Adventure Log, Session 24, Lennerd's Lab
General Summary
Lennerd had run off, heading southward, towards the outskirts of the city and the expanse of farmland and hedgerows. But he had been there, watching his house from his hiding spot in some bushes across the street as his garden gnome tried to defend his house. He couldn’t see what was happening, as all of the action was at the rear of his house, and he was watching the front. But he could hear it.
And that confused him, a little; the loudest noise he heard at first was mirthful laughing, punctuated by shouts and some clattering. As he listened, he tried to put the scene together in his head. He was known for having at least some creativity and imagination, after all. But as he tried to piece the fight together, he came up with nothing. It didn’t make sense.
Then he heard a shout of triumph, along with something about pickles. They were joking around? That meant only one thing, since his garden gnome was a tough, homicidal munchkin made of solid stone. It should have been able to last in physical combat for quite some time; beating on a stone statue with a sword was damn near ineffective. It was why he liked the animation technique. Statues made very difficult and hard to stop opponents for those people that vexed him. And he could say, with all truthfulness, that he didn’t lay a hand on them. In case that was even necessary….
The fight must be over, and the people that had broken into his house and found out about Bogruk and Jasper had won. He didn’t even think any of them were wounded, given the sounds of levity and lack of painful screaming. Dammit, he had thought, maybe my garden gnome was just too small to do anything significant to a seasoned warrior.
It was then that he took off, running as fast as his legs could carry him. He didn’t know how fast those four people and their dog were, but he wanted as much of a head start as possible.
———————————————
Elitheris crouched down behind the bushes, staring at the boot heel marks in the dirt. They were clustered, with many scuffed and smeared, showing that whomever had hid there had been there a while, and had shifted his weight multiple times. All signs pointed to an active watcher. They had been observed. How did he know to come home? she thought. He was supposed to be at whatever warehouse he worked for. What tipped him off?
Standing, she turned and looked around, and saw a series of flattened marks in the grass heading southward, between the houses that made up this neighborhood.
“He went that way,” she said, indicating with a finger.
“You’re the tracker,” Taid said, “can you follow him?”
Elitheris cocked her head, silently staring at him.
“Of course you can,” he said, hurriedly.
Eykit spoke up, “Too bad Mr. Wiggles isn’t a bloodhound!”
The dog in question was sniffing around the corner of the house. He lifted his leg, leaving a wet mark on the wattle and daub corner. He strutted back, looking oddly pleased with himself. As Elitheris watched, he got distracted, veering off to sniff at some bushes several meters away.
Mr. Wiggles was a border collie and pitbull cross breed, barely trained besides being a simple companion animal. Elitheris, and the rest of her companions, had had little time to actively train him, merely snatching a few minutes here, an hour there, in an attempt to get a start on some solid training. Fortunately, he seemed to understand who to attack, and hadn’t yet attacked anyone they didn’t want him to.
But it was only a matter of time before he made that mistake. They would need to spend some quality time with him to get him used to verbal and gestural commands, and to make them stick. Until then, he was a bit…unreliable.
Elitheris started following the spoor of their quarry. At first, his trail was fairly obvious: footprints, flattened spots in the grass, areas of brush that lacked dewdrops where he must have brushed by. She lost the trail when it went into the fields. It was harvest time, and the fields were full of people working to get the harvest in, and the fields were trampled. Teasing out which footprints were his was difficult.
“Gods damn it,” she muttered, “I lost the trail.”
“Now what?” Almë asked.
“We find it again.” She held her arms out, describing a sixty degree angle. “He’s out that way, somewhere.” She sighed. “I’ll have to sort of spiral out within that arc, and hope I pick up his trail again.”
Eykit rubbed his face. “Argh. That is going to take a while, isn’t it?”
Elitheris simply nodded.
She got to it. Hundreds of meters farther away and over an hour later, she found a trail that might have been Lennerd’s. It skirted fields, crossed irrigation canals, and, at one point, she almost lost the trail again as it seemed that Lennerd had run through the irrigation canal for several dozen meters before continuing on his original course. Fortunately, Elitheris knew that trick, and half expected it every time they came to an irrigation ditch.
By late afternoon, they came up a low rise. Beyond it, downslope and situated amid a series of fields, was a dilapidated, abandoned farm house. From the front they could see a small hole in the roof, and all of the windows were boarded up. It was in dire need of repair, even more so than the Vesten Estate. It looked like no one had been there for several years.
There was an integral barn to one side, connected to the house. There was also a garden shed, the remains of some structure, of which only the struts survived, and a paver courtyard with a fountain. The courtyard surrounded an “island” or mound with trees and bushes, in addition to some disheveled flowers grown amok. The yard, like the house, needed some attention. The pavers were tilted and weed-grown; running across it could be a trip hazard. The fountain was half filled with scummy water, choked with water weeds, duckweed, and mud. It was likely a mosquito breeding ground. In the center of the fountain was a statue of a nymph holding a tilted bowl, presumably where the water flowed out. It was carved out of marble, but covered in algae and moss.
No water flowed from it now, however. Its water source, a tower now reduced to some struts with debris around it, could no longer function.
They all eyed the statue warily. Taid stepped onto the lip of the pool, then hopped to the center stand which supported the nymph, avoiding getting his feet wet. He applied pressure to the upraised arm of the statue, trying to pull it down, or rotate it in some way. It didn’t move, so he hung from it, using his significant weight. Again, it didn’t move.
He grunted in disappointment. He had been hoping it was a lever or something that would make the fountain shift to one side, exposing a secret underground lair. If there was an underground lair, it wasn’t accessed by the fountain.
Almë, Elitheris, Taid, and Eykit saw no movement near the house. This wasn’t surprising, as all of the windows were boarded up. They stealthily moved towards the front door, until they stood on the porch.
Taid lifted his foot.
“Wait!” Eykit said. “I can pick—“
Taid’s foot crashed into the door, which was unimpressed and didn’t give way.
