Zacharia carefully inches froward to inspect the creatures' corpses.
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"Thankfully, my diagnosis is they have not been afflicted by any poison."
"Excellent attack Morcrug, though be careful; Constructs can be incredibly sturdy. Dimitri and Atsuko, I would recommend taking some sort of antivenom as soon as possible; I suspect this is some variant of an Iron Cobra dolled up to LOOK undead for some reason; in either case it is likely venomous, not just...sticky." "I'll see to your wounds once we've assured its destruction, but alas my ability to treat poison is curtailed without my kit. I'll analyze you and hope for the best."
Zacharia starts with the usual battery of knowledges.
Zacharia looks at her curiously. "It's not that bad, or strong. Do you not receive olfactory shock training in the warrior courses?"
"Dimitri, out of curiosity, are you able to sense the dead at all? I imagine if you could you might have mentioned by now, but it never hurts to ask."
"This particular one serves a more...sinister purpose. It uses the bones of dead creatures and puppeteers them in a mockery of life. On the bright side, this may put some of our fears to rest; the ground hasn't necessarily been desecrated such as to allow for the spontaneous creation of undead."
Zacharia curiously inspects the weird creature.
Zacharia passes off his Lucerne Hammer to Morcrug. "Use this! It's more effective on the skeletal undead!"
Zachariah bobs his head in agreement, following Dymitri into the room. "I'm fine. If anyone is injured, however, please step up."
Zacharia remembers Gharol's advice, and tries to Aid Another Morcrug's next attack.
"Interesting. All these dedications to people who fell during the Shining Crusades...and yet there are still undead present in the tomb. It stands to reason this would be one of the most consecrated tombs in Ustalav, but that is obviously not the case. What has happened?"
Zacharia cautiously follows.
Zacharia follows, for lack of any better ideas.
"Are any of you injured? If so, I can patch you up quickly enough. I'm afraid I'm little good in a fight, however. Zacharia, by the by. I caught Morcrug's name, as well as our second Dymitri, but what about you?" he addresses Atsuko as they walk.
"Some kind of crypt." Zacharia answers the Half-Orc warily. "There is clearly some magic afoot. We all awoke in these coffins as well, but I'm sure we would have noticed if more than one of us were crammed into them with you." The implications of this are grim. What if we escape only to be transported back here?"
"It could be some kind of trick, but if it is actually somebody else..." Zacharia sighs and cautiously heads back toward where they started. "Stay close. Whatever happened to Gharol and Lelache could happen to us if we're not careful."
Zacharia does a quick scan of the room for valuable or useful items, and then suggests the group heads toward the rightmost door.
"I don't relish going deeper than we must. Maybe this door will lead us closer to an exit."
Zacharia wanders off to the door.
"Indeed, yes. Any objections to me keeping this skull? I'd like to examine it further."
Zacharia shakes his head. "The metal is a complete unknown to me as well, and Esoteric Metallurgy was one of my electives last year. That likely means it is quite valuable, and at least exceedingly rare."
Zacharia racks his memory.
"Err, right. Poke, them. I see." Zacharia says. Thankfully nobody can tell he's blushing in the dark.
"It seems I was snatched from my room with none of my usual gear, so sadly no."
"I wish, that would make them a lot easier to deal with." Zacharia remarks. He saunters forward and tries to drop the hammer on this bug.
Thankfully he manages to hit the ground, at least.
"I understand they're expendable, but surely they still have a better use than throwing them into what seems to be some kind of acid spewing trap." Zacharia comments.
"We're better off not destroying our own resources, expendable or not." Gharol takes his lucerne hammer and offers it to Zacharia. "Here. I'm not expecting much but standing back and taking swings is better than nothing." Zacharia stumbles under the unexpected weight of the unwieldy, 7 foot pole but quickly recovers. "I'll...do my best. I believe you were around when our class was tested for existing aptitudes. I'm not sure Telemachus' scar ever faded."
"Ah, good, it's finally over. As I mentioned earlier I have a question to ask: Dimitri are your skeletons at all resistant to positive energy? I am a natural conduit for it but I fear the attack is indiscriminate. If they are not I think I'm going to be regrettably passive for much of our trek through these catacombs, as my other offensive abilities only work on creatures with a working circulatory system."
Zacharia moves back to an open space and waits for somebody else to smash the bug.
