Lost Trails: The Harrowdale Horror: Part 7

[ewancummins]

HALVAN'S KEEP


As the party moves up-slope through the autumn woods, the hikers catch multiple glimpses of the Keep through the screen of blackberry bushes and red-leafed trees: crumbled parapets, the sweep of a mostly-intact section of curtain wall, a heap of broken stones the height of a mature oak.

Soon, trees thin out, the bushes grow even thicker and thornier.

Perielle pauses to pick and eat a handful of berries.
Then the acolyte points out a fallen building stone the size of a man, half hidden in the briers and high weeds.
''There's a path over there, I think. The workmen used..."
She rubs her noses and eyes with her left hand, and then munches more berries.

A brief investigation proves Perielle correct.

A cart-rutted, hoof-marked path runs from some point downhill, deep in the lower woods, up the hill to a clearing before a high-arched gateway.

The heavy wooden doors of the gate hang ajar.
Solid stonework, showing off-colored blocks and fresh-looking mortar suggestive of recent repairs, runs left and right from the open doors, vanishing in thick thorn-bushes.

Scouting the site before entering, the party finds shallow tracks in the dirt, some that might have been made by plant men as well as boot-prints of human size.

But even though reconnaissance found no enemies in sight, no one passing through the entrance can shake the feeling of being watched.

A jumble of small, tumbledown buildings, thickly clad in brown and yellow-green vines, fills the space to the front and right. It looks less like a castle inside the walls than like a village of stone houses and shops, burned and ruined and now overgrown with creeping plants and weeds.

But off to the left, near the curtain wall, a cleared, weeded, and leveled area spreads about ten feet on a side, stacked with cut logs, pieces of building stones, barrels, crates and sacks. The bushes behind the clear zone rustle, and presently a boy of maybe twelve emerges, dressed in drab brown clothes and carrying a basket.
The kid makes a beeline for the party front-rankers, then stops just out of reach.
He stares at the adventurers.

The lad opens his mouth, revealing teeth black with decay.
His voice comes as a surprise, hollow and hoarse.
"My mistress wants to know why you have been attacking her minions. What does it profit you? And what purpose would your deaths serve here, now, except to feed the god. Is that your true wish?"
As he speaks, something wriggles in his long, dusty hair on the left side of his head, like a garden snake writhing in dead grass.

[Adam]

Bennedict grips his walking stick tightly, but doesn't raise it at the boy

"Your mistress and her minions infected the township with madness and death. We are here to see that this stops."

[alhoon]

"Can someone verify if this ... person? is possessed? We should immobilize it if it is." Raen asks, prepared to blast the creature. His lighting hasn't been too helpful lately, but he would try it again if needed.

[ewancummins]

Bennedict grips his walking stick tightly, but doesn't raise it at the boy

"Your mistress and her minions infected the township with madness and death. We are here to see that this stops."

The lad cocks his head and smiles.
''Many have thought to stop the messenger of the Darkbringer.''
He falls silent standing stock-still, eyes staring at Benn.

[ewancummins]

Klokulf lunges for the boy, grabbing at his head.


The boy cries out and leaps clear.
He runs further into the ruins, losing his shirt to the snagging thorns of a brier as he rounds the overgrown mass of a collapsed building.

Pursuit quickly leads to a central ruin. The stone walls reach up ten or twelve feet where they have not fallen into heaps of rubble.

The boy enters the ruin from the SW.

click here for map
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/88/d8/6a ... 44040b.png

[ewancummins]

SIR CLIVE unsheathes his greatsword, Mercy, and jogs after the boy, his harness clanking with every swift footfall. He reaches the edge of the ruins as the boy darts past a wall corner.
A figure --much larger than the boy-- steps out from behind the wall and hefts a double-bitted battle-axe over its horned head.
Sir Clive doesn't slow down, but swings high using the momentum of the chase to add force to the blow.

