Alex smiles assuringly at Teo. "I have special training against undead. Even if I did not, these zombies are among the weakest of the undead. We need only find a place to bottleneck the monsters and take them out one at a time." Alex had never lacked self confidence. Some might even say she had too much. "I could slay an unlimited number of these fiends from a good defensible position. But I doubt there are many undead left here. The necromancer has plans for his or her army and I don't think that plan entails sitting around a dead town."
"Like Lady Alex said, I ain't afraid of no zombies. Bring on the whole town! I'll chop em down to size. Then I'll march over the trail of corpses straight to the necromancer himself and send him to whatever hell awaits such an evil being."
"Now that we know what we face, let's check on our merchant. We can do the house to house search tomorrow in the daylight. The likelihood of finding a survivor is very low, but we may find another clue. Perhaps the necromancer is taking revenge on the town for something.
"The necromancer obviously has an army and a base outside of town. After searching the residences, we can find the base and destroy him and his army. Zombies cannot hide their tracks." Finlogan offers.
Naia says little, content to let the rest of the group have their head. She wonders to herself - if this village fell so easily - how many others fell the same? And what of her people, her fellow creatures?
"Yes. End the necromancy."
"I don't think I'll be able to sleep tonight. I'll take the first few watches and maybe I'll exhaust myself before dawn."
Teo volunteers for the final watch, so she could get a full night of rest. (Hopefully!)
Thinking of the fluffy looking beds, Alex wishes they could stay in the inn. She piles up some straw to make her bedroll more comfortable, then sits down to pen the days events in her journal.
To your surprise (and probably relief), the night passes with no signs of any additional undead creatures. The morning is as still and lifeless as the evening before, if a bit less unsettling under the warming light of the sun.
"I almost hate to look at the personal residences. You know it is going to be horrible as all of them were taken."
"You can keep watch outside if you wish, Teo Brissett. We must make sure there are no children hiding in cupboards. As for you." Alex turns to the merchant. "What do you plan to do? Come with us or wait here? Try to reach the nearest town?"
"Let's get this over with. The undead don't rest."
Alex turns to the merchant. "What do you plan to do? Come with us or wait here? Try to reach the nearest town?"
Gammell squirms a bit, then replies, "Well, if you lot are going to go off looking for trouble, then I think I'd like to get out of here while I still can. I'll leave my carts here, lest they slow me down. If you survive all this, come find me in Linhaus so I know it's safe to come back and claim my property."
After parting ways with the merchant, you head south past the businesses you visited last night and begin to investigate the residential area.
The first few houses you reach show signs of having been broken into, but not of having been barricaded. It seems that at the time this area was taken, folks were scared enough to lock their doors, and ignorant enough to think that's all it would take to keep them safe. As usual, you find blood, but no bodies and no survivors.
You then start transitioning into homes where—if the account in the letter you found is to be believed—the residents were either taken by surprise or just never came home one night. Again and again, you keep exploring homes where the only thing amiss is the lack of people.
Eventually, you reach the town guard's barracks, situated at the edge of the residential area, near where lakeside establishments begin to pop up. The door is damaged and hangs idly ajar, and you can see broken windows from the street. There is, as usual, no sign of life or movement nearby.
If there is undead in here, they may have armor and weapons. Some undead might even know how to utilize them. Be ready." Alex warns and enters the barracks, holding her shield in front of herself.
Investigating the barracks, you find plenty of evidence of combat. There are a handful of defeated zombies scattered around, blood splatters are everywhere, bunks are overturned with their straw mattresses destroyed, and a few broken weapons lie fallen on the floor or embedded in walls or furniture.
At the back of the biggest room is a rack for weapons and armor. It is completely empty.
While you are looking around, suddenly the room goes dark, as though all the windows had their shades pulled simultaneously!
Three dark figures, literally black silhouettes, rise up out of the floor and reach their hands toward the throats of the two humans and the halfling!
With utter silence, the creature attacking Alex grabs her around the neck and squeezes, beginning to choke her!
The one by Gwen attempts to do the same, but she quickly wrenches free!
The one by Teo has to reach down at an awkward angle, bumps her, and she flinches away without being grabbed!
Something cold wraps around your neck and squeezes hard!
Something cold wraps around your neck and squeezes, but you reflexively wrench away from it before it can choke you!
You feel something cold brush against your neck in the dark, and you flinch away in alarm, not knowing what it was.
Teo casts Shield on herself, hoping someone could deal with the darkness.
"Ack!" Alex gulps as some gross something wraps its gross something around her neck. She hopes it isn't slimy and dirtying her collar. A moment passes, then her longsword suddenly blazes with a pure, golden light.
Finlogan moves up to Teo and releases his two shortswords. The elven prince attempts to stab it with his steely knives.
Gwenifer doesn't know what this is but magic seems to be in order. She switches to her +1 maul and spins in a circle swinging the hammer into the shadow grabbing at her.
"Don't you dare grab at me! I'll flatten you!"
Teo blindly casts a shield spell to protect herself against an unknown threat!
Alex then lights up the room with a glowing sword, revealing the presence of the three silhouetted figures!
Fin comes to Teo's aid, trying to stab the shadowy creature!
