Hague stepped out and away from the living zombie, shifting his stance to keep his injured arm behind his guard. He springs back and forth staying at the edge of the creature's attack range, watching its movements carefully--launching a few quick punches and kicks, a few flourishing strikes with the kama, fast enough they lack real killing force but designed to guage the reactions of the monster, how fast it responds and what it's likely to do in response to a given attack. In the meantime, as he watches, he keeps his defenses fully up, dodging rather than blocking--he can't take much more blocking, looking for his opening to take all that strength and turn it against his opponent.
FYI
Hague spins in following Riven's arcing blade for cover, staying low and close and as the next wave of zombies rise up behind those felled by each stroke, he follows up with a crouching high kick bringing his heel down onto the knee of one zombie, palm striking another onto the ground, and sweeping the leg of a third.
As the willed undead stomps forward, Hague readies his kama, ready to cut grab the first limb the creature strikes with with his free hand and peel it free of muscle and ligament, like peeling a potato, with his weapon hand.
Doesn't seem to relax much at that, but he does wince and reach up at the bruise now forming at the site of the compatriotic shoulder squeeze--now both tense and bruised as well.
Hague stares helplessly at the big northerner, jaw slack. He tries to talk, but can't force himself to form words. Already the blood has started to leave his face and fingertips.
"A plan..." he gasps out weakly, almost laughing from the prepostrousness of it, hand going up to his mouth as a tear carves a path of cleanness across his filthy features. He sinks down to his knees and looks into the den of roiling dead. "...what plan? A plan? If they find us...we're all going to end up like...them." The last word comes out in a wheezing exhale, his eyes fixed on the inside of the room, at the hissing angry undead within and the profane dancing of the cultists, unable to look away, eyes bulging out of his skull. "We...can't. We can't."
Hague narrows his face as they approach the inhabited sections of tunnels, his breath evening as he pushes in and out a deep steadying breath. He slides the staff into its resting place behind his back and drops into a low crouch, pulling out the kama. He gives a pointed glance to the others and then silently rolls out into the darkness away from the dim magical light. Scouring the passage for clues with lightly probing fingers and toes he crawls his way down the tunnel, low with his limbs splayed out--like a hunting spider, each limb seeming only to tenatively, delicately make each move. In the darkness he lets the sounds and vibrations and physical senses combine to create a whole picture of his surroundings as with a final backstepping whirl he skitters nimbly into striking distance, back against the entry of the chamber from which the chanting emminates, peering inside hoping for some illumination provided by the cultists within.
Appologies if my description of the area between where we are and where they are isn't totally accurate. Just trying to get the post out without having to go inch by inch over what's where. The desire is to be at the entrance of the main chapel (or whatever) pressed up against the inside doorway, as much out of sight as possible, so as to get the drop on anyone who might come close to spotting him--but mostly to scout it out so he can go back and let the party know what we're dealing with. That's the hope anyhow.
His voice is quiet, a tense trembling murmur through partly open lips. "So...what now...how do we go in...don' wanna' be down there a moment more than we need to..." Every muscle is taught, eyes wide as he looks down into the almost mythical darkness of this place, evil and deadly like a cruel children's legend made real, shuddering and fighting the urge to flee.
"Hard to say, really." Hague begins, scratching at a lesion under his jaw with a blue-rimmed fingernail. "Signs don't last long down here. Things are always changing, whether by rats or dripping water or worse--the signs are always passing. I heard stories of ranger types who can tell a lot about goings on from just minor clues, but I don't think even they'd get much from all that goes on down here. The sewers like them secrets."
Suddenly Hague's eyes go distant. "There is a place, a place no one goes, that leads into this part of the sewers. I ain't never heard no more than rumors. Folk call it the Demons' Playground. Nobody goes there, I hear. Not even the most cutthroat, hardened killer. Light barely works down in that dark and there's things...awful things that live in it. I just thought of it. Haven't been down here hardly ever. That's likely where we need to go--and if we're gonna' go, we better move."
Taking a few steadying breaths, Hague is loping off again, trying hard to move through the less familiar tunnels as quickly as he can but trying to keep aware of the others behind him. Not a good place to be lost, especially if you're not a stinker. He continues on to the tunnel he's heard about, stopping just at the edge of the entrance.
