The Father of Waters

Game Master Fighting Chicken

Istiel's first punch connects with the zombie, and his head explodes in a puff of zombie gore, showering all those nearby.

Istiel is fortunate to be swathed in her silk robes and wooden mask; the exploding gore only touches the skin of her hands. The rest splatters into the thick silk cloth, unable to soak through.

Unfortunately, this is her only robe...

Oios nods and backs away, staying close to the Suriname in case he gets swarmed and needs to be healed.

Drazan miraculously turns away from a gout of gushing gore before he readies Bane to attack the next dead-born[/dice]

As Imix channels, the zombies surge forwards, the first collapsing from Drazan's readied axe. The next runs mindlessly at the Suriname, right into the trap set, Drazan and Istiel's attacks primed.

Istiel finds trying to throw a punch around a corner to be awkward, unbalancing herself and nearly running into one of the slavering dead. Thankfully, the zombie extruder is made up of two independently operating parts.

The dead sprint down the hallway, another falling to Drazan's baneaxe a geyser of gore erupting from the corpse's severed head. Bursting through the trap, the nearest zombie crashes again into Imix's shield, gnashing teeth and clawing hands finding only Imix's protections.

The other dead follow. Turning, one of the dead lashes out at Istiel, its snapping teeth latching onto the monk's extended wrist. Another swings wildly at Drazan clawing at the Mountain Man's chest despite Drazan's best attempts to use the alcove as cover.

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Next Round
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COMBAT MAP

Istiel pulls back her bloody wrist without flinching, launching it forward again as a balled fist. Most of her techniques are useless- zombies lack pressure points. But when she lands a solid blow more than bones break on the fetid undead.

"They just won't go down" rumbles Imix, lashing out with his power once more. This time the energy that floods out is a little stronger - but only a little.
Frustrated the Suriname lashes out with his new Pick.

Oios grimaces as he holds position. Setting up a corridor trap had been his idea but he was now frustrated by his inability to contribute to the fight as the Surinama held the line while Drazan and Isitel battered against the relentless dead ones.

Clear your mind, this battle is already won!. Let them crush themselves against the wall of the Flight's Protectors. Drazan shouts, more to keep himself in line than anyone else; the fury within him bubbling to near overflowing.

Imix's pick slams through the head of the undead - and then proceeds to obliterate all the way down the spine to the mid-chest, shredding vertebrate like paper. The Suriname pulls the pick out as the dead man falls backwards, and it emerges from the chest as if from water, ribs cracking as it emerges gore covered and unchipped.

Imix pauses, stunned, and looks at the weapon he now wields. "I shall call you Dodeslachter." he announces to all and sundry.

Another dead falls once more to Istiel's attacks, and Drazan finishes a third, the creature's unlife ending in an explosion from the Baneaxe.

It is a matter of seconds before the last two have charged the Suriname and blunder mindlessly into your trap, soon rendered nothing more than inert flesh, blood, and bone.

Istiel's torchlight bounces off the gore-slicked walls, the rushed breaths of your bodies after exertion the only sound...

Imix hefts Dodeslachter, his magic causing the rotted slime to slide off.
"Undamaged." he says in admiration, then turns his attention to his companions, and the dead men in front of them.
"Stay alert! How injured are people? This state may be contagious. We should see if the Frozen have succumbed. If they are dead, we should ensure they do not rise."

Istiel gives the last zombie a snap kick to the side, knocking it off-balance and sending it directly into the path of Drazen's axe to be cut in half.

She looks around the edge of the bunk to peer down the hallway, but nothing else seems to be approaching. Glancing to the Drazen the monk nods, moving from her position to stalk down the hallway and into the gore-strewn room.

Stepping over the bodies of the two recently killed Frozen, a bit of zombie goo drips off Istiel's elbow, landing on one of their half-eaten faces. She momentarily surveys the carnage for any signs of danger before walking over crunching bones, moving to the edge of the room and looking down the next hallway.

With a weary sigh, Nat ceases to concentrate on maintaining the totem; it flickers and vanishes almost immediately.

"Well, we're all aloyve. Who needs healing?"

