The Unliving

Looking to escape the tower, the heroes remembered a teleportation circle they had used when they rescued Leenia during her brief kidnapping. They quickly found the circle, unfortunately, it was damaged and would take at least a day to restore, assuming the required material components could be found.

Looking around, Leenia spotted what looked like several Shadar-Kai run past the entrance to the room they were in. Following them, they once again caught up with Roduka. She was attempting to rescue one of her trapped men. Roduka urged the heroes to escape with her, yet Alexander could not be convinced to leave the half alive, half undead, henceforth referred to as unliving, men that they had locked in a room above.

Heading back up to that room, the heroes found the door was still pitoned shut, as they had left it. Removing the piton, they entered and saw the remains of a massacre. There had only been 5 unliving in this room, yet the amount of blood and gore was staggering. Looking around, it appeared as if half of the unliving had given themselves over to undeath and the other three fought them to a standstill. With only fingers, teeth, and the insatiable hunger of undeath as weapons, it was hard to know that only 5 men had been here.

Examining the corpses, one was still alive, and it was one that had not given himself over to undeath. He begged for death, but Alexander would not give him his peace until a few questions were asked. Specifically, were there other portions of the tower to be explored and did Acererak have a treasure hoard here. Unfortunately, the man was unable to provide anything concrete and after several more minutes of questions and begging for death, Alexander released him from his bonds of life. Knowing these things to be part undead, Leenia cast a ritual to keep them all dead. This led to one of the worst quotes ever in a D&D session from the DM, "Hocus, Pocus, Stayikiss, deadikiss"

Searching the room, a small alcove was discovered with a book in it. Leenia took a quick look, but the content was too disturbing for her to continue reading and she passed it to Kuppies. Looking through it, there were numerous entries that referred to Galun-Khur, the 547th layer of the abyss. A layer little is known about outside of its name. It could be a barren wasteland, or the realm of an unknown demon prince. But the book definitely inferred that Acererak had some sort of outpost or hideout there.

With that, the heroes headed back down the stairs and to one of the Tower entrances.