Bancroft#
The morning was cold and gray in Helix. Bancroft woke early, already thinking about the barrows.
They had hired five henchmen from the Gray Company — a local band who took on lesser jobs while their better-equipped brethren sought greater treasures. Nine gold for the lot. Bancroft hoped it would be money well spent.
Gillix and Ragnar were both mute — Gillix with a spear and a battered Viking helmet and a habit of gesturing at people’s crotches that Bancroft decided not to ask about, Ragnar with a crossbow and a quiet devotion to St. Yig. Hengest was the torchbearer, a big man who talked enough for all of them. Landersooth carried a club and smelled of fish and kept looking over his shoulder. “They can’t find you in there, right?” he said, when asked why he was coming. And Mordu — burned badly down his left side, the skin still raw. When someone offered him a torch, he told them where to put it. The nerves were too close. Bancroft understood that.
He lent Gillix his sling, bought a lantern and supplies, and told Hengest to keep the torch lit at all costs. SeaCrock spent a long time explaining a rope harness system that nobody else understood. Bancroft reminded the party of Sylvanus’s mission: find the Nergulite priest and put an end to him.
The path to the Barrowmaze was quiet. They gave wide berth to a pond of giant toads — huge things, big as dogs — and lost an hour for it, but nobody wanted a fight that early in the day.
They entered through the skull barrow, the one with the sarcophagus mechanism. Hengest lit the first torch and Bancroft took the lead with his shield up. The zombie corpse they had left in the hallway last time was gone. That was not a good sign. Once a zombie was dead, it should stay dead. But the barrows had their own ideas about that.
Squeaking from the east — rats feeding on something. Buzzing from the north — flies near a statue. Neither sound was inviting.
In the north passage they found a small chamber with a pyramid-shaped cairn of stacked rocks. Crude writing on the wall read: “Beware the dark water.” Bancroft didn’t know what it meant, but he knew to take a warning seriously in a place like this. Gillix poked the cairn with his spear. Nothing inside but dirt and old stone.
Bancroft kicked the door open. At the same moment, they heard cries from the south — “Please help me!” and a baby wailing. He knew a trick when he heard one. The barrows played games with sound.
The room beyond held three piles of rocks with coins embedded in them. Then two of the piles stood up.
Hunched-over things, about four feet tall, with long claws and cloaks of rubble. Three of them: one with a single eye, one with too many tusks, one with enormous feet. They bolted into the darkness before anyone could move, dropping coins behind them.
The henchmen scrambled for the scattered coins. Landersooth shook his head the whole time. “That was some ghost shit right there,” he said.
“Don’t care,” Irulan said. “Pick up the coins. The coins are real.”
The buzzing led them toward a broken statue — head missing, arms reduced to stumps. Then the sound swelled into something alive.
Horse flies the size of cats. Five of them, their wings glistening in the torchlight. Giant carnivorous flies.
A fly dove at Ragnar and missed, its mouthparts clicking as it passed. A fly hit Landersooth in the face — its barbed proboscis burrowed into his mouth, and his screams cut off as blood spurted from his nose and ears. Dead before he hit the ground. A fly tore into Mordu’s neck, hooks digging into flesh, dragging him down. Dead before Bancroft could raise his shield. A fly caught Irulan with a glancing blow — drew blood, but nothing worse.
Two men dead in seconds. The torchlight flickered across their bodies and the flies burrowing into their open mouths, and Bancroft felt something go cold inside him.
Giant carnivorous flies attack the party in the barrow corridor, killing two henchmen in seconds
Hengest’s torch burned out mid-fight.
Then Ragnar went down. The last active fly crawled into his mouth. The crossbowman who had prayed to St. Yig made a choking sound and was still.
“I killed the fly,” Irulan said. That was all she said.
Irulan drives her longsword through Ragnar's body to kill the fly inside
Then the second torch sputtered out. Total darkness.
Bancroft's shield erupts with green divine light in the total darkness of the barrow
Five flies dead. Three henchmen dead: Landersooth, Mordu, Ragnar. Two deserted: Gillix and Hengest, gone into the dark. They took Ragnar’s crossbow from his body. Gillix had run off with Bancroft’s sling.
They slipped inside and closed the door. Bancroft lit his lantern and set SeaCrock to watch the sleeping flies while he and Irulan searched.
SeaCrock went quiet after that. When he looked up, his eyes were different.
They had about ten minutes before the sleeping flies would wake. That was when the door burst open.
The three dead henchmen stood in the doorway. Landersooth, Mordu, Ragnar. Their eyes were flat and empty and their arms hung loose at their sides, and two of them still had their mouths hanging open with flies buzzing inside. They were zombies, and they had come back for the people who had left them behind.
A zombie caught SeaCrock with a glancing blow. “That would have killed me twenty minutes ago,” he said through gritted teeth.
Two zombies swung at Irulan and missed. The third — what was left of Ragnar — lurched toward one of the sleeping flies and struck it, waking it. The fly’s wings buzzed to life.
The three dead henchmen stand in the doorway as zombies, flies still buzzing in their open mouths
They ran.
Irulan grabbed SeaCrock by the collar and dragged him out. Bancroft stood in the doorway and raised his holy symbol, calling on Sylvanus to turn the dead. Nothing happened. The zombies kept coming. He tried again, spent everything he had left. Still nothing.
Sylvanus’s power was not with him today. Not for healing. Not for turning the dead. Not for anything that mattered.
Bancroft slammed the door shut and braced it with his weight. Behind it, he could hear the zombies and the flies colliding — the wet crunch of dead fists hitting chitin, the buzz of wings against stone. Let them sort each other out. One zombie hadn’t made it through in time. It stood in the hallway, its dead eyes fixed on the green light of Bancroft’s shield.
The zombie swung and missed. SeaCrock’s Magic Missile punched into its shoulder. Irulan drove her longsword into its chest — the thing staggered, dark fluid leaking from the wound. Bancroft brought his sword around and connected solidly. The zombie went down.
It shuddered once, trying to rise. Then it was still. Permanently.
They moved toward the skull barrow exit. Bancroft’s shield still glowed with Sylvanus’s light, casting green shadows on the walls. His side still bled where the fly had bitten him. Somewhere behind them, the sounds of zombies fighting flies echoed down the stone corridors.
Something was ahead of them now. Something between them and the way out. They could hear it in the dark — a sound they couldn’t identify, growing closer with each step.
Bancroft gripped his sword and kept walking. Three dead henchmen risen as the things they had come here to fight. Two more fled into the barrows, maybe dead already, maybe worse. And now something new waited ahead, and they were wounded and spent and a long way from daylight.
The green light on his shield flickered once, and held.
This session report was written with the help of AI. For details on the process, see Transcribing D&D Sessions with WhisperX and Speaker Diarization.