Eykit tried again. “I can—“
Taid slammed his shoulder into the door. He bounced off of it, the door holding yet again.
“—pick the lock.”
Taid looked at him. “Okay. Your turn.”
Eykit sighed, shook his head, and applied his lock picks. In a few seconds, the simple lock was sprung. Eykit stood, and gestured at the door with his signature grin. “All yours. Try it now.”
Taid opened the door. It swung open, exposing a dark foyer. It took a few seconds for their eyes to adjust. A stairway led upwards to their left, the stairs looking rather rickety and dangerous. The windows were also boarded up on the inside in addition to on the outside. To the left was a room, filled with debris, garbage, and dust. The place had a musty, dusty smell, mixed with something organic. Ahead of them, through a doorway, part of what must have been a kitchen at one time lay in ruins, filled with debris and less recognizable trash. Lath lay exposed where plaster had fallen from areas of the walls and ceiling. To the right was a room that had been swept, with a cot, a side table, and a small table with a chair. The small table had a plate and fork, crumbs and smears of some liquid on the plate.
Elitheris drew several arrows, nocking one, and holding the others in her bow hand, ready for use.
Since the room to the right had been inhabited recently, it was obviously a point of interest, and the group moved into that room. As soon as they did, they heard movement from the unlit adjoining room. They saw movement in the dimness, and heard the sounds of clinking metal and thudding footsteps on the floorboards.
Two zombies ran at them, both carrying swords and shields. One wore a chainmail shirt and gambeson pants, a pot helm on his skeletal head. The other was dressed in gambeson armor, with an old, rusty, damaged corselet on his chest.
Homer, a.k.a. the first skeleton
Both were skeletons, either zombified as skeletons, or they had been zombies long enough for their flesh to rot completely off. Unlike their flesh-encumbered brethren, they were quick, and ate up the distance between them and their foes in a flash.
Krennic, a.k.a. the second skeleton
Almë waited, his staff ready, already planning on sweeping the chainmailed skeleton off his feet. Eykit pulled out his daggers, also waiting until the two zombies got closer before attacking.
The armored skeleton rushed in, and Almë swung the staff low, aiming at the lower legs, but the skeleton parried the wooden staff, deflecting its path and avoiding the strike. Its sword swung up, counterattacking immediately. Almë parried easily.
Elitheris drew back and loosed at point blank range. The arrow slammed through the chainmail, glancing off of a rib, and stuck out the back, the finger-thick arrow transfixing the empty ribcage of the skeleton. “Shit!” she said, “that wasn’t very effective!”
With skeletons, there just wasn’t much flesh to damage. They were mostly empty space.
Taid, his halberd “Maggie” ready, swung at the second, corselet-wearing skeleton as it approached, slamming the axe blade into the skeleton’s shield which it used to block the attack. It sank into the wooden shield, tearing out a chunk as the skeleton staggered to one side under the force of the blow. The second skeleton stepped towards Taid, but the blow had slowed its advance and pushed it back around the corner.
After parrying the first skeleton’s attack, Almë spun the staff in a complicated whirl, levering the shield off of the skeleton’s arm and flinging it across the room, where it clattered into the cot. Almë grinned, rather pleased with the result of his attack.
Eykit, blocked by his companions, started moving around them to get a good angle on the enemies. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see the first skeleton, now shieldless, attacking Almë, and Almë almost nonchalantly knocking the blade aside. He also saw a flash of white and silver, low to the ground, grab onto the first skeleton’s leg. Mr. Wiggles had joined in, and looked like he wanted a chew toy.
Elitheris realized that her arrows did, at best, minimal damage. She tossed them aside, drawing her rondel dagger. It wasn’t optimized for slashing, but it had an edge, and it was sharp. It felt odd in her hand, gripped sword style, rather than in an icepick grip. But stabbing into these things wouldn’t be any better than her arrows. She could hear her dog’s signature growl as he started to worry at the first skeleton’s leg.
Taid readjusted his grip on Maggie, readying it for another attack.
The plate armored skeleton took a swing at the Dwarf, but Taid danced back, out of the way.
Almë tried to sweep the skeleton again, and again it parried his attack.
Eykit saw an opportunity. These guys were fairly light, and with the armor, top heavy. If he slammed into their knees…. He ducked down, slamming his shoulder into the second skeleton’s knees in a tackle. Unfortunately for Eykit, the Goblin was pretty lightweight himself, and barely made the skeleton move. But, if nothing else, he was an encumbering weight on the leg, much like Mr. Wiggles.
The first skeleton attacked Almë again, trying to get past the Elf’s defenses, and again failed to land a blow.
Elitheris, coming in from Almë’s side, slashed at the skeleton’s arm, cutting through some of the links and feeling it hit the bone beneath.
Taid used the hook on his pole arm to pull the second skeleton’s shield out of line, then shoved the top spike forward into the rusty corselet. It plunged in, making another hole in it, and he did not pull it out. He was planning on steering this skeleton around, if he could.
The skeleton, before Taid could readjust his grip on the shaft of his halberd, struck his arm, knocking his hand off, leaving a gash through the gambeson on his arm. Blood welled up, soaking the layers of linen. Taid growled in pain, and shook his hand; the blow to his arm had caused pins and needles to suffuse his fingers. He got his hand back on the shaft of his weapon. If he had been using a one-handed weapon, he would have been disarmed, the weapon somewhere across the room.
Almë was getting tired of his enemy parrying his attacks. The skeleton was pretty good, and seemed to be almost untouchable, despite having lost its shield. He had to sneak in an attack somehow. He attacked high, drawing the skeleton’s attention there, following up with a pair of attacks.
Eykit, his slam unsuccessful, doubled down and wrapped his arms about the skeleton’s legs, acting like a pair of living shackles.
The first skeleton attacked Almë again, following up after parrying Almë’s strike towards its head, but Almë was ready for it and parried it easily.
