New Campaign: Athelos Darkening

[BMR]

Tim-Tim
You cast Detect-Magic

Near the desk, you sense two moderate magical auras. Near the desk, inside a small chest near it, you sense a strong magical aura. The ring on the floor has a moderate magical aura. Outside, and upstairs, you sense four faint magical auras and one strong magical aura.


Beardthar and Spittle
You walk out the room and look down the hallway.

You look down the hallway to the right, and you can just see the zombies shuffling along. They take a left around 30 feet down the hall. From what you can see, the hall only turns left. Looking the other direction, you see that the hall turns right around 30 feet down. You suppose that the temple must be laid out in a square, with room extending on either wing.

[Spoonweaver]

Tim-Tim Shares his magical finding with the party and begins carefully examining each item he's detected to hold magic starting with the small chest, then the 2 near the desk and then the stain.

[Bob the Hamster]

Beardthar goes left down the hallway (antizombiewards) and peers around the right-hand corner.

[BMR]

Tim-Tim
You reach over and open the chest.

Needle Trap: 12 + 10 = 22 Hit!
The trap sends a spray of needles into Tim-Tim! It hits for (2d4[6]) 6 damage!

The pain is quite intense. Once you get past the pain, you look into the chest and see a fingerless glove.

Beardthar

You continue to walk down the hall and take a peek around the corner.


It's rather dark, but being a dwarf, you can see relatively well. The hallway, after the right turn, opens up to a balcony. The railing is pretty rotten and looks like it would crumble and break when pressure is applied to it. It opens up into a large open area, perhaps a gathering area for temple services. You guess that the massive double doors below are the main entrance.

Looking down, you see corpses in various states of decay littering the floor. There are at least twenty five different corpses, but none seem to be moving. Judging from the smell, they seem to be genuinely rotting. For the most part, they are human corpses, though you do see a few that might be kobolds or perhaps halflings. There's a large corpse as well, but it's in such decay that it's hard to tell if it was an ogre or a giant or something else.

Looking down the corridor, you see perhaps around twenty feet away, the stairs leading downwards. There is also a large door right in front of the stairs, but it's closed at the moment. The door also appears to be boarded up.

[Bob the Hamster]

Beardthar returns to where Spittle and Saint Akbar are standing, and tells what he saw (reveal spoiler)

There is a balcony over there, and you can see down to the ground floor. There are a lot of corpses down there. I hope they are just corpses, and not sleeping zombines.... do zombies even sleep?

Beardthar notices the needles sticking out of Tim-Tim.

You okay little friend? Was there anything interesting in there?

Beardthar heals Tim-Tim with the Seneschal's Rod.

[Mogri]

"Well, I don't like all of this stealth business! I think we should march right up there and, and... tell that person to stop being evil!"

Holy Saint Akbar al-Akbar seems to be on the verge of enacting his plan. It is a good plan.

[Spoonweaver]

Tim-Tim carefully takes the needles out of his skin.

Thanks for the quick healing, that really scared me for a second.

Then, sensing nothing else could possible go wrong at this point, Tim-Tim decides to pick up and put on the his new glove[s?]. Then he takes a moment to admire it before examining the 2 magical aura coming from near the desk. But this time he tries to do so more carefully.

[BMR]

Tim-Tim

You take the fingerless glove (singular) and slip it onto your left hand. It's a bit loose, as it was probably made for someone larger than a gnome. Within seconds though, the glove shrinks to fit snugly around your hand. A few seconds later again, your feel thousands of tiny sharp points sink into your palm and the back of your hand. The pain is absolutely horrible. The pain causes your fingers to stiffen and flex momentarily, upon which each of your fingers becomes sheathed in a translucent blue claw that extends around four inches from the tip of each finger. You relax your hand, and the claws go away. You stiffen your fingers, and the claws return. The pain does not lessen.

You grit your teeth through the pain and take a look at the table.

The first drawer contains a few sheets of blank paper, a bottle of ink, and a few quills. Besides that, there's nothing else in the drawer. The second drawer though, is more interesting. Inside is a small wooden jewelry box. It's currently closed, but you don't see a locking mechanism of any sort on it. The box has two auras of Telepathy inside. You open the box and see two silver rings inside. Each ring is set with a small diamond. They are extremely well made and you guess that they would easily be worth a few thousand gold apiece.

[Spoonweaver]

Tim-Tim attemts to take the glove off, carefully.

[BMR]

Tim-Tim
You try to remove the glove, but the barbs have embedded into your flesh preventing its removal. Even trying to carefully remove it causes you pain.

[Spoonweaver]

Tim-Tim gathers up the rings, putting them into one of the pockets inside his robe while trying to ignore the fact that one of his valuable casting hands has been turned into a pin cushion.

Then he peers outside the room to try and see what the others might be up to.

[BMR]

Tim-Tim
You go out and take a look down the hallway. You look to the left and see that the zombies are coming back around.

[Spoonweaver]

Tim-Tim slips back into the room and recloses the door.

[Bob the Hamster]

Wow! those were some scary looking claws on that glove! How strong are they? Try the desk or the wall and see what happens

[Spoonweaver]

I'd rather not. This glove seems cursed and the less one uses cursed items the better. I just want the darn thing off of me.