Adventure Log, Session 23 Lennerd Fountainsmith
General Summary
…Bogruk had been forced to let go of Almë’s head, and took a moment and straightened his arm with a sudden jerk, the point pulling out of his wrist and freeing his arm for use. Jasper, the axe wielder, swiped it again at Eykit, hitting him but failing to penetrate. The blow was enough to knock Eykit away from Bogruk, however, and he stumbled back a few steps, reeling from the blow….
Almë’s knife was gripped in his left hand. He wasn’t very good with his off hand, but it was free, and his dominant hand was still pinned at his side by the strong arm of Bogruk the Orc-thing. Despite the thick gambeson he wore, he could swear he could feel the ropes of flesh sliding about each other as the Orcish monstrosity held him against the wall. “Shit shit shit shit!” he said, the words barely a whisper.
He struck at Bogruk’s right arm as it again started reaching for his head in order to pull it off of his body. He grimaced and moaned, the thought of the unnaturally long fingers gripping his temples making him almost squeal in fear. The knife battered desperately at the mailed arm of the reanimated Orc, glancing harmlessly without biting into any of the links.
Elitheris dropped her bow, going for her Elven rondel dagger. It was too close in the low-ceilinged pantry for archery anyway. The one shot she had gotten off had been while holding the bow at a non-optimal angle, which had made for a less than ideal shot. In a single smooth motion she pulled the dagger from its sheath and plunged it into Bogruk’s side. It was an inaccurate hit, barely grazing anything vital. “Damn it!” she complained. She had been hoping for a better strike. These kinds of creatures seemed to have a lot of unlife in them, and every little bit of injury helped.
Eykit, knocked over by Jasper’s dane axe, kipped up, going from prone to standing in a single motion. Adrenaline could do amazing things. If he weren’t in combat, fighting for his life, he never would have been able to flip up like that. If he had been more focused, he could have turned Jasper’s hit into a somersault and ended up on his feet. If he had Elitheris’ acrobatics. He would have to have her teach him sometime….
Taid advanced towards the once-human foe, who had to have been the guy called Jasper. Jasper wore gambeson and a brigandine vest. The brig was good armor, so Taid decided that taking out an arm would be his best option. A disarmed foe was almost as good as a dead one. An overhand chop came down on Jasper’s left upper arm, driving the arm down. The blade, biting deeply into the squirming flesh on the arm, hit bone and slid downward, peeling away a great flap of muscle. The tendrils at the edges of the cut flesh spread and flared outward like spastic roots, vainly trying to reattach to something. It made the wound look like it was exploding. Jasper dropped the Dane axe; it wasn’t effectively wieldable using only one arm, and his left arm hung at his side, twitching, but otherwise useless. It would take a while for the flesh to rearrange and fix the damage, time that Taid had no intention of giving him.
“How do you like that, you squirming mass of worms!” Taid said through clenched teeth.
Bogruk suddenly dropped Almë, spun, and headed for Eykit. He pulled out his mace, a steel rod with sharp flanges at the end. It looked tiny in the hands of the Orc, like a children’s toy. Jasper, meanwhile, pulled out a knife, his attention on the Dwarf who attacked his arm…and held some other things….
Almë fell from Bogruk’s grasp, no longer supported by the beefy Orc’s arm, the short fall causing a slight stumble and a surprised “Oof!” His staff hit the ground end-on, bounced once, then starting to topple over in what appeared to be slow motion. Almë quickly grabbed it before it completed its fall.
Elitheris, seeing the Orc beginning to charge towards Eykit, stuck out her foot. The hulking Orc-thing didn’t see it in time, tripped over it, and fell face first to the ground with a thud. She smiled, half surprised that it worked. She had been expecting the huge, hulking Orc to blow through her foot like it wasn’t there. She guessed she got lucky that the juggernaut of a warrior wasn’t as agile as he was strong.
Eykit wasn’t one to miss an opportunity to play a game of “perforate the Orc”, and struck quickly, hitting several times and making wounds. Too bad these Shard-enhanced zombies didn’t properly bleed. If they had, Eykit suspected that there would be a large, slippery pool of blood. As it was, the zombie only oozed a pale reddish milky fluid, in quantities too small to be satisfying. Nothing for it, he thought, I’ll just have to make a lot of little holes in it! Maybe then there will be a sufficiently-large pool of…whatever that stuff is.
Taid took a swing at Jasper’s other arm, but missed, the sword point whistling past his foe’s wrist.
Bogruk didn’t bother getting up; he just lunged for Eykit, tackling the short Goblin. Eykit was spending a lot of time on the ground for a dextrous Goblin known for his mobility. This was getting tiresome! The Orc’s legs scrabbled for purchase on the dirt floor, digging ruts as it tried to climb more fully onto Eykit.
Taid, meanwhile, felt Jasper’s blade scrape across his leg, the enchanted gambeson deflecting the cut. It likely left a cut in at least one of the layers of linen, which he would eventually have to sew back up again. But he didn’t waste time thinking about that.
Almë swung his staff, the tip slamming into the back of Bogruk’s head. The pot helm dented, but it didn’t seem to faze the reanimated Orc. By the amount of shock reverberating back up the shaft of the staff, had Bogruk been a living Orc, he’d likely have a concussion. Or at least a headache. Well, at least I found a head harder than Taid’s, he thought.
Elitheris plunged her dagger into the Orc’s leg, tearing muscle fibers as the kicking leg almost pulled the rondel out of her hands, a reddish, filmy fluid oozing out of the wound to join the small pool that Eykit had started.
Eykit, under the Orc, attacked the brute on top of him. “Get the fuck offa me!” he yelled, stabbing into the Orc’s arm. In his panic, he wasn’t able to do much damage to the undead thing. He could see the face of the thing as it leered at him, a pair of blankly staring eyes surrounded by tendrils of squirming flesh above a set of imposing teeth in a lipless mouth. It was terrifyingly close to him, and looked like it could bite off his face had it wanted to. He hoped it didn’t want to. He rather liked his face.