Elitheris went for the arm again, cutting through the old chainmail, her enchanted blade parting several rings before cutting through the radius bone. The sword fell from the skeleton’s hand, which seem to clench and release spastically. The old arming sword clattered on the wooden floor, missing Mr. Wiggles by mere centimeters.
Taid stepped forward, driving the skeleton on the end of his halberd back as well, in an attempt to topple him over. The skeleton managed to stay on its feet, however, much to Taid’s frustrated chagrin.
But that wasn’t going to work for much longer, not with a Goblin wrapped about its legs and a Dwarf trying to push it around. It reversed the sword, stabbing down into Eykit’s neck, opening up a deep gash in the deltoid muscle as the sword tip slid down the scapula and out his back. It would be a while before the Goblin would be able to use his arm effectively again.
Almë’s feint paid off as his two attacks slammed into the skeleton’s upper leg, breaking its hip and crippling both of its legs. It toppled to the ground, and its bones, no longer animated by magic, fell apart, the skull clunking as it rolled to rest against the wall, the helmet still strapped to its head. Its eye sockets gazed emptily at the ceiling.
Eykit could feel his back covered in warm wetness, and he got woozy, then everything went black as he toppled unconscious to the floor.
Elitheris, seeing Eykit fall, strode over to the second skeleton and slashed at its arm, cutting through the gambeson and biting into bone.
Taid, likely with the unconscious Eykit’s help, managed to topple the second skeleton over. It fell with a crash, and Taid started shoving it away from Eykit, sliding it along the floorboards. Now on its back, the skeleton struck out at the halberd itself, nicking the wood just below the langets as Taid pulled the spike out of its ribcage.
With an overhand chopping blow, Almë slammed his staff into the second skeleton’s leg, shattering the femur. The lower leg, no longer connected to the rest of it, fell out of the pant leg, twitching.
Elitheris aimed a kick at it, but it rolled aside.
Taid swung down, slamming the axe blade into its chest again. At the very least, if it didn’t kill it, the force of the blow should keep it from being able to get up. Maggie bit deep, but only managed to put a six inch gash in the rusty steel.
Almë, taking advantage of the skeleton’s prone position, slammed the end of his staff into its bony face, shattering it and causing teeth to spray across the floor. It stopped moving, whatever magic animating it dispersing.
Skeletons, while suffering minimal (at best) damage from impaling weapons, seemed to be vulnerable to crushing weapons, like staves and maces.
Taid immediately saw to Eykit, whose back was drenched in blood. Elitheris cast a spell of Stop Bleeding, one of the ones she self taught herself all those many years ago. The flood of blood slowed, then stopped.
Getting the chainmail and gambeson armor off of him, Taid could see the wound. Eykit wasn’t in good shape. The sword point had entered near the back of the neck, and the blade had slid downward across the shoulder blade until it emerged again about halfway down Eykit’s back, leaving a deep gash and a flap of muscle and skin. Taid pushed the flesh back where it belonged, and started chanting, casting a spell of healing major wounds.
Motes of subliminal light swirled around his fingers, then collected in the wound and along its edges like sutures of living light. The wound was large, too large for the spell to fully heal. He bound Eykit’s shoulder with bandages, packing it with herbs known to stave off infection.
While Taid dealt with Eykit’s wound, Elitheris and Almë looked about the room. There was one other room that had been cleared and cleaned, it was apparently a laboratory, somewhat like Herbert Vesten’s, but not nearly as professional. Two tables, wood and stained with blood and other fluids, had been set up in the center of the room. Reagents in jars, bags, pouches, and even loose, lay on any flat space available. What those reagents did was anyone’s guess. Likely used for necromancy.
In the side table was a drawer, and in it were an ink well, some quills, pencils, and chalk, some blank sheets of paper, and three letters from other members of the necromancer circle.
“Now that you are able to walk,” Almë said, “we can check out the rest of this house.”
The house was a mess, with the exception of the two rooms that Lennerd had cleaned up. Upstairs was even worse, given that the roof had caved in and was completely open to the elements in a couple of the rooms. Most of the rooms upstairs had been furnished with several bunkbeds, all destroyed by time and weather. This house had obviously been a bunkhouse for farmworkers, years ago.
The windows were boarded up on the second floor, as well, although these windows hadn’t been boarded up on the inside, unlike the windows on the first floor.
Finding nothing of value, the all went back downstairs, stepping as lightly as they could. They could feel how soft some of the wood of the treads were. And the whole staircase swayed a bit.
“He’s not here,” Taid stated. “But he’s got to be around here somewhere.”
“Hiding in the bushes again?” Elitheris asked.
“Probably,” Eykit said. “He’s done that before.”
“Or he could be in that shed,” Almë mentioned.
“Let’s go find him,” Taid suggested. There was a door from the makeshift laboratory to the covered patio and courtyard at the rear of the house. He unbarred the door, unlocked it, and opened it.
And saw an opalescent fog obscuring the doorway. He shut the door.
“Shit, he’s misted us again.”
“I’ll check the front door,” Eykit said, hurrying off to do so. A moment later they heard a door open, then slam closed again. “Same at the front door,” he said as he ran back to the rest of the group. “There’s holes in the roof. Let’s check those!”
Taid stated, “He couldn’t have cast too many of them, they are expensive, and take five minutes to cast!”
“Well, he’s had plenty of time while we have been exploring his house.”
They went back up the rickety stairway. As they tramped up the stairs, a baluster fell out, loudly bouncing off of a pile of rubble that might once have been a chest of drawers. They ignored it. Lennerd obviously knew they were there anyway.
They reached one of the rooms that had a gaping hole where the roof should have been. Taid boosted Eykit up, and the Goblin carefully peeked past the cracked tiles of the roof, trying to get a view of the courtyard. He could see into the courtyard, and noticed two things: the first was that there was a large blob of mist at the back door, very much like what they saw at Lennerd’s domicile. The second was that the pool no longer had a statue centerpiece. He would have to climb up the roof’s slope to the ridge in order to see anything to the front of the house.