...unless something else complicates the situation first.
"Well..." Hague says, collapsing winded against the side of the tunnel, breathing deep through his nostrils. "We are where you said. Neath the Street of the Gods. As y'can see, ain't nobody around. That's real unusual. Scary kind of unusual--means somethin's been happining to them. Be cautious. Something down here in the dark and slime has taken every soul's been living down here."
He gets up and raises his staff in front of him in a fist, still breathing heavily. "Now where did we want to go from here? Best we travel quickly...and not linger."
After a few minutes getting his bearings, Hague finds a familiar passage and the speed of the expedition increases greatly. Hague leaps from dry section to dry section of crumbling masonry, probing his way carefully along for memorized landmarks, keeping just enough ahead of the group to scout the way, his senses probing his surroundings for signs of disturbances, charting the safest (if not the most direct route) to the ill omened tunnels where the disappearances and dark superstitions abound--beneath the Street of the Gods.
Now whether we get there uneventfully or not...
Hague blinked in the dim light. Go away? It said go away? Relief spilled out of him as he held his hands out. He tried to keep his head down, to look as nonthreatening as possible, as he slowly circled around the family of creatures and up over the massive mound of sewage. The whole encounter left him feeling somewhat giddy the further he backstepped away from the confrontation, an unexpected miracle in a world devoid of mercy or good fortune. As he slid down the far side of the obstruction and into another black tunnel he felt a huge upwelling of laughter rise out of him--pitching him forward against the wall unable to proceed and sputtering out the muck that still caked him. He washed himself in the filthy brackish water that ran in the channel next to the ledge he stood on--no cleaner certainly, but at least no longer caked with foul mud.
"Just go around...slowly!" Hague called out exhultantly "It's telling us to go away. It was saying NOT food! Be careful, but I think the way is clear if you behave!"
At that Hague collapses into the corner, pulling his feet up near his chin, shaking and wiping the slick hair from his face unable to stop laughing, a huge idiot grin full of rotten teeth splitting his face.
Like poling the ground on a riverboat, Hague twisted, probing the stone floor of the sewer with the end of his staff until it found a friction point between two heavy stones. Using this leverage, pulling against the muck, feet still skidding out, he's able to stand, pulling up on the worn rag wrapped staff handle with both hands, a white-knuckled deathgrip.
Covered in muck like chunky mud, Hague hobbled away from the monster now wheeling toward them. The eyes loomed upon him, but in this near total darkness he couldn't tell if they were fixed or searching. With a thump he backed into the rounded arch of the spillway wall, just about coming out of his skin. Good to have a solid wall behind him. He leaned against it and prepared for the coming fight--staff in front of him to give the creature something to latch onto. Though now seeing it by the sputtering light of the fallen torch, it seems trying to fend off something of that size and power would be utterly hopeless, even the tentacle arms seemed thick enough that to pick him off of his feet would be no effort.
For a moment he glanced into the black, thinking perhaps the other two might be able to hold it off long enough for him to escape. His eyes went back to the priest who had saved his life--now nothing but a gray sillhuette against the darkness.
"It's warning us! It's not about food. We've enraged it." he could feel his teeth chattering together, having to force his voice above a breathless gasp.
The stench wrenches Hague off balance, pitching him forward choking and palming his face with his hand. When the little creature actually speaks it's too much for him. He lurches backward in horror, his feet skidding out in the deep sewer detrius and falls backward into a slick of it. Already he can feel the onset of some terrible illness setting into him, fighting to take hold in him. He cradles up the stick with one arm, pinning it to his chest hoping not to lose it. There's no way the otyugh didn't feel that splash--it knows exactly where he is. Panicked he tries to kick away from the gnashing arms he knows are coming, splashing and sinking in the muck unable to find leverage to move himself. Desperately he tries to keep his head above the sewage level as the stinking glop surges with the heavy body moving in his direction.
Augh! It said "food"! Whah! I totally didn't see that coming. Eeagh!
Dino...excuse me, did you say...droppings? Dino-droppings?
-Ian Malcom.
Oh and if you didn't get the quote before that, it's GlaDOS from Portal. Well except for me swapping out "neurotoxin" for "sewers" it's all her.
