Silva hops up on Sez and they move to P22 on the right flank.
"I see. Can you tell me anything else about what happened to the cart? Did you see anything strange?"
Hailina moves to P16 and begins to cast something, touching her chest as a soft soothing light eminates from her fingertips.
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"Zombies. Fast ones. Not your run of the mill shamblers," Chalice announces to the others with a scowl. Here she thought she was just going to play fetch with slow potato farmers.
She holds an orb out in one hand, focusing a blast of destructive magic through the trinket and out towards the center zombie, then moves backwards to give some buffer space between her and the undead.
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Destructive Blast - Explosive Orb
Target: I-22
Range: 35ft
Area: 15ft radius
Save: DC17 Reflex for half
Move Action - Move
Same here.
Hailina casts a spell, storing positive energy within herself, in case it is needed.
Chalice casts a destructive blast, and all the zombies are damaged, but they continue on.
Gow makes a grasping motion with his hands, and the underbrush in front of the undead reaches up and tries to restrain them.
Silva calmly talks to Sez, "Hit from right to left." Then to the others, "Come from the left side, and keep a watch out, they may not be alone."
Silva and Sez each cast a destructive blast at the rightmost zombie.
"Makes sense." Davak gestures, and a slashing wave of darkness strikes at the leftmost zombie (that's still standing).
Hailina waits to heal the injured.
The remaining zombie shambles out of the entangled area towards the largest group of you.
"I see. Thank you for your time. Hopefully this will help you feed your family. Pardon me but I must go help the others."
Lanaral quickly takes out a few gps and hands them to the closest person before running back toward the group.
Silvia and Sez shoot destructive blasts at the next zombie in concert with each other and without word, clearly well practiced at this sort of thing.
"Is everyone okay?" Hailina looks over the party.
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Silva hops off Sez and starts checking over the cart repairing as needed. "I'm fine. We need to keep an eye out for any more of them."
She yells over to the elf Lanaral, "Oi, have those three inform the guards in town about this. They should also be very careful on their way back."
"Where did those things come from? Did they come from the direction of the town we're going to?"
" A good point. Gentlemen I suggest you get back to town and let others know what happened."
Lanaral continues walking and rejoins the group.
You see a set of fresh, easily visible tracks leads away from the broken cart towards the west.
Silva notices the tracks as she walks around the cart, "Look at this. There is one more enemy it seems. Probably the one who commanded these creatures. Four prisoners, one big person and three little."
You follow the tracks thru the forest underbrush for about thirty minutes and come across an overgrown stone archway and wall with a dozen headstones visible beyond it.
The tracks lead to the archway of the graveyard but do not continue inside. It is easy to notice a number of less fresh tracks that emerge from the archway and leading off in different directions.
Lanaral sings a haunting wordless melody and stares intently ahead of them.
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Chalice stoops down to look at the tracks, curious about their sudden appearance or perhaps disappearance at this particular spot.
"Certainly not a normal track pattern," she mused out loud. She didn't know much about such things, but even she could see the oddity here.
"Is there any more signs of the little and big tracks we've assumed to belong to the family?"
Looking at the graveyard from the outside, the low stone wall (3 feet high) defines a roughly square area (20 feet by 20 feet). The archway consists of two pillars and a lintel large enough for a medium creature to pass through. The headstones are grey with age and worn by the elements. The headstone inscriptions cannot be made out through the overgrowth that has reclaimed the interior as well as the walls of the graveyard. None of the graves show signs of disturbance below this vegetation.
"See how the tracks end? The graveyard is likely under an illusion, showing everything as normal. Whoever set this up is taking precautions against passersby. That likely includes other preparations for those that go into the graveyard, so we should come from an unexpected direction by climbing the back or side walls." Silva says quietly to the others. Then she and Sez quietly make their way around the outside looking for any kind of signs whether natural, trap, unnatural, magical, etc.
Davak will ponder standing on the 3-foot wall---is there room?---but will wait until those who are investigating are done with their investigation.
Lanaral moves closer to the archway to examine it.
Lanaral examines the portal with a quizzical look.
Silva completing her circuit around the small cemetery quietly crawls over the wall near the gate to look around from the otherside, particularly for tracks or traps.
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Everyone inspects the portal, and you agree that this is a natural occurring portal to the Plane of Shadows, the dark reflection of the Material Plane – sinister and twisted – an in-between place connecting and collecting all other places. and that Natural Shadow Portals like this one occur in long forgotten places and have the peculiar habit of changing with the time of day. When the sun is in the sky, its power pushes through the portal allowing creatures from the Material Plane to enter the Plane of Shadows. Once the sun dips below the horizon, darkness takes over permitting creatures from Shadowsfall to walk the Material Plane.
"No way but forwards that I see. Anyone else coming?"
A plane of shadow? Sounds ... familiar? Maybe? Regardless, if there's a good chance people were taken there, I'm for going.
Hailia nods. "Me too."
Silva hops back over the wall and on Sez. After glancing at the sun, they give their opinion on the matter by walking through the portal. They go through at a angle though, obviously trying to avoid any potential traps.
Gow grins. "Shadow Plane? Sounds intriguing. Let's do this."
Lanaral follows Silva through, carefully looking around as he does so.
Assuming nothing obviously untoward has happened to the others, Davak follows.
He will check whether people are disappearing from sight after going through, but if they are, that won't stop him from following.