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• Adrian Silverstrength (Human Paladin)
• Morsus Firebeard (Hill Dwarf Cleric)
• Sephrenia (High Elf Cleric)
• Ragnaroc (Aasimar Warlock)
• Don Kannin (Half-Elf Ranger) – Not Present
• Korra (Air Genasi Rogue)

Current NPCs traveling with the party:

• Pren Flintrock

Connected Adventures: Adventure 14, Adventure 15, Adventure 16, Adventure 17, Adventure 18, Adventure 19, Adventure 20, Adventure 21, Adventure 22, Adventure 23, Adventure 24, Adventure 25, Adventure 26, Adventure 27, Adventure 28 and Adventure 29.

• The party decides to investigate the “Bone Cave” area, which at one time had been the original Dwarven Kingdom Courtyard – when Emereth the Green came and killed hundreds of Dwarves and called this area her home. Her presence tainted the land and spoiled the soil and very ground. She left fifty years ago, but the Dwarves never returned to try and reclaim the land, because of the eerie feeling and sense of spiritual unrest that they could feel.
  • Don Kannin and Korra scout ahead (Note: Don Kannin did not make it to the game, Korra was running a little late)
• Pren mentions he will wait outside the cave entrance for the party and that going inside the Courtyard makes him feel too uneasy. This also makes Morsus uneasy; while Pren is a Mountain Dwarf and Morsus is a Hill Dwarf, they share a common superstition about haunted areas. (The Morsus note is mostly as a fun little thing to explain all the Natural 1’s he kept rolling for Initiative this session)
• The party enters the fallen courtyard and sees that the courtyard is massive, and it’s in ruin with pillars toppled over, walls have collapsed, and all throughout there are corpses of hundreds of dwarves; most of which, since it’s been fifty years, the flesh has corroded away leaving only bones in the armor.
• As the party investigates the remains, one thing becomes obvious – most of the weapons these dwarves would have had in the fight against Emereth are missing – except for the broken weapons (hilts and broken swords litter the courtyard – but no swords or axes in good condition are anywhere to be found)
• Morsus tries to see if there’s any indication of what may have taken their swords and see if there’s anything of value on the corpses, but fails his Investigation check
• As the party ventures a little further in, Adrian manages to spot that several of the armor suddenly seem to stand on their own (Natural 20 on Perception!) and warns the party that some of the armor seems to be “coming to life” (meanwhile, Morsus seems too invested in checking the armor – Natural 1 on Perception)
• Three of them move on Adrian, while the other three go after Ragnaroc

• One of the animated armors manages to hit Ragnaroc, in which he unleashes Hellish Rebuke for incredible damage, incinerating the magic armor
• Sephrenia unleashes Burning Hands striking a few that were surrounding Adrian
• Several of the animated armors manage to deliver some damage to Adrian, which Sephrenia uses a healing spell to get some health back to Adrian
• Adrian then uses his Divine Sense from his Paladin abilities and senses undead; but it’s not coming from these animated armor creatures attacking them – these beasts seem to be animated by the dark magic left here by Emereth
• Adrian commands his summoned Raptor mount, Mrs. Claws to attack but her teeth fail to penetrate the animated armor
• Ragnaroc tries to fire off several Eldritch Blasts – but both miss – (probably because the ashes of the one he incinerated with Hellish Rebuke remained in the air, obscuring his view – let’s go with that)
• Morsus is caught flat footed by the rise of these animated armors (Natural 1 on Initiative)
• When the animated armor continue their attack on Adrian, their multiattack lands a few hits, doing some damage
• Sephrenia casts some more healing on Adrian after the round of attacks
• Ragnaroc manages to hit one of them on him with Eldritch Blast
• Morsus regains his composure and casts Spirit Guardians which invokes an aurora about him where great warriors from his home from generations past fly around about him, striking at anything they see as a threat – landing constant hits on all five of the remaining animated armors, dealing Radiant Damage