Taid was still focused on Jasper’s working arm. He attacked it again, but the undead human parried the blow with his own knife, forcing the point of the short sword away and down.
Jasper fought back against Taid, riposting with his own knife, but it was parried easily by Taid’s larger, heavier blade.
Bogruk dropped his mace, and started to fumble with Eykit’s clothing. Eykit didn’t know what this thing wanted, but he certainly didn’t like the implications. Being naked under the squirming-fleshed undead Orc-thing was not on his bucket list. His levels of panic were rising, and he clenched his teeth to avoid screaming in terror as he felt the clutching hands trying to get past and under his chainmail. “Ohshit-ohshit-ohshit!” he whimpered. “Getoff getoff getoff!”
Almë attacked the Orc, slamming the end of his staff into its foot, trying to cripple it. If it ever got up, Almë didn’t want it mobile enough to do anything. He could see that the Orc was doing…something…to Eykit. Something that looked rather like rape. He took a deep breath, determined that he wouldn’t let that happen.
Elitheris, assessing the situation, realized that Jasper was likely the more immediate threat, given that he was still on his feet. Almë was helping Eykit, and Jasper seemed like an easy kill. She lunged, attacking from the flank, and drove her dagger up and under the brigandine, slicing through flesh and driving deep into its intestines. She yanked the dagger out, opening up a deep gash that caused fluid to almost pour down its leg. It wasn’t quite like blood, but a mixture of other things as well. There was an odor of rot and sewage; there were things in that digestive tract that had been there when Jasper had died. Nature’s little agents had had time to work on them, and it didn’t smell very good. In fact, it smelled like the effluvia of an entire Human city that had sat in the summer sun for an entire day to her Elven nose.
Eykit frantically tried to shove his daggers into the monster’s chest, but wasn’t able to pierce the mail and gambeson armor. In addition, it was an Orc. They could run naked through a rose bush hedge and come out without a scratch; their tough hides prevented small cuts like that, and the layered armor on the Orc made his knives seem like small rose thorns. “Gods damn it get off me!” It was turning into a mantra, and he’d keep saying it to fight the fear until the Orc was gone or dead. Or both, preferably.
But that tough hide didn’t really help him against Taid’s next attack, who decided to change targets, since Elitheris was now attacking Jasper. Besides, the Orc was doing something to Eykit that was unnatural, and he didn’t approve. He saw an opportunity, with Bogruk on the ground. Taid plunged his short sword into Bogruk’s back, his entire weight on the pommel, and the point pierced the mail, slid through the gambeson, and punctured the Orcish tough hide, burying itself two inches into the meat of the Orc’s back. And he was going to keep it there, driving it in deeper every chance he got, using his great weight for extra leverage.
Jasper, however, hadn’t changed targets. He was still after Taid. Jasper could sense them on him, and he wanted them. He attacked, the knife blade punching through Taid’s leather boot and into his foot. Taid yelled in pain, his boot becoming filled with sticky blood.
Bogruk rolled, trying to move out from beneath Taid’s sword, but Taid wasn’t having any of that. “Oh no you don’t!” he said, following his target, keeping his weight on the sword and the point buried in Bogruk’s back. But the Orc-thing rolling off of Eykit allowed the Goblin to scramble out from under him like a panicked crab until the wall stopped his progress.
Almë tried to trip Jasper with a sweep of his staff, but the undead Human-thing simply leapt over it. Elitheris, too, attacked Jasper, but he was too fast for her and dodged out of the way of her dagger.
Taid, poised over the hilt of his blade, slammed his entire weight onto the pommel of his sword, driving it completely through the Orc-thing’s body and into the hard packed earth beneath him, pinning him in place. The blade bottomed out at the hilt, which lay pressed against the chainmail on Bogruk’s back, unable to slide in any farther. The Orc shuddered, then his limbs flopped down limp, the stringy flesh still squirming like worms or questing roots.
Jasper didn’t seem to notice that Bogruk was defunct and pinned to the ground. He attacked the armored Dwarf, striking him in the leg and drawing blood a second time.
Almë, moving his staff in a complicated series of arcs, knocked the knife out of Jasper’s hand, and it tumbled end over end into the far corner of the pantry, bouncing off of a barrel of sugar sitting on a shelf before coming to rest on the floor between two potatoes.
Elitheris stabbed under Jasper’s brigandine again, and again the blade slipped in deeply. She wrenched it out, and again fluid leaked out, this time flowing down his other leg. She knew it was a deep strike, but Jasper was still actively trying to kill them.
Eykit, on his back up against a wall, threw his legs forward to kip up onto his feet again, breathing hard. Meanwhile, wiggling his sword back and forth to free it, Taid pulled it out of Bogruk’s (mostly) still body, the blade grating against the Orc’s vertebrae.
Jasper, one arm crippled, the other weaponless, closed his hand into a fist and slammed it into Elitheris’ stomach. She doubled over, hurt, the wind knocked out of her. She struggled to breathe as she stumbled back a few steps.
Almë spun his staff over his head and brought one end down to slam into Jasper’s kneecap. The leg folded, and Jasper went down. He didn’t get up, but lay there, unmoving, except for the inevitable squirming of his reanimated flesh.
The group took a few moments to get their breath back, looking over the small battlefield. Taid bled from a leg and a foot. They hadn’t seen him hurt before. Usually it was someone else taking wounds, not the Dwarf. Eykit got the impression that if those wounds had been on anyone else, they would be leaving in a stretcher. As it was, Taid’s armor had protected him; his wounds were minor.