I can take some of that burden Nat Oios says tiredly We might need your divine connection more than mine as we go deeper

Bolt moves forward into the room, and reaching down pulls the spear from his dead comrade's hand, and then gives the kukri back to Drazan. His voice comes in an awed whisper. "Mountain Tribesman, Death of Death, I give you back your kukri, if you'll let me keep the spear."

Istiel makes her way across the charnel pit with her torch held high, the pit of bones casting macabre shadows across the room with each crunching step. Pausing at the next doorway, the monk's torchlight just reaches into the next room, glinting off of a metal table covered with dried blood, and another beyond it. Alongside the first table, stretching across the wall and into the shadows, is a series of stone cubbies, filled with all manner of clear vials holding many liquids of differing colors, small cloth sacks, candles, and strange devices, bent and twisted things, often clear, of what purpose the monk cannot discern from where she stands.

Istiel shakes a giblet off of her foot; an arm with rotting connective tissue left over caught her moccasin in the crook of the elbow.

Looking back, the masked monk waves everyone forward and proceeds into the next room. She stops in front of one of the meetal tables, staring at it intently. Why use metal for a table? Wasteful.

She stops her forward push for a moment, looking around the room for any recognizable features and figuring the others wanted to do the same.

Before Istiel scouts out Oios touches her gently with Telowo's staff and then himself.

There is a rush of power that flows through the staff into the young guardian of the group and Oios finds he has to expend more of himself when he turns the healing energies into himself.

Istiel finds the room chock full of various items and reagents, liquids, and other various components, all stuffed haphazardly into the overflowing cubbies. What they are for, the monk cannot say - it seems her herbal training has failed her. Turning her torch to take in the rest of the room, the smell of decay hits the monk like a winding punch.

There are in fact three more metal tables. A dead Frozen lies on the farthest one, the man's mouth gagged and unliving eyes staring wide up at the ceiling, which hangs low and oppressive here. The Frozen has been cut open from sternum to belly button, his skin pulled back and stitched to his sides.

Bolt follows Istiel into the room, tentatively stepping towards the member of his survey team, counting on his fingers as he does so.

Istiel shakes her head at all the nick-knacks lining the walls, unable to place any of them. For other the hundredth time she wished Domhnall was here to share his wisdom, and for the thousandth time she cursed herself for not listening harder to his herbalism lessons.

The monk recoils from the smell of the farthest table, thinking better of using breathing exercises to study her gut. She just toughs it out instead, approaching the dissected body.

Orange torchlight falls over the corpse, and Istiel's eyes follow the curves of the dead Frozen's intestines. Her memory briefly flashes back to the Monk's Mound in Cornucopia; young black-hooded students huddle around a similarly dissected corpse of a man sentenced to death. A Master gives lessons on the internal workings of the human body, and how to exploit them with a well-placed kick or punch.

Istiel blinks, swiveling her head to the rest of the group. "Why do this? Curiosity? Is this how undead are made?" She asks, looking to Nat, Imix, or Oios, for answers.

Nat walks, aching with every step, into the room that Istiel has found. She shakes her head, silent, lacking the energy even to speak: she has no answers to the monk's questions.

You are welcome to try, Nameless. Drazan relents as he gathers the weapons of the fallen to add to his collection. But are you sure you want to stay armed? There are no other men's lives to shield you next time.

In reply to Imix's statement, Drazan can't help but ask, And how does one create the death born? Given the dead back there and now seeing this, I find it hard not to believe that it could be anything else. Then Drazan approaches the corpse to examine what has been done more closely, and to determine if the man may have been turned.

"Then check the ones we killed for surgical marks." Imix retorts, annoyed. He handles components and items quickly "A collection like this... it would take decades. At least."

Raising an eyebrow at Imix's tone, Nat nevertheless wearily does as she has been asked, checking the corpses carefully.

Afterwards she examines the reagents that Istiel discovered, trying to identify them; and their purposes.

Bolt looks curiously at Drazan, before handing the longspear to the Man From Fire Peaks, Bolt's hand shaking slightly as he does so.

