16.2: This ain't no charity

Dramatis Personae

Beltin (Aasimar Dirge Bard/Cleric 11).

"Jake" aka Alex, the actual character name but I refuse to go back and edit the old entries (Human Wizard/Rogue 11).

The Smith (LN Half-Giant Aegis/Psychic Warrior 11).

This ain't no charity, Session 16.2 - 10/10/14

Day 33

The day after their rather anti-climactic victory over the dragon Malerix, the party, and by party I mean Jake and Jake alone, decides what to do with their shiny, "new" firebase. The party teleports back to the Camp, leaving the Greed Elementals to hold things down while they are gone.

As soon as they arrive in the town square, near the gallows, it is clear that something has happened while they were gone. Several buildings are heavily damaged and there is smoke coming from the north west part of town, like several huge bonfires had been lit. Make shift barricades and defenses are placed at key points. Groups of crusaders are patrolling around as craftsmen work to repair damaged structures. Old time campers sit around in their usual spots looking mostly nonplussed regardless of the strangeness around them.

Beltin and Jake approach one of the old timers and ask what the hell happened. The Smith, not caring and missing the forge, leaves to get back to his true passion. One of the old timers explains that there was some sort of massive spider raid on the Camp, like dozens if not hundreds of the bastards; the camper is drunk, as it tradition, so numbers do not seem to be his strong suit. Rumor is there queen was killed and they blamed the Camp, so they gathered and came en mass to take revenge and slaughter the Camp to the last man.

Fortunately Skeriber and his boys knew they were coming and gave warning. The crusaders built defenses and got ready. They let the ashborne arachnae push in before surrounding and decimating them; the north west section of the Camp got wrecked. Between the crusaders and the adventurers in town, the beasts stood little chance and were nearly all slaughtered. The smoke the party saw was from pyres for the creatures and for the Camp dead; all things considered, not many people were lost and most of them were no body important, though a high ranking crusader went down.

Percentile dice are rolled; yep, it was one of the people Beltin sold a mansion to, so now it reverts back to him as per his sleazy, dishonest real estate contract. Great success! More dice rolls confirm that no player property was in the war zone. More success!

The old timer continues that it seems that the Usurer didn't do shit and left it to the crusade to protect the Camp and now the crusaders are marching about like they own the place... huh, looks like there might be more bloodshed to come, but this time from within, concludes the drunk with an air of complete indifference.

Jake and Beltin response: "Kthxbai."

The Smith

Missing the explanation, the Smith heads straight for the Usurer and the forge and when he arrives he sees the Usurer talking to several men, all high ranking crusaders by their apparel. The Usurer is smiling the kind of smile that's more about showing teeth with the implied threat they may soon find your throat than about expressing warmness, but the crusaders talking to him either seem to not realize the dangerous ground they were treading or don't care. They seem agitated except for one; though the Smith wouldn't recognize him, the calm one is the head crusader, the leader, and a man who also has a reputation as one that is not to be trifled with.

It seems there is a disagreement of sorts happening before him, but being the Smith, he is uninterested and instead walks up and starts pointing out the flaws in the fine armor these important men are wearing. He does so not out of hubris or the will to mock them, but simply because he sees. One of the already affronted looking men looks more affronted and explains how his armor was past down for generations and was forged by the renowned smith X, etc, etc.

The whole exchange causes the Usurer to laugh in the man's face before telling the crusaders that they will have to continue this discussion another time as he has business to conduct. The crusaders leave but it is clear that they still have issues. The Smith gets some dirty looks on the way out, but he of course doesn't care.

The Usurer greets him warmly and with a real smile and brings out the manifest of the work that needs down, but the Smith stops him. He tells the Usurer that for his services he requires additional compensation on top of his dirt floor near the forge accommodations: He requires daily rations of bread and water. The Usurer considers this momentarily and says he thinks he can manage that. The Smith nods to him and goes to the forge. Oh, how he has missed it.