Eykit started stripping the Sharded zombies. It was distasteful, as the flesh still squirmed. He expected this, since these kinds of zombies—or whatever they were—still had that semblance of life after they died until the Shard itself was extracted. It wasn’t immediately harmful, but it was very disconcerting. And uncomfortable to look at, since it always seemed like the tendrils of flesh were coming after and growing towards the living. Eykit wasn’t sure if this was actually the case; but it was hard not to see that in his mind’s eye. And who knew what kind of parasitic infection that might cause? Was it possible for these “Sharded dead” to cause others to become zombified? Could their flesh tendrils burrow into his living flesh and control him? He didn’t know, and, if he was honest with himself, didn’t really want to know. He shoved it from his mind with a shudder.
He didn’t know the procedure of how these things were made, but they weren’t like normal zombies. Normal zombies tended to be somewhat fragile compared to these things, at least according to the rumors and stories he’d heard growing up. And once you killed them, they stayed dead. Or dead again. He honestly didn’t know what would happen if they just left the bodies here to do what they wanted. They may regenerate and come back to terrorize them again. That was a scary thought. He pulled out his knife, and went to work carving the Shards out of their backs, because that seemed to stop them completely.
He was really happy when they stopped completely. Eykit hadn’t liked being the focus, and he suspected that the pouch hidden in his pants had been what had attracted the Orc. He really didn’t like the idea that it might still have a sex drive. The thought of being pantsed by the zombie thing wasn’t pleasant. The fact that Jasper had targeted Taid likely wasn’t a coincidence either. He had the other set of Shards, taken from Lerial and Hoskins.
Unlike the Hoskins-thing, Bogruk-thing and Jasper-thing only had a single Shard in them—the control Shard. He handed them to Taid, who put them in with the others they had collected from the Shard zombies at the Vesten Estate. Only after he had put them into the pouch did Taid realize that it could have caused a pairing. But, nothing happened. Pairings were rare, after all, fortunately for them.
The zombies had been well armored, one with a chain hauberk, the other with a brigandine vest, along with the ubiquitous gambeson armor. Since everyone either had sufficient armor already, or didn’t want to deal with the weight, the two armors were slated to be sold for profit. Eykit figured that he’d be able to get around $2000 for the pair of them.
While Eykit was carving into the bodies for the Shards they contained, Taid had been busy wrapping bandages around his wounds, staunching the bleeding. Neither wound was serious, and he was planning on casting a healing spell upon himself anyway, but getting the wounds in as favorable state as possible was good practice. After he had wrapped them, waited for a bit for the blood to stop its oozing, he cast a spell of healing on them. They closed up, leaving barely a scar.
Almë and Elitheris had been looking around the room, checking what was on the shelves and looking for any secret entrances that would lead to some necromancer’s lair. They were joined by Taid, once he was done with his leg and foot. The group found that the room was exactly what it looked like: a pantry. An oil lantern hung from a hook attached to an upper shelf. There were plenty of canned goods in jars, a barrel of salted pork, and general food stores that any well-stocked house would have. He managed to find a box with three travel rations in it: nuts, dried fruit, wax-encased cheese, and some hard tack biscuits.
“Well,” Taid said, “when you have zombies for minions, you don’t have to worry about feeding the troops.”
Eventually, they climbed back out into Lennerd’s house proper, and put the wooden trap door, rushes, throw rug, and table back into place.
Then Eykit noticed that there was a stream of light coming through a hole in the waxed paper window. Peering out, he was able to see the front yard, which was empty. But to one side, he saw some opalescent mist. He suspected, based upon what Taid had told him, that it must be what that magical fog looked like to an “unfriendly”. From what he could determine, the Mist seemed to be over by where the door to the house was. “Crap”, he said, “we may have a problem.”
“What do you mean?” Taid asked.
“There may be someone waiting for us outside. They have…what do you call that magical mist we camp out in?”
“Mystic Mist,” he replied. He took a turn looking out through the hole. “Yep, you’re right. It’s Mystic Mist all right. Damn it.”
“Well, we can’t go out that way,” Elitheris stated.
“No, we can’t. Give me a moment.” He started chanting, his fingers waving about. He was casting a spell of Sense Danger. Almost immediately upon completion of it alarm bells went off in his head. “Shit,” he said, “danger within a minute. Something is out there, alright. Likely waiting for us to come out.”
“I’ll head up to the roof”, Elitheris said. “To get a better look.”
“Careful, don’t skyline yourself,” Taid mentioned, although he knew that Elitheris likely already knew that. “No need to make yourself an easy target.”
Elitheris nodded, and went to the back of the kitchen, peered out the window, saw that it appeared clear, and opened the window. She dove through it, rolled to her feet, then leapt up and grabbed a rafter tail, levering herself up to the thatched roof. Careful to put her weight only on the lattice members that held the sheaves of straw, she crawled up the relatively high pitched rooftop.
“How big is it? The Mist, I mean,” Almë asked.
“What?” Taid replied.
“The Mist. How big of an area does it cover?”
“I don’t know. We can’t tell unless we stick out head out the window. You wanna do that?”
“No. Ok. I’ll just cast Pollen Cloud over a very big area, then.”
While Elitheris was climbing on the roof, Almë cast the Pollen spell. He didn’t know how large the area of Mist was, but he was determined to cover it and more. And he did. The spell area covered the mist, most of the front yard, and half of the front yard of the neighbor’s house. Small flocks of birds flew out of the trees, disturbed by the sudden influx of itching pollen, and a squirrel fell out of the tree in the front yard, sneezing uncontrollably before scampering off across the street.
Elitheris saw an area of mist about five meters in diameter, the area tangentially touching the door. Nothing was moving in it as far as she could tell, and she couldn’t hear anything. But she couldn’t see very far into the mist anyway, so seeing no enemies in it wasn’t much of a surprise. Then, when Almë’s spell kicked in, the whole front section of the yard became dusty looking, and the local wildlife fled the area.
Taid got out his rope, tied it to his waist, and handed the other end to Almë. Then he got a better idea. He retied the rope to his belt on his left side, then used the other end to tie to his right side. He handed the middle section to Almë, who would then be able to pull on either side of the rope to “steer” Taid along. It was about the only way to try to mitigate the disorienting effects of the Mist. He opened the door, and saw only fog, slightly opalescent in the doorway.
