S08E02 – The Abandoned Monastery

Previously on Zhymballa

Minnesota, a well-fed female dwarf, has hired the heroes to rescue her brother Gighur Shatterheat from a group of goblins. The heroes get their way into the goblin’s lair through a crate of full of corpses. After killing the goblins unloading the cargo, the heroes find the entrance to the crypts and explore it in full.

A presence in the walls

Til warns the group of a presence in the walls which then goes away. Annoyance gone, Til unlocks the drawer without triggering a poison trap, he snatches money and a bag of holding, while Dawn grabs the journal, the master plan checklist to foil it, and the drugs checklist to research. Interesting books on necromancy and potion making don’t appear of interest to them and are left to there.

The heroes go back to the previous level, but the presence, a specter, is waiting for them there, and this time it’s not in the walls but outside. With Salazar tanking, and Til and Dawn shooting at the creature from the shadows and the ceiling respectively (Dawn is still levitating), the undead creature is promptly dealt with and his ectoplasm disappears.

Jump! (Flash-back)

Til and his halfling friend, Davos, are running around the mansion of the major of Ridgeport with a gem box worth 1,000 gp. After coming out of a room and into the hallway, Til needs to decide between jumping out of a window and escaping the furious gnome right behind them, or trying to jump over the guards coming up the stairs and making it for the front door. Til chooses the window and both halflings jump through the window glass and onto the ocean, 100m below them. Til touches the water first and falls unconscious, just in time to see his friend Davos crashing through a boat.

The hanging pits

The heroes leave the crypt. Dawn, unable to leave so many armors and weapons on the loading dock, attaches a crate to his back with some chains laying around, and loads the crate with leather armors and swords. The heavy load doubles as an anchor to the ground, and Salazar is relieved from the duty of pulling him around.

The heroes go down to the next level below the cave and they inspect the storage room there. Other than bandages, the altar-like table with markings, the piles of old religious drapes taken off the walls, and bathtubs there is nothing of value.

The heroes go down to the next level, but they choose not to inspect the room there. The terrible smell, and the fact that all openings into a room have been tucked with rags gives them the creeps. So they go down to the last level and onto a grate at the top of a huge cavern. Hanging from huge chains attached to the grate are several unipersonal cages with prisoners, and taunting the prisoners is a goblin. The heroes kill the goblin and, one by one, they pull up all the cages and free the prisoners that are still alive: Gighur, the dwarf they were looking for; Davos, Til’s friend; a kid; a pretty female human cleric; and a bunch of villagers.

The heroes discover that Gighur isn’t Minnesota’s brother, he owes her money that he got for a merchant venture of his.

On their way out, the heroes decide to explore the room they skipped earlier. The room is full of bathtubs with decomposing corpses floating on a whiteish liquid. The heroes imagine that whoever is leading the goblins is also creating skeletons and zombies.

When the heroes reach the top level they face a female goblin called Cees who informs them in broken common that she works for the person who runs this place. She offers to not kill them if they leave through the old mines and the ruined monastery, and kill as many undead there as they can. The heroes accept and, after some underground hiking, they come into the east side of the ruined monastery. What at first inspection looks like a lonely skeleton inside a room turns out to be more than a dozen skeletons and an unknown number of zombies stabled there. The heroes spend three rounds trying to kill one skeleton, but they realize it’s not going to work, and they escape through one of the broken walls. Salazar, with 2 hit points to spare, leaves last.

Featured characters

The heroes (level 1):

• Dawn: male wood elf ranger.
• Salazar Astorio: male human paladin.
• Til Grassthorn: male halfling rogue.

NPCs

• Cees: female goblin, leader of the goblin faction at the abandoned monastery.
• Davos Trickfoot: male halfling rogue, best friend of Til.
• Gighur: male dwarf merchant.
• Sister Scarlet Turtleneck: human cleric of Ulaa who wants to have sex with Salazar, and Dawn, but specially with Salazar.

Quotes & mementos

• Salazar asking “lay your hands on Dawn" after Dawn got intoxicated with the fumes coming out of the room with corpses in bathtubs.