“Statue’s gone,” Eykit told his companions.
“I knew it!” Taid exclaimed softly. “I knew that nymph was going to be trouble!”
“Can you see where it is?” Almë called up from the room below.
“No. I suspect it’s in the mist,” Eykit replied. “Unless we want to spend forever removing boards from a window, I suggest we exit via the roof.”
They all climbed up the rubble, careful to step on only the most stable parts, and hoisted themselves up onto the roof. Taid handed Mr. Wiggles up to Elitheris, and she put him down upon the tile roof. He stood on the slope, shivering, whining a little, unwilling to move lest he slide off the roof to the pavers below. Soon they all stood upon the tiles of the second story roof, some eight meters above the ground below. Below them was the covered porch. They could see the surrounding landscape all around them.
Elitheris scanned the surrounding farmlands, looking for movement. Specifically, she was looking to see if Lennerd was running off again. She saw lots of movement and people in the farmlands around the house, but it was just farmhands harvesting crops. She didn’t see a rogue necromancer high tailing it away from the house.
The rest of her companions were climbing down onto the porch roof, a story below. She handed her dog down, keeping a grip on his armor. Almë held him until Elitheris climbed down herself. She didn’t just hop down as would be her standard method of dropping that distance; the porch looked too unstable to handle that kind of weight at that speed.
Then they dropped from the porch roof to the ground.
At which point they heard the sound of heavy stone footsteps on old boards, and the nymph statue, animated now, holding her bowl in one hand and a large wooden cudgel in the other, burst from the mist like a charging bull.
Almë started casting the spell of earth shaping. He knew how to deal with stone enemies. Eykit and Elitheris started running towards the shed to keep as much distance as possible between them and the charging statue. They figured that getting hit by that huge cudgel, wielded by that statue, would hurt…a lot. And they weren’t wrong. Mr. Wiggles charged forward to attack the thing that was threatening his pack, tried to clamp his jaws on its leg, but the statue hopped over him, continuing to charge towards Taid and Almë. Taid braced himself, ready for the nymph’s attack.
The nymph wasn’t terribly fast, but it looked inexorable and inevitable. Boards cracked under its weight as it pounded towards them. Then Almë completed his cast, the motes of light visible only to mages swirled about his arm and hand as he raised it towards the oncoming statue. There was a subliminal flash as the motes curled towards the nymph, suffused it, then caused the nymph statue to morph into dozens of fist-sized balls of marble. The spheres continued moving towards Almë and Taid, their momentum conserved, and they bounced loudly all over the deck and pavers until they finally rolled to a stop, their energy spent. Mr. Wiggles, confused at the sudden loss of a target, barked and spun about wildly trying to figure out where it went.
The necromancer, watching from his hiding place, seethed silently as he watched his main weapon completely fall apart. He was shocked; he hadn’t expected that. There had been no hesitation, as if that earth mage Elf had been in that situation before. And now he knew what had most likely taken out his gnome. He winced, worried, and readied his staff. They would find him soon.
Almë, Eykit, and Taid all took a few of the spheres of marble, figuring they might be useful as missiles later. Eykit tried to listen for any noises from the mass of mist at the other end of the covered porch, but heard nothing. If the mage was in there, he wasn’t moving. And if he had been in there, Eykit would have expected some spells to come from that direction.
Then they all looked at the shed. The only place they could think of where that necromancer might still be. They went over to it, and Elitheris slid the door open.
Before she got it open too far, a staff flashed out of the dark opening and hit her in the gut. She turned away, her muscles cramping as nausea and dizziness overwhelmed her. She stumbled away from the opening, her lunch coming up. She vomited, her eyes watering. She could smell bile and gangrene.
Almë shouted, “Give yourself up, wizard! We may let you live!” Eykit readied his knives, and Taid pulled out a flask of lantern oil, tossing it into the shed where it broke, splashing oil upon whatever was in there.
A circle of distortion, like looking through wavy glass, encircled the group, rising up from the ground. It took a moment for them to see it, but only Eykit and Taid had the time to jump out of the circle. Elitheris never got a chance to notice it, since she was puking her guts out, Mr. Wiggles didn’t realize it was a problem, and Almë was focused on the wizard. The distortion continued up until it met above their heads.
Almë ran forward, into the shed. He saw two figures in there, one was a man with a staff, and behind him, a small girl in a pink dress. Then he hit the inside of the force dome, face first. He stumbled back, barely able to keep his feet.
Lennerd Fountainsmith
Lucia Fountainsmith
The wizard smiled, the fight finally going in his favor.
The fight must be over, and the people that had broken into his house and found out about Bogruk and Jasper had won. He didn’t even think any of them were wounded, given the sounds of levity and lack of painful screaming. Dammit, he had thought, maybe my garden gnome was just too small to do anything significant to a seasoned warrior.
It was then that he took off, running as fast as his legs could carry him. He didn’t know how fast those four people and their dog were, but he wanted as much of a head start as possible.
———————————————
Elitheris crouched down behind the bushes, staring at the boot heel marks in the dirt. They were clustered, with many scuffed and smeared, showing that whomever had hid there had been there a while, and had shifted his weight multiple times. All signs pointed to an active watcher. They had been observed. How did he know to come home? she thought. He was supposed to be at whatever warehouse he worked for. What tipped him off?
Standing, she turned and looked around, and saw a series of flattened marks in the grass heading southward, between the houses that made up this neighborhood.
“He went that way,” she said, indicating with a finger.
“You’re the tracker,” Taid said, “can you follow him?”
Elitheris cocked her head, silently staring at him.
“Of course you can,” he said, hurriedly.
Eykit spoke up, “Too bad Mr. Wiggles isn’t a bloodhound!”
