Secrets revealed...

The old ashik moved around the small hut belonging to the sibling herders preparing a meagre breakfast for the brothers. He hobbled out to the herd and passed each of them a bowl, and then took his place next to them with a bowl of his own and they ate in quiet companionship. Once he had finished, the old man set aside his bowl and once again started to recount his tale.

The demoralised Kank’s chin hits his massive chest and he gives a big sigh, he turns on his heel and walks away from the fight mumbling to himself about nothing being worth it. As he moves away the final fungal creature also backs away and remerges with one of the large patches of vegetation in the corner of the storeroom. As he is passing Scar asks Kank what is in the pit, the Mul looks at her with tired eyes and says;

Nothing but despair!

The big Mul then walks out into the corridor and slumps down with his head in his hands. Arthur steps up to the edge of the pit to engage the still thrashing vine, and the others follow him. The vine lashes out at Balboa but harmlessly slaps the floor to his left, with the vine extended Arthur slams down with his iron maul and the vine ceases to exist.

Arthur and Miloch lower Balboa into the pit on a rope and the Mul wanders around looking for any hidden exits, as he is stumbling around he knocks over an urn and discovers that it contains three green gemstones, a clay tablet, and a handful of gold coins. A quick look at the tablet lets Balboa discover that it is yet another spell tablet, and that this one will allow him to cast the fireblade spell. Finding nothing more, the others haul him up out of the pit and he hands the coins and gems to Arthur. A very pleased Arthur decides that he will try and cheer up Kank and so cajouls him into going back to the dragon headed water spouts and getting a drink of fresh, clear water. As soon as the liquid passes Kank’s lips he instantly cheers up. He thanks Arthur and they head back to the others.

As they get back to the others they start to hear the ominous BOOM BOOM BOOM of someone, or something trying to knock down the doors into the temple. The group rush back to the room with the corpse covered floor and start to search. Kank leaves the rest of the group searching and heads back along the corridor, through the room with the wind cauldron and enthroned skeleton, and back to the locked door leading into the temple where they were attacked by the fire throwing skeletons. From there he can tell that the banging is against the outer locked door leading from the lightning room. Kank decides to stay put and listen.

While Kank has his ear pressed against the door his colleagues search the corpse room, but as soon as Scar touches one of the many urns that line the back wall wraiths materialise out of the rooms floor, and some of the corpses pull themselves up off of the floor and into the fight. In her shock a scream leaves Scar’s mouth, she claps her jaw shut as soon as she can but it is enough to alert Kank who starts to sprint back towards the room.

The wraiths attack but fail to hit all bar Scar, and as she is hit she once again feels her life essence draining away, and not being fully recovered from the first of their encounters, she staggers at the blow. Knowing that he cannot harm the wraiths without a magical weapon, Arthur attacks one of the zombies. As his iron maul smashes one of its legs out from underneath it he realises that it is not a human, but a reptilian humanoid. Miloch follows his lead and slashes his iron battleaxe through a different reptilian zombie's leg. The creature slashes back at Miloch but it’s claws harmlessly scrape down the human’s armour.

Kank skids to a halt at the top of the steps and takes in the scene, below him he sees Arthur, Miloch , and Scar attacked by wraiths. Both Miloch and Scar are hit and stagger, Kank leaps off of the steps and swings Bone Crusher at one of the reptilian zombies, he is gratified to hear the sound of snapping bones as his hits it a powerful blow in the back and it collapses lifeless to the floor. While the group are dealing well with the zombies, they are unable to injure the wraiths without enchanted weapons and the fight starts to look bleak for them. Miloch and Scar both suffer blows again, as Arthur manages to down another reptilian zombie by crushing its head to a pulp with his iron maul.

In desperation, Miloch thrusts his hand forwards towards one of the wraiths attacking him and fire shoots from his palm and engulfs the ghostly apparition, but the thing continues to attack and Miloch is hit once again. The look in Miloch’s eyes tells everyone that he is now fighting on instinct alone. Kank rushes to Scar’s side and she breaks off from combat long enough to touch Bone Crusher and imbue it with a bludgeoning enchantment, Kank instantly reverses his grip and clobbers the wraith attacking Scar and sees it diminish slightly. The room is lit by another burst of fire from Miloch, but he is still beset by two wraiths.

Arthur rushes to Balboa’s side, who is battling a human zombie, and swings his iron maul. The zombies chest shatters as the big Dwarf embeds the head of his weapon in it, the undead creature dies a second time. Scar lashes out with the Sword of Kemalok and it slices through the wraith like it is passing through smoke, but the wraith evaporates into the air as the blade passes through it. Miloch is hit once again and drops to one knee, Kank leaps to his defense and smashes one of his attackers out of existence with a swing of his now enchanted maul. Arthur is hit by one of the last two wraiths and feels his strength ebbing from him, but Scar leans across and enchants his maul with a bludgeon spell and he strikes back at the wraith, hitting and diminishing it.

Scar then slices at Arthur’s wraith and once again the Sword of Kemalok banishes it, Kank then lands a killing blow on the final wraith and everything goes quiet once more, with the exception of the BOOM BOOM BOOM against the door at the entrance of the tomb. Miloch and Scar collapse to the floor, Miloch looks like he is confused by everything and Scar just looks exhausted. Kank heads back to listen at the temple doors while Arthur and Balboa continue to search the urn room. They discover a large red gemstone and a clay bottle with a wax stopper, the bottle has writing on it and Balboa manages to decipher that it is some kind of healing. Arthur discovers a pair of bracers with brass trimmings and starts to investigate them when Miloch intervenes and suggests that as Arthur has the iron gorget that perhaps he should hand the bracers to Miloch. Arthur happily hands them over.