• The Dwarven Spirits manage to destroy one of the animated armors that had been attacking Adrian
• Battered by the Dwarven Spirits Radiant Damage, one of them attack Adrian does a Critical Fail on an attack, damaging one of the other animated armors; while the other one, also Critical Fails hitting the other armor back
• Sephrenia casts Acid Splash which manages to hit several of the animated armors, destroying one of them, then following up with a small heal for Ragnaroc who has taken a number of hits from these magically enhanced living armors
• Morsus finally unleashes Radiance of the Dawn which brings down a beam of holy light shining upon the remaining animated armors, finally forcing them to collapse, the magic within them dissipated in defeat
• Adrian prays to his goddess to see if he can help the spirits rest; but his goddess seems to indicate there’s something still that remains
• Adrian then uses his Lay On Hands to heal himself from some of the damage he’d taken against the animated armor
• Morsus sends his bat ahead to scout the cavern and it eventually flutters back to give the impression of humanoids, and fire
• Just then, Korra steps out of the brush and tells the party that up ahead there’s three bugbears sitting around a campfire with a large back of what appears to be weapons next to them
• The party decides that they will try to stealth and surprise the Bugbears
  • Korra manages to stealth; and Morsus (with nice rolls!) follows exactly in Korra’s steps. Sephrenia also manages to stealth.
  • Adrian tries to stealth but steps on several broken branches, kicking some broken marble, with Ragnaroc behind him, cursing at the uneven earth (both of them failed the Stealth rolls)
• Morsus hears a language he’s not familiar with, and assumes that the Bugbears have heard their approach
• Morsus sends his bat to go look, peering through its eyes and listening through its ears, and all that remains is the campfire and the bag with the weapons
• As the party slowly advances, Morsus spots that the Bugbears have leapt into the bushes and behind some of the fallen pillars, clearly intended to spring a trap on the party
• Morsus informs the party of the Bugbear’s location by letting out a startling scream when he spots the glint of one of their eyes from the campfire (rolled another Natural 1 on Initiative), and the Bugbears seeing the party pause (and Morsus’ scream), realize they’ve been spotted and decide to leap out of their hiding places

• Sephrenia summons up a Spiritual Weapon and manages to hit one of the Bugbears
• Ragnaroc follows up with Eldritch Blast, striking it twice, killing the one that had been damaged
• Korra steps back and fires at one of the remaining Bugbears, striking it with her short bow and then stepping into the shadows to try and get sneak damage on her next attack
• After seeing their companion fall, something makes the eyes of the Bugbears glow red as the advance on Adrian
• Adrian manages to keep his shield up from being hit, and brings his sword down, cutting deeply into one of the Bugbears
• Morsus’ Spirit Guardians make their final attack, still remaining from the summoning against the animated armor, and manage to inflict some damage on the bugbears before the spell comes to an end, and the spiritual guardians dissipate
• Despite the sounds of combat, Sephrenia’s elven ears pick up the sound of yet another – what appears to be a bugbear – and oddly – she picks up the sound of a female voice also speaking what appears to be the same language – Goblinoid – which she does not speak
• Sephrenia, growing tired of the battles and the unusual happenings, lifts her finger and unleashes Guiding Bolt one the Bugbear battling Adrian, piercing the Bugbear’s brain with a blast of powerful, radiant energy – the shocked Bugbear doesn’t even realize he’s dead for a few seconds, before he collapses to the ground
• Not to be outdone by a Life Cleric, the Warlock in Ragnaroc – despite his Aasimar heritage – feels challenged and unleashes two Eldritch Blasts – the first misses, tricking the Bugbear to move right into the second blast which hits for Critical Damage (Natural 20!), killing the last bugbear
• Just as it seems as though the battle is over, and Korra is about to step out from the shadows, she hears something behind her and sees a towering Bugbear – one, slightly larger than the others, and wearing chainmail armor
• In her haste and being startled by this big creature who had managed to stealth this closely to her, she hastily draws her Drow Spider Dagger – and too quickly moves to strike the Bugbear Chief – and accidentally strikes her own leg – she realizes she can’t pull the dagger out or it’s going to inject the venom (Natural 1 to Hit)
• Leaving the dagger embedded in her leg, Korra jumps out of the shadows and warns the party about the bugbear chief who tried to ambush her

