Once everyone had caught their breath after their fight with the Zombie Master and his horde of undead, they set about searching the island. It didn’t take them long to find the large vertical shaft that led deep inside of the island.

They quickly tied up a rope, tossed it down the hole, and started descending. Unfortunately, this meant they had to leave Bask behind. Soon, they were able to see a trio of wolf ghouls at the bottom, like Sylvester had warned them. The ghouls could pass for wolves with a careless glance, but their missing fur and misshapen bodies gave away their undead nature.

The wolves circled where the rope reached the floor, such that it was, and snapped at the descending party. They stopped short, so that Sylvester could take a moment to unfurl and read one of his scrolls.

As he carefully read the scroll while holding onto the rope, the inked lettering on the scrolls began to glow with holy light. The ghouls below howled and tried to jump up but couldn’t quite reach.

Sylvester ignored them and continued to read, causing the entire scroll to begin to glow as well. As he reached the final stanza of this prayer, the entire scroll fell apart to glowing dust which swirled around the group.

A Prayer, in addition to the Medallion of Warding, was plenty of protection and the party quickly dropped down to face the ghouls who emitted small sizzles every time they came in contact with the glowing flecks of dust.

Kurt immediately charged at ghouls, cutting into one while the others snapped at him. Unfortunately, one managed to catch him and his entire body stiffened as the ghoul’s paralytic venom did its work. Karrank quickly moved to help him, managing to completely slay one of the ghouls and force them away from Kurt.

Sylvester, instead, slowly began making his way over to envelope Kurt in the protective aura of his medallion. The other ghouls barked and paced but couldn’t force themselves into the aura and were forced away.

Sylvester, Karrank, and Neil all tried to target one of the ghouls, breaking one of its legs with a sickening crack. Neil luckily managed to leap back into protection before the ghoul could bite him as well.

They quickly got into a rhythm of attacking the ghouls before darting back into protection, though Sylvester didn’t even need to move thanks to the reach of his kusarigama. The ghouls were helpless to do anything about it, and too stupid to have a fear of death, so they eventually managed to defeat the two remaining ones without further injury.

After the fight, as Sylvester was about to cast Resist Poison on him, Kurt managed to finally overcome his paralysis. So, Sylvester instead used some energy to heal up his wounds instead.

With the fight over, the party quickly got ready to continue into the island and claim the iron rose. There was only one path forward, but it was certainly unappealing. The entire island was fashioned out of rotting corpses and bones, all of which were animate to some degree. The floors were fine if you didn’t look too closely, being mostly made of backs and torsos.

The hallway forward, however, had many dangling arms and hands that reached out of the wall. They all flinched away from the aura projected by Sylvester’s amulet, pulling back into the wall, and widening the path, but they were slow about it. No one complained, however, as the alternative was to be groped by them as they continued.

They came to a split in the path, but Sylvester led them upward. The other path led to an oubliette, covered by a trap door which would actively drop them down.

Soon enough, however, Sylvester called for them to stop.

“Karrank, somewhere in this upcoming hallway we have a pressure plate which will cause giant bone blades to swing at us.” Sylvester explained.

“I can try to do something about it, but if it is controlled by these undead there is only so much I can do other than point it out.” He answered, moving to the front of the group.

“Don’t worry, this one is entirely mechanical.” Sylvester assuaged his worries.

Like Sylvester had said, the trap was entirely mechanical when Karrank found it, and he managed to completely disable the trap for them. They continued onward until they found their goal.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

In a large circular room, on a raised dais, stood the iron rose. Ten feet tall and made of clean iron, it was sculpted with immaculate detail. It was also guarded by two wights.

They might have been able to pass for human, but for their chalky white skin with the occasional rotting hole and vicious yellow eyes. They turned to attack as the party entered but were held back by Sylvester’s amulet.

Seeing this, everyone let out a sigh of relief. Sylvester took a few moments to cast a Prayer, without a scroll this time, while Kurt handed out vials of holy water to everyone.

As the holy energy swirled around them all, blessing them, they took aim with their vials and threw them at the two wights. Unfortunately for the wights, they happened to be standing next to each other when the vials smashed open upon them. One had gone wide, and another simply sunk into a wight’s eye socket without shattering, but the other two dutifully coated the wights in holy water.

They shrieked in pain for a few moments as they completely melted under the holy water’s touch. Even Sylvester was surprised at how effective the water had been at dealing with them. In a matter of seconds, the two fearsome undead were naught but sizzling puddles on the ground.

“That should be the last of the undead, so we can take a short break here.” Sylvester announced, causing everyone to sigh with relief.