The purpose of the dead Frozen on the table remains unclear, but the ones you sent to their second deaths do not appear to have been cut, other than in the typical ways that men from the Mountain Tribes suffer throughout their lives. There's obvious signs of trauma; a bone set badly here, an old scar suggesting a spear wound there, but nothing indicating any of these men were opened from sternum to belly. Well, the unexploded ones at least.

Oios joins the others in canvassing the area. I fear the filth we have been exposed to might start to take its toll. Can the implements here help cure us if required?

Nat yawns, and stretches, feeling the scars across her ribs twinge in response. "There's more to sort through, but Oy've already found something useful."

She hands over the 2 healing potions for safekeeping.

"Oy think we should rest. It would give me toyme to look at the rest of this."

Then let us stop for now, rest, go through these things, there may be much here that could help us, not only get through this house of abominations, but also also with The Flight. Oios says. Two of us will be awake, the rest will rest. One to stand guard, the other to go through these materials. Imix, perhaps you should start going through these first and come up with a method of categorization that the rest of us can follow.

Oios leans on his staff. Whoever created this, and the undead, might be aware of us, and if so... the old man sighs We must sleep lightly.

Drazan nods in hesitant agreement to Oios's plan. This is best, for now.

Imix nods once at Oios' words. "I will do my best." he promised "How long do you want shifts to be? Do you want Nat to take over from me when I rest? If so it would be worth leaving a small overlap to brief her. I also suggest we work together for a little while now in order to secure the area. Reinforce the walls. Possibly prepare a surprise if massed undead invade while we sleep. A secondary wall around the sleeping area would be helpful."

Very well, we set up some defensive structures. And then we do as Imix suggests, but, each of us should get enough sleep to fortify us for the next day. We cannot be tired when we delve deeper. Oios grasps Telowo's staff This staff seems to glow whenever an undead comes close, and so I will rest close to the entrance that goes further in with it in my hands.

Istiel feels a looming sense of dread at camping in this place. For one, the flight remains relatively unprotected, and two the ogres are still at large.

She says nothing, however, and instead takes initiative based on Imix's words. The monk tests the metal table, seeing if they can be lifted or moved from the floor.

If they are too heavy for her to move herself, she enlists Drazen's help to place two tables over the entrances to the room, the first being placed horizontal across the portals.

The dissected Frozen is unceremoniously dumped from its resting place, and the other two tables are tipped up (if the ceiling allows it) and placed perpindicular to and behind the horizontal entrance-blocking tables to further reinforce their mass and prevent the horizontal tables from simply being stepped over.

On the eastern side of the room that leads further into the depths of the tower she adds an extra defense. She deftly unloops one of her belt pouches to retireve Tom's enchanted (cursed?) fingerbone, holding it tightly in her hand to prevent the supernatural darkness from spreading. The monk had painstakingly tied a strip of leather around the fingerbone to wear on her wrist should she ever need its darkness for stealth- instead, she loops it around one of the table legs blocking the eastern entrance to prevent their lights from shining down the next hallway and to mask the presence of the tables.

After a few hours of surveying and cataloging, it appears that the room seems to be a multipurpose lab, devoted to three main themes; life, death, and the making of more mundane (i.e. practical) items.

Inside the cubbies closest to the dead Frozen, there are materials intended to preserve, or at least prolong, life. You find a fine set of surgical tools, many regents and elixirs geared towards the staving off of maladies and the healing of the body.

Closest to the entry that you came in through, the materials turn to a darker purpose. Here amongst the various tools and alchemical crafting items, sit materials geared towards the preservation of corpses, and the healing - and perhaps creation - of the undead.

Scattered among the cubbies are other items as well, designed to aid in crafting, or having various useful purposes.

The work continues well into the night, you all taking turns resting and cataloging, the metal tables turned into makeshift barricades.

Nat, Istiel, and Imix are asleep. Drazan works through a box of regeants, Oios on watch, the Shadow's eyelids drooping, when the Staff of Damballah flares to life, lighting up the room with a warm yellow glow. Protruding from the table barricade, you catch a whispy cowled head, a long grey beard trailing from its cloakhood, before it retreats back through the barricade, as if the metal were mere air. The staff's light winks back out, the room once again bathed in the feeble light of one of Istiel's torches...