Jake and Beltin

The two non-smiths head over to the crusader area and look to into meeting up with a high ranking crusader; they have business to conduct. Beltin sold a house to a man fitting that criteria, a man by the name of Rinswald, a man who happens to be in charge of the crusades tactical plans for cleansing the Desolation. They decide to pay a visit to Rinswald as he is the highest crusader they have had any dealings with.

They approach the crusade "high command," a semi-permanent, large tent structure. They are stopped by two guards outside and asked their business. They say they have important intel to deliver concerning a staging position for entry into Tsar. They are told to wait as one man goes inside and then 10 minutes later they are escorted inside.

The guard leads them into a fairly large room dominated by a table covered with a large map, clearly of the Desolation. It's covered with markers perhaps designating potential areas of interest, battles, and such. Jake and Beltin don't give a shit and a couple minutes later a stern looking man, Rinswald, walks in and tells them to give the goods.

Jake tells him to simmer down and that this kind of info doesn't come cheap. Rinswald gives Jake a look that clearly states his thoughts about money grubbing mercenaries such as himself, but to drive the point home he begins to lecture him on civil duty, concluding that some would say it is his moral obligation to deliver any information concerning the Desolation to the churches of Muir/Thyr and that duty is its own reward.

Jake disagrees, stating they didn't kill Malerix for nothing (this gets Rinswald attention), but before things can escalate Beltin intercedes and says that though they are devout believers in the cause of the crusade they are also a business; plus with one good deal the party will think of the crusade first for any other intel they find. Rinswald looks skeptical about one of those claims but then asks for a price.

Jake says 20,000 bits. Rinswald argues for 5,000. They end up meeting at 12,000 with conditions. The party will lead a group of the crusader engineers to scout the area and dependent on their report they will have a deal. The party will receive 5,000 bits up front but will be required to reimburse the crusade should a deal not be made. Lastly, the party will be responsible for making sure the area is secure until the crusade can move men into the area. Should things check out, it should take about a week for the crusaders to muster and prepare supplies for an appropriately sized force.

Jake agrees and says that he can teleport the inspectors to the site at any time. Rinswald says they will be ready within the hour.

An hour later, Jake meets with Horace, the crusader friend of the late BW, and a few crusader engineers. As they never actually met, the BW connection is not brought up, though Horace must know this was one of his friend's old partners. Jake teleports the men out to the firebase and the inspection begins.

The Greed Elementals stay out of the way though Horace questions them and Jake about the resistance faced here and from the surrounding area. Things have been keeping away, perhaps due to the reputation of the former occupants, so that's something. The engineers look over the position and declare it sound, but then they find the strangely marked canisters.

Jake tries to call is a selling point as they come with the place, but Horace and his men find this to be a dubious claim, especially after one of them recognizes the symbol of Tsar on them. The party negotiates with the crusaders and decide that they will take a canister back to be examined, but should they be a hazard to the firebase then the party will be responsible for eliminating them as per the "party must secure location" clause of the previous agreement.

They shake on it and they teleport back, but this time outside the Camp limits due to the unknown canister they have in tow. The engineers stay and guard it while Horace heads back to the high command and Jake leaves to do his thing. On the way back, Horace is friendly and asks for a blow by blow of what happened with the tar dragon. Jake tells him with minor embellishments to make himself look good and Horace is clearly impressed.

Later that day Jake is summoned to the high command, but instead of meeting with Rinswald or Horace, he is led to an agitated looking bureaucrat bearing a holy symbol of Thyr. The man doesn't waste time of pleasantries.

He explains that the canisters are dangerous and as such are the party's problem. Get rid of them. Jake inquires further and after a little resistance the bureaucratic crusader tells him they contain plagues.

They are weapons. Perhaps highly unstable weapons, given how regardless of their seeming preservation, they are several hundred year old thin metal cases holding horrible death inside. They don't know how to safely get rid of them, but that ain't their problem now.

He passes some paperwork on to Jake, saying it is a contract saying the destruction of the canisters will be carried out by the Greed Elementals as per the previous verbal agreement. The ease of which he is being put into the position of being responsible for highly dangerous biological weapons isn't lost on Jake.