The dog in question was sniffing around the corner of the house. He lifted his leg, leaving a wet mark on the wattle and daub corner. He strutted back, looking oddly pleased with himself. As Elitheris watched, he got distracted, veering off to sniff at some bushes several meters away.
Mr. Wiggles was a border collie and pitbull cross breed, barely trained besides being a simple companion animal. Elitheris, and the rest of her companions, had had little time to actively train him, merely snatching a few minutes here, an hour there, in an attempt to get a start on some solid training. Fortunately, he seemed to understand who to attack, and hadn’t yet attacked anyone they didn’t want him to.
But it was only a matter of time before he made that mistake. They would need to spend some quality time with him to get him used to verbal and gestural commands, and to make them stick. Until then, he was a bit…unreliable.
Elitheris started following the spoor of their quarry. At first, his trail was fairly obvious: footprints, flattened spots in the grass, areas of brush that lacked dewdrops where he must have brushed by. She lost the trail when it went into the fields. It was harvest time, and the fields were full of people working to get the harvest in, and the fields were trampled. Teasing out which footprints were his was difficult.
“Gods damn it,” she muttered, “I lost the trail.”
“Now what?” Almë asked.
“We find it again.” She held her arms out, describing a sixty degree angle. “He’s out that way, somewhere.” She sighed. “I’ll have to sort of spiral out within that arc, and hope I pick up his trail again.”
Eykit rubbed his face. “Argh. That is going to take a while, isn’t it?”
Elitheris simply nodded.
She got to it. Hundreds of meters farther away and over an hour later, she found a trail that might have been Lennerd’s. It skirted fields, crossed irrigation canals, and, at one point, she almost lost the trail again as it seemed that Lennerd had run through the irrigation canal for several dozen meters before continuing on his original course. Fortunately, Elitheris knew that trick, and half expected it every time they came to an irrigation ditch.
By late afternoon, they came up a low rise. Beyond it, downslope and situated amid a series of fields, was a dilapidated, abandoned farm house. From the front they could see a small hole in the roof, and all of the windows were boarded up. It was in dire need of repair, even more so than the Vesten Estate. It looked like no one had been there for several years.
There was an integral barn to one side, connected to the house. There was also a garden shed, the remains of some structure, of which only the struts survived, and a paver courtyard with a fountain. The courtyard surrounded an “island” or mound with trees and bushes, in addition to some disheveled flowers grown amok. The yard, like the house, needed some attention. The pavers were tilted and weed-grown; running across it could be a trip hazard. The fountain was half filled with scummy water, choked with water weeds, duckweed, and mud. It was likely a mosquito breeding ground. In the center of the fountain was a statue of a nymph holding a tilted bowl, presumably where the water flowed out. It was carved out of marble, but covered in algae and moss.
They all eyed the statue warily. Taid stepped onto the lip of the pool, then hopped to the center stand which supported the nymph, avoiding getting his feet wet. He applied pressure to the upraised arm of the statue, trying to pull it down, or rotate it in some way. It didn’t move, so he hung from it, using his significant weight. Again, it didn’t move.
Almë, Elitheris, Taid, and Eykit saw no movement near the house. This wasn’t surprising, as all of the windows were boarded up. They stealthily moved towards the front door, until they stood on the porch.
“Wait!” Eykit said. “I can pick—“
Taid’s foot crashed into the door, which was unimpressed and didn’t give way.
Eykit tried again. “I can—“
Taid slammed his shoulder into the door. He bounced off of it, the door holding yet again.
“—pick the lock.”
Taid looked at him. “Okay. Your turn.”
Eykit sighed, shook his head, and applied his lock picks. In a few seconds, the simple lock was sprung. Eykit stood, and gestured at the door with his signature grin. “All yours. Try it now.”
Taid opened the door. It swung open, exposing a dark foyer. It took a few seconds for their eyes to adjust. A stairway led upwards to their left, the stairs looking rather rickety and dangerous. The windows were also boarded up on the inside in addition to on the outside. To the left was a room, filled with debris, garbage, and dust. The place had a musty, dusty smell, mixed with something organic. Ahead of them, through a doorway, part of what must have been a kitchen at one time lay in ruins, filled with debris and less recognizable trash. Lath lay exposed where plaster had fallen from areas of the walls and ceiling. To the right was a room that had been swept, with a cot, a side table, and a small table with a chair. The small table had a plate and fork, crumbs and smears of some liquid on the plate.
Elitheris drew several arrows, nocking one, and holding the others in her bow hand, ready for use.
Since the room to the right had been inhabited recently, it was obviously a point of interest, and the group moved into that room. As soon as they did, they heard movement from the unlit adjoining room. They saw movement in the dimness, and heard the sounds of clinking metal and thudding footsteps on the floorboards.
Two zombies ran at them, both carrying swords and shields. One wore a chainmail shirt and gambeson pants, a pot helm on his skeletal head. The other was dressed in gambeson armor, with an old, rusty, damaged corselet on his chest.
Both were skeletons, either zombified as skeletons, or they had been zombies long enough for their flesh to rot completely off. Unlike their flesh-encumbered brethren, they were quick, and ate up the distance between them and their foes in a flash.
Almë waited, his staff ready, already planning on sweeping the chainmailed skeleton off his feet. Eykit pulled out his daggers, also waiting until the two zombies got closer before attacking.
The armored skeleton rushed in, and Almë swung the staff low, aiming at the lower legs, but the skeleton parried the wooden staff, deflecting its path and avoiding the strike. Its sword swung up, counterattacking immediately. Almë parried easily.
Elitheris drew back and loosed at point blank range. The arrow slammed through the chainmail, glancing off of a rib, and stuck out the back, the finger-thick arrow transfixing the empty ribcage of the skeleton. “Shit!” she said, “that wasn’t very effective!”
With skeletons, there just wasn’t much flesh to damage. They were mostly empty space.