His first attack misses, but the second makes the creature shudder!
Gwen sees what tried to grab her neck and swings wildly, missing the mark!
,
Naia moves to assist Alessandra, slashing the creature!
The creature holding Alex by the neck continues to squeeze, and you can see all the veins in her neck discolor and swell from foul magic!
The creature by Gwen moves toward the light source!
Gwen takes a swing as it passes by, but it ignores the hit and approaches Alex. Its form melts into an amorphous shadow, then splits into a Y-shape, with each branch reaching a large, dark hand toward one of Alex's arms!
It gets hold of her arms and holds her in place!
The third creature leaves the fight with Teo and Fin, also heading toward Alex!
,
Fin takes a swing, but misses!
The shadowy figure's shape re-forms into something resembling a giant, floor-mounted scythe, then rears back and swings itself downward at the restrained Alex!
Alex somehow manages to twist just enough to get the strike to glance off her armor!
Dizzy, her head pounding from oxygen starvation, Alex tries to free her arms. She twists against the Y monster, trying to bear the weight of herself and her shield against it in an attempt to knock it down.
Alex struggles with her shield arm, but to no avail. However, she takes advantage of the shadowy form's attention there and barely manages to push her sword down onto it, searing it with holy light as she does!
With a hiss like an air leak, the dark shape dissipates!
Teo pulls her her dagger and attacks the shadow creature.
Attack
Damage
Gwen attacks the one choking Alex.
"Let her go!"
Teo approaches the melee, brandishing her dagger ineffectually.
Gwen comes around and swings her cubified hammer, bringing it down hard on the form that's choking Alex!
Finlogan moves to a wounded thingy and attempts to stab it with his steely knives.
Finlogan brutalizes the shadow that was choking Alex, and it disperses like a black fog!
The remaining figure shifts back into the vaguely-humanoid shape it originally was, and reaches for Alex's sword arm, seeming focused on trying to remove the magical light!
Alex denies the figure its final attempt and plunging you all into darkness, and is soon surrounded and dispatched.
As the third and final being is destroyed, the veil of darkness lifts, almost looking like a coating of oil evaporated from the windows, and the morning sun once again pours into the room. From outside, you hear a flutter of wings and the sound of a crow's cawing, fading into the distance. Then, all is again silent.
"I'm still okay. How about everyone else? I say we press on. Does anyone have any special abilities against undead? This village is overrun with them."
"There's that crow again."
"They say crows are harbingers of doom, but I tend to ignore them."
With the shadows gone, Alex breathes in a ragged gasp as color slowly returns to her world. She rasps a few meaningless syllables, clears her throat, and whispers "Those were not mere zombies. Our necromancer is doing more than animating the dead." She unclasps her gorget and swings it open to rub her throat. A soft silver light soothes away some of the corruption in her veins. "They do not seem to like light. That could be useful if we run in to more of them." A moment later the light leaves her sword.
Heading toward the waterfront, you see hardly any sign of trouble. A few wharfs line the water, with a couple of rowboats moored and empty. Further down is a large, wooden structure; most likely a place where boats returning with fish or cargo could unload. Further from the lakeshore is what you'd guess is a warehouse for storing said cargo prior to distributing it to local businesses or outbound carts.
Finlogan heads toward the warehouse looking for tracks. Zombies don't necessarily cover their tracks, so he looks for where they moving to and from.
I'll follow Finlogan to the warehouse.
"Just watch out for unnatural darkness."
Even the most recent tracks in this area are days old (that'll happen when everybody's dead), and it seems to be a massive number of humanoid footprints all headed for the docks and the shore, as though some got into boats and some just walked right into the lake.
One exception: it seems a group of about eight-ish sets of humanoid footprints have passed through here repeatedly, each time in the same direction (toward the other end of town), and each time taking the same path, as though constantly walking a circuit.
"It looks like the necromancer is storing his army in the lake. There appears to be a squad of eight zombies walking a circuit. How many did we face earlier" Finlogan advises and asks the group.
After the answer, the wood elven prince nods and suggests, "let's check the warehouse and the boathouse. I've no interest in diving for zombies."
"Maybe the necromancer is undead himself if he is hiding underwater."
Alex had just been contemplating how nice a bath in the lake would be and grimaces at Gwen's thought. "We cannot wage war on an underwater army without draining the lake, so let us hope that is not the case."
"We need to keep an eye out for something to start a large fire with. If they are lame dwellers, I bet they don't like fire at all."
You head to the warehouse and peek inside. Seeing no obvious threats, you enter and look around.
It looks about like a warehouse should: lots of space, some crates and barrels stacked here and there. No immediately obvious signs of combat come to your notice. The dirty floor is, as expected, littered with tracks. In the back of the main area is a stairway up to a small second-story office. There is no sign of light or movement from the office visible from here.
As expected, it seems this warehouse hasn't seen use in days. The most recent activity, by your reckoning, would be the dragging of something heavy out of the now-vacant northern corner of the warehouse (furthest from the lake-facing doors).
Alex ignores the tracks and heads for the office. "There could be a shipping manifest here that might have answers."
Survival
"Something heavy was dragged out of the north corner of the warehouse. Can't tell
What it was, though."