We headed out to the skull door barrow (D10). As soon as I opened the door, a stack of skeleton heads tumbled loudly down the stairs. Somebody’s homemade alarm. I saw torch light at the bottom of the stairs, and let the others know. Nobody went through the door, so I closed it. It was raining out, so we just hung out, to see if they came out. After 20 minutes, I opened the door again. The light was gone and it was quiet, so we decided to give it a try. All was quiet until we got to the mongrel den, and there was the usual wolf growls and old lady yelling asking for help. We ignored them and went to listen at the doors to the west.
As we were doing that, we heard shuffling and moaning from the south. Where we just were. Where the hell were they hiding. What did we miss? Gross bloody zombie came around the corner. I whacked at it, and it looked worse for wear. Riyou’s arrow flew past me, and took it out. It erupted blood everywhere, started to get up, and flopped over. Bancroft stabbed the wiggling tongue with a flaming weapon, and it turned to ash. Everyone was distracted by that, and didn’t hear anything when listening at the three doors. Bancroft decided to open the middle door for some reason I can’t fathom. I told him what Morrigan said about those rooms. Four black cloaked undead crawled out of the alcoves of the room and attacked before he could shut the door.
So I did, and pulled on the handle to keep the door closed. I kept it shut through two of them trying to pull the door open. Bancroft said to open the door, so I reluctantly did. He hit one with the flaming weapon. I missed it and backed up. Anister and Driah shot and missed. The undead floated out, blue eyes blazing, and surrounded Bancroft, disliking his flaming sword. Riyou yelled they were worse than the necromancer and we needed to run. Bancroft’s turn undead failed. All our shots just hit cloaks. I ran. They hit Jack and Ghalf and they collapsed into piles of rotted flesh. Those were the companions holding torches, so the torches went out. I was at the corner, so I knew if I hugged the wall, I’d get to the stairs. Driah and Anister joined me. Riyou vanished.
Bancroft cast light and started around the corner, and with him running, we tried to evade. They stuck to us like glue. I struggled with the door, and held it for the others to run out if the floating bastards didn’t kill them first. Driah got hit and died. Riyou and Anister ran out. Bancroft ran by and pulled me out. One made it out before the door shut. And it still stuck to us. I yet again missed. It missed me. The others ran past. We tried to evade and again failed. I again missed, and it also missed. This time, exhausted, we finally lost it in the barrows. We slogged towards town through the rain, avoided some hunched figures rising out of the bog, and finally made it. I’m surprised any of us made it out of that. Bancroft headed straight to the St. Ygg priests to heal him of the rot spreading across his neck where the creature touched him. He came back fully healed, but much lighter of purse.