Still not certain of where the creature is in the settled muck, Hague steps gingerly into it, weight entirely on his back foot so he can yank it away if he feels contact. Slowly he wheels around. "Unless there's a better plan..." he begins, between ragged nervous breaths "I'll try to get it to bite down on my staff and someone...get around behind it." As he decends into the waist deep filth a smell comes up that is beyond noxious, forcing even Hague to recoil and move a hand up over his face.
Slowly he picks his way toward the wet shifting sounds--when suddenly they shift in tone from slobbery groping to a kind of deep bellows hiss. Hague freezes, oily beads of sweat running down his face. It's getting ready to attack. Not knowing where it is he sticks his pole in front of him like a boarspear, leaning way back hoping its toothy arms or vast maw will find his weapon rather than his legs. He clamps his lips together, eyes wide as terror numbs his hands, legs and face...
Hague lingers at the rim of the circle of dim light, his voice a low hoarse whisper to his companions "We go west then? Towards the disappearances...beneath the Street of the Gods? Some of the gasses down here don't respond well to open flame so be careful if you use them. Also the most visible thing down here is a man with a torch. Light tends to draw out all sorts of things. As for me, I have learned to find my way by touch."
He crouches down, staff in one hand and prowls his way forward staff skimming the way ahead like a blind man in natural quick sweeps. He tries to keep a slow pace to make himself easy for his compatriots to find, whether they opt to chain up with him or light a torch a ways behind him. He listens intently for creatures in the dark, smells for odd smells that stand out from the thick greasy plume of decay.
He steps forward, trying to stay above the waterline where walkways are present, keeping to the dry stones to avoid squelching his feet in puddles. Where he must step into the water he probes it first with his staff--kama in his off hand, fishing around for the bottom, and for signs of anything amiss down in the fetid black water. Then he eases himself in, making as little disruption to the water as he can and glides along as smoothly as possible, feeling with feet and staff for signs of trouble.
Passing under an archway, he peels some muck out from between the bricks, touches it tenatively, then rolls it between his fingers and smells it and touches it to his lips before balling it up and tossing it away with a frown. Have to be careful what you eat down here. Can't take chances.
Suddenly he pauses. He goes taut and holds his staff back to stop the others.
There's a snuffling sound--like someone rubbing at a runny nose. The air has a honey undertone to a stench more wretched than elsewhere. Probing ahead the ground is spongy. Some obstruction has blocked the pipe and now all the sediment and sewage has formed a thick mound. In it, something moves very slightly, snaking around to search the area with a long toothy tentacle. More thick mucusy movement.
"Otyugh." Hague turns and whispers through his teeth "Caught scent of us. Up ahead. Its feeling around for us. Sounds like she's got pups too...but we need to go this way. Looks like we're in for a fight."
Ignoring the handholds, Hague clamps the worn handle of his kama in his teeth and drops down the pipe--hands and feet spreading out to apply friction to the inside of the grime slick shaft speeding him down into the sewer at something of a controlled fall, landing at the bottom, folding like a ragdoll with the force. He comes up with the kama in hand and ready for a fight.
With his other hand he finds the walking stick behind his back and spins it free, using it to probe the darkness around him. He sweeps it over the ground to figure out how wide the path is, how much water there is and how deep. He passes it at shoulder height along the walls probing for torch sconces--or of course enemies. Mostly he just relaxes and lets his senses paint the inside of the chamber, lets the sounds and smells and vibrations on the air mix together and paint a scene for his mind. His face pinches tight under a flood of trauma, his training and his master, the old callouses of the cane marks on his back flaring to life fueling his sharp lonliness and loss.
He blows out a deep breath, clearing his mind and finding focus and composure again, staff swishing silently around him as he takes a few careful steps forward in the black, kama held close and coiled in a striking position.
Shakes his head. "Nah. Just an urban legend, that."
"Nothing like that, I'm afraid. We've plenty of tales down in the sewer, but they're a practical kind. Follow the rats. If they're goin' a way there's a reason. Dark and quiet means water coming. There's rhymes to tell what mushrooms to eat, or how bad something can rot before you can't eat it."
