Kurger Gets A Head

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After dealing with the Frog God and Fly God, the party journeyed to Barter Town. Kurger debated about whether or not he wanted his arm reattached, but finally decided to get it put back on. Mainly, it seems that Kurger just likes scars. A Nethermancer going by the name of "Boss" did the spell the attach the arm--but for a price to be named later on. "Boss" apparently owns a vast underground complex that he intends to retire to. He wants the party to take care of any 'nasty-ness' that may be lying inside, and escorting any such to another world. We journeyed to the place uneventfully. Sure enough, there's a large shaft going into the ground. Personally, I don't think it looks so nice. Kurger, Petros, and I are the only ones here, as the rest of the party seems to have bugged out. Kurger and Petros are taking the front, while I take the rear. Jeez, in the first room, we found Kurger's severed head. Despite Petros' and my protests, Kurger picked it up and put it in a bag. "I refuse to be afraid of my own head," he asserted. The human seems to be intent on dying rather horribly. The head appeared to be recently deceased and decapitated, but was not bleeding. Petros used his astral sense to look at the head, and the pattern of the head seems to be the same as Kurger himself. Great Foosk--the windling Finch actually decided to join us today. Finch used his astral sight to verify that it was Kurger's. He also described that the walls were very strong, yet rather corrupt. Kurger actually started to look resonably disturbed at this, and began applying eyeliner to his own face to make himself look differently. Finch wanted to slap the head, but Kurger didn't want his severed head slapped. Kurger happily put in his bag. The next room was really big. Kurger started to look around, but decided to leave after a strange weakness descended upon him. I followed him out to the severed head room, where he felt a bit better. However, any attempt to journey further in the dungeon made him feel weaker. I left Kurger to follow Petros. Four dead-looking dwarves, one with a large sword, attacked us in one of the large rooms. I got the drop on them, but in my haste I missed badly. Fortunately, the dwarves were as bad as I was, sparing Petros and Finch pain. Petros cast Mind Dagger and hurt one. I missed again, and Finch took a rather nasty strike, and went down with a cry of pain, and crunching of little windling bones. I'm afraid it looks like it'll hurt in the morning. Petros attached Finches assailant with his Mind Dagger, wearing it down a bit. Finch gritted his teeth and started to get up, and managed to duck a flying fist and a swinging sword. With an insane laugh, the little windling left himself wide open to deliver a devistating blow to the sworld-wielding dead thing, dropping it. I finally hit the other one, though it was a glancing blow. Finally, Finch, Petros and I brought the other dead thing low. The sword that one of the undead things was carrying seemed to be sharp and very shiny. Petros took the sword, and Finch went ahead and took a single tooth from each of the dead bodies. When we met with Kurger again, Kurger wanted to expirament. He'd been trying to leave the room, but encountering strange attacks of weakness every time he tried to leave the first room. After giving the head to Petros, Kurger left. Upon his return, he said that he did not feel any weakness. While Kurger was gone, the windling started a fire and was trying to convince Petros to burn the head. Kurger was very upset at this, and took his head back. Finch and I went to the surface to let Finch recover from the grievous wounds. Kurger decided to sit inside, guarding his severed head. Petros decided to sit with him and keep him company. I stuck around with Finch while he recovered. He's a rather disturbing conversationalist, and I spent quite some time practicing my beggar's whistle. Petros came running out of the shaft. Kurger soon followed, but without his head. They said there was a dozen cadaver men right behind, but nothing emerged from the tunnel. Of course, Kurger didn't wait long before returning to the depths to sit with his head. On the fifth day, the windling and I went to join Kurger and Petros again. Kurger had had enough, and relunctantly left his head in the room. Disturbingly, the head does not appear to have begun to decompose. We headed south, since the cadaver men seems to have come from the other hallway. We got into the huge room,and spent an hour looking around. Finch swears that he found a secret door up on the ceiling, but then couldn't find it again. The little buzzer isn't necessarily quite right in the head--four days with him nattering on -- very happily, I might add -- about how he's going to die in battle against evil, disasterous horrors convinced me of that. We decided to move on. While in a damp room, Kurger suddenly cried out in pain. A rat bite appeared on Kurger cheek. Cursing, Kurger ran back down toward the first room with his head. Petros ran back with Kurger, while Finch and I followed behind. Kurger had to deal with the dilemma of how to handle his own head. After some debate, we built a little rock cairn for the head. Hopefully, nothing will mess with it while we explore, but I think that this will bother Kurger for some time to come. We returned to the damp room and headed further into the maze. In one room, we found a sword stuck in the floor. It didn't look special, but Finch couldn't see it in astral space. After some more examination, Finch and I left to give the sword to our weaponsmith. The squirrels are keeping our weaponsmith well fed. We wandered into a room filled with stone faces. Kurger examined them closely. They appeared to be mumbling, chanting something horrible. To his own horror, Kurger began mumbling the chant, and found he could not stop. We hurried him out of the dungeon, and Kurger had stuffed both hands in his mouth. It took hours of his obscene muttering before he was able to stop. The next day, we explored further, and found a cadaver man standing over a chest. We quickly dispatched it. In the chest, we found quite a bit of money (25 gold, 1500 silver). Kurger keeps licking our windling. We ended up in a room with a significant amount gold and silver coins. Finch stood guard, because the next room over was full of cadaver men. Kurger, Petros, and I picked up all the money (988 gold pieces of coins), then we discreetly left. We took the money out, and gave it to the unhelpful portion of the party to guard. Thankfully, the squirrels don't want to be paid for the nuts that they're feeding the other bums. The sword that we found in the crack seems to be a well made blade that has been forged several times. It is not magical (step-10 damage). We found another room filled with stainless steel statues of two huge troll warriors facing each other. A pool of blood lay between them. Finch flew into the room, and they promptly animated and tried to attack the windling. Luckily, he was able to dodge their swords and fly back out of the room. The two statues returned to their positions, resuming their vigil. We apparently cannot get across to try the doorway across the room. We went back to the damp room to consider our options. We found a huge room. Every 5-10 feet, several (4) hangman's nooses hang from the ceiling, and dangle in the breeze. Of course, there's no breeze. There's about 300 nooses inside the room. Not incredibly surprising, but Petro's astral sense says that something is terribly wrong in the room. We backed out down the hallway, and Petros decided to cast crushing will on the set of nooses right in front of the door. After destroying two nooses, the rest around the entrance raised up so we could not see them or attack them with spells. Well, Finch is truly suicidal. After Kurger restrained his impulse to shove the windling into the room, he came up with the crazy idea that we should get the dozen cadaver men to chase one of use into the noose room. Finch decided that it was a good idea too. It nearly worked, except the stupid cadaver men figured it out and noticed the windling fly toward the ceiling. They stood looking at the hovering windling. Petros and I headed out and quickly searched the cadaver men room, finding nothing. Then, we headed out to meet Kurger and Petros outside.