Planescape - The Blood War (Inactive)

Game Master Tourach

"Hmmm, wonder if the other one will see this?"

People can give me Knowledge (Arcana) to have some idea of what happened. But the occurrence is certainly unusual nonetheless.

Katrin after decapitating, looks around confused at what happened as she did not expect a flash of light in the process of killing a zombie. Once things seem to settle she cleans off the bladen with some water and a rag and sheaths it into her scabbard. She readies her polarm and says, "Well then, shall we continue to investigate?"

Knowledge (Arcana): 1d20 + 10 ⇒ (10) + 10 = 20

Fingernipper gives a nice, slow round of applause, "Nicely done. I hope it haunts the s*%# out of you."

"Well that is a thing that happened. Might as well rob her now that she's dead, dead."

Fingernipper looks around the place.

Perc: 1d20 + 4 ⇒ (14) + 4 = 18

With that taken care of, Kayla takes a moment to channel some healing energy to her group.

channel: 1d6 ⇒ 5

Qalendar, your knowledge can't quite pinpoint the exact nature of the phenomenon - what you can tell is that the scream and the light were releases of some sort of pent up energy. You can easily conclude that either the creation of the zombie or something that happened since involved a large amount of arcane energy and that said energy infused the form of the creature.

Fingernipper you find a spell component pouch, a spellbook (Arcanist, though I'm not sure there's a way to tell the difference), 80 gp worth of jewelry, a masterwork cold iron dagger (medium), two broken longbows (medium), three broken sets of chainmail (medium), one heavy steel shield (medium), and 34gp 16sp in coins.

You each receive 200 XP for defeating the encounter. I'll note that I'm generally going to award bonus XP for creative solutions to encounters, so no bonuses for killing everything, but full XP for the combat.

Should we be tracking individual XP, or will you be doing it for the group?

Also... anyone prepare Mending today?

The young man straightens as the channel of healing goes out. Thank you.

Interesting. Qalendar quietly looks around. He looks thoughtful. This culture died long ago, he says idly, not speaking to anyone in particular, this one has left a strong echo.

"So what now?" Martin asks the group. "You've seen more of these ruins than I have. Will the other zombies crumble, with their queen dead, or will they turn mindless and rampage, or will they just generally swear revenge against all outsiders? If it's either of the last two, we've just created the situation you were trying to avoid, and we're going to have to start our cleanup as soon as possible—and someone will need to give me a weapon that can actually damage the undead."

Martin, it is a good idea to track individual XP just to double check each other, but you'll all have the same amount (and you gain enough to get parity with everyone at the start).

Qalendar continues to stand idly by, and responds to the air, Those are a lot of assumptions for things posed as questions. We shall have to wait and see.

What, they won't even meet my gaze? Martin responds. "I'm just saying—the fighter here may have created the very crisis you were trying to create, and we'd all best see to finding out what's happened before you all unleash a horde of angry undead on the countryside. Deciding to 'wait and see' right now sounds rather idiotic."

Qalendar smiles slightly, then blinks and seems to notice that he's being spoken to, Hrm? Oh...I see. More assumptions and misunderstanding. The young man frowns sadly, A pity. He returns to his musing.

She looks to Martin and says, "I did not create the crisis, I ended it. This world belongs to the living. The undead have no place in it."

"You attacked this woman out of fear that these ruins possess an army of undead who might eventually overrun the nearby mages. Now you assume that because you killed one leader and two of their number, the 'army of undead' is no more?"

Martin turns to Qalendar. "The only assumption I'm making here, sir, is that the Tanar'ri would have hired competent agents who know how to think ahead."

After thanking Kayla for the healing, Fingernipper snorts, "Oh it does, does it? The world tell you that? Hmm? The Powers that watch over this world tell you that?" He points at the ground, "This isn't your house. It doesn't have to follow your rules."

He goes about packing up the stuff he found, muttering darkly about working with humans. There is a google docs loot list tag under my profile tag. If you want something just take it and indicate you are doing so.

"Let's go."

Qalendar doesn't appear to be paying attention to the discussion until Fingernipper finishes,

Hrm? Oh...yes. We should be going. The young man taps his staff on the ground and looks around. Where to?

Assuming you step outside, the ruins seem quiet. The light and sound have not visibly changed the environment since you last saw it and you don't see or hear any movement in your immediate vicinity.

"Right. We should come up with a geometric plan to sweep the ruins, make sure we've at least looked in every building. Mark the ones we've already entered. See how many we can check by sunset. All agreed?"

"It may take a while for us to check every building. I was thinking of just checking the larger, official type looking buildings first."

What kind of building did the undead appear to be in? A public or private residence?

Methodical and time consuming...but, time consuming. The young man looks around as he steps out of the building, Why does this city refuse to die?

Qalendar taps his staff to the ground idly, and his head tilts as if listening to something. After a moment he speaks quietly, Too long...

"Methodical and safe," Martin corrects him. "Are we on a time limit, or would you simply prefer an excuse to do less work?"

Qalendar chuckles slightly then tilts his head and nods. Speaking quietly, he says, Have you stopped beating your wife?