After parrying the first skeleton’s attack, Almë spun the staff in a complicated whirl, levering the shield off of the skeleton’s arm and flinging it across the room, where it clattered into the cot. Almë grinned, rather pleased with the result of his attack.
Eykit, blocked by his companions, started moving around them to get a good angle on the enemies. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see the first skeleton, now shieldless, attacking Almë, and Almë almost nonchalantly knocking the blade aside. He also saw a flash of white and silver, low to the ground, grab onto the first skeleton’s leg. Mr. Wiggles had joined in, and looked like he wanted a chew toy.
Elitheris realized that her arrows did, at best, minimal damage. She tossed them aside, drawing her rondel dagger. It wasn’t optimized for slashing, but it had an edge, and it was sharp. It felt odd in her hand, gripped sword style, rather than in an icepick grip. But stabbing into these things wouldn’t be any better than her arrows. She could hear her dog’s signature growl as he started to worry at the first skeleton’s leg.
Taid readjusted his grip on Maggie, readying it for another attack.
The plate armored skeleton took a swing at the Dwarf, but Taid danced back, out of the way.
Almë tried to sweep the skeleton again, and again it parried his attack.
Eykit saw an opportunity. These guys were fairly light, and with the armor, top heavy. If he slammed into their knees…. He ducked down, slamming his shoulder into the second skeleton’s knees in a tackle. Unfortunately for Eykit, the Goblin was pretty lightweight himself, and barely made the skeleton move. But, if nothing else, he was an encumbering weight on the leg, much like Mr. Wiggles.
The first skeleton attacked Almë again, trying to get past the Elf’s defenses, and again failed to land a blow.
Elitheris, coming in from Almë’s side, slashed at the skeleton’s arm, cutting through some of the links and feeling it hit the bone beneath.
Taid used the hook on his pole arm to pull the second skeleton’s shield out of line, then shoved the top spike forward into the rusty corselet. It plunged in, making another hole in it, and he did not pull it out. He was planning on steering this skeleton around, if he could.
The skeleton, before Taid could readjust his grip on the shaft of his halberd, struck his arm, knocking his hand off, leaving a gash through the gambeson on his arm. Blood welled up, soaking the layers of linen. Taid growled in pain, and shook his hand; the blow to his arm had caused pins and needles to suffuse his fingers. He got his hand back on the shaft of his weapon. If he had been using a one-handed weapon, he would have been disarmed, the weapon somewhere across the room.
Eykit, his slam unsuccessful, doubled down and wrapped his arms about the skeleton’s legs, acting like a pair of living shackles.
The first skeleton attacked Almë again, following up after parrying Almë’s strike towards its head, but Almë was ready for it and parried it easily.
Elitheris went for the arm again, cutting through the old chainmail, her enchanted blade parting several rings before cutting through the radius bone. The sword fell from the skeleton’s hand, which seem to clench and release spastically. The old arming sword clattered on the wooden floor, missing Mr. Wiggles by mere centimeters.
Taid stepped forward, driving the skeleton on the end of his halberd back as well, in an attempt to topple him over. The skeleton managed to stay on its feet, however, much to Taid’s frustrated chagrin.
But that wasn’t going to work for much longer, not with a Goblin wrapped about its legs and a Dwarf trying to push it around. It reversed the sword, stabbing down into Eykit’s neck, opening up a deep gash in the deltoid muscle as the sword tip slid down the scapula and out his back. It would be a while before the Goblin would be able to use his arm effectively again.
Almë’s feint paid off as his two attacks slammed into the skeleton’s upper leg, breaking its hip and crippling both of its legs. It toppled to the ground, and its bones, no longer animated by magic, fell apart, the skull clunking as it rolled to rest against the wall, the helmet still strapped to its head. Its eye sockets gazed emptily at the ceiling.
Eykit could feel his back covered in warm wetness, and he got woozy, then everything went black as he toppled unconscious to the floor.
Elitheris, seeing Eykit fall, strode over to the second skeleton and slashed at its arm, cutting through the gambeson and biting into bone.
Taid, likely with the unconscious Eykit’s help, managed to topple the second skeleton over. It fell with a crash, and Taid started shoving it away from Eykit, sliding it along the floorboards. Now on its back, the skeleton struck out at the halberd itself, nicking the wood just below the langets as Taid pulled the spike out of its ribcage.
With an overhand chopping blow, Almë slammed his staff into the second skeleton’s leg, shattering the femur. The lower leg, no longer connected to the rest of it, fell out of the pant leg, twitching.
Elitheris aimed a kick at it, but it rolled aside.
Taid swung down, slamming the axe blade into its chest again. At the very least, if it didn’t kill it, the force of the blow should keep it from being able to get up. Maggie bit deep, but only managed to put a six inch gash in the rusty steel.
Almë, taking advantage of the skeleton’s prone position, slammed the end of his staff into its bony face, shattering it and causing teeth to spray across the floor. It stopped moving, whatever magic animating it dispersing.
Skeletons, while suffering minimal (at best) damage from impaling weapons, seemed to be vulnerable to crushing weapons, like staves and maces.
Taid immediately saw to Eykit, whose back was drenched in blood. Elitheris cast a spell of Stop Bleeding, one of the ones she self taught herself all those many years ago. The flood of blood slowed, then stopped.
Getting the chainmail and gambeson armor off of him, Taid could see the wound. Eykit wasn’t in good shape. The sword point had entered near the back of the neck, and the blade had slid downward across the shoulder blade until it emerged again about halfway down Eykit’s back, leaving a deep gash and a flap of muscle and skin. Taid pushed the flesh back where it belonged, and started chanting, casting a spell of healing major wounds.
Motes of subliminal light swirled around his fingers, then collected in the wound and along its edges like sutures of living light. The wound was large, too large for the spell to fully heal. He bound Eykit’s shoulder with bandages, packing it with herbs known to stave off infection.