Taid held Maggie in front of him, using the halberd as a blind man’s cane in order to both find out about the terrain in case there were hidden pit traps and to find any foes in the fog.
Mystic Mist had several effects: one was the limited visibility; another was disorientation. It was nearly impossible to walk a straight path through it. But there were other effects as well. It was frightening. He didn’t want to enter it; there was something in there that wouldn’t be affected by the deleterious effects of the mist, which included a malaise that made one’s reflexes a bit less sharp. The whole combination of effects is why he valued it so much when out in the wilderness. The fear effect alone kept predators and herd animals out. Sentient creature could enter, but they still had to overcome the fear it instilled. He took a few breaths to steady himself; even though he knew that the fear was simply an effect of the spell, it still needed to be dealt with. No matter how hard he tried, the sense of danger was there. It didn’t help that due to his earlier spell casting, he knew there was danger around. Likely somewhere in that mist, where it would be the most protected.
He went out into the mist, swinging Maggie about and poking at the ground. Almë, getting the ropes pulled in what seemed to be in random directions, tried to keep them taut and Taid under control. It was a mixed bag; within a few moments, after witnessing the end of the halberd emerging from the mist and swinging about randomly, Elitheris saw Taid pop out of the mist in the front yard. He hadn’t found anything in the Mist.
Elitheris looked around, and got a sense that there was something about the back yard that she didn’t like. Something nagged at her, but she couldn’t pin down what it was. Taid came back into the house through the rear window after untying himself and tossing the ends to where he figured the door and Almë were. While it would have been possible to use the ropes as a lead to reenter the house through the door, he really didn’t want to do that.
As he climbed in, something whacked him on the leg. It didn’t do any harm due to his armor, but it was surprising. He popped his head back out to see what it was, and a stick slammed into his face. Fortunately, his helm had a nasal on it, and he only got his bell rung. He got hit again, this time on the arm. “Ow! You bastard!” he yelled at whatever had attacked him.
And that’s when Elitheris remembered that there had been a garden gnome in the back yard, by the raised bed full of herbs, tomatoes, and greens. It wasn’t where it used to be. And apparently it had a stick. Looking down from the roof, she couldn’t see anything; but this wasn’t surprising, since the roof thatch overhung the walls by over half a meter. She crouched down near the edge, her Elven sense of perfect balance helping, and peered over the edge.
To the right of the window was a series of shelves, mostly filled with potted plants and stacks of empty clay pots and garden tools. A basket of trowels, weeders, and even a pair of gloves sat on the upper shelf. Also on the upper shelf, by the window, was the garden gnome, hitting Taid with a stick.
Taid jumped out the window, but got hung up on the windowsill. The front half of his body fell forward, his legs and hindquarters still in the house, kicking in the air. The garden gnome, armed with his stick, whacked Taid’s back with it a few times, harmlessly but noisily, as he slid over the windowsill to the ground.
Almë had gone over to the other window on that side of the house, opened it, and watched Taid exit not-so-gracefully out the window, the little garden gnome taking a couple of whacks as he did so. It was a funny sight, and he started laughing.
Elitheris stood and did a forward flip off of the roof.
Eykit climbed out onto the windowsill as soon as Taid’s hindquarters cleared it, crouching there. The gnome leaped off of the potting shelves and onto Taid’s back, no longer holding a stick, but a small knife.
Taid reached back and grabbed the gnome, his fingers closing on its shoulder. It was heavy; like a statue, rather than hollow pottery, and his angle was bad. He couldn’t budge the gnome by himself. Elitheris grabbed the gnome, and with Taid’s help, threw it off of him.
Seeing his opportunity, Eykit jumped onto the gnome before it could get up, driving its heavy stone body into the muddy, grassy loam. A part of his mind registered that Almë was still laughing at the “Great Garden Gnome Ambush” and Taid’s elegant response to it. For his part, Almë was trying to stop laughing, but he just couldn’t.
Elitheris glanced at the pottery shelving. Off to the far side were some garden tools on a rack. One of them was a mattock. It might do against the hard stone body of the garden gnome. Better than swords or knives, anyway. She headed in that direction.
Eykit continued to stand on the garden gnome. He didn’t want it getting up, so he shifted his weight as necessary as the stone figure squirmed beneath him. He was also listening to see if he could find the mage that was puppeting this thing. Had to be one around somewhere….
Taid started to get up, and realized via his knowledge of magic that the garden gnome was most likely the result of an Animation spell. It was magic that summoned a spirit to invest into an object, which it then animated as its body. It was a Necromantic spell, as were most spells that dealt with spirits. “It’s likely animated by a spirit,” he said to his companions. “Necromancy.”
The garden gnome squirmed, trying to escape, but it didn’t have enough leverage or strength to shift Eykit off of it. “At least it isn’t another of those zombie-things!” the Goblin said.
Elitheris grabbed the mattock, hefting it in her hands as she spun back towards the pesky garden gnome.
Eykit was alternating putting his weight on one foot, then the other, actively trying to bury the gnome in the mud. “How do you like me now?” he shouted at it. “It’s nice picking on someone my own size for a change!”
Taid stood, grabbing the discarded stick the gnome had been using. He could see the gnome struggling under Eykit, and it started to make a bit of headway.
Almë’s laughing had finally stopped, and he wiped tears from his eyes. He saw Elitheris charge at the gnome, the mattock raised, ready to dig a trench right through gnome. Eykit leapt back and off to avoid the heavy tool.
Taid hit the gnome with its own stick. “Take that, you little bastard.” It didn’t do anything to it; the stick wasn’t terribly large, and the gnome was made of solid stone.
The gnome tried to get up, but failed, as it was mostly buried in the mud. It would have to get some leverage before it could stand up and free itself of the mud. But it didn’t stop trying.
