Chapter 7: The Challenge Phase

The Crypt Titan was the former dungeon lord of the Ossuary and the first dungeon lord to fall to the crusades. An army flooded the bone-lined halls, and the skeletal giant devoured wave after wave as it crawled down the passages. Here, war was waged in its most antique form. Underfoot, bodies and parts of bodies were trampled until the ground was slick and there was a terrible stink from the wet innards.

The Ossuary became so littered with internalments that the huge form of the Crypt Titan was entangled and slowed. Passages behind the thing were choked with bodies and passages in front of it bristled with resistance.

Shoulder to shoulder, the crusaders beat and bashed the Crypt Titan’s arms from its body, and with a cry, crushed its skull to nothingness. It stopped moving. By the end of the battle, ten-score crusaders had been felled.

Of the two-hundred to die in the battle, fifty rose again from (seemingly) deadly wounds. All were amazed, and it was declared a miracle. And yet, the other fallen were no less restless. Those dead who were utterly desiccated by the Titan’s jaws became howling specters. Those who were merely crushed by the Titan’s bulk struggled up as zombies. And thus was the Crusade of the Ossuary declared victorious.