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Jayma stamps her foot and curses under her breath, "Blast it, they're out of range." She decides to move closer to the skeletons.
Once within range of her spells, she picks out a nice rounded piece of stone from the battlement. With a flick of her wrist and a "bones be breaking," the stone goes flying towards the remaining blood drenched skeleton.
The fleshless skeleton has little weight to it and Zabu is easily able to knock it up and over the crenulations. Dropping the blade it makes a grasping attempt for the ledge, but the claws slip from the rain-slicked stone as smashes and the bones shatter outward on the ground below
Jayma's attack certainly would have broken the remaining undead on the battlements, but the stone misses by a fraction of an inch.
Zabu (2 damage [4 starting + 3 from success vs explosion - 5 healed])
Shagrat (17 damage, basic Reflex save, 5 healing after explosion)
Jayma
Meadow (+1 striking weapon)
Blood Drenched Skeletons
. black (12 damage)
Brekovi
Skeletons
. white (6 damage)
Kornel
extra damage on the first hit.
Silence snaps at the skeleton before flying back to Meadow.
The owl flaps his wings and hisses.
Silence's blow may have not connected, but the magically imbued arrow from Meadow breaks through the skeleton and brings it to the ground. Ending the sudden breach in the defenses as the villagers retake to the walls.
Shagrat wasn't able to avoid all of the bone shards, but at least was able to dodge enough of the raw scrap material to remain standing at the end of the fight.
Mask Narsen commands the villagers to hasten to retake the battlements, "Fight for your village! Fight for your Nation, your god! Fight for yourselves!"
Turning to you he is clearly more disheveled since the start of the battle, but he focuses on the party. "Of the accounting there are none injured and this push faltering. We will take to the battlements and hold them back. You take the moment to rest, recover, and heal. You skills will be likely needed soon." He quickly moves to join the others on the battlements as he casts fiery spells down toward approaching undead in the name of Razmir.
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Zabu turns around just in time to see Meadow's arrows destroy the last skeleton.
"You couldn't do that BEFORE I pushed the other one over? I missed seeing it hit the bottom because I was coming to deal with this one," he complains, his words heavily slurred by the odd shape of his mouth at the moment.
As it becomes apparent that there are no further skeletons to destroy, at the moment, he relaxes, his features becoming their normal feral appearances rather than the exaggerated ones he just had.
He checks his wounds but then just shrugs when he sees their lack of severity.
Calmly, he sits on the wall, looking over and watching the villagers pick off the skeletons.
"Wow! That shot was so bad, it must have come from Benyan!" he says to toss kindling on that particular fire.
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Brekovi has no problems treating Zabu's minor wounds. As he is doing this, he asks "Can someone check that we have villagers watching the other areas of the walls? It is alright if they immediately run away if they see undead coming. It would be nice to know when they are pulling a trick like these did."
Looking over to Kornel, he adds "So evidently those weren't normal skeletons. What can you tell us about them? The ones with blood seemed to heal themselves and the others exploded. Not sure what to look for to detect if they will explode or not."
Kornel is able to identify the bloody skeletons you fought as more powerful skeletal undead with the ability of their blood to slowly restore their bodies. At least for these undead, their healing is unable to repair any damage after their destruction. They have the high agility and the natural resistances common to other skeletons.
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While Brekovi is patching up Zabu, Kornel does the same to their fearless goblin ally.
However, the bone shrapnel are buried deep in Shagrat and are difficult to remove in this short timespan.
As a faster alternative, he offers his own healing potion. "Here, down the hatch. I do not have much use for it, anyway; if I get hurt, I will of course use my own magic. Ah hah."
At Brekovi's inquiry, Kornel takes a quick glance at the blood-covered pile of bones. "Ah, these?" He explains their regenerative abilities.
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Shagrat, not looking so hot after the battle, welcomes any healing from the others. He also pulls out two of his own healing potions, one he had been saving from the Pathfinders, and the other from their group stash.
"Those things not die to cuts," he says lamentably. "Shagrat find himself a club that work better."
"There IS a whole side over there with no walls at all. I don't know what the cliff face really looks like but if they can climb a stone wall, I'll bet they can climb that," Zabu says, pointing to the side of the keep away from the gate where it is clear part of the fortification has fallen away.
Martin answers the concern. "There are some trying to pull themselves up the cliff, but we are hammering them back down. They are taking longer to climb that height and we can keep them back for now."
*****
Matthild shouts an alarm as the next wave approaches. "Zombies! They have a ram!" She fires her sling bullets into the mass of approaching undead as Plisken draws bow to fire arrows.