"Afraid there less down there by way of trolls as there is desperate people hungry and angry or sick. So if a one down there catches your gaze and holds it like he's watching you, keep an eye on him. The dangers in there aren't nothing fanciful. It's big hungry rats that chew you when you sleep, big fuzzy red spiders that can mimic the sounds they hear to lure you close--even voices, and of course the molds and oozes that can melt a man to pudding."
*amend amend*
Stops short of pulling the lid free, brow furrowing. "Right, so back to the guardhouse then?" He steps back for a second, mulling things over as if lost and trying to find his place again. "I won't know my way around as well if we go in somewhere I haven't been. Guess I could look around until something looks familiar. The sewers are big, really big, and I haven't spent as many years down there as most--but if we spend some time getting bearings I should be able to figure it out."
"Worst sort of rumors really. Nothing. People dissapear and don't come back--even the sort of people who normally know what they're doing. Would be, I'd tell you not to go near there, but as that's the only way to stop it, I guess that's where we're goin'." he gives a weak shrug, his eyes losing a bit of their focus, his face taking on a worrisome, slackface fatalistic expression. He stalks his way over to the sewer entrance, a muck grating where the uneven street dips low enough to let someone in.
"Well we can get in--but for the first ways there's not going to be room for armor--or beer-bellies for that matter." With a huge strain he leans back and pops out the crude rusty, handmade grating, standing it off to one side against the unusually high curb. For a moment he pauses at the entrance to listen and make sure the coast is clear, then crabbing forward on his hands he slinks, legs first into the dark hole and tumbles in with a splash and rolls into a crouch.
Nods solemnly. "Of course. I still owe you much considering the state I would still be in if you hadn't shown me the courtesy of healing me. I won't forget that. Whatever I can do." Hague moves in closer, and continues in a nervous, conspiratorial whisper, "so what did happen with all of you since I left? It feels like death herself follows you through the streets...clinging to the air. Something...bad?"
*cough-cough* The sewers... so deadly... Choking... *wha-hah-hah* Kidding! When I said "deadly sewers," the deadly was in massive sarcasm quotes. I could take a bath in this stuff, put it on cereal, rub it right into my eyes, honestly, it's not deadly at all. To me. You, on the other hand, are going to find its deadliness a-lot-less-funny...
Hague fiddled idly with something in his hands as the others approached, he slips it nervously into his pocket as if caught, looking up white eyes wide against his grime-smeared face. He nods shakily to the adventurers.
"Sorry for being away. Had a debt to pay off and...someone I needed to tend to." for a long beat he falls silent, reading over the expressions of each of the men with red-rimmed eyes, scouring them for clues. Then, shaking his head slightly with a sour look on his face as if he'd found something there he didn't like.
"What's wrong?" There was sudden urgency in his voice and demeanor, and where a moment ago he had seemed lax and pained he was now suddenly upright and alert like a startled deer. His eyes were only flittingly on the men he was talking to, moving in quick pans over the streets around them.
*appears, looks around and down at the glowing pentagram he's standing in*
I've been summoned?
Slips in just before the last few people to go into the office--not close enough to the first people in to draw attention, not far enough behind to draw attention as a straggler. Once inside he tries to position himself amongst the others to be the least visable possible, using the others as tall grass against which to camoflage himself.
"I'd accompany you..." says the stinker from behind her, head down, voice almost a mumble. "I owe you."
Hague took the youth's hand uncertainly, the priest still checking his neck for wounds. "Darius." he says quietly, with a short, awkward nod. "I'm called Hague."
He looks up with a wince, as the priests hands probed his injuries. Though his arm had reset itself and he was no longer pouring blood, he clearly was not as whole as he'd believed. As the dirt and gore are wiped clean he can feel the ragged edges of the wounds and what feels like it might be a tooth lodged in his cheek.
He tries to mull over what the priest is telling him...cherubim and not gods? He has to struggle to keep his head still.
"So...you do not know where your powers come from?" though it boggled him, the knowledge was also a tremendous relief. For the time being, it remained that he was safely outside the ken of powerful gods and their ilk.
...
As the man's ministrations turn to the young woman, the one whose powers to both control and incinerate the walking dead seem to have placed her at the nexus of the group's attentions, Hague finds himself divided. Part of him wants to remain safe, stick to the shadows--but he could not deny that she had done on his behalf. He would be dead if not for her.