Almë, finally under control, cast the spell of Shape Earth. It costs him a lot of mana because the garden gnome was worked stone, but he overcame its defenses and was successful, and the garden gnome’s shape became plastic, melting and forming into four stone pickle jars, each with a lid, and each one with a different name on it.
“Almë, seriously?” Eykit said. He looked at the jars. The names were “Almë”, “Elitheris”, “Eykit”, and “Taid”. “I’m not carrying your pickles for you!” It was likely that one of the jars had a spirit in it, at least until the necromancer stopped maintaining the spell.
A short while later, while Eykit was using his parabolic hearing to scan the area again, he heard some footsteps receding, coming from the direction of the street. They hurried around the house, across the front yard, and into the yard of the house across the street. There, Elitheris noticed some marks in the bushes where it appeared as if someone had been hiding there, crouched down peering through the bushes.
Almë’s knife was gripped in his left hand. He wasn’t very good with his off hand, but it was free, and his dominant hand was still pinned at his side by the strong arm of Bogruk the Orc-thing. Despite the thick gambeson he wore, he could swear he could feel the ropes of flesh sliding about each other as the Orcish monstrosity held him against the wall. “Shit shit shit shit!” he said, the words barely a whisper.
He struck at Bogruk’s right arm as it again started reaching for his head in order to pull it off of his body. He grimaced and moaned, the thought of the unnaturally long fingers gripping his temples making him almost squeal in fear. The knife battered desperately at the mailed arm of the reanimated Orc, glancing harmlessly without biting into any of the links.
Eykit, knocked over by Jasper’s dane axe, kipped up, going from prone to standing in a single motion. Adrenaline could do amazing things. If he weren’t in combat, fighting for his life, he never would have been able to flip up like that. If he had been more focused, he could have turned Jasper’s hit into a somersault and ended up on his feet. If he had Elitheris’ acrobatics. He would have to have her teach him sometime….
“How do you like that, you squirming mass of worms!” Taid said through clenched teeth.
Bogruk suddenly dropped Almë, spun, and headed for Eykit. He pulled out his mace, a steel rod with sharp flanges at the end. It looked tiny in the hands of the Orc, like a children’s toy. Jasper, meanwhile, pulled out a knife, his attention on the Dwarf who attacked his arm…and held some other things….
Almë fell from Bogruk’s grasp, no longer supported by the beefy Orc’s arm, the short fall causing a slight stumble and a surprised “Oof!” His staff hit the ground end-on, bounced once, then starting to topple over in what appeared to be slow motion. Almë quickly grabbed it before it completed its fall.
Elitheris, seeing the Orc beginning to charge towards Eykit, stuck out her foot. The hulking Orc-thing didn’t see it in time, tripped over it, and fell face first to the ground with a thud. She smiled, half surprised that it worked. She had been expecting the huge, hulking Orc to blow through her foot like it wasn’t there. She guessed she got lucky that the juggernaut of a warrior wasn’t as agile as he was strong.
Eykit wasn’t one to miss an opportunity to play a game of “perforate the Orc”, and struck quickly, hitting several times and making wounds. Too bad these Shard-enhanced zombies didn’t properly bleed. If they had, Eykit suspected that there would be a large, slippery pool of blood. As it was, the zombie only oozed a pale reddish milky fluid, in quantities too small to be satisfying. Nothing for it, he thought, I’ll just have to make a lot of little holes in it! Maybe then there will be a sufficiently-large pool of…whatever that stuff is.
Taid took a swing at Jasper’s other arm, but missed, the sword point whistling past his foe’s wrist.
Bogruk didn’t bother getting up; he just lunged for Eykit, tackling the short Goblin. Eykit was spending a lot of time on the ground for a dextrous Goblin known for his mobility. This was getting tiresome! The Orc’s legs scrabbled for purchase on the dirt floor, digging ruts as it tried to climb more fully onto Eykit.
Taid, meanwhile, felt Jasper’s blade scrape across his leg, the enchanted gambeson deflecting the cut. It likely left a cut in at least one of the layers of linen, which he would eventually have to sew back up again. But he didn’t waste time thinking about that.
Almë swung his staff, the tip slamming into the back of Bogruk’s head. The pot helm dented, but it didn’t seem to faze the reanimated Orc. By the amount of shock reverberating back up the shaft of the staff, had Bogruk been a living Orc, he’d likely have a concussion. Or at least a headache. Well, at least I found a head harder than Taid’s, he thought.
Elitheris plunged her dagger into the Orc’s leg, tearing muscle fibers as the kicking leg almost pulled the rondel out of her hands, a reddish, filmy fluid oozing out of the wound to join the small pool that Eykit had started.
Eykit, under the Orc, attacked the brute on top of him. “Get the fuck offa me!” he yelled, stabbing into the Orc’s arm. In his panic, he wasn’t able to do much damage to the undead thing. He could see the face of the thing as it leered at him, a pair of blankly staring eyes surrounded by tendrils of squirming flesh above a set of imposing teeth in a lipless mouth. It was terrifyingly close to him, and looked like it could bite off his face had it wanted to. He hoped it didn’t want to. He rather liked his face.
Taid was still focused on Jasper’s working arm. He attacked it again, but the undead human parried the blow with his own knife, forcing the point of the short sword away and down.
Jasper fought back against Taid, riposting with his own knife, but it was parried easily by Taid’s larger, heavier blade.
Bogruk dropped his mace, and started to fumble with Eykit’s clothing. Eykit didn’t know what this thing wanted, but he certainly didn’t like the implications. Being naked under the squirming-fleshed undead Orc-thing was not on his bucket list. His levels of panic were rising, and he clenched his teeth to avoid screaming in terror as he felt the clutching hands trying to get past and under his chainmail. “Ohshit-ohshit-ohshit!” he whimpered. “Getoff getoff getoff!”