"And they are more than a bit ripe ones!"
The undead are rotted bloated bodies with writhing insects billowing from their bodies. They move with a singular focus carrying a fallen log as a squad toward your forward gate. Their forms are a host of biting insects swarming around their bodies and filling the air a dozen feet away. They move with incredible speed, faster than even the skeletons before them and are to the gates brining their ram into the door. The wood is splintering as attacks land and bring down some of the undead attackers but it isn't enough to stop the attack.
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When she sees the Zombies approaching, she quickly moves to the outer battlements of the northwestern tower to get a better angle on them. She casts as many spells as she can at them before the main gate starts failing, and then quickly shifts over to the inner side of the tower to catch them as they come in. While she waits for the gate to fall, she pulls one of the carefully folded scrolls from her bandolier and holds it in her hand just in case.
"Omnes damnari inferno! I'll make them pay for wrecking our beautiful new gate."
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Twyl pokes his nose out of the backpack when the noise dies down, and then hops back onto his mistress's shoulders when she gives him the all-clear. From his vantage point, he once again watches as she casts spell after spell onto the advancing horde.
He does his best to snap his jaws and flick his long tail to keep the flying bugs from biting his mistress. After their last adventure, he knows all too well how much she hates nasty little biting insects like these.
As they hear the main gate start to groan under the repeated blows, his mistress commands him to fly up to the top of the high tower behind her where he'll be able to safely watch the action below.
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"Look, Jayma, more bugs!" Zabu calls out with a grin.
His face twists to a look of distaste as he contemplates the creatures and what's about to happen, though. He knows his fighting style and how he's going to have to deal with them. He may need one of those prestidigitation spells of Jayma's for the inside of his mouth when this is done. Hopefully, she has a minty fresh version.
As the gates start to give, he hurries down the stairs, taking them two at a time.
Positioning himself right in front of them, he crosses his arms over his chest, grins ferally and waits.
The fact that he's alone down there doesn't seem to phase him.
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"So is that how how they do it these days..." Kornel speaks quietly to himself, lost in thought as he observes the undead battering ram crew. He chuckles.
He tosses a few more antinecrotic lances at the enemy ranks, and once the gate has been crushed, he strategically positions himself above the gate, preparing to unleash another burst of energy.
Despite the their military formation, the undead clearly have nothing in their mind aside death and slaughter as they push their way through the doors toward Zabu.
Brekovi
Zombies
. Blue
. Red
Kornel
Meadow
Zabu
Jayma
Zombie Middle Line
. Black
. White
Shagrat
Zombie Front Line
. Green
. Pink
The waves of fire come crashing down on the undead attackers, while are faster than most humans, they are slow to react and move out of the way. Only one manages to avoid the worst of the flames as it charges blindly forward at Zabu. Another is nearly destroyed by the saves of flame, but none focus as much on the fire as the person before them.
Through the fire and flames the undead in the back are the first to through themselves into fight, dropping their burning ram as they move and try to slam their dead hands into Zabu.
However none of them manage to land just yet and clearly are more clumsy than the bloody skeletons Zabu dealt with minutes ago.
Brekovi
Zombies
. Blue (7 damage)
. Red (7 damage)
Kornel
Meadow
Zabu
Jayma
Zombies
. Black (7 damage)
. White (14 damage)
Shagrat
Zombies
. Green (7 damage)
. Pink (3 damage)
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Zabu stands still as the zombies rush him. He bobs back, and weaves once, lets a fist bounce off his breast plate another time and simply quirks an eyebrow as one swing misses him entirely.
"My turn," he growls, his voice shifting from humanoid to more bestial as he speaks and his mouth shifts again.
He decides not to use his teeth, though, eyeing the rotting flesh. Instead, he uses his newly formed claws.
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"Look, Jayma, more bugs!" Zabu calls out with a grin.
"Oh, ha ha, Mr Creed. How very amusing of you," she replies as she slaps dead another of the insects that had the temerity to get too close to her.
Seeing that the zombies that made it into the fort were being taken care of by Zabu, Jayma moves back to the outer battlements of the northwestern tower where she can see the remaining zombies.
Once she has the outer zombies in her sights, she picks out a sharp edged fragment of stone from the ground below her, and with a practiced flick of her wrist and a "rock rends rancid rotter," the stone shoots forwards and cuts across the healthiest looking zombie.
The zombie's flesh is engorged with animated negative energy though every muscle. When Kornel's healing energy washes over the area it cuts through their bodies and creates burns as the healing energy overwhelms the necromantic power. While their forms would normally be resilient to a physical attack, the positive energy in particular makes their defenses almost for naught.