Kurt quickly recovered the unbroken vial of holy water, while Sylvester and Karrank went to inspect the rose. It was currently standing upright, the base of its stem planted into the dais which existed only to prevent the rose from tipping over. The arms and bodies wrapped around the base of the rose writhed and retreated as Sylvester approached, causing the rose to tip and fall.

It hit the ground with a sickening thud, sinking into the corpses making up the floor.

“I know you said this would be heavy, but this is going to be terrible to lug around.” Karrank complained, looking at how far the rose had sunk into the floor.

“A full 300 pounds. Luckily, we won’t be carrying it anywhere except on the causeways.” Sylvester agreed.

After they confirmed that Kurt was ready, they all began working to drag the rose down the hallway and back to the base of the shaft. The progress was slow as the rose’s thorns caught on the arms and bodies that made up the island, but they eventually reached the bottom of the shaft.

Karrank securely tied the bottom of their rope to the rose and they all climbed back up to the top. There, they all worked together to pull up the rose. It nearly got lodged in a small cavity in the shaft’s wall, but they managed to maneuver it out and get it all the way up.

From there, they dragged the dead weight to the edge of the island where they found Bask munching on the petrified remains of two giant catfish zombies.

“Alright, we are done here. Neil, get that floating disc up. Our only goal for the rest of today is to reach the causeway before the floating disc dissipates, since dragging this rose through the swamp will be such a pain.” Sylvester directed.

Neil began chanting, while the rest of the group started transferring most of their excess gear onto Bask’s back. When Neil finished his spell, nothing appeared to have happened, but he was able to quickly direct everyone to the invisible floating disc. It took a bit of work to get the rose properly lashed to it, but once that was done no one needed to worry about carrying the rose.

Luckily, the party didn’t encounter anything in the swamp, and they made it to the Causeway just as the floating disc dissipated and dropped the rose into the muck. They struggled to pull it out but were eventually successful.

The next day, they started with the rose on the floating disc once again. Unfortunately, Neil could only keep it up for about three hours by using both of his castings of the spell, so they had to spend the other five carrying it by hand. Sylvester, Kurt, and Karrank all shouldered it together for that. It was unpleasant, but by working together they were able to keep up a reasonable travel pace.

That night, several troglodytes found them, but left after celebrating the recovery of the rose.

The day after, they repeated the same pattern. They did reach the Frog God’s idol, but it didn’t react or animate as they leaned the massive rose against the equally large statue.

All that remained now, was the amber. They quickly set off to retrieve it. The trek to the amber’s location took four days, with them arriving early in the morning.

The amber was located within the center of a maze made of thorny overgrowths, on top of the idol of Plures, God of Rains. Further, the maze was patrolled by a dozen throgrin.

Though they somewhat resembled hobgoblins, with their flat faces, spiked ears, and reddish skin, throgrin were technically a different form of goblinoid, primarily distinguished by their large claws and completely black eyes.

Sylvester quickly began leading the group through the maze, having its layout memorized. Only a few minutes into their travels, however, they came across one of the wandering throgrin.

It grinned viciously as it began to charge. Neil and Bask met its charge, holding it back enough for the rest of the group to arrive and surround it. From there, it was a simple matter of beating the creature down.

When the party continued, leaving the body behind, they soon came across two more throgrin who had been attracted by the noise of their fight.

This time, Sylvester was the one to break their charge, his enhanced skin causing their javelins to bounce right off. The others quickly leapt into the fray, with Neil shattering one’s shoulder with a well-placed strike of his new staff. Kurt used the opportunity to cut it down while also injuring the other, which Sylvester and Karrank were able to take down.

The group quickly moved on and were able to make it to the center of the maze without further encounters. The center was a large clearing, a bit more than 50 feet across, whose center was dominated by a large and mossy stone idol. This one appeared as a black and green dodecahedron, covered with plants, and having a large depression filled with rainwater on its top. The four remaining pieces of amber, each the size of a head, sat peacefully within the pool.

Sylvester had already explained the plan to everyone, informing them that disturbing the amber would call all the remaining throgrin to the center of the maze. Luckily, however, it only had two entrances and they had time to prepare.

Karrank placed and hid a bear trap in front of each of the entrances while Neil formed himself something to hide behind out of fallen vines. Sylvester readied his shield and scaled the large stone polyhedron. Bask was placed just to the side of one entrance while Kurt was placed similarly by the other.

Sylvester did one final look around, making sure everyone was ready. Bask and Kurt lied in wait, Neil was hiding for his protection, and Karrank had his crossbow out and ready to go. Seeing everyone in position, he reached down, grabbed one chunk of amber, and tossed it down onto the soft ground below.

Immediately the light rain that had been falling intensified and the sky began to rumble with thunder. Angry shouts and the sounds of people running began to echo from the surrounding maze as the throgrin began charging toward its center.