Almë attacked the Orc, slamming the end of his staff into its foot, trying to cripple it. If it ever got up, Almë didn’t want it mobile enough to do anything. He could see that the Orc was doing…something…to Eykit. Something that looked rather like rape. He took a deep breath, determined that he wouldn’t let that happen.
Elitheris, assessing the situation, realized that Jasper was likely the more immediate threat, given that he was still on his feet. Almë was helping Eykit, and Jasper seemed like an easy kill. She lunged, attacking from the flank, and drove her dagger up and under the brigandine, slicing through flesh and driving deep into its intestines. She yanked the dagger out, opening up a deep gash that caused fluid to almost pour down its leg. It wasn’t quite like blood, but a mixture of other things as well. There was an odor of rot and sewage; there were things in that digestive tract that had been there when Jasper had died. Nature’s little agents had had time to work on them, and it didn’t smell very good. In fact, it smelled like the effluvia of an entire Human city that had sat in the summer sun for an entire day to her Elven nose.
Eykit frantically tried to shove his daggers into the monster’s chest, but wasn’t able to pierce the mail and gambeson armor. In addition, it was an Orc. They could run naked through a rose bush hedge and come out without a scratch; their tough hides prevented small cuts like that, and the layered armor on the Orc made his knives seem like small rose thorns. “Gods damn it get off me!” It was turning into a mantra, and he’d keep saying it to fight the fear until the Orc was gone or dead. Or both, preferably.
But that tough hide didn’t really help him against Taid’s next attack, who decided to change targets, since Elitheris was now attacking Jasper. Besides, the Orc was doing something to Eykit that was unnatural, and he didn’t approve. He saw an opportunity, with Bogruk on the ground. Taid plunged his short sword into Bogruk’s back, his entire weight on the pommel, and the point pierced the mail, slid through the gambeson, and punctured the Orcish tough hide, burying itself two inches into the meat of the Orc’s back. And he was going to keep it there, driving it in deeper every chance he got, using his great weight for extra leverage.
Jasper, however, hadn’t changed targets. He was still after Taid. Jasper could sense them on him, and he wanted them. He attacked, the knife blade punching through Taid’s leather boot and into his foot. Taid yelled in pain, his boot becoming filled with sticky blood.
Bogruk rolled, trying to move out from beneath Taid’s sword, but Taid wasn’t having any of that. “Oh no you don’t!” he said, following his target, keeping his weight on the sword and the point buried in Bogruk’s back. But the Orc-thing rolling off of Eykit allowed the Goblin to scramble out from under him like a panicked crab until the wall stopped his progress.
Almë tried to trip Jasper with a sweep of his staff, but the undead Human-thing simply leapt over it. Elitheris, too, attacked Jasper, but he was too fast for her and dodged out of the way of her dagger.
Taid, poised over the hilt of his blade, slammed his entire weight onto the pommel of his sword, driving it completely through the Orc-thing’s body and into the hard packed earth beneath him, pinning him in place. The blade bottomed out at the hilt, which lay pressed against the chainmail on Bogruk’s back, unable to slide in any farther. The Orc shuddered, then his limbs flopped down limp, the stringy flesh still squirming like worms or questing roots.
Jasper didn’t seem to notice that Bogruk was defunct and pinned to the ground. He attacked the armored Dwarf, striking him in the leg and drawing blood a second time.
Almë, moving his staff in a complicated series of arcs, knocked the knife out of Jasper’s hand, and it tumbled end over end into the far corner of the pantry, bouncing off of a barrel of sugar sitting on a shelf before coming to rest on the floor between two potatoes.
Elitheris stabbed under Jasper’s brigandine again, and again the blade slipped in deeply. She wrenched it out, and again fluid leaked out, this time flowing down his other leg. She knew it was a deep strike, but Jasper was still actively trying to kill them.
Eykit, on his back up against a wall, threw his legs forward to kip up onto his feet again, breathing hard. Meanwhile, wiggling his sword back and forth to free it, Taid pulled it out of Bogruk’s (mostly) still body, the blade grating against the Orc’s vertebrae.
Jasper, one arm crippled, the other weaponless, closed his hand into a fist and slammed it into Elitheris’ stomach. She doubled over, hurt, the wind knocked out of her. She struggled to breathe as she stumbled back a few steps.
Almë spun his staff over his head and brought one end down to slam into Jasper’s kneecap. The leg folded, and Jasper went down. He didn’t get up, but lay there, unmoving, except for the inevitable squirming of his reanimated flesh.
The group took a few moments to get their breath back, looking over the small battlefield. Taid bled from a leg and a foot. They hadn’t seen him hurt before. Usually it was someone else taking wounds, not the Dwarf. Eykit got the impression that if those wounds had been on anyone else, they would be leaving in a stretcher. As it was, Taid’s armor had protected him; his wounds were minor.
Eykit started stripping the Sharded zombies. It was distasteful, as the flesh still squirmed. He expected this, since these kinds of zombies—or whatever they were—still had that semblance of life after they died until the Shard itself was extracted. It wasn’t immediately harmful, but it was very disconcerting. And uncomfortable to look at, since it always seemed like the tendrils of flesh were coming after and growing towards the living. Eykit wasn’t sure if this was actually the case; but it was hard not to see that in his mind’s eye. And who knew what kind of parasitic infection that might cause? Was it possible for these “Sharded dead” to cause others to become zombified? Could their flesh tendrils burrow into his living flesh and control him? He didn’t know, and, if he was honest with himself, didn’t really want to know. He shoved it from his mind with a shudder.
He didn’t know the procedure of how these things were made, but they weren’t like normal zombies. Normal zombies tended to be somewhat fragile compared to these things, at least according to the rumors and stories he’d heard growing up. And once you killed them, they stayed dead. Or dead again. He honestly didn’t know what would happen if they just left the bodies here to do what they wanted. They may regenerate and come back to terrorize them again. That was a scary thought. He pulled out his knife, and went to work carving the Shards out of their backs, because that seemed to stop them completely.