Oios jerks up and takes a quick experimental step towards the barricade with the Staff held out before him to see if it flares up again.

Drazan... he calls out. Did you see anything?

Through the barricade! Drazan alarms as his muscles bulge on taught sinews and he bounds to move either over or around the barricade; through if necessary.

Oios stops Drazan No, it's gone, and it's dangerous to go alone. It will do us no good to charge at it while we are scattered and tired. Oios says. Better to keep watch and be ready for the morning.

Imix sleeps as if dead, rugged up in everything he could find to stay warm, as Oios and Drazan talk.

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DESNUS 10
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The remainder of the resting passes without incidence. You awake groggy, time seeming to endlessly stretch out in muted shades of grey down below, without Ayida Wedu to mark its passage.

And so, after a quick breakfast and morning ministrations, you remove the barricade and set off again. The hallway stretches out before you, curving eloquently (and barely noticeably) both down and to the right. Eventually, after many minutes of walking, the hall opens up into a large, cavernous room, the ceiling of which stretches out of sight. It was perhaps, in the old days, a town center or marketplace. Buildings, now in disrepair, flank the walls - no, you realize, are carved into the walls - many stories tall, stretching upwards into the darkness. The street is covered in cobblestones, long shifted and uneven with the passage of years. Ahead of you, in the darkness, a voice calls out in heavily accented Tkayan, and then once more in basic Abyssal.

"Halt! Or die where you stand!"

Istiel has dreamless sleep, awaking the next morning to the continual smell of torch smoke and stale air. Starting in the corpse pose (in which she sleeps), Istiel immediately moves through her moving stretches. Rolling onto her side, she tucks her legs and arms together to ball her body, repeatedly flexing her arms in and out while perfectly balancing on her hip. She rolls to the opposite side and does the same, ignoring the hard stone beneath her.

The spectacle continues, Istiel transitioning between various odd forms of stretching on the ground until she is standing upright. Arms arc to either side of her body and hands form a point above her head. She brings her hands down to her chest in a prayer pose, bowing deeply towards the unseen rising sun in the east.

The description of the intruder during the night does not put her as on edge as she expected it might. Instead, she feels excited. With their presence known, whatever necrofiend creating these undead would prepare for their arrival- creating a greater challenge and greater glory.

Knowing the necrofiend would ambush or confront them soon, the monk drinks several potions and mixtures with her breakfast, fortifying her body against harm. For a final touch she puts the recently discovered nightdrops into her eyes to enchance her vision in the dark tunnels, blinking away the bizare numbness as her pupils diliate.

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At the edges of her enchanced vision, she can see them. The ogres, her long awaited foes. The voice does not belong to them, she is sure of it, the necrofiend shrewdly hanging back behind his bodyguards.

Istiel does not proceed any further as the voice orders them to halt. Instead, she stands rod-staight, torch held high in the air, waiting for hostilities to commence. She knows Oios will not allow this creature to continue its machinations of undeath.

The monk is silent and stoic, but the energy coming from her body is palpable. She is an arrow ready to be loosed, a brewing storm ready to birth hail and lightning, the tremors of an oncoming earthquake. This time when the word is given to fight there will be no calling her back until either she or their foes are dead.

As they prepare to venture forth Oios tells the others about what he witnessed during the night as well as everything he knows about wraiths and how to fight them.

Dangers such as this were very unusual Oios says Before the madness of the Flame descended on us. Now even the most mythical of our stories are becoming mundane. We will need to prepare ourselves better than Cornucopia did.

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At the voice Oios responds in Tkayan calling out in a strong voice Tell us who you are. And what you have been doing to the bodies of the dead.

before progressing
"This advice is well timed, Oios. I was about to prepare myself for the day. I had intended to give some of the dead a chance for revenge, but I now think it is better to ensure we are all at our peak. Most of my abilities will cover only a fraction of a day."
Imix nods in acknowledgement the conversation is over, and shifts back into his half-human form, his mouth elongating monstrously.