And so the party had returned to Hayley's village. A whole evening was ahead of them in which to relax and plan the next few days. At least that was the plan for most of the party. Beard on the other hand decided that the thousand years he'd spent in the library had made the quiet life wear thin and reminded Emily in a loud voice that she had just made up some new stories and what a wonderful opportunity it was to try them out. Of course the local morons lept on the bandwagon and Emily soon found herself standing in front of the entire village again.
Whilst Emily entertained the village with stories of animated carpets and flying pies, the rest of the party got down to the serious business of planning the journey - and here they faced a choice. On the one hand, they had the trip to Aldibar along relatively safe roads and plenty of time to do it. On the other hand, they could travel into the Land of Doom, where the barbarians feared to tread. Margaret decided to elabourate a little on what would be found there. It seems in the past mages weren't the doddering fools they currently are. Instead they were vastly powerful and, in keeping with mages on every plane, meddlesome. These ancient mages had opened a portal to another plane in an attempt to do ... something ... and let something unspeakably evil through. This Great Evil(TM) decimated the land and the mages of the time couldn't defeat it. Instead they banded together and locked it in some kind of prison from whence it couldn't escape (probably). They blocked up the portal as well for good measure, presumably incase Another Great Evil (TM) came through and made a mess of things. Anyway, this epic confrontation was pretty lethal to the mages and only one chap survived - allegedly by using the portal to warp elsewhere in the world. This chap was something of a hero and it was the only thing he ever did wrong. Obviously Margaret wanted to expose this thing as part of the history of the land, but the only likely place proof would exist was at the site of his great defeat. The place this powerful mage feared to return. So; imprisoned Great Evil(TM), Evil Door(TM), and an forbidden area.
It took the returned Emily to point out it wasn't the best place to take a meddling mage.
There was much discussion about whether this would be a sensible detour. From surprise (Emily: "You want us to go to the Land of Certain Death?" Margaret: "Certain death?" Emily: "Ok, the Land of Likely Death") through disbelief (Arthur: "We had trouble with your garden!") and eventually into fact (Beard: "Well, you see ... death ... bad ..."). And yet still there wasn't agreement. Or, more accurately, Margaret insisted there was a detour and Mishkal felt it a good opportunity to get closer to Pelor. Much, much closer. Since the option was bludgeoning Margaret with Ug, it was eventually decided the trip should be undertaken. Despite the party's gravest misgivings.
The next week on the road was uneventful aside from the usual bickering. Finally, however, the party found themselves travelling into barbarian lands. And then into forbidden barbarian lands, carefully marked out by symbols meaning danger. It didn't take long for them to find the danger.
The party approached a hill, on the other side of which was supposed to be the ruins. They decided it was a good idea to scale a tree to see what was ahead. And who went up the tree? Arthur, the fit young man who enjoyed running, jumping and CLIMBING? Ug, the strongest of us all - also an accomplished jumper and CLIMBER? Mishkal the brave cleric whose god protected him? Beard, the one would could cast featherfall? Or Emily? The one with no appreciable talent at climbing at all?
Emily got 20' into the tree before she put her hand into a large nest of something. Flailing around she managed to drop the cat sized tree crab on to Beard's head as the rest of the brood boiled out and attacked. She clambered onto a nearby branch but they followed, forcing her to leap into another tree before being clawed to death. Despite one attaching itself to her ankle, Emily made it into the second tree safely and paused for breath.
Down below, there was pandamonium as Mishkal and Arthur narrowly missed smashing Beard in the face in their attempts to kill the crab before it breathed heavily and the old man keeled over. Finally Beard threw it off and Ug splatted it against the tree just as the rest appeared above them. The brief fight was punctuated by a long scream as Emily fell out of her tree and Mishkal hurried over to heal her.
With no information learned, the party decided to crest the hill in order to see the ruins in the middle of the lake. They went up and into view came ... a swamp. Overjoyed, the party then spent half an hour constructing mud shoes so they could paddle through without getting too covered and made it to a small island half way into the swamp to sleep the night. In the centre of the island was the grave of a barbarian, and yet despite this the party made it to the morning without being attacked by undead.
Rather surprised, the party moved onwards the next day - grateful that this was the last day they could try and die a horrible death before they had to return else they would miss Hadar in Aldibar. They made it to the ruins, after a brief encounter with a leech swarm which was very confused and contented itself eating Ug before vanishing back into the waters.
On the island, Emily scouted ahead looking for danger and things whilst the rest of the party slowly advanced on the three towers. Emily scouted round and found the entrance to the tower and returned to the party to inform them all was safe. She arrived just as the zombies started erupting from the ground.
As the zombies emerged, the party went into kill-mode. Ug managed to knock away the hands grasping for him then delicately chop them off with his axe leaving the zombie wriggling around in the ground unable to escape. Arthur hacked the head clean off another and watched in horror as it came after him some more. Margaret ran for the tower, with Emily giving her cover. "What do you expect to find in here?" she asked as she chopped away some vines from a window. Logically she was hoping Margaret would say something about an object of great holy power which would destroy the onrushing horde and allow them all to escape. Oh no. "Something to prove my research!" "You're not making any friends here you know..."
Back at the fight, Mishkal had managed to change the batteries in his holy symbol and blasted the zombies with Pelor's might. As they started cowering, the party withdrew after the women and with Mishkal covering the rear they clambered into the tower and looked at the steps leading downwards into the gloom.
And there we leave it, with the party in a ruined tower surrounded by a horde of zombies and about to go down into the darkness...