CCI - Summaries

[Daos]

Chapter One:
A Night on the Town

Giunona Scarletbark, a dwarven cleric of Marthammor Duin, arrived in the small town of Pommeville that night, in the rain, eager to find a warm bed for the night. She stops at the Green Griffon Inn, and meets the ostler, George Marsette and his nephew, Marco. Marco is sent to take care of her mare, Flegone. Giunona pays for a room for two nights.

Giunona immediately sits down with a shy and awkward monk named Friar Nicholas. He is a priest of Lathander and a member of the Order of the Sun Soul. Giunona then invites a nearby soldier and a half-elf merchant over to their table, which spooks Nicholas who scurries upstairs to his room. The soldier is Captain Miles of the 82nd regiment of the Purple Dragon Army while the merchant is Shanna Whitelock. They talk briefly, and then Giunona asks the captain to escort her to her room. Along the way, she tries to probe him a bit about Shanna, but he really doesn't know anything.

After saying goodnight, she retires to her room and gets some sleep. She has a strange dream about her mother warning her about something, and when she suddenly awakens, she hears a scream and someone pounding on her door. A zombie bursts through and attacks her. She fights in her nightclothes, and just barely manages to defeat it.

Rushing out into the hall, she spots several more zombies attacking the staff and guests, so she turns them all. The zombies flee out the front door, and George and his family quickly start barricading the place.

While everyone puts on their armor and gets their gear, they discuss their options. George comes up with an idea to send a small party to the temple, clear the way of danger, make sure it's safe, then return for the others. Giunona offers to lead the group, and recruits Nicholas, Captain Miles and Marco. Shanna insists on staying behind, citing it being too dangerous. The party slips through the back and tries to make for the temple. On the way, they encounter a couple being pursued by zombies and jump in to help. Nicholas turns most of them, and the party mops up the rest while the couple runs for safety.

The party moves on and encounters another group of survivors, led by the mayor, Nichole. She swaps Marco with one of her own party, a farmer named Oswald, at Giunona's request. Nichole asks the party to check out the graveyard, as the zombies seem to be dragging off some of the survivors there. Giunona agrees.

When they reach the cemetary, they see the zombies have several people prisoner, and are holding them down while a wight drains them of life, one by one. Giunona boldly steps forward, demanding they stop, and a fight breaks out. The zombies easily surround and start to overwhelm the party, and the wight--calling himself Nedrezar--is no push over, either. While Miles and Giunona are well protected with their heavy armor, Oswald and Nicholas take quite a beating. After defeating about half of the zombies, Giunona bids the pair to run for it. They do so, but she does not see them again that night and their fate remains a mystery.

She and Miles face the remaining forces alone. Eventually, they're able to defeat the wight. But a green energy bursts from the body and flies off. The zombies seem stunned, but only for a moment, and then they start attacking again. It's a grueling fight, but the two are able to take out the remaining zombies on their own.

Badly injured, they start to make for the temple. Giunona suggests they take shelter inside one of the seemingly abandoned houses. They find one, but it's locked up tight and while Giunona hears whispering inside, they refuse to open the door for her.

The pair decide to make a run for it to the temple. A number of zombies notice and give chase, but are fairly slow. Once they reach the temple, they bang on the door. An old man lets them in, and introduces himself as Brother Montrel, the priest of this temple. Giunona asks him to look after Miles, and she starts searching the temple for familiar faces--but there's over a hundred folk crammed inside.

Giunona finds Marco and his family, but George is missing. He explains that he went out with Nichole's group to find more people. Nobody has seen Nicholas or Oswald, though. She also finds Shanna, who seems rather low on hope. Giunona assures her that if it comes to it, the people of Pommeville will win the day against the undead horde. But Shanna feels even if they do win, there will be many causalities. At some point, Giunona drifts off to sleep for a bit.

When she wakes up about an hour later, she finds the temple in a panic. A massive hoard of zombies have surrounded the temple and are trying to beat their way inside. Giunona meets up with Miles at the front entrance, along with six farmers, to help defend it. Zombies burst through the door, and several windows, as farmers try to hold them off. Just when things start to look bad, they turn worse when two juju zombies arrive.

All of the farmers go down, and it takes great effort, but the pair manage to defeat one of the juju zombies. But all hope seems lost at that point, until suddenly...all of the zombies just retreat for no apparent reason. Then it becomes clear--the sun is rising. The nightmare has ended...for now.

