Some 400 years ago, the temple of Frith and Inle was a thriving hub of spirituality. Then barbarians overran the nearby town. Townies fled to the shelter of the temple. Three heroes successfully defended the temple with their lives and were enshrined, along with their compellingly powerful magic weapons, in the undercroft.
Hlessi became the latest and seemingly final guardian of that legacy, but in his old age has not been up to the task of defending the temple from an incursion of vampires and aberrations from below. Charlie Company, tasked with protecting Brother Im as he prepares to visit the altar of Inle in the natural caverns below, gathers what knowledge it can from Brother Hlessi before descending the stairs into the undercroft. The entrance is barred from the outside.
Ash listens to shuffling and scraping beyond the door. Good-and-evil protected Barika enters the undercroft and immediately finds an undead monk. It is quickly dispatched by the ready party, but Sqyylarr finds five more in the corridor ahead. They are all dressed as though servants of the temple long ago, very possibly lapin although the undead years have deformed their features. Briar shifts and Barika eventually enrages and they join Sqyylarr in trading blows with the ghast monks. Ander flips a copper coin into a turret that throws flames at a clump of three. Ash plants arrows into whatever is left. Brother Im inspects the putrid remains of a monk and retrieves an engraved stick from its robes, confirming its legacy as a temple monk. Briar collects name sticks from the other fallen. Ander dubiously regards the still-smoldering victim of his flame turret whose wooden name stick will not be collected.
Surrounding rooms and areas are quickly checked for more ghastly monks. There is a 7 bed dorm, a study, a dining room, and a storeroom that opens into natural caverns. The area seems generally abandoned, empty, and not at all trapped. Brother Im wanders north into the study. Briar finds another natural cavern opened into the back of a study closet and probes ahead to find a black water pool. Multiple investigations of the pool reveal nothing even slightly interesting about the water. In the next chamber, however, a very interesting, very fresh, exsanguinated bandit corpse is found. Watc doesn’t find a clear vampire track or drag marks, but does find the bandit stumbled from one particular corner of the chamber just before expiring. Ander finds green mushrooms there. Ash shoots one through with an arrow and it bleeds. Bloodless, arcana-trained Watc takes a closer look, fends off a psychic attack, and determines these are vampiric mushrooms. Nosferungi, if you will. Ander burns them up. The only other way out of this area is over a deep pit of bats so the party backtracks in the likely event the other side of the pit can be found from another,more convenient, direction.
Upon returning to the entrance of the undercroft to pick a new direction, the party finds the door barred from the other, entering side. Outraged at the perpetrator, Brother Hlessi or the cheeky bandits, Sqyylarr smashes through the door, breaking the locking bar. The party rushes upstairs with readied accusations and insight, but Brother Hlessi truly seems unaware of any attempts to lock them into the undercroft. Certainly the bandits have not returned. The baffled party returns to the undercroft where Brother Im bafflingly expresses reservations about Brother Hlessi’s sudden change in disposition.
The party fans out through the dining area. Ash finds another natural cavern in a smaller larder to the south, this one noted for its strong putrid stench. Despite Ander’s suspicion that a foul stench leads the way to success, there is general consensus that this putrid corridor will be saved for last. Barika finds the kitchen which seems long abandoned until three spectres project through the walls and surround her. She ducks away from them as Briar drops a radiant moonbeam on them. Watc throws a fireball dissipating two spectres, and Ash eliminates the third.
Ash locates the other side of the bat pit. Watc precariously approaches the edge of the pit and determines the bats are simply bats, nothing more sinister. Sqyylarr and Briar trace out the cavern which splits and rejoins around natural columns. Something about the wall along the south end catches Briar’s attention. Ash identifies the problem: the wall features a veneer of creatures, ready to attack. Watc expeditiously arrives and ignites a preemptive fireball that finds around a dozen tentacled, beaked gricks that grab and peck at any nearby adventurer they find, and they critically find Ash. Ash escapes the mob and picks a couple off. Barika charges in and slays another. Watc amps up a second fireball and finishes the remaining gricks.
The party pulls back to the dorm room for a short rest.