The proper paperwork gets done and once it is the paper pusher of Thyr relaxes; it seems now that this is someone else's problem he can relax as the party will most definitely not hold onto weapons of mass destruction for their own potential use. Jake says they will bury them somewhere or something and no one will ever find them. Whatever, says the man behind the desk and Jake is dismissed.

Fun fact: The bureaucrat doesn't really care as his part is done. Yay, shortsightedness!

Fun fact 2: Due to clerical errors, the whole "we found biological weapons from Tsar" report never actually made it up to the actual high command, as if it did, they would not be okay with leaving their destruction to a band of highly suspect mercenaries.

But such is life. If only BW were still alive the party could become arms dealers to terrorists in the south. Missed opportunity.

After the meeting with the strange little crusader man, Jake meets up with Beltin and explains what they have. Yep, we're gonna keep those they decide. Perhaps at some point they can use them to hold Bard's Gate to ransom or something, brainstorms the party barring the Smith. Jake it seems just can't wait for the Greed Elementals to be branded a terrorist organization and get a crusade declared all over their punk asses.

The two collect the canister still stored near the Camp (after signing a release for it of course). It is decided that Beltin will make a worthless undead hold onto it and then he will store that undead in his staff for safe keeping.

Days 34-40

There is some down time while the party waits for the crusaders to muster before heading out to relieve the Greed Elementals of command.

The Smith spends his time working at the forge and has all the bread he can eat. At one point Beltin arrives with his share of the bits for the firebase deal; seeing them as worthless bits of metal, the Smith throws them into the fire and melts the several thousand bits into a few iron ingots. Beltin facepalms on the inside and decides he will never give the Smith money ever again.

The party debates looking into materials to create a private forge for the Smith at the Greed Elementals base (yay, not getting gouged by the Usurer for using his forge!), but no definite plans are made. The party gets the feeling they will still end up having to pay the Usurer off for bypassing his service fees.

Jake and Beltin spend most of the week back at the firebase. They teleport in, but on the night after the crusaders inspected the place the firebase was attacked by a large group of mostly stupid creatures. Due to the defenses of the place the Greed Elementals fought them off, but one man died.

The number of creatures involved was odd; it seems like something was corralling them in the base's direction. A few men thought they say demonic looking figures herding the beasts of the Desolation toward them.

Probing for weakness: Their enemies found some.

This is unacceptable to Jake and Beltin, so they stay. More "natural" attacks come, but this time Beltin is there and calls forth his skeletal tar dragon. Similar herding instances happen a few more times in the next few days, but each time undead Malerix is there which leads to predictable results.

Probing for weakness: Their enemies found none. The attacks cease and the firebase's reputation among the intelligent beings of the waste stays intact: "Not worth the effort."

Days 41 and 42

Beltin and Jake head back to the Camp and meet with the crusader expedition. They have 50 men and supplies for the long haul. They are ready to go. The expedition leader tells them they are ready to be led them to the spot, but Jake disagrees that leading them is their responsibility. They told them the location; it's not their job to get them there.

Things get nasty with the expedition leader but eventually Jake offers the party's services to escort the expedition as extra security. He asks for a rather outrageous sum and is refused. Fine, Jake says, see you guys when you get there. Yay, reputation decrease!

The whole party reunites and teleports out to the firebase to await the crusade expedition. While they wait, they plan their own moves to explore Tsar.

They know that supposedly the two side gates are destroyed and open for anyone who wants to enter, and that the main gates below that rather ominous tower known as the Tower of Weeping Sores is also reported to still be open... But then again they could just fly over the walls, so who needs gates?

Feeling they could use a good dungeon crawl, the party decides investigating the Tower of Weeping Sores will be their first outing into Tsar. What could possibly go wrong there, right?

End of session. No casualties besides a nameless grunt.

16.1: Why the DM won't feel bad when you all die horribly

Dramatis Personae

Beltin (Aasimar Dirge Bard/Cleric 11).

"Jake" aka Alex, the actual character name but I refuse to go back and edit the old entries (Human Wizard/Rogue 11).

The Smith (LN Half-Giant Aegis/Psychic Warrior 11).

