have to do that? I was about to waste him.”

“Sorry,” said Lancer, “but this is what I do.”

The last skeleton fell easily, and after a few moments of wary expectation and searching, it was clear that nothing remained. Like all good adventurers, the party began to search the bodies and the cave for any valuables, but there were none that were interesting to the living.

In the depths of the cave, though, they found a curious display, almost like a shrine. Propped against the wall was a portrait of an unappealing human female, presumably the merchant’s wife. Collected around its base were bits of moss, polished bone, and linen fragments.

“I do believe those are tokens of affection from the skeletons,” observed Mica. “I guess they have very different standards of beauty.”

“Aye,” agreed Eberk. “She doesn’t even have a respectable beard.”

“Well, to each his own,” said Charcol, enjoying the disgusted look on Mica’s face. He picked up the portrait, and they headed back towards Brindol to claim their reward.