Picture if you will a group of adventurers on their way to consult the knowledge of a gnomish village of magic users. They head up a mountain path snaking along a cliff. It opens out into a wide shelf. The cliff on the left continues for another hundred feet before arcing to the right, creating a wall with a magnificent gate set inside. Further down a small door leads to a gardeners dwelling. Twenty feet along the left wall a three story inn has been set flush within the cliff side. Fifty feet above that another narrow shelf runs along the wall until it reaches a point directly above the main gate. A grove of trees is set in the main shelf, bisected by two paths running perpendicular to each other. All of the structures looked as if they'd been molded out of rock.
It's as idyllic a setting as the party could come across in normal circumstances. But what this group is unaware of is that they are not in normal circumstances. Without their knowing it they have entered the TAB zone . . .
This being a particularly ugly version of the TAB zone, as its filled with rotting gnomes lacking even the decency to quit moving. Be happy they haven't invented smell-o-vision yet. As we left our heroes last week four of them were watching this horror approach as two rushed to catch up. Once the group reformed they moved into combat mode.
Their main adversaries were Apocalypse Zombies and Skeletal Archers. The archers proved ineffective at hitting anything. Honestly I'm surprised none of the party were quoting Leonidas. The zombies on the other hand got in several good blows. One even decided to force itself onto Tanic. At least Tanic kept yelling rape when it grappled him, and proceeded to maul him with its teeth . . . in the neck. Once the group were done making fun of him they cleared this annoyance fairly easily.
A cursory examination showed that all of the corpses had one of two wounds, when not both. Many had large gashes in their armor/clothes that could only have been caused by a large sword. More had the puncture wounds associated with a small pistol. The odd contrast was not lost on the group.
After that investigation the group decided to check out the inn, only to find that it too was infested with zombies. But instead of skeletal archers, whatever madman had created this mess (no it wasn't me; how could you even think such a thing?) had opted to create Black Skeletons. I'd like to say they gave the group a serious headache but the truth of the matter was that they spent more time trying to figure out how to get the magic stove and invisible lights out of the inn then in dealing with these momentary annoyances.
Well, aside from that first black skeleton that did enough strength damage to drop Tanic of course.
But, once they'd cleared and spent several hours looting the inn, the question still remained; how to get into Augerhead?