Why the DM won't feel bad when you all die horribly, Session 16.1 - 10/10/14

Day 31

The day after liberating the firebase the party decides to rest up before heading off to kill themselves a tar dragon. The Smith tries to instill respect for proper weapon maintenance ("Not only must you tend to the body of the steel, but also the soul") among the Greed Elementals, but he fails. Jake and Beltin examine the canisters they found in the oddly preserved shed (9 total) and notice the symbol of Tsar as well as another sign. The meaning is not immediately clear, but upon reflection Jake remembers it is an old sign, one that has since fallen out of use.

It used to be put above the doorways of the homes of plague victims. Hmmm. The party considers firing a canister off with a catapult but decide against it.

Day 32

Jake commands his men to hold the base while he and the rest of the party go out for a boss fight. The party leaves and begins walking. As they walk, perception checks are rolled. High above, three ravens of unusual size circle and follow. Jake points it out in an obvious fashion and as he does so the three birds break formation and begin to fly away in different directions. That can't be good decides the party as they continue on.

A few hours later they approach the blighted tar pits that mark the artillery boundary of Tsar. Perception? No sign of a dragon... They get ready and wait. Time passes and then Beltin decides to escalate things. He magically enhances his voice and calls out a challenge in Draconic. In answer to his cries the normal ambient sounds of the Desolation cease. They have got something's attention.

From poisonous looking cloud being pumped up from the blighted pools off to the west they see movement in the sky. Something gigantic is coming to them and coming fast. As it flies it leaves a vapor trail of tar. It is most certainly a dragon. Initiative!

The party readies as the tar dragon dive bombs them! The Smith, psionically grown to epic proportion again, stands out as the most obvious target and the dragon takes it. Jake blasts the dragon as it comes in, hoping to divert it, but the dragon gives no fucks and pulls its wings up to soak most of the damage before slamming into the Smith.

The Smith staggers back but is ready. He and an astral construct he had summoned as the dragon approached move in to attack. The Smith strikes the dragon but to his dismay realizes that his weapon is now stuck. Fortunately he uses his psionics to get an extra move action to pull his weapon free and hits again.

As his weapon is stuck a second time, he makes a rather high will save; it is not the tar of the beast that traps his weapon, but rather his own mind. This is not the dragon Malerix. It is an illusion.

He calls this out and as he does the illusion in front of them begins to become less substantial, but from behind them the party feels tremors. The real Malerix breaks up from the ground and attacks Smith! In retrospect this is where he made a mistake. He should have breath weapon'd first for crowd control, but instead trusted to his tar coating and the fact that he cast Mage Armor and Lesser Globe of Invulnerability before engaging the true party.

Malerix had heard of the party and its exploits and was warned (but by whom? Dun dun dun) to beware the party and so he was. He sent in an illusion first to soften them, but a lucky roll by the Smith defeated that tactic much sooner than he had hoped. Sighing, the dragon decided he would just handle this himself but put up some token magical defenses before doing so, something that is almost unheard of, but hey, he's not stupid.

He shouldn't have let his vanity get the better of him. He should have cast more buffs.

The Smith slams again into the dragon, but this time the real one. His first blow is deflected by the Mage Armor and gets stuck in the tar, but one psionic move action later, he has it out and slam again, this time for a massive crit. About 150 damage from one hit later, Malerix is beginning to recognize that perhaps he had still underestimated these people.

This thought is affirmed as Jake teleport slashes around the dragon, unaffected by the tar effect due to his constant dimensional striding, and then he calls forth Bol. Bol launches his tiny form at the massive dragon's throat and rips into its neck. Malerix tries to rip the tiny demonspawn from his throat, but Bol bites through the tar and the scales and tastes blood.

The dragon sways and then collapses, leaving Bol, most of the undead, and Smith's weapon entangled in his corpse. But as he falls the party hears cries from above and sees movement!

The three unnaturally large and obviously undead ravens from before are diving toward them, and magical energy is manifesting around all three! Beltin realizes what is happening. These creatures are the conduit for a greater power, one that is channeling his power through them. Beltin recognizes some of that power. Looks like Malerix may be coming back a Juju zombie, and this time he won't be so cocky.