A normal man would have fallen under such a blow as the knight struck.

But the horned, hoofed beast-man only staggers a bit.
A long strip of rotting gray flesh hangs loose along its chest and left arm where the blade bit.
No blood.

[ewancummins]

SIR CLIVE

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Sir Clive

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Beyond the foe right in his face, the knight spots a couple more such massive horned creatures shambling from the ruins along with several much smaller creeping dog-things.

[ewancummins]

The others...

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?

[ewancummins]

KLOKULF

Moving to a position near and behind the armored knight, the Lawgiver's priest lifts his god's spear-sign and calls on divine power.
He experiences the expected current of negative energy, a cold and hidden stream.


And the rotting, stinking enemies keep on coming:

Three big horned beast-men, one now in toe-to-toe combat with Sir Clive, and behind those more than a dozen things like hounds twisted into a mockery of man-shape.
Getting closer...

RAEN

The Darkonese wizard hangs back at what he may hope is a safe distance, watching the fight begin.

[kintire]

"Well here we go..."

Kat tries to dive behind the being fighting Sir Clive and jab it in the rear, but keeps a careful eye on the other creatures, making sure they do not get too close before she can dart back again...

[ewancummins]

"Well here we go..."

Kat tries to dive behind the being fighting Sir Clive and jab it in the rear, but keeps a careful eye on the other creatures, making sure they do not get too close before she can dart back again...

KAT

This close, she cannot miss the signs of decay on the form of the horned beast-man: strips of moldering skin hanging loose, black splotches, maggots wriggling out between splintered tooth-stumps in the slack, bovine mouth.
It stinks as bad as it looks.

Rolling behind the slow, clumsy monster proves easy enough, and so does sticking it between the ribs from behind.

Not a drop of blood flows, nor does the creature cry out in pain with several inches of cold thrust into its back.
Kat can't hear it breathing.

Two more such hulking, bull-headed creatures shamble closer to her, trailed closely by the scuttling dog-like humanoids. Fat flies buzz over the gang of monsters.
The shifting breeze adds the charnel odor of the oncoming mob to the stench of the one she just stabbed-- threatening to turn her stomach.

[Adam]

Bennedict invokes ancient words of power, feeling a flood of magical energy spreading into his bones and imbuing him with eldritch strength.

The arcanist strides boldly towards one of the bull creatures, raising his walking stick to strike.

[ewancummins]

PERIELLE

The acolyte takes one look at the monsters and runs back the way the party had come--but not far. She dives behind a clump of bushes.

[ewancummins]

The heroes fight the oncoming mob of reanimated monsters with blades, bludgeons, energy blasts, and a great rattling hail of conjured stones.

Half the enemy force crumples under the furious combined attack.
The rest press on, immune to fear and pain.

Sir Clive staggers from the impact of an ax-stroke delivered by one of the horned monsters, but his armor saves him from any serious harm.

Katrin skewers one of the little dog-headed horrors, which promptly tries to crawl up her sword to claw at her face.
She kicks the thing loose and hops back closer to the safety offered by the big armored knight (and away from the energy blasts and falling stones her companions are sending into the rear ranks of the enemy).


And then black brambles explode from the soil and erupt from cracks in the nearby walls!
Before the grit and dust have settled, thick walls of thorns have grown up against the ruin's masonry and caught both Katrin and Sir Clive in a narrow triangular space with one of the bull-headed monsters.
One of the dog-headed things wriggles and rattles in the dense briars, tangled and impaled.


Alain

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spots something the others do not see, in the NW corner of the ruins-- a black-headed woman peeking at his comrades over the upper surface of the stone walls.

[ewancummins]

Green light floods the ruins.

The heroes suddenly feel their stomachs tighten and their muscles cramping hard and painfully.

Raen retches.

Klokulf

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feels nothing odd

Within the thorny prison, Katrin and Sir Clive fight a desperate, hack and slash struggle against the horned monster.