Almost without thinking he finds himself standing by her side to defend her. "I don't know if this woman is a witch...or whatever she may be. I can't say I've seen power like hers, ever. I know that she risked her life to save mine out there, that I now live because of her. If her actions are to tell me what she is, then I would wish for many more of these witches of yours. In this city. In all cities."
By the time he was done, his hands were shaking. Then, like a blown out candle, his eyes lose their luster. He remembers himself and shrinks back against the wall, hand going back to favor his once broken arm.
Hague wanders into the huge building only very reluctantly, sticking close by the side of the priest who'd healed him--profoundly uncomfortable and twitchy. It was a very different thing, rallying to the gates of parliament, than it was to actually force our way into the building. He winced at his every squelshing footstep, seeping mud and grime onto the polished floors. He touched his face, smeared around the blood that lingered there though the wounds beneath had closed miraculously. He watched as a similar wonder was worked on the tall swordsman. He clenched his hand into a ball, slipping into a reverie until with a jolt he notices how far from the priest he has drifted. Quickly he slipped across the room, back to the priest's side.
He passed the tea table spread, feeling a little sick inside, last thing he wanted was to soil their nice tea sets--or accidentally break something. He couldn't find the noble he had dirtied during the combat outside, and was glad of it. That was the last attention he needed, already so out of his depth, sopping mud and gore in a building he was certain he had no business in.
Finally he found himself flanking the priest, still absently rubbing the spot in his arm that had been pouring out blood from the spot where the sharp end of his forearm bone had popped through the skin. He waited nervously to get the cleric's attention. He tried to sift and roll over the jumble of feelings and questions in his head, his face long and perplexed.
"Your god healed me? I...still don't understand. Why would your god take notice of me?" Hague's hand went up to his nose, rubbing the spot where it was nearly severed, almost bitten off by the creature in the street, now whole and intact. "So...owing your god what I do now. What do I do? I don't even know which god it is to whom I owe my debt..."
Ahhuuuurrggghhh...
*nose falls off*
Hague grinds his teeth as he's pulled to his feet, the arm beneath him having folded badly under him with a snap as the mass of zombies had crushed him to the ground. He held it tenderly to his ribs in an unnatural position. Blood seeped through his stained sleeve. Everywhere he was covered in bites and clawmarks, nose ruined--though he couldn't tell how badly, he could taste the blood running into his mouth.
It was the noble who helped him to his feet, and with a dull horror that radiated through his pain he realized the mess he was making of the man's clothes--certainly more expense than his life was worth. He looked away toward the zombies advancing toward the gate. The bizarre woman was in the crowd too, from the stench of burned rotten flesh and copius wet smoke, and from the sound of her snarling. He reached up to his kama and his eyes snapped open, squirting a fresh rivulet of blood down from the bitemark below his brow. He'd had it in hand when he was down in the fighting. It had to be in there somewhere. Agonized he stooped over and began feeling through the blood and mud, probing for the weapon with his one working hand.
Hague tried to keep his head down. No good looking a noble in the eyes; but from his demeanor...well clearly he didn't mean the woman any harm. He shook his head. As the big noble stormed off, entranced, Hague slipped in behind and helped the injured townsman to his feet and hobbled him toward the Parliament gates. Still no sign the gate would be opened soon--but maybe there was something to getting everyone together.
Hague could only carp and nod feebly. She'd locked eyes with him and the discomfort of her gaze was intense, he floundered for words. He shook the debris of a half charred corpse from his leg, rendered half to ash by her fiery spell. He switched his staff to his other hand, drew his kama and hacked away the remaining parts of the creature that still clung to him.
It seemed, in the swirling rain that the fight was fiercest to either side of the fountain, but with a last look at the woman, he wasn't about to argue. He sheathed his kama and put the pole over his back and ran for the gates, leaping the edge of the fountain and landing low on the other side, right in front of an irate looking noble--eyes intent on the woman, and from his course, moving straight across the plaza toward her. Behind him a couple of townfolk, one injured, and numerous bodies.
*splish-splish-splish-splish-splish*
Hague whooshed past the front lines of fighting and disappeared deep into the midst of the zombies. Like navigating a shallow sea full of shipwrecks at full sail he weaved and ducked his head, bent and arched his body. He felt angry bone white fists windmill around him--a few crunching the nearby corpses of fellow undead. Twist and bend and turn and suddenly the dim light was gone completely, swallowed up in the stinking crush of bodies dripping with dark water.
