Session 41: The Graveyard and Catacombs

The party visits the graveyard and finds a horde of undead.

This write up is based on our Sunday, May 5, 2024 session and was written by our scribe Carl with a few additions from myself. Thanks to our mapper Jimmy for the screen shots.  Since we are scattered around the country, we use Discord for voice communications and the Roll20 online tabletop to connect with each other.

Continued from: The Party Meets Steadfast Tumblebelly

Location: Outside Tegel Manor, near the carriage house

We finished carrying the new furniture out to the cabin in the yard about noon.  

With all the dead and undead we have met in our time here, why did we never go visit the graveyard?  No matter, today is a good day for someone else to die, and maybe they just need to be buried.  So, let's go look at some headstones. Maybe take some rubbings.

We looked at the headstones, all Rumps of course, with a pithic comment or each of the deceased.

Terrible Tombstones
1. Here lies Rithiena Rump/Stuck in her head/Pulled back a stump.
2. This is Rolf/His life was full/Till he tried/To milk a troll.
3. Rupture learned with great regrets/Syannggs don’t make good pets.
4. Reckless Rump R.I.P./Tried to dance with a chimerae.
5. Racey hitched his wagon to a dragon/Now he does no more braggin’.
6. Roget’s gullet went awry/While eating at the Balor’s Eye.
7. Razzle met his term/Hacking at a purple worm.
8. Roderick – quite a cager/Till he failed to pay a wager.
9. Ramie wished he hadn’t been born/Hanging on a gargoyle’s horn.
10. Ravenbeard – insulted a Roc/Showed no fear/Broke an egg/Wound up here.
11. Rook wound up on a fork/Buried him with belching orc.
12. Here rests Riddles Rellwood/Once in a feisty mood/
    Stranded by a roper/Failed to give an answer.
13. Rinsel the Ravishing/All vital bits missing.
14. Raoul the Reformer/Rogue and Rascal/Renegade Romantic.
15. Last in the fight/First in the flight/Retreat Rumplast was killed by a wight.
16. Reciting Ralfrid played his lyre/Always in element/
    We burned him on the pyre/Appreciating his talent.
17. Never miss Rallick/His life has gone by/Ate so much garlic/Made a troll cry.
18. Felled by a giant wasp’s sting/Reviled Randolph didn’t see it coming.
19. Retort Rowanter/Fell down the well/His crazy banter/Turning into a yell.
20. As well travelled as the road/Rosienna the Romancer was turned into a toad.

Mausoleum madness?  What an idea. At least one was unlocked, and appeared to have been recently opened. Inside, stairs descended into the earth...  So did we.

We were met by skeletons, not entirely unexpected. Zombies too, no more surprising. Not the most demanding fight we ever had, but there were quite a few of them. Good warmup.

This also seemed to be a well excavated crypt area, not what we were anticipating as we entered the building.  It looked like a series of corridors and burial areas the spreads out like tree roots.

After what seemed like the nine zillionth skeleton and zombie went down, we had a MESS in the crypt corridor. Bones and decayed body parts everywhere made for treacherous footing.

We heard a rumble around the first corner, it was the sound of a bunch of bricks or stones falling to the floor of the corridor.

We went down around the corner --- ghouls. The complete undead package was shaping up nicely.

As the tunnel narrowed we were more jammed up, but kept on progressing best we could.

One of the ghouls climbed a part of one wall and disappeared down an elevated tunnel to the west and a second one followed. Probably getting reinforcements. Other passageways off to one side or the other appeared to be short dead ends.

We could hear stone-on-stone scraping sounds from where the ghouls had gone up the tunnel. 



Continued in Tunnels Under the Graveyard and then Back to the Manor