Session 6: Spider fiends and zombie frauds

The exploration of the cave was largely uneventful. There were spiders and goblins, but the part was able to fight their way through with little difficulty. In the rear of the cave, they found the beast they were searching for. It was a spider the size of a dog, and it had the head of a wolf. When it saw the party, it dropped a globe of darkness over them and proceeded to slash with its claws and bite with its teeth. The party, however, was able to quickly injure the spider fiend quite badly, and it teleported away, crying "My lord Miska will hear about this!" The party shrugged and headed back to Neufeld to tell the miner's that the mine was clear.


Once back in town, the party was accosted by a zombie running suddenly out of a house in the slums. Startled, they barely have time to grasp for their weapons before a woman runs out of the house yelling, "That's no zombie, that's my brother!" With the help of the party, Ulrike is able to get her brother back into the house. Hansel looks and acts just like an actual zombie, but on closer examination, he is still alive. Ulrike explains that Hansel had the pox, and a priest came by to treat him. Unfortunately, she doesn't remember the priest's name. Further investigation in the marketplace leads to the discovery that there were three other houses whose inhabitants had been treated for the pox recently.

In the first house lies Ernest, chained to his bed. His mother Nelda tells the party that the priest Bombulus came by to cure Ernest's sickness. At the next house, Michael says his wife had the pox, and a priest treated her with a white powder. Volodemir recognizes the white powder as not only a standard cure for the pox, but also was used on some southern islands as "zombie powder". He notes that the cure for zombie powder is rose hips. So the party was able to go to the market and get some rose hips, which cured the former pox patients! That being dealt with, they went to the temple to find Bombulus.

When they found Bombulus, he was deeply apologetic, and offered to give the party the zombie powder. However, when he brought it in front of him, he sneezed, and the powder went everywhere! Fortunately, Volodemir still had some rose hips, and so was able to cure Bombulus in short order.