While Taid dealt with Eykit’s wound, Elitheris and Almë looked about the room. There was one other room that had been cleared and cleaned, it was apparently a laboratory, somewhat like Herbert Vesten’s, but not nearly as professional. Two tables, wood and stained with blood and other fluids, had been set up in the center of the room. Reagents in jars, bags, pouches, and even loose, lay on any flat space available. What those reagents did was anyone’s guess. Likely used for necromancy.
In the side table was a drawer, and in it were an ink well, some quills, pencils, and chalk, some blank sheets of paper, and three letters from other members of the necromancer circle.
Heatdaze 23 Greetings, LF! I got him working! Thanks for the tip on using burning sage, rather than burnt sage. Odd thing about rituals…details count. A lot more than most people think. The Elves have known this for millennia, but we Humans take a little longer to figure that out (or at least I did). Jelly seems to take orders well. I’ve got him doing the laundry at the moment. Well not THE laundry; I can’t have the servants seeing him. Might cause a bit of a stir. No, he’s just doing some of my clothes. I had to show him how to use the washboard, though. Seems that the poor guy had never done his own laundry. I’m starting to wonder if this guy had servants of his own before he died. Doesn’t matter, really. Don’t know why, but I’m sort of actually curious about his life, now that he is dead. Kind of dead? What term should we use for this? He’s not technically a zombie, at least, not in the traditional sense. More like a new kind of classification. Or do you think that it’s just another pathway to the same destination? I know HV has his opinion on the matter, especially now that he’s started working with live subjects. But I wanted your opinion, being the traditionalist that you are. So, is Jelly a zombie, or something else? Does how we get there matter, or is it only the final result that makes the difference? Yours Truly, Nigel
Heatdaze 27 Hello, Lennerd, Congratulations on your successful foray into the unknown! I realize your conservatism, and I must admit that I was in that state of mind myself, for a while. But, as I am sure you have discovered, the qualities of the Shards are too great to ignore. It makes things so much easier, in so many different ways. Not, perhaps, the creation process—traditional zombies are simple, in comparison. But they rot, stink, and eventually turn to brittle skeletons. Herbert had the right idea about mummifying them first. Kept them vital for much longer, and the preservative oil he developed acted as a kind of perfume. Wish I’d thought of it. I probably would have, eventually. The weather is nice here. Not as hot as in the valley, and there are some days, while I am doing my thinking on the porch, that I think I can see your house from here. It’s not true, of course; I can’t see through those little bumps you call hills in your neck of the woods. Plus the atmospheric haze is a bit too great. Too many miles of air getting in the way. Elves—even Aarakocra—can’t see through all the stuff that’s floating in the air. Dust, pollen, bugs, water vapor, smoke. All kinds of stuff we breathe in day after day. Makes me wish I had more filters. I miss the clean, still air of the undercities sometimes. One of these days I will have to find a pet enchanter and marry him. Make him make me things. I don’t envy your position. Stuck in town, having secrets. Not living amongst the townsfolk is a blessing; I sleep fine at night. Although, like you, I have defenses set up, both to alert me of visitors and to help me deal with them. Just before I penned this little missive to you I was blowing the leaves off of my courtyard, using Air Jet and pretending that the leaves were intruders. I could almost hear their screams as they flew over the edge and down the mountainside. What can I say? It amused me. If you have to clean, you might as well make it interesting, right? Ugh. I’m rambling. Now I’m starting to sound like Herbert! Sorry. Modok’s transformation went well, and is formidable. I thought he was strong before, but now? He was able to carry in excess of 1500lbs! I haven’t mapped out all of his other abilities yet, but he is fast. Much faster than someone his size should be. At least, normally. I’m still devising experiments to push him, to test him. There is a certain amount of variation with the creation techniques we are using. It’s interesting. Like an inherent chaos, an added randomness that is both surprising and frustrating. I’d really like to come up with a way to make it more predictable. But it’s early days still. We’ll get there. Yours, Kallia
Hi, L You know, you really shouldn’t be so insulting to M. He’s a bright guy, and nice to boot. Just because he’s an Orc doesn’t mean you should be uncivil. There. Got that off my chest. Had to. Okay. I did some digging on these Shards. We all know they came from Jypra, after it blew up and spewed these things all over Velyri. My sources told me (in their roundabout, threat-filled, obfuscating way) that our suspicion about them is true. There is a sort of semi-sentience lingering in them. It’s only the tiniest memory of a shadow, but it’s there. Which is fortunate, because it’s the thing giving us the hooks we need to use them. My sources (you know who they are) tell me they have no idea who or what that sentience might be, but as you know, they lie. Often, with an almost metronome-like regularity. It’s in their nature. Razor has been cultivating some friends. And by friends, I mean bloodsucking parasite strix. A whole flock of them. He keeps them away from the house, though, thank the gods. Disgusting creatures. I think he goes out of his way to feed them things. I feel sorry for the local rabbits, rodents, and fawns. Anyway, I should probably get back to my projects. And I’ve got more letters to write. Later, JCTaid gave Eykit a slap to wake him up. “Ow,” he said, rubbing his face. “Are they dead?” He looked around. Two skeletons lay on the floor. Mr. Wiggles gnawed on a bone, the very picture of a happy dog. Eykit grinned, then winced as he felt the wound in his back twinge. But the pain wasn’t really all that bad. He was a little surprised; that blow had been bad, and he knew it.
“Now that you are able to walk,” Almë said, “we can check out the rest of this house.”
The house was a mess, with the exception of the two rooms that Lennerd had cleaned up. Upstairs was even worse, given that the roof had caved in and was completely open to the elements in a couple of the rooms. Most of the rooms upstairs had been furnished with several bunkbeds, all destroyed by time and weather. This house had obviously been a bunkhouse for farmworkers, years ago.
The windows were boarded up on the second floor, as well, although these windows hadn’t been boarded up on the inside, unlike the windows on the first floor.