Zacharia delays his action.
Initiative Order:
Skeletons (19) Lelache (14) Dimitri (10) Gharol (9) Zacharia (4)
"Hm. I just realized a problem. Something to discuss after the battle." Zacharia muses aloud, going through his options for fighting.
"The noble Red Shrikes, huh?" Gharol muses, examining the carvings, then glancing around the room "Apparently not noble enough for a nicer tomb than this pit." He spares a glance to his companions. "Any of you heard of this bunch?" he asks, probing his own memory at the same time. "The Red Shrikes were a band led by Ervin Roslar; presumably the namesake of Roslar's Coffer. They were part of the Shining Crusade which defeated Tar-Baphon. They most certainly deserved better." Zacharia takes a peek through the door. "More crypt. Frustrating. Can you manifest that skeleton without it burning the rest of us? It appears we may have a bit of a walk ahead of us." he asks Dimitri.
As they work on the door, Zacharia racks his own memory.
"Sorry. I sometimes forget not everyone can see right now. The room is approximately 15, maybe 20 feet long. I see a door, as well as a covered crate. I had thought to check the former first, maybe there is light outside if we can get it open." He hesitates for a moment. "Also the sarcophagi we woke up in have images eerily similar to our own carved above them in bas relief. It refers to the occupants as 'Red Shrikes, companions in the war against evil'. I thought that was of lesser concern for now, but it did catch my eye."
Zacharia looks curiously at the carvings but files them away as a curiosity to be explored once the situation has been fully assessed. "Hold off on that. There is a door, but there's no telling if we can get it open; a fire could burn away what could be a limited supply of air and suffocate us all." "Gharol, help me with this?" Zacharia asks, moving to inspect the door and see if it will open.
"But where is 'here', is the question? I'll take a look around."
Zacharia nearly smacks Gharol in the face as the lid is lifted away in the midst of him pushing and banging on it. Pn seeing his face, Zacharia is annoyed, then relieved. That relief fades a bit after looking around. "What...? I don't believe that's possible Lelache. This doesn't look like the mausoleum of some village. Besides, we have close ties with the people of Roslar's Coffer. If they were insane we'd have known years ago."
"What the..." Zacharia starts, then cuts off, looking around irritated.
He pushes against the lid to no avail. "Ha ha, funny prank! You've trapped the vampire boy in the coffin, very droll. NOW LET ME OUT!" he yells banging against the coffin lid.
Zacharia eats and drinks in a workman-like fashion, efficiently downing his food and only slightly stopping to savor the bitterness of the ale, downing it almost as someone might a tonic for some ill. "Thank you Mr. Chaucer, that was perfect after such a long trip." He is genuinely pleased with the quality of the food, though in truth barely noted its taste other than it was nourishing and seemed to have nothing in it which had spoiled. Most food is largely unimpressive to Zacharia, his body craving something else he knew he could never let himself have, at least not in the way the Hunger tells him he wants it. After dinner he sits quietly a moment, enjoying the warmth and camaraderie of the other patrons, and waits for the light buzz from the ale to relax him further. Once it has, he stands up languidly and makes for the stairs to the rooms. "I believe I'll make an early night, much as I would wish to enjoy everyone's company the rest of the evening. I've an early start tomorrow and wish to be at my best."
"Yes, how did you know?" Zacharia says, flashing the innkeeper a smile to let him know he's joking.
"That certainly seems the best plan. Hopefully the name denotes it's cheap as well, I'm not too keen to spend a ton of money during our stay." "Would you mind booking the room for me if you have nothing else pressing? I have some patients to see to while we're here, and I want to speak with the headsman to set up a list of priority cases before bed so I can get straight to work in the morning."
