Nightmare of the Lost: Part 8

Spire of the Undead

Wooden doors barred their way but they were unlocked. The necromancer wanted them to come in, to come closer. As they made their way through, they encountered more undead. In some rooms there were so many bunched together in the same space that passing through them seemed impossible. The undead seemed to pay them no mind. In fact, most of them smiled in their direction when they passed through. 

The group had expected a fight throughout the spire as they made their way to the top. However, it looked like they would be able to make their way to the top without interference. That was when Ramiel landed them in hot water. He was so confident that they would not have to fight as they made their way up, that he started hacking away at undead bodies in his path. At first there was no response. The undead fell where they stood and stayed. After a few moments, though, they heard a low moaning rising up through the spire. The undead were moving again and this time they were fighting back. 

The necromancer wanted the party to willingly walk into his hands but had been angered by their destruction of his toys and pets. He rallied the undead throughout the spire and gave them the go ahead to attack the group. Undead surged through open doorways to overwhelm the adventurers. Desperate, they did the only thing they could. They ran. 

Fleeing through the corridors and rooms in the tall spire they barricaded areas behind them to block off access. They hacked and slashed away at anything that stood in their path. Some undead were ahead of them so they took those few down and kept moving, barricading behind them as best they could. They were almost to the top when they came across a dark room. They could feel the dark energy of the necromancer ahead. It pulsed in the air and made the hair on their arms stand up. 

With a trembling hand, Sukra pushed the door open. The room they entered was shadowed and they could barely make out the outline of a man seated in a large chair at the center of the room. The group approached quietly, trying to be sneaky in the gloom. They expected to meet a terrible mastermind. A gloating, power hungry man ready for anything. They found instead a fragile, old man. He was chained to the chair and unable to leave. 

BaRuhk tried to speak to the old man but he opened his mouth wide to show that his tongue had been cut out. He could not speak or communicate in any way. He was still alive as far as they could tell, but he was in no shape to help. His eyes kept returning to the door opposite of the one they came through and fear filled his face. He started gesturing with his head towards the door and, after that was done, he shrank back into the chair in fear. 

The group went through the room in silence, hoping to find clues as to who the necromancer was. It was clearly not this man who was chained to a chair and kept prisoner. They found a journal in one of the desk drawers in the room. It seemed to be written by the man as he referred to a daughter he had. The journal mostly spoke of his beloved daughter and how much he doted on her. Only in the last pages of the journal did things change. The man had dabbled in necromancy as a research venture but his daughter had been fascinated with it. They had been comfortable but his daughter, Vestra, had wanted titles and wealth to put people to shame. 

When she was a child her mother died and, with her, any semblance of supervision or discipline. She had joined her father on their research expeditions and had grown more interested in necromancy. As she grew older, the evidence of how much she had learned came to light when he found a mass grave full of animals and people that Vestra had found to reanimate. She had done so. 

At first he was proud. Vestra had achieved what he could not in his research, but she had also broken the rules of the kingdom. It was strictly forbidden to practice necromancy. That was why he only studied it, never gave it practical application. Upon finding the bodies, he and his daughter left for more isolated lands. As they traveled he tried to dissuade his daughter from her chosen path but she would not hear of it. In the end he gave into her demands and found her the spire in which they now resided. There she began to amass bodies again. This time she started building an army. 

She wanted, not just power and wealth, but control over the country, over the world if possible. The journal entries stopped right after their arrival at the spire. As they finished reading the entries, the door at the other end of the room began to creak open. The adventuring party turned towards the noise and readied their weapons.