[Daos]

Chapter Two:
A Grave Situation

Giunona awakes the next day at noon, having succumbed to exhaustion shortly after dawn. Most of the locals are gone, or working on rebuilding the church's barricades, but Brother Montrel is still there. She asks him a few questions about last night. He mentions that there are some old ruins nearby that some adventurers were poking around recently, and wonders if maybe there is a connection. The ruins were of an old temple of evil, destroyed by the king's men two centuries ago. He offers the use of his library so Giunona can do some research.

Giunona spends hours in the library, not coming out until around 5 PM. However, she learned quite a bit. 'Nedrezar' was the name of the head priest of this temple Montrel mentioned, so that was a solid connection. Apparently, Nedrezar was seeking lichdom, but failed when one of his own threw a coup against him. Bishop Astara Trueheart later led an army to destroy the temple for good. While not a lich, clearly something of Nedrezar survived the incident.

Giunona decides to put together a team to investigate the ruins. She first heads toward the mayor's house. However, on the way a young lad stops her and asks for help. His mother was hurt in the attack last night, so Giunona revives her. The two thank her and head for one of the shelters. Giunona shortly after runs into the mayor herself, along with her younger brother, Terence, something of a local folkhero. According to Nichole, the town lost 6 people and many more were injured; she asks Giunona for help in figuring out what happened and how to prevent it again. Terence offers his aid.

Terence suggest Giunona try the inn to find more people, but she is deadset on visiting the lord's manor. They travel there and upon meeting the lord, she asks for some of his staff. He only has two guards, though, and they are both quite green--Ulster and Thuskar. Neither are adventuring types, or have any experience with such things, but Giunona doesn't seem to mind. Only then does she decide to head to the inn.

There, she finds Miles and Nicholas again, helping the Marsetts load some supplies into a wagon. Nicholas explains that he hid in a barnloft until morning after they were separated. Shana is nowhere to be found, having already left town that morning. Giunona invites them both back into her party, then the whole group heads for the ruins.

Upon reaching and descending into the ruined temple, Giunona asks about the adventurers and learns they only stayed for about a day than rode east to the town of Arden. Oddly, they find their mining equipment was left behind, and the door to the main altar room is propped open with a helmet also left behind. Giunona decides to lightly check each room first, and they find the altar room, a room with a well, an old equipment closet and some smashed up bedrooms. They then come across a guardroom, which is being guarded by a pair of zombie ogres. The party bottlenecks them in the room, making them easy to pick off.

After defeating them, the party moved on to a jail of some kind. Inside one of the cells, they found Marcel, a villager who had been kidnapped by the zombies and locked up. Giunona was skeptical of his intentions, but eventually agreed to release him. She refused to give him an escort, though, so he ran off back to town by himself.

From there, the party started searching the various rooms more thoroughly. In one of the bedrooms, she found some notes on the proper way to approach the altar to show respect to the evil god it was meant for. Giunona immediately concludes that the altar is trapped unless someone performs these rites first, a line of logic the others have trouble following.

However, Giunona is somehow exactly right, and when she approaches the altar, four shadows appear and attack the party, which she is ready for. After they are defeated the party takes a short rest, and Giunona quickly deduces there is a secret door behind the altar, revealing a hidden stair down into the level below. Here, they find three doors; the first which leads into Nedrezar's crypt.

Inside they find a glowing green skull, a sarcophagus and a circle of runes around it. A small metal rod is missing. Giunona quickly deduces the missing rod was taken by the adventurers who were down here, and must be returned. The party then checks another door, leading into a winding hallway that ends with a door. She carefully checks the floor for traps, but finds none. The door is safe, but locked up.

The party backtracks and tries the last door. This time Giunona fails to check the floor for traps, and nearly falls into a pit trap. In the room beyond are four adventurers in bad shape, who Terence recognizes as Giles and his gang. Giunona is immediately suspicious and preternaturally assumes it's an illusion. She shuts the door, leaving in them in there, but they seem to have the rod they need. She opens them back up and uses turn undead, which reveals the illusion--that they are heucuvas. However, only one is turned, the other three attack.

Ulster and Thuskar, as well as Terence this time, nearly die. But in the end, the party is victorious. They gather up any loot found and return to the temple for the night. Giunona fills in Montrel what happened, and learns about heucuva blight, and that the party is probably infected with it; only magic can cure it. That night, the undead attack again. But this time the town is ready and none are able to break into the shelters.