Finding nothing of value, the all went back downstairs, stepping as lightly as they could. They could feel how soft some of the wood of the treads were. And the whole staircase swayed a bit.
“He’s not here,” Taid stated. “But he’s got to be around here somewhere.”
“Hiding in the bushes again?” Elitheris asked.
“Probably,” Eykit said. “He’s done that before.”
“Or he could be in that shed,” Almë mentioned.
“Let’s go find him,” Taid suggested. There was a door from the makeshift laboratory to the covered patio and courtyard at the rear of the house. He unbarred the door, unlocked it, and opened it.
And saw an opalescent fog obscuring the doorway. He shut the door.
“Shit, he’s misted us again.”
“I’ll check the front door,” Eykit said, hurrying off to do so. A moment later they heard a door open, then slam closed again. “Same at the front door,” he said as he ran back to the rest of the group. “There’s holes in the roof. Let’s check those!”
Taid stated, “He couldn’t have cast too many of them, they are expensive, and take five minutes to cast!”
“Well, he’s had plenty of time while we have been exploring his house.”
They went back up the rickety stairway. As they tramped up the stairs, a baluster fell out, loudly bouncing off of a pile of rubble that might once have been a chest of drawers. They ignored it. Lennerd obviously knew they were there anyway.
They reached one of the rooms that had a gaping hole where the roof should have been. Taid boosted Eykit up, and the Goblin carefully peeked past the cracked tiles of the roof, trying to get a view of the courtyard. He could see into the courtyard, and noticed two things: the first was that there was a large blob of mist at the back door, very much like what they saw at Lennerd’s domicile. The second was that the pool no longer had a statue centerpiece. He would have to climb up the roof’s slope to the ridge in order to see anything to the front of the house.
“Statue’s gone,” Eykit told his companions.
“I knew it!” Taid exclaimed softly. “I knew that nymph was going to be trouble!”
“Can you see where it is?” Almë called up from the room below.
“No. I suspect it’s in the mist,” Eykit replied. “Unless we want to spend forever removing boards from a window, I suggest we exit via the roof.”
They all climbed up the rubble, careful to step on only the most stable parts, and hoisted themselves up onto the roof. Taid handed Mr. Wiggles up to Elitheris, and she put him down upon the tile roof. He stood on the slope, shivering, whining a little, unwilling to move lest he slide off the roof to the pavers below. Soon they all stood upon the tiles of the second story roof, some eight meters above the ground below. Below them was the covered porch. They could see the surrounding landscape all around them.
Elitheris scanned the surrounding farmlands, looking for movement. Specifically, she was looking to see if Lennerd was running off again. She saw lots of movement and people in the farmlands around the house, but it was just farmhands harvesting crops. She didn’t see a rogue necromancer high tailing it away from the house.
The rest of her companions were climbing down onto the porch roof, a story below. She handed her dog down, keeping a grip on his armor. Almë held him until Elitheris climbed down herself. She didn’t just hop down as would be her standard method of dropping that distance; the porch looked too unstable to handle that kind of weight at that speed.
Then they dropped from the porch roof to the ground.
At which point they heard the sound of heavy stone footsteps on old boards, and the nymph statue, animated now, holding her bowl in one hand and a large wooden cudgel in the other, burst from the mist like a charging bull.
The nymph wasn’t terribly fast, but it looked inexorable and inevitable. Boards cracked under its weight as it pounded towards them. Then Almë completed his cast, the motes of light visible only to mages swirled about his arm and hand as he raised it towards the oncoming statue. There was a subliminal flash as the motes curled towards the nymph, suffused it, then caused the nymph statue to morph into dozens of fist-sized balls of marble. The spheres continued moving towards Almë and Taid, their momentum conserved, and they bounced loudly all over the deck and pavers until they finally rolled to a stop, their energy spent. Mr. Wiggles, confused at the sudden loss of a target, barked and spun about wildly trying to figure out where it went.
The necromancer, watching from his hiding place, seethed silently as he watched his main weapon completely fall apart. He was shocked; he hadn’t expected that. There had been no hesitation, as if that earth mage Elf had been in that situation before. And now he knew what had most likely taken out his gnome. He winced, worried, and readied his staff. They would find him soon.
Almë, Eykit, and Taid all took a few of the spheres of marble, figuring they might be useful as missiles later. Eykit tried to listen for any noises from the mass of mist at the other end of the covered porch, but heard nothing. If the mage was in there, he wasn’t moving. And if he had been in there, Eykit would have expected some spells to come from that direction.
Then they all looked at the shed. The only place they could think of where that necromancer might still be. They went over to it, and Elitheris slid the door open.
Before she got it open too far, a staff flashed out of the dark opening and hit her in the gut. She turned away, her muscles cramping as nausea and dizziness overwhelmed her. She stumbled away from the opening, her lunch coming up. She vomited, her eyes watering. She could smell bile and gangrene.
Almë shouted, “Give yourself up, wizard! We may let you live!” Eykit readied his knives, and Taid pulled out a flask of lantern oil, tossing it into the shed where it broke, splashing oil upon whatever was in there.
A circle of distortion, like looking through wavy glass, encircled the group, rising up from the ground. It took a moment for them to see it, but only Eykit and Taid had the time to jump out of the circle. Elitheris never got a chance to notice it, since she was puking her guts out, Mr. Wiggles didn’t realize it was a problem, and Almë was focused on the wizard. The distortion continued up until it met above their heads.
Almë ran forward, into the shed. He saw two figures in there, one was a man with a staff, and behind him, a small girl in a pink dress. Then he hit the inside of the force dome, face first. He stumbled back, barely able to keep his feet.
The wizard smiled, the fight finally going in his favor.
Rewards Granted
2 CP
I suppose the fist sized marble balls count as loot.
I suppose the fist sized marble balls count as loot.
Report Date
24 Mar 2023
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