At that point there is a loud crack and the booming noise stops. Kank can’t hear anything and is then startled as there is a loud boom against the door he is listening at. The boom is closely followed by a deep scream, and the rumbling sound of what can only be a half-giants voice saying that the door hurt him. Then a voice of someone in command says;

Stand aside! I will deal with this.

Kank can then hear the faint sound of someone chanting. At that point he takes to his toes and runs back to warn the others. As soon as he has told the others what is happening they climb wearily to their feet and Miloch suggests that they should attack the Templars in the wind cauldron room, in the hope that they can use the effects of the room to their aid. Ten minutes later and the booming continues and they decide to put their plan into action. They take Arthur's battered leather satchel and put some detritus inside, Kank then throws the bag near the base of the wind cauldron. They then retreat out of the room and close the doors, Kank remains by them while the others retreat a short distance and ready themselves for an ambush.

The booming noise stops and Kank sees light spill into the wind cauldron room, through a crack in the door he sees two Half-Giants enter, followed by what is obviously a Templar, and last through the doors are two men and a Mul dressed in the guard uniforms of Tyr. Kank watches them as they start to cross the room, and just as he is about to run back to the others one of the guards spots the leather satchel. The Templar orders one of the guards to retrieve the satchel and as soon as the man steps beyond the pillars the wind in the room rises and the guard is dragged by the gale towards the cauldron. The guard starts to scream.

The Templar starts to back away and orders a second guard to go and help the first, as soon as the second guard steps between the pillars he too is sucked and buffeted towards the cauldron. And then the gale starts to tear at the Templar, and one of the Half-Giants has to grab hold of him to stop him from being dragged towards the cauldron. The two guards are sucked into the basin of the cauldron and as they go in two dust devils start to form to either side of the cauldron. As soon as they are fully formed the twin dust devils spin towards the Half-Giant not holding the Templar and begin to attack him. Kank gives the signal to prepare and the group starts powering up their items, Balboa tries to use the powerful bludgeon spell from the clay tablet but something goes wrong and the tablet just turns to dust.

Kank throws open the doors and charges straight for the Half-Giant holding the Templar, Arthur is close on his heels. The final Tyr guardsman sees the pair of heavily muscled, maul wielding warriors charging in and decides that he doesn’t get paid enough coin for this situation and runs. Miloch and Scar join the fray and target the Templar, Scar slashes him in the leg just as Arthur smashes the Half-Giant in its right arm. Arthurs blow cripples the Half-Giants arm and it drops the Templar, which leaves it open to an attack from Kank. Kank slams Bone Crusher into the Half-Giants chest and there is the sound of cracking ribs, the Half-Giant collapses like a falling tree.

Scar once again stabs at the Templar and this time catches him in his left arm, Arthur and Kank both switch their attacks to the Templar and under a flurry of blows the man falls to the floor dead. The group ignore the other Half-Giant, who is being abraded to death by the two dust devils, and rush across the room to the opposite door. After a short discussion Miloch manages to convince Arthur not to try and search the bodies of the Templar’s party, and the group run from the temple. As they exit they discover that one of the obelisks has been knocked down and the huge dust devil guarding the entrance is no longer there.

Kank runs out in front and gets to the entrance just in time to see three guards riding quickly away mounted on kank. He also spots that there are still four kank tethered in the hollow and so he waves the rest of the group forwards, Arthur is delighted to see the kank and the group head down to get them. As they are walking down Kank hears a loud rumbling noise coming from the direction that the guards fled. He quickly runs up to the brow of the hollow while the others are loading all of their equipment onto the kank, as he crests the brow he spots a terrifying sight.

Lumbering towards them is what can only be described as a fort made of bones, the fort rests upon the animated skeletons of giant mekillot and they are slowly walking towards the temple. The fort is at least one hundred feet in length and as Kank watches in awe he spots that there are several outriders moving ahead of the horrific structure, Kank guesses that the desert raiders have returned in force and that it is time to leave. By the time he gets back to the others Balboa is ready to lead them out, and Kank hangs back to hide the tracks.

The group travels for a couple of hours and when they pause for a short break they realise that the rumbling noise has stopped. The group decide to push on for a few more hours, but not long after the middle of the day they are forced to stop by exhaustion. There is plenty of food and water on the stolen kank and the group decide to wait out the rest of that day and the following one, and as the sun sets they set off once again. They have been travelling for a couple of hours when the sounds of roaring and fighting echo back to them. Kank runs forwards to investigate and finds two humanoids fighting against a mountain lion, there is a third humanoid already on the floor.

Suddenly Kank hears a voice in his head;

Help me!

Kank rushes towards the skirmish and swings his maul straight at one of the humanoids, to this day he is still unsure why but it was instinct, the blow strikes the humanoid in the right arm and it spins in surprise to see who had attacked it. Kank is shocked to be looking into the face of a Gith. The mountain lion takes advantage of the surprise and rakes the back of the Gith killing it. The second Gith stabs at the mountain lion and then leaps twenty foot away and starts to run away, the mountain lion gives chase and Kank follows on losing ground quickly. He is brought up short by a blood curdling scream in the darkness.