He put the staff down low and twisted his body around. It was too close for them to fight in earnest, just lean close and hungry and try for a bite. He coiled like a spring, soaked up all their energy. For a moment his mind flashed to his training, stacks of flagstones crushing him until blood gushed out of his nose. Then he switched footing and found the natural angle for his body to return all that force. Stones and stones of it. Then as though the world started low and spun out and around him like a stone on a sling he came around with the staff.
"Aaaauuurrrgh!" he untwisted, staff spinning over his head, the force of it tossing the undead away from him in a circle as though a meteor had landed in their midst. They fell back and away like trees in neat rows. In the middle stood Hague, staff back in one arm, cradled against his ribs, his other arm out in front of him, palm out and fingers tight in a guard, all the fingers curled except his forefinger. He breathed. For a moment, he felt serene, all around him the undead were down, a hole blasted in the center of their line like a storm giant had slammed down his fist.
Then the moment that had lingered was gone, and as though nothing had happened, the undead began to pick themselves back up...and he was right in the middle of them. Hopefully they had noticed--the others. Hopefully they could use this chaos to their advantage, and soon. Else he would be torn apart.
Hague turns the corner, giving a wide berth to the bewitched horde of undead. He charges down the open street, hearing their challenges yelled back and forth as he approaches, his face stiffens, wary eyes moving between the big city guard and the fearsome woman nearing what may be a violent clash if neither side relents. He wouldn't be able to pass the guard without bringing himself into the arc of his sword, but similarly he was loathe to stop running, to draw himself into their conflict. Crouching low in a run past the guard on his left side he reached back and spun the quarterstaff into his hand, bringing it up in a defensive position. He'd have to react quickly if the big sword came sweeping his way. No way he could block a weapon like that by just meeting force with force...
Hague hears the call to advance on the Parliament building, the commander's voice ringing out against the roar of the storm, a call to charge into a throng of yet more undead monsters. He stands wearily, dipping his hands into the rain puddle and running them trembling through his plated hair. He stands, watching the handful of other adventurers turn together and rejoin the battle and blows out a long, terrified, exausted breath, knocking the staff against the cobblestones a few times to dislodge the gore and ichor, and rejoins them. Looking down the street he sees the woman sprinting with her bewitched undead escort lagging in a trail behind her. He shudders, shakes a spray of water from his hair, and runs after.
Twirling the staff overhead, throwing off the rotting gore of the just slain undead, he casts his eyes from one guard to the other, eyes squinting hard against the blinding spatter of rain. The one guard was free, swinging with his club and on his feet. The other was still on his back, and in that instant the zombie above him brings down his brick, two handed--illiciting a high pitched yowl and crunch of bone.
Startled, Hague sprints toward the fallen guard to help him--then a bone jarring impact. Another one of the creatures, hidden in the recesses of the square, masked by the gushing downpour, surges forward. It's fists are like iron, knocking Hague tumbling to the ground. It shambles forward out of the rain, looming over him. It's a woman, once beautiful even, but with one side of her face bruised and rotten like a bad peice of fruit, blue black and swollen with rain. Lighting crashes behind her as she lurches forward, a look of anguished sadness on her face as she reaches down to Hague. He crabs backward, just inches out of her desparate grasping reach.
More screaming from the prone guard, in much as terror as in pain, accompanied by an awful wet ripping sound.
Hague's eyes flick back to the female zombie, but she's gone--lost in the rain. Panicked he looks around, heart pounding. He gathers up his staff and tries to stand. Suddenly rictus hands grasp him from behind like talons of iron, digging hard into his skin. He bends backward into the grasp, then bends at the waist, flipping the zombie to the ground. The pole comes up in both hands and he drives it down through the bottom of her chin into her skull.
The battle stops for a second and he slumps back into the mud, horrified. He wants to run. The sounds of the guards fighting for their lives sound a million miles away, hushed and low. The rush of rain a thousand times louder. Then the girl spasms, mangled face grimacing into an ugly incomprehensible mess, arms lashing out and balling up handfuls of his pantlegs. Hague screams, ripping a leg free from her grasp and dropping it down onto the body in a series of brutal axe kicks until finally it collapses in death.