Seemingly uninterested in a response, he taps his staff again, and chuckles and nods to himself.

"We were not given a time limit, but we still need to accomplish our mission before the king of this land finds and executes the mages. I am more than willing to spend a few days searching here, but even just the inner walled section would take at least that long and then we still have the outer walled section to deal with. Unless you just want us to knock on the doors, peek in to say yoo hoo and then leave."

"Just peeking in doors would be fine. I simply want to finish the course of hostile action we've now been set on, and not leave the ruins more perilous than we found them."

Katrin moves at the front of the party with her polearm at the ready and looking around for more passages to follow and watching for more enemies that reside here.

The architecture of the building you just fought in makes it seem like a library. You don't have much ability to tell if that would be public or private but it seems likely to have been private.

As an aside, it certainly looks like this is a relatively large city. You haven't reached the center yet, but you do guess that searching every building in the city would likely take a week or more accounting for the need to rest.

Qalendar follows the group, seemingly more interested in the architecture of the buildings around them than in where they are going.

"Well... if we don't find anything in a day or two, that might be good enough."

Note: there is a cleric spell called "Detect Undead."

Assuming you are now moving, please let me know where you plan to go. Are you heading inward? Staying on the outskirts? Looking for large buildings?

I think the current plan is to continue looking for larger buildings and listening for movement. I'm not sure given the description of how large the city is that its feasible to search the whole city. Even with Detect Undead (and hoping that they aren't deep into a building), it would take a while. Though that'd be a great spell to break out tomorrow.

Kayla would at least do a search of the desk that the zombie was at. IF any papers or books are to be found.

Qalendar has what I was thinking. Martin would like to spend at least a day looking into the largest buildings he can find for further zombies—and if we see them in more than a few places, he'll hope very hard that they don't know about the ones we killed.

Keep in mind the spell is 60ft of range and 1 minute duration. It's good for a small check just in case, or if we're feeling a little worried, but it's not a long term solution. And certainly can't help us search faster. But it may prove useful, just super-situational even in our current situation of a city full of them.

Kayla, you find a number of freshly written pieces of parchment as well as numerous books throughout the library. All of the writing is in Elven.

Please all give me Perception and Stealth checks as you move deeper into the city.

Perception: 1d20 + 6 ⇒ (15) + 6 = 21
Stealth: 1d20 + 7 ⇒ (2) + 7 = 9

Perception: 1d20 + 0 ⇒ (3) + 0 = 3
Stealth: 1d20 - 1 ⇒ (16) - 1 = 15

Perception: 1d20 + 3 ⇒ (7) + 3 = 10
Stealth: 1d20 + 1 ⇒ (10) + 1 = 11

perception: 1d20 + 11 ⇒ (6) + 11 = 17
stealth: 1d20 + 2 ⇒ (2) + 2 = 4

Perc: 1d20 + 4 ⇒ (14) + 4 = 18
Stealth: 1d20 + 17 ⇒ (10) + 17 = 27

You all trudge forward, heading deeper into the ruined city. It is clear that as you move inward toward what you assume is the city center, the buildings become more and more ruined and where you might expect to see increasing building height, you actually see increased frequency of rubble.

Roll 1: 1d20 + 11 ⇒ (8) + 11 = 19
Roll 2: 1d20 + 16 ⇒ (4) + 16 = 20

After nearly twenty minutes of travel you start to see a cloud of dust further toward the center of the ruins. It is not overly dense and you suspect that you could see through it, but it is quite visible especially as the buildings that block your line of sight decrease. As the group nears one of the last multi-story buildings before the city gives way to rubble and single story structures, Qalendar notices that something seems to be following you at a distance of a few city blocks. It cannot currently be seen, but Qalendar, you get a distinct flash of something moving from time to time.

Qalendar pauses a moment and tilts his head, Something seems to be following us. Something...curious.

Shall we try turning a corner quickly and then hiding and wait for it to try to catch up to us? I really don't want something following us the entire time we are searching about."

Katrin looks to the group and says, "It would be better for us to stay as a group and not chase what is stalking us. It could be trying to lure us into an ambush."

Qalendar nods and points to the next corner, Let's go that way.

"Right. And it's troubling that it's intelligent enough to shadow us—the zombies couldn't do something like this."

You are able to advance and take some cover in the alley around the corner of one of the more intact buildings. Qalendar, it seems like whatever was behind you is keeping its distance from what you can tell and you do not hear it growing closer.

If the plan is to conceal yourselves here and take some time to wait it out, you can all give me new Stealth checks. If you are planning on talking/advancing elsewhere that's fine too and don't worry about new checks in that case.

Stealth: 1d20 + 7 ⇒ (12) + 7 = 19
Perception: 1d20 + 6 ⇒ (18) + 6 = 24

If it is more patient then us, we should come up with a plan.

stealth: 1d20 + 2 ⇒ (11) + 2 = 13
perception: 1d20 + 11 ⇒ (5) + 11 = 16

"With any luck it is nothing more that a curious mage who's followed our trail from camp."