• The Bugbear Chief hoping to get the drop on Korra, who has disengaged sees the next closest target, which is Ragnaroc which he manages to hit for some significant damage
• Morsus tries to cast Faerie Fire which the Bugbear Chief is easily able to avoid
• Adrian turns and sees this new enemy and quickly approaches; when he notices that Korra has her dagger embedded into her leg – he then goes to her side insides and uses his Lay on Hands to counter the poison, allowing her to safely draw her dagger from her leg
• Adrian then sends his raptor out into the fallen courtyard to see if she can also locate the source of the female’s voice that Sephrenia had heard
• Sephrenia having done so well with her last Guiding Bolt attempts to cast another one; however, the Bugbear Chief seems to recognize what she’s casting and at the last minute bats her arm away with his weapon, forcing the bolt to strike Ragnaroc for quite a bit of damage! (She actually rolled a Natural 1 on the attack)
• For her bonus action, realizing how badly she’d accidentally hurt Ragnaroc, she uses some of her own magic to help heal his wounds
• Ragnaroc manages to hit the Bugbear Chief with an Eldritch Blast doing some damage
• Korra throws her Drow Poison dagger at the Bugbear Chief, and nearly penetrates his armor; the Bugbear Chief, on his turn, recognizing the lethal dagger of the Drow Assassins picks it up
• Morsus uses Warding Flare to disadvantage the Bugbear Chief’s attack against him, saving him from being struck
• Morsus then tries to blind the Bugbear Chief who resists the attempts to darken his eyes!
• With her other Drow Assassin Dagger in hand, Korra rushes the Bugbear Chief, but the blade of the dagger is not able to penetrate the Bugbear Chief’s chain links of his chainmail shirt
• Recognizing the poison dagger in Korra’s hand – as she steps back the Bugbear Chief points at her and chants some unusual words – and Korra is able to avoid a magical sphere that lunges at her (Successful Dex Save!)
• The Bugbear Chief then swings the dagger at Morsus, but the Warding Flare continues to prevent him from allowing him to strike the bothersome dwarf
• It is Adrian who is finally able to deliver the killing blow on the Bugbear Chief
• Looking over at the campfire, and seeing the bag of weapons – the party is weary of just picking up or even touching things that may be too good to be true, due to their last experience with a mimic in the troll swamps
• Adrian takes one of the javelins on the bugbear corpses and throws it – striking the bag, which does not react
• Shortly after the battle, Morsus’ bat and Ms. Claws return, both sharing the same news; of seeing a “shimmering female” and provide a visual that looks something like:

• It appears she’d been the one who communicated with the Bugbear Chief, and after seeing the Bugbear Chief be defeated, the shimmering image vanished
• Adrian and Morsus both fail a History check to see if they might know the significance of the shimmering woman’s appearance
• Korra takes this opportunity to recover her dagger then kick the deceased Bugbear Chief in the face for good measure
• The party finds 165 gold on the Bugbear corpses, splitting it evenly between the six of them (including Don – even though he’s not present – rounded up to 28 gold a piece)
• The party examines the bag that had been by the bugbear’s campfire – and see that it’s full of dwarven made short swords – explaining why there’d been no weapons on the deceased bodies of the dwarves – the bugbears were gathering them to use them
• Realizing these are the swords of the dwarves who died in the fight against Emereth so long ago, the party agrees the best thing to do would be get them to Pren who is waiting outside the courtyard. They strap the bag with the weapons onto Adrian’s raptor mount and send her back towards Pren – however, after a brief moment – Adrian senses that something has happened to his Raptor
• He tells the party that he had sensed undead earlier and at that moment, between them and where Pren was
• Morsus quickly ran close enough to cast Faerie Fire forcing the ghostly figure to glow yellow
  • Morsus failed to identify it (Critical Fail on History Check)
  • Adrian is able to identify to undead beast as a Wraith

• The party catches the Wraith flat footed (it rolled a Natural 1 on Initiative!)
• Sephrenia launches an arrow which does some damage to the phantasmal body; but notices that it doesn’t do as much as it should have
• Korra fires and arrow and sees the same result
• Ragnaroc launches Eldritch Blast and notices that at least his magic seems to be doing the correct amount of damage
• Morsus attempts to cast Toll the Dead which has no impact (Natural 20 on save)
• Adrian and Morsus notice that the Wraith appears to be a spiritual dwarf
• Adrian casts Protection from Good and Evil on himself and charges forward, switching to his magical sword Demonbane
• He brings Demonbane down on the undead Wraith and expends his Divine Smite
• The Radiant Damage ignites the Dwarven Wraith from within – shattering its essence
• The Crown the Wraith was wearing falls to the ground
• Morsus picks it up and identifies it as a Dwarven Crown
• He places it on his head (apparently not learning the lesson of putting on odd relics from the Shadow Vale may not be a good idea) – but fortunately, nothing happens
• Morsus’ bat returns – and shares an image of a humanoid vulture speaking to the “Shimmering Woman” – and paints a picture that looks like this…
• And somewhere near by, Adrian is able to sense the presence of a demon…

• And this is where the session ended for tonight