After the wave finishes only two are left standing. One next to Zabu with a more muscular, although still rotted, form that resisted the healing energy and another by the gate that had avoided the worst of Brekovi's magic.
Even their successes are short-lived. A single swing of Zabu's bestial claw cuts through the rotted body with incredible ease doing a massive amount of damage to the undead with a single swing.
Jayma has even more success as sharp stone cuts cleanly through the last of the undead dealing a critical blow to the already weakened creature.
Brekovi
Zombies
. Blue (18 damage)
. Red (16 damage)
Kornel
Meadow
Zabu
Jayma
Zombies
. Black (20 damage)
. White (23 damage)
Shagrat
Zombies
. Green (20 damage)
. Pink (31 damage)
With that the sound of the battle surrounding fills air as villagers focus on driving other undead back. There is still a bit of fear in the air of the continued attack, but with so many of the undead broken before the walls and by the traps there is more hope within the common citizens.
Petres fills any silence after the battle as he takes the lead at the gate with a sword ready as well as a number of javelins. He calls to others villagers on the walls, "don't let their success go to your heads! You need to keep fighting with all you have! The gate is broken, don't let any get close to it!"
He gives a glance toward the party saying, "I don't know how your magic works and I'm not looking to learn, but if a few minutes can give you anything I'll make sure to buy you as much time until they force me back."
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“Not sure we need the cages. There are several items in the scrapyard that will work.”
He lists off some items — scrap lumber, some old chair legs, a particular chunk of rock — and asks that someone fetch them. Meanwhile he grabs sections of the broken gates and starts putting them in place.
He does his best to construct a make-shift barricade from the materials available.
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Jayma comes down off the tower and looks over the damage to the main gate. It is pretty clear that it will take several days work to fully repair the damage. "Those zombies got through it pretty easily. I guess we should have done a more thorough job of it."
As she helps the others put together some sort of defensible barricade in place of the doors, Jayma considers how to make them even stronger the next time. "Thicker doors with metal plates on the outside for a start, then stronger hinges and a heavier door beam, or maybe two, for good measure."
While working on the barricade, Jayma occasionally stops and shares Twyl's senses at the top of the tower to keep an eye on the remaining undead outside. When she's done with the barricade, she returns to the battlements to prepare for any further attempts by the undead army to enter the castle.
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"Magic," Zabu softly sneers as first fiery then positive energy fills the battle field, eliminating most of the zombies before he can get to them.
He stands, looking at the broken gates, or more accurately, the horde beyond until his Rage subsides and he reverts back to his normal form.
It's not too hard to guess what he's thinking in that time.
But then, he joins in the task of blockading the opening. Too lazy to make trips back and forth to the scrap yard, he just grabs what's at hand and adds it to the pile.
And what's at hand is the zombies' battering ram. And their corpses.
Given the moment of time the Pathfinders are able to take time to fashion a barricade of scrap materials. Given only a few minutes the scrap will not be able to stop entry, but it will at least be able to slow down intruders passing through the gate.
Shortly after the barricade is set up Aasif cries out near the keep tower as he launches javelins into the approaching undead. "The rest of the garbage is making another push!"
The zombies in tatters the last wave is another group of common skeletons, but riding behind them is a skeletal figure with metal armor and lance. It holds up a shield toward the fort, ready for attacks, emblazoned with the iconography of fallen Lastwall with gouges scoring across the symbol. He is riding atop a horse lacking muscle or any other sort of flesh that races forward without breath toward the front gate.
Zabu
Brekovi
Shagrat
Kornel
Skeleton Soldiers
. green
. blue
. gray
. white
Meadow
Jayma
Skeleton Captain
. Captain (red)
. Skeletal Mount (black)
Shagrat's arrows don't find much success connecting solidly with the approaching skeletons as the their agility is a match for the goblin.
The undead is immediately overwhelmed by the lance of energy that tears through the animating forces holding it together. Within moments the skeleton breaks into hundreds of pieces forcing one of the skeleton allies to avoid the onslaught of bone.
Kornel can't tell much at a glance to separate the mounted skeleton from the others aside the better weaponry, chain mail, and steel shield. It seems to be like the other skeletons and likely has the same resistances to elements and physical injury . However, while the other skeletons seem focused on charging the front gates and the defenders before it, the dead and empty sockets of the undead leader are focused entirely on Kornel.
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Meadow leans over the wall and yells at the mounted skeleton.
She holds her hands up by her ears and wiggles her fingers while sticking out her tongue. It's oddly impressive how she manages to do this while holding onto her bow at the same time.