Star Day, Leo 19th, 576CÆ, Year of the Tiger
Players: Rathar the Brash (Carolingian Frank, Berserker of Krimmr), Wulfweard the Sly (Anglo-Saxon, Legerdemainist of Rel), Ligotorix (Pict, Priest of Azathoth), Xararhaan (Hyperborean, Paladin of Apollo)
The ghouls came again at night, smashing into the village's spear-walled last hope. The preparations were effective, the tactics lethal. The ghouls steadily dwindled but surged forward, finally cresting the wall. Men fell like cut grass; Rathar and Ligotorix lay paralyzed in the mud and blood. The village still had the numbers. Xararhaan and Wulfweard pressed the advantage and the wave finally shattered. When it was over, twenty corpses were tossed into the bonfire—Rathar and Ligotorix were not among them.
The surviving townsfolk rowed out into the cove and sheltered on boats while the party waited out the days until reinforcements arrived from a nearby Viking logging camp. During this purgatory, Aodh pointed out the sea cave entrance where the ghouls had been coming from. A day and a half later the Vikings came—led by Ilfmr; twelve in number; salvation in the form of half-drunk brutes who hadn't bathed in weeks and were itching for something to hit other than themselves.
The entrance was a narrow cave cut into the rock at the base of the promontory, terminating in a flooded passage. They swam it. The far side opened into worked stone—not natural, deliberately built—and they pushed deeper through a succession of twisting corridors until the torchlight lit up a room large enough to swallow sound. At the center stood a jet-black obelisk etched with archaic Greek, rising from an octagonal platform ringed by knee-deep water. A door at the far wall had been smashed inward from the other side. Beyond it lay a vast charnel hall: hundreds of niches cut into the stone in tiers, ten of which held skeletal remains clutching urns, bronze plates riveted over their eyes.
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