He was really happy when they stopped completely. Eykit hadn’t liked being the focus, and he suspected that the pouch hidden in his pants had been what had attracted the Orc. He really didn’t like the idea that it might still have a sex drive. The thought of being pantsed by the zombie thing wasn’t pleasant. The fact that Jasper had targeted Taid likely wasn’t a coincidence either. He had the other set of Shards, taken from Lerial and Hoskins.
Unlike the Hoskins-thing, Bogruk-thing and Jasper-thing only had a single Shard in them—the control Shard. He handed them to Taid, who put them in with the others they had collected from the Shard zombies at the Vesten Estate. Only after he had put them into the pouch did Taid realize that it could have caused a pairing. But, nothing happened. Pairings were rare, after all, fortunately for them.
The zombies had been well armored, one with a chain hauberk, the other with a brigandine vest, along with the ubiquitous gambeson armor. Since everyone either had sufficient armor already, or didn’t want to deal with the weight, the two armors were slated to be sold for profit. Eykit figured that he’d be able to get around $2000 for the pair of them.
While Eykit was carving into the bodies for the Shards they contained, Taid had been busy wrapping bandages around his wounds, staunching the bleeding. Neither wound was serious, and he was planning on casting a healing spell upon himself anyway, but getting the wounds in as favorable state as possible was good practice. After he had wrapped them, waited for a bit for the blood to stop its oozing, he cast a spell of healing on them. They closed up, leaving barely a scar.
Almë and Elitheris had been looking around the room, checking what was on the shelves and looking for any secret entrances that would lead to some necromancer’s lair. They were joined by Taid, once he was done with his leg and foot. The group found that the room was exactly what it looked like: a pantry. An oil lantern hung from a hook attached to an upper shelf. There were plenty of canned goods in jars, a barrel of salted pork, and general food stores that any well-stocked house would have. He managed to find a box with three travel rations in it: nuts, dried fruit, wax-encased cheese, and some hard tack biscuits.
“Well,” Taid said, “when you have zombies for minions, you don’t have to worry about feeding the troops.”
Eventually, they climbed back out into Lennerd’s house proper, and put the wooden trap door, rushes, throw rug, and table back into place.
“What do you mean?” Taid asked.
“There may be someone waiting for us outside. They have…what do you call that magical mist we camp out in?”
“Mystic Mist,” he replied. He took a turn looking out through the hole. “Yep, you’re right. It’s Mystic Mist all right. Damn it.”
“Well, we can’t go out that way,” Elitheris stated.
“No, we can’t. Give me a moment.” He started chanting, his fingers waving about. He was casting a spell of Sense Danger. Almost immediately upon completion of it alarm bells went off in his head. “Shit,” he said, “danger within a minute. Something is out there, alright. Likely waiting for us to come out.”
“I’ll head up to the roof”, Elitheris said. “To get a better look.”
“Careful, don’t skyline yourself,” Taid mentioned, although he knew that Elitheris likely already knew that. “No need to make yourself an easy target.”
Elitheris nodded, and went to the back of the kitchen, peered out the window, saw that it appeared clear, and opened the window. She dove through it, rolled to her feet, then leapt up and grabbed a rafter tail, levering herself up to the thatched roof. Careful to put her weight only on the lattice members that held the sheaves of straw, she crawled up the relatively high pitched rooftop.
“How big is it? The Mist, I mean,” Almë asked.
“What?” Taid replied.
“The Mist. How big of an area does it cover?”
“I don’t know. We can’t tell unless we stick out head out the window. You wanna do that?”
“No. Ok. I’ll just cast Pollen Cloud over a very big area, then.”
While Elitheris was climbing on the roof, Almë cast the Pollen spell. He didn’t know how large the area of Mist was, but he was determined to cover it and more. And he did. The spell area covered the mist, most of the front yard, and half of the front yard of the neighbor’s house. Small flocks of birds flew out of the trees, disturbed by the sudden influx of itching pollen, and a squirrel fell out of the tree in the front yard, sneezing uncontrollably before scampering off across the street.
Elitheris saw an area of mist about five meters in diameter, the area tangentially touching the door. Nothing was moving in it as far as she could tell, and she couldn’t hear anything. But she couldn’t see very far into the mist anyway, so seeing no enemies in it wasn’t much of a surprise. Then, when Almë’s spell kicked in, the whole front section of the yard became dusty looking, and the local wildlife fled the area.
Taid got out his rope, tied it to his waist, and handed the other end to Almë. Then he got a better idea. He retied the rope to his belt on his left side, then used the other end to tie to his right side. He handed the middle section to Almë, who would then be able to pull on either side of the rope to “steer” Taid along. It was about the only way to try to mitigate the disorienting effects of the Mist. He opened the door, and saw only fog, slightly opalescent in the doorway.
Taid held Maggie in front of him, using the halberd as a blind man’s cane in order to both find out about the terrain in case there were hidden pit traps and to find any foes in the fog.
Mystic Mist had several effects: one was the limited visibility; another was disorientation. It was nearly impossible to walk a straight path through it. But there were other effects as well. It was frightening. He didn’t want to enter it; there was something in there that wouldn’t be affected by the deleterious effects of the mist, which included a malaise that made one’s reflexes a bit less sharp. The whole combination of effects is why he valued it so much when out in the wilderness. The fear effect alone kept predators and herd animals out. Sentient creature could enter, but they still had to overcome the fear it instilled. He took a few breaths to steady himself; even though he knew that the fear was simply an effect of the spell, it still needed to be dealt with. No matter how hard he tried, the sense of danger was there. It didn’t help that due to his earlier spell casting, he knew there was danger around. Likely somewhere in that mist, where it would be the most protected.
