Road to Kiev, Chapter Nine

Adders, Apples, and the Afterlife
Sunday, October 9, 987 AD

Edward begins the day by attempting to lead mass, but then stops when he remembers he is not an ordained priest. He narrowly avoids heresy by turning it into group prayer.
Because of Nicolae's new spell, Melf's Acid Arrow, the party goes off looking for adders, because their stomachs are a spell component. Edward talks to a squirrel first, who asks for nuts. Edward tells him he has none. Then Edward talks to a hedgehog that Gunther had accidentally stepped on. It gives Edward better directions to the adders. We get to a clearing that seems to be the correct place and then Nicolae casts sleep. The party digs around for some adders and finds only one. Nicolae takes the stomach and we head back to the eastern building.
We explore the first level fully and most of the basement level (leaving three fist-sized rocks and Catarina's broken lantern down there for lighting purposes), ending up in the courtyard with the glowing tree. It turns out to be glowing because silver apples hang off its branches. After a bit of debating, Thorvald, with a reduced wisdom, takes an apple and bites into it. No effect is perceived immediately afterwards. Thorvald says the apple tastes alright, so Catarina, in her infinite wisdom, takes another apple and bites into it before Reynaldo can voice his observation that Thorvald has gotten dumber. The apple in Catarina's mouth tastes bitter and she reflexively spits it out. The piece grows into a nine foot cat monster carrying a scythe, with no skin on its head. The party defeats it quite rapidly and decide to stop eating apples. Reynaldo guesses that each apple has a different, random effect, and that some may even be good, but cannot persuade anyone to try another apple, except for Thorvald who must be told no many times.
We decide to go back to Irethazan's former home (where we spent the previous night), but get ambushed by a group of ghouls and ghasts outside the front door. The fighters move up and ring around the front door to let only two ghouls in at a time. Other fighters wait behind to come up if anybody gets paralyzed. The mages sit at the back and wait for a victory, but instead notice a second wave of ghouls and ghasts that were trying to ambush us from behind in a pincer maneuver. The mages cry for help and Edward turns all but three of them. Wong then starts to kick some ass. In the front, Thorvald, Anna, and Thalia beat down on the ghouls and ghasts. Gunther was paralyzed in the first round and does not come out of it until the battle is over. Wong kills two ghouls in the back, but the third turns out to be a ghast, and it paralyzes Wong. The ghast and Wong tumble into the pit that leads into the basement level. Reynaldo and Nicolae cast Blindness one after the other, and only Nicolae's hits. Catarina and Reynaldo go into the pit to get Wong and kill the blind ghast. Up above, Thalia gets paralyzed and Edward comes in to take her place. The ghouls and ghasts fall steadily up front, but down in the pit, Catarina and Reynaldo have trouble. The blind ghast uses the paralyzed Wong as a shield, so Catarina ends up hitting her once. Then she decides to grab Wong and try to pull her free while Reynaldo is in mid-swing of his mighty Rey's Axe (previously known as the Minotaur's Axe). He narrowly misses her. Nicolae comes down to help pull Wong free. With their combined might, Catarina and Nicolae finally pull Wong free. Thalia comes out of her paralyzation upstairs and pushes Edward aside to take on the remaining ghouls and ghasts. Edward comes down into the pit to help the mages against the blind ghast, and ends up stealing the kill from Reynaldo. Upstairs, Thalia is paralyzed once again, but Anna and Thorvald are able to take care of the rest. Thorvald gets his fist-sized rocks back and Catarina goes to get her broken lantern in the other pit. While there, she hears screaming, and half the party, led by Thalia, decides to go check it out. The other half, led by Reynaldo, decides they need rest first before attempting to do anything else. The screaming stops, and Gunther and Edward agree that the urgency is over and they need rest. We do so, but not in Irethazan's house as it has been vandalized by the ghouls. We decide to rest in the large arch instead.

Cats in the Eastern Building
Monday, October 10, 987 AD

We go back to the eastern building to finish exploring the basement level, but more importantly, to see where that screaming was coming from. We notice the silver apple that Catarina is still carrying for some reason to be a better light source than the torches we have been forced to use since continual light stones do not work in the building, and find half a ghoul lying in a hallway and decide it was very fortunate that the party took the path of reason yesterday and did not risk their lives for a ghoul. We continue exploring and find a very large room where we are immediately attacked by five large six-legged cats with two tentacles on their backs. The fighters make a ring around the mages and Thorvald, Wong, Gunther, Thalia, and Anna take a single cat each. Each cat attacks with its mouth, both tentacles, and a two-to-four claws. Reynaldo and Catarina shoot some magic missiles and the fighters notice the cats are not actually where they appear, so they miss their first attack. Wong is felled and Nicolae steps in to help her out. Catarina casts Rope Trick and goes to get Wong. Anna kills a cat while Catarina is halfway up the rope with Wong. Two more cats emerge from the darkness and attack Reynaldo and the prone figures of Catarina and Wong. Reynaldo blasts his cat with a lightning bolt (and what a fine blast it was), but the other new cat takes out Catarina. Somehow, Wong manages to stay on the rope. Nicolae falls against his cat. Anna and Edward move towards the two cats with no current opponents, one of which knocks Wong off the rope. Anna kills her cat and moves to defend Thalia who is about to go down. Anna and Thalia both go down, but Thorvald kills his cat and moves towards theirs. Edward kills his cat, but Reynaldo falls at almost the exact same time. Gunther and Edward each kill another cat, but Thorvald falls against his. Edward and Gunther use their combined might to bring down the last cat. The battlefield is littered with our heroes' blood and the corpses of the cat monsters. Edward and Gunther decide this a bad place to rest, so Gunther takes point and Edward brings up the rear as the rest of the party crawls to a better resting area. We decided upon the room with ceramic cages (used to let the cats into the pits so that Romans could watch elves get slaughtered gladiator-style). Reynaldo locks one door and the other is spiked shut by Edward. Gunther keeps sole watch while everyone else recovers from their wounds or gets heal spells. In the middle of the night, a group of nine ghouls approach the ceramic gate. Gunther quickly wakes Edward, who turns them all, grumbles something about importance of sleep, and goes back to sleep.

Resting
Tuesday, October 11, 987 AD

The entire day is used to recuperate from the horrific attack at the paws of the cats yesterday.

End Chapter Nine
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