The learning curve at the school was steep, in more ways than one. While Father Isaiah had taught him to be a healing, it was only the school's strict regimen that taught him medicine. He learned to not merely treat symptoms but to solve problems, with or without the magical arts, and the shift in perspective of the Father's trust in the divine and his new teachers' insistence on exactitude and knowledge above all else was jarring. Still, Zacharia was adaptable, and that came soon enough at the patient hands of Master Healer Lyon, as part and parcel with the training. Far more difficult was the years long journey to accepting and channeling the Hunger as part of himself. Master Warlock Fennix (a half-breed himself, of the fiendish variety) had decades of practice in channeling evil arts to good ends, and brooked no complaints from his charges. The man was harsh, abrasive, and exceedingly difficult to learn from but his mastery of the arcane was second to none, and genuine worldly experience tempered and sharpened a man who might otherwise have become a nebbish bookworm, so encyclopedic was his knowledge of magic. The two opposing but no less dedicated teachers molded Zacharia from an idealist youth into a more practical and competent, if no less righteous young man, and by the time the curtains closed on his second year Zacharia felt grounded for the first time in his life, comfortable in his own skin and feeling more adventurous. Where previously he'd been withdrawn and uncomfortable around others, he finally began to open up to some of his classmates rather than keeping them at arm's length, with his only regret being that he hadn't done so sooner. Now close to closing the book on his third year, Zacharia is torn between the itch to go back into the world and use his talents to better it and his desire to stay in familiar surroundings with good friends and acquaintances forever.
I likewise had Ustalav in mind when coming up with names and whatnot. Specifically he would have been born in the relative outskirts of the county of Caliphas (the self-named capital of which has a sizable, though hidden, vampire population). If you wanted a potential ominous plot hook for later, Zacharia could even be indirectly descended of Luvick Siervage (the Elder Vampire of the region who's been chilling around for like 3000 years or something like that). Zacharia's two Spheres have very different 'feels' to them. Using the Sphere of Life is exactly as complex as performing actual surgery. It requires painstaking attention to detail and an iron will to knit flesh as it is supposed to be, instead of into a misshapen mass of soon-to-be-dead tissue. The Sphere of Blood, by contrast, is all too easy to use, and seductive in its simplicity. Using it is more akin to letting go and allowing the Hunger to guide Zacharia's actions. Where Life is discipline, Blood is catharsis.
Story:
The blood calls to Zacharia; it always has. His heritage leaves him with the Hunger, to the horror of his wet nurse at the orphanage, and growing up was a struggle to control his urge to feed on the other children (particularly the ones that angered him), grown only more confusing over the years as other desires began to arise and mingle with the one omnipresent one singing through his veins. Were it not for a kind soul, a similarly afflicted priest who saw in Zacharia a kindred spirit, he might have turned to a dark path, shunned as he eventually became from the other children his age. Instead he was brought into the care of Father Isaiah, a priest of Dalenydra. In practice he was also associated with Sarenrae's church, but adhered to a vow of strict pacifism and respect for life that even the Dawnflower's worshipers found extreme. Father Isaiah taught Zacharia everything he knew about the human body, and those of the other races and tried to instill in him the values that Isaiah said allowed him to hold on while surrounded by those his body told him were food. Zacharia appreciated the Father's kindness and tutoring, but would never quite gel with the philosophy. His blood ran hot and fast, and he turned the philosophy of medicine toward life: sometimes harm must be done to accomplish a great good. A diseased limb must be severed, and sometimes the cure to a disease ravaged the one healed. So could it be considered that the parasites that inflicted themselves on the populace should be purged, with the same prejudice that a tick would be removed and burst for the good of its host. This came to a head when Zacharia turned his healing abilities to use removing the "disease" of a small group of toughs harassing the pacifistic priests of Dalnydra and Sarenrae. While Father Isiah had come to love his charge, he could not reconcile that with the boy's radically different philosophy, and could no longer conscience teaching him the same talents he had turned to the violence he had so abhorred. Still, his skill in the medicinal arts could not be denied. Not wanting to destroy Zacharia's future over their philosophical differences, and hoping he would come to seethe light one day, the priest pulled strings with a friend of his in the school to get him into their medical program, and set that friend to watching over him. Ignore the sheet in the profile, this is a recycled alias from a very short lived game.
Zach moves up and flourishes his blade, trying to make up for his epic fail earlier. He puts his hand on his sword, then pulls it from the sheathe while executing a 720 spin to slice into the two nearest rats .
Zach is thrown from the cart, slightly groggy from the gas.
He does a front flip, preparing to make a cool three-point landing. Unfortunately, he misjjudges the speed at which he was thrown from the cart, and face plants instead.
Quickly he gets up, wiping the blood from his face. Surely nobody saw that.
"Yes, onward, ever onward."
Zach shrugs and goes to pry up one of the metal plates.
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