He went out into the mist, swinging Maggie about and poking at the ground. Almë, getting the ropes pulled in what seemed to be in random directions, tried to keep them taut and Taid under control. It was a mixed bag; within a few moments, after witnessing the end of the halberd emerging from the mist and swinging about randomly, Elitheris saw Taid pop out of the mist in the front yard. He hadn’t found anything in the Mist.
Elitheris looked around, and got a sense that there was something about the back yard that she didn’t like. Something nagged at her, but she couldn’t pin down what it was. Taid came back into the house through the rear window after untying himself and tossing the ends to where he figured the door and Almë were. While it would have been possible to use the ropes as a lead to reenter the house through the door, he really didn’t want to do that.
As he climbed in, something whacked him on the leg. It didn’t do any harm due to his armor, but it was surprising. He popped his head back out to see what it was, and a stick slammed into his face. Fortunately, his helm had a nasal on it, and he only got his bell rung. He got hit again, this time on the arm. “Ow! You bastard!” he yelled at whatever had attacked him.
And that’s when Elitheris remembered that there had been a garden gnome in the back yard, by the raised bed full of herbs, tomatoes, and greens. It wasn’t where it used to be. And apparently it had a stick. Looking down from the roof, she couldn’t see anything; but this wasn’t surprising, since the roof thatch overhung the walls by over half a meter. She crouched down near the edge, her Elven sense of perfect balance helping, and peered over the edge.
To the right of the window was a series of shelves, mostly filled with potted plants and stacks of empty clay pots and garden tools. A basket of trowels, weeders, and even a pair of gloves sat on the upper shelf. Also on the upper shelf, by the window, was the garden gnome, hitting Taid with a stick.
Almë had gone over to the other window on that side of the house, opened it, and watched Taid exit not-so-gracefully out the window, the little garden gnome taking a couple of whacks as he did so. It was a funny sight, and he started laughing.
Elitheris stood and did a forward flip off of the roof.
Eykit climbed out onto the windowsill as soon as Taid’s hindquarters cleared it, crouching there. The gnome leaped off of the potting shelves and onto Taid’s back, no longer holding a stick, but a small knife.
Taid reached back and grabbed the gnome, his fingers closing on its shoulder. It was heavy; like a statue, rather than hollow pottery, and his angle was bad. He couldn’t budge the gnome by himself. Elitheris grabbed the gnome, and with Taid’s help, threw it off of him.
Seeing his opportunity, Eykit jumped onto the gnome before it could get up, driving its heavy stone body into the muddy, grassy loam. A part of his mind registered that Almë was still laughing at the “Great Garden Gnome Ambush” and Taid’s elegant response to it. For his part, Almë was trying to stop laughing, but he just couldn’t.
Elitheris glanced at the pottery shelving. Off to the far side were some garden tools on a rack. One of them was a mattock. It might do against the hard stone body of the garden gnome. Better than swords or knives, anyway. She headed in that direction.
Eykit continued to stand on the garden gnome. He didn’t want it getting up, so he shifted his weight as necessary as the stone figure squirmed beneath him. He was also listening to see if he could find the mage that was puppeting this thing. Had to be one around somewhere….
Taid started to get up, and realized via his knowledge of magic that the garden gnome was most likely the result of an Animation spell. It was magic that summoned a spirit to invest into an object, which it then animated as its body. It was a Necromantic spell, as were most spells that dealt with spirits. “It’s likely animated by a spirit,” he said to his companions. “Necromancy.”
The garden gnome squirmed, trying to escape, but it didn’t have enough leverage or strength to shift Eykit off of it. “At least it isn’t another of those zombie-things!” the Goblin said.
Elitheris grabbed the mattock, hefting it in her hands as she spun back towards the pesky garden gnome.
Eykit was alternating putting his weight on one foot, then the other, actively trying to bury the gnome in the mud. “How do you like me now?” he shouted at it. “It’s nice picking on someone my own size for a change!”
Taid stood, grabbing the discarded stick the gnome had been using. He could see the gnome struggling under Eykit, and it started to make a bit of headway.
Almë’s laughing had finally stopped, and he wiped tears from his eyes. He saw Elitheris charge at the gnome, the mattock raised, ready to dig a trench right through gnome. Eykit leapt back and off to avoid the heavy tool.
Taid hit the gnome with its own stick. “Take that, you little bastard.” It didn’t do anything to it; the stick wasn’t terribly large, and the gnome was made of solid stone.
The gnome tried to get up, but failed, as it was mostly buried in the mud. It would have to get some leverage before it could stand up and free itself of the mud. But it didn’t stop trying.
Almë, finally under control, cast the spell of Shape Earth. It costs him a lot of mana because the garden gnome was worked stone, but he overcame its defenses and was successful, and the garden gnome’s shape became plastic, melting and forming into four stone pickle jars, each with a lid, and each one with a different name on it.
“Almë, seriously?” Eykit said. He looked at the jars. The names were “Almë”, “Elitheris”, “Eykit”, and “Taid”. “I’m not carrying your pickles for you!” It was likely that one of the jars had a spirit in it, at least until the necromancer stopped maintaining the spell.
A short while later, while Eykit was using his parabolic hearing to scan the area again, he heard some footsteps receding, coming from the direction of the street. They hurried around the house, across the front yard, and into the yard of the house across the street. There, Elitheris noticed some marks in the bushes where it appeared as if someone had been hiding there, crouched down peering through the bushes.
Rewards Granted
2 CP for session 23
3 Traveller’s rations
4 stone pickle jars, which once used to be a garden gnome.
3 Traveller’s rations
4 stone pickle jars, which once used to be a garden gnome.
Missions/Quests Completed
Progress was made on the Quest to Stop Lennerd Fountainsmith
Character(s) interacted with
Bogruk, a Sharded zombie
Jasper, a Sharded zombie
An animated garden gnome
Jasper, a Sharded zombie
An animated garden gnome
Report Date
11 Mar 2023
Primary Location
Secondary Location
Related Characters
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