Hague sprang forward across the slippery tile shingled rooftops, gale buffeting him to and fro in a zigzag--his vision a blur of rainspatter, but he could vaguely see the throng below. The woman standing in the midst of rotting creatures who were chewing each other apart while she blasted them with tendrils of eldrich hate. He could barely believe what he was seeing, the snarling flashes of her face lit against the storm by volleys of cracking magic. The wrongness of it and the helplessness he felt against it wobbled his legs, nearly causing him to tumble off the roof. He scampered past it, clambering away from it, the primal fear chewing at him like a dog left chained out in a thunderstorm, driving him to flee, forcing him to find his legs and run.
Hague leaped from rooftop to rooftop, clinging to chimneys and other bits of architecture to stabalize himself. About a block down, at the far edge of the riot, the streets had largely cleared except for the wounded, the dead and the undying. A junior priest of some stripe had stepped into the square, raising his hand and shouting something at the creatures against the wind. It only drew their attention. One of them shuffled forward, eyes glazed, and planted a pitchfork in the youth's innards, making his eyes and mouth go wide.
At the other intersection, a pair of off duty guards were caught in the thick of the horde, the one attempting to pull away his injured friend. The zombies had separated them. The injured guard lay on the ground in a pool of bloody mud, one zombie tearing at his clothes, another beating him with a brick. The other guard was entangled, grabbed from around the waist and shoulder by three zombies while a fourth stumbled toward him with arms outstretched.
Hague opened his mouth, tongue out, and swallowed a bit of sweet rainwater. He focused. Breathed. Forced out the screaming. His hand went back to his walkingstick. Two running steps and then nothing under his feet but air. He landed in the mud with both feet, an explosion of muddy water erupting around him. As the water fell back, he charged forward, vaulting off his staff and lauching a leaping kick into the chest of the zombie advancing on the grappled guard to push it backward against the wall, following it with a massive two-handed overhead bash with the staff.
Age: 26, though he looks a fair sight older. He got a late start training, and although he's a fair bit older than most monks of his level of training, by something like five years, it was only the declining health of his mentor that even let him out into the world at all--or likely he'd STILL be trying to get it right.
Greasy tears rolled down his face as he sealed Kairn into his wooden shack, nailing soggy wooden planks across the door, piling up rubble, bricks. It felt like he was leaving forever. He'd fought the old dwarf into wheezing exaustion and tied him to his cot, left the last of the dried pondscum, roast ratmeat and mushrooms in reach along with a bag of clean water. He'd given him a last spongebath--who knows when he would get another. Now he just needed to board him up and conceal the entrance so that whatever it was that was taking people, that whatever it was would not take his old mentor...the only family he had.
He finished and collapsed in the slick black mud, head buried in his hands and sobbed, chest convulsing, heart shrunk down tight in his chest, eyes and forhead pinched and puckered, swollen red, nose running. Finally his grief abated enough that he could pick up his gear--an old broken handpick ground down into a kama, a frayed leather scrap he used as a headband and a sling, the warped walkingstick he used to tap his way through the black tunnels--but also as a quarterstaff. And tapped his way forward into the inhabited section, where he could feel, smell, and almost see the packed rag covered bodies of vagrants. He clambered through them, past them and out to one of the drainages, pushing out the grating.
It was daytime! The sun on his skin felt like a blast furnace. The light made him gape and skitter backward blinking. Slowly, ever so slowly he pulled himself out through the pipe and out into the ditch. He rolled onto his back and wheezed. Every time he came back out it was like being born again, covered in a black slick of slime and offal, blinking and helpless. He staggered to his feet, eyes adjusting finally to the light. He was behind the town. He made his way to a mud puddle and tried to wash the ichor from his face, hands and clothes.
Up the grassy hill he climbed, through the broken wall of a ruined building and out into the town. Self conscious of his stench he kept his distance from the folk in the streets until he approached the marketplace, hugging close to the sides of the buildings. As he approached the marketplace he lingered in the shadows, listened for the sounds of disturbance, and then with a few focusing breaths began the process of scaling up the wall of the building his back was against, up onto the roof. Better to be up there with some distance between him and whatever evil, half-dead things he might be roaming the streets below.
