I was able to run the game again last week. My friend Joseph ran the game in my stead. Here is what happened based on what I've heard from him and other players:
The next featured two zombies waiting in ambush on a ledge over the entrance. They dump a box of rocks then jump down to engage the party. While they rolled low on the falling rock damage, but managed to make a few good attack rolls, and, thanks to Undead Resilience, managed to take a lot of punishment before going down.
Then, there was a side room filled with corpses. Darwin went to explore and touched one of the corpses, triggering an encounter with three skeletons hidden among the corpses. Naturally, he called for help, and the party dropped them.
The next room in the cave featured three zombies in outrageous costumes. During this encounter, the zombies managed to score some critical hits and even managed to drop Skomba before the encounter ended. Lastly, they explored another side room ending at a treasure chest. This room was watched by Orieth, the necromancer and self-proclaimed Lord of Lance Rock. He triggered a trap on the PCs exploring the chest. However, Joseph had him spring the trip on the party a bit early, only hitting some of the party. Unfortunately, the chest was empty.
For the next encounter, the party swelled to 9 members. Which was probably fortunate, since it is a fairly hefty encounter in a large room: featuring a zombie, crawling claw (zombie hands, basically), and four skeletons. The Lord of Lance Rock also began the encounter in the room, hiding behind the skeletons. Seeing such a large party of adventurers, he ran. One of the players captured and kept and crawling claw for some reason.
Next week, the party shrank back down to four. They confronted the necromancer, and opted to take him prisoner to be questioned back in town. They then returned to town and began looking into the Believers, a cabal of citizens controlling Red Larch from the shadows, and the Tomb of Moving Stone, a place where they hold their meetings. I'm not quite sure on the particulars, but it involved birthday cake and trying to get the members drunk, but it ended with members of the party getting drunk instead. In any case, they learned the location of the Tomb, and that it contains mysterious moving stones that the Believers use to try to divine the future. They managed to spot a trap consisting of cages mounted on the ceiling and rigged to fall and trap them, and took another corridor. They ran into some corpses and giant rats.
This is where I returned. I ran the battle with the rats with a party of six. After dispatching the rats, they examined the corpses and found a mysterious symbol cut into their skulls and learned that they had been murdered.
They proceeded to the next room to discover a floating stone. After some experimentation they discovered a cylindrical magical effect causing objects to levitate in that room. After playing with it a bit, they moved on.
The next room had a petrified and long dead dwarf in it, and was inhabited by a group of mercenaries called the Bringers of Woe sent to stop the PCs. They dispatched these foes and looted some coins, gems, and a magic dagger from a plinth in front of the dwarf.
They then back-tracked to the room just past the cage corridor, discovering Grund, a half-orc simpleton set to guard the room and set off the cages, and Braelan, a youngster being punished for failing to deliver a message by being pinned under rocks. After a short confrontation, they knocked out Grund and freed Braelan.
Now they'll go further into the Tomb.
As a reminder, I went in for surgery. I've had a rocky recovery, and medical and related bills are still kicking my ass. Readers, I'd deeply appreciate it if you visited my GoFundMe and donated and spread the word to your connections. I'm at 20% of my goal already!