So apart from stats here's a few extra details about Hague:
Monk 4
Ability Increase: +1 Strength
Feats-Starting: Blind Fighting, Skill Focus (Survival-Underground)
2nd Feat: *some kind of improvised weapon feat
* I know I've seen feats like this somewhere, but have had lousy luck finding them--basically they reduce the -4 penalty on fighting with a random weapon at hand. Pathfinder has a couple--one that's ranged only called Throw Anything and a melee one that I don't at all qualify for that's much better than I need called Razor Sharp Chair Leg. I know there's something like that out there...but if not I'll pick something else. Endurace would be good as a fallback.
Survival +7*(+4, +2 focus)
Listen +6(+3)
Move Silently +6(+3)
Tumble +7(+4)
*Not sure if Skill Focus makes a cross-class skill into a class skill. If so then Survival goes up to a +9
Just let me know if there's anything else you need.
Stats:
Str: 14 - his strenth is a fairly new development in his life, a product of the rigorous training he recieved at the hand of his dwarven taskmaster. He'd always been hard, but where his former exertions had been mostly mindless and exhausting, now he was being called upon to perform feats beyond his ability. His regimen has left him completely spent at night, unable to move, motivated only by blows from his master's cane. Through this mistreatment he's found new reserves of strength.
Dex: 16 - quick, and twitchy from a dangerous life that's convinced him to treat everything as potentially deadly. He's made a life out of barely avoiding injury in a world where getting hurt is as good as being killed. This permanent level of stress and high alertness makes him haggard and shakey, but when he turns his mind to stilling himself and moving carefully he can have a precision born of sweating desperation.
Con: 12 - surrounded by sickness and hard work he whole youth has given him a sick kind of toughness. He's never really well, but likewise he's gained a bit of resistance to all the vile things out there, having immersed himself in them.
Int: 8 - a bit of a dim candle due to poor nutrition in his youth and the utter lack of any kind of mental cultivation. He's not the archtypal slurring moron half-orc. He's just always in a fog, and trying to think things to their ultimate conclusion is an effort. He forgets the little things, and it takes him forever to learn things that others take for granted.
Wis: 16 - even before his training, which honed his perceptions, he's always learned to look for the little signs that fortell a storm brewing within a person. He watches the world greedily, jealously and sifts it over for information the way a rich nobleman mulls over the notes of a fine wine.
Cha: 10 - years of abuse and servitude, as well as the fear of abandonment have worn down most of his rough edges for good or ill. He's malliable, bland and a shade needy.
Okay here's what I've got:
Hague Kotair was born and abandoned beneath the city streets, left to die in the sewer as a meal for rats, but was found by the sewer cleaners who turned him in for a bounty from the local temple. As he grew, he showed no hint or inclination toward faith despite the earnest efforts of the clergy to incorporate him into their order. So in time he was abandoned again to an orphanage.
He was found there by a wealthy old widow in town, who took him in--not to raise him, but as free help. He cleaned up after her in her large, spooky and increasingly eccentric house, and just as he felt that her feelings toward him were beginning to soften, she died. Everything she had reverted to her grasping family, who threw him from the house and into the street, not a man by several years but too old to be considered a proper child or be offered any support. Half-starved, he headed back to the sewer, the same where he had been found as an infant. There he sat and waited to die.
He was found by a dwarven monk, an old hermit, hateful and bitter, who resided in the sewer sprawl. He taught the boy how to subsist off of fungi and carrion, how to feel his way through the dark, how to fight with whatever was at hand. Finally in the monk's last active years he let Hague know why he had taken him in. He was dying, and there were arts that he had developed and in his pride had never shared, but now he was ill and afraid that his name and skills would be forgotten. Hague was to be the repository for his training. His training began in earnest--a harsh, unrelenting pattern of abuse and unfair expectations.
At the end Hague was prepared, given the texts to continue his training, and the old dwarf became bedridden. Though he thoroughly hates him, Hague tends him in his illness, coming down to the sewers every day to bring him food, helping him eat, cleaning him and fetching things for him. He takes what jobs are available, anything to earn some money to help him support his elderly charge. He would let the mean old monk die, but that would mean he would be abandoned again--and he just can't let that happen. He's been abandoned too often. He can't let it go.
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