Unfortunately for that plan the players started bitching about how readied actions work for the birds (ignoring the fact that casting high level spells through undead minions miles away is hardly in the rules), so instead of a properly continued boss fight they got a round before it happened. The Smith readied to take out a bird as it approached and Jake blasted one out of the sky. Beltin then moved up and beat the birds to the punch; Malerix is now a bloody skeleton!

As this happens the aura around the last giant undead raven changes from necromantic magic to evocation. More specifically, the spell Detonate. The last bird slams into the tar dragon and explodes, catching the entire party in the blast, but unfortunately it was poorly rolled. Next one is going to be maximized and empowered, assholes.

Before leaving the battle site Beltin of course captures the deceased dragon's soul, because who could pass on that? A black vapor cloud coalesces around the undead dragon and then condenses into a small gem, which Beltin stashes along side BW's soul in his bag. The Smith eyes this suspiciously but doesn't know enough about what is happening to really contest it. For all he knows that's just part of making undead.

With the dragon defeated and adopted into the menagerie and safely stored in his staff (apparently he now has a CR 7 regardless of his stupid high strength and 40ish AC), the party teleports back to the men waiting in the firebase and much rejoicing is had for their victory. Hooray!

To be continued...

15.2: In your base killing your dudes

Dramatis Personae

Beltin (Aasimar Dirge Bard/Cleric 11).

"Jake" aka Alex, the actual character name but I refuse to go back and edit the old entries (Human Wizard/Rogue 11).

The Smith (LN Half-Giant Aegis/Psychic Warrior 11).

In your base killing your dudes, Session 15.2 - 9/26/14

Day 29, day

The party departs nice and early with Roringard and 19 other Greed Elementals (each a level 4 Magus) in tow. As such teleportation is a logistical nightmare, meaning things will be done the old fashioned way. The group walks and up the road north they go.

The Desolation is a deadly place most of the time, but if you are lucky you can just escape notice. Yeah, 23 people plus some giant undead are not subtle. The stupider creatures of the wastes are drawn toward the column and the the smarter ones watch and wait. The ashborne arachnids are conspicuous in their absence.

No fights are actually rolled out, but the group faces fairly consistent harassment from mindless creatures, but suffer no losses. Some of the men begin to think that the stories about the Desolation were overblown. And then perception checks are called for and they all notice what happens, but notice too late: A screamer possesses one of the men and murders another before forcing its puppet to fall on his own blade, wild insane screams issuing from him the whole time.

And then the creature dies, it's insane, nihilistic, and suicidal attack complete. Beltin is able to Breath of Life one of the men, but the other can't be saved. Jake orders his men to strip the body and dump it on the side of the road. They obey and any sense of grand adventure the outing had inspired in them to this point is gone.

The group makes decent time and decides to camp a mile or two south of the Cross Roads. They move a few hundred feet off the road into the Dead Fields and Jake casts three Secure Shelters in a triangle formation, all doors pointing in toward the center. It is decided that four men will roam around the outside of the shelters at any given time in the night along with a party member. The undead are instructed to attack anything pointed out to them by those on patrol.

They settle in to rest and/or keep watch.

Day 29, night

About 1 a.m. that night Smith is on watch. He stands near one end of the camp with most of the undead nearby. The four Greed Elementals roam around the other side. Perception checks are made successfully by each group, Smith and grunts. Each sees a large patch of inky blackness moving along the ground toward them. The grunts make to sound the alarm and Smith makes to charge, and then the shadows on the ground, realizing they are discovered, explode upwards to their full height.

The figures are vaguely humanoid blobs of shadow, dark enough to stand out against the night. Faint blue sparks rest where eyes should, their only actual features. And it is clear there is hunger in those "eyes." They are Dread Wraiths, ancient and powerful undead spirits that haunt the night, seeking new victims to consume and convert. Initiative!

The wraiths surge forward with uncanny speed and agility. The Smith feels his life force weaken as the creature begins to siphon away his soul to the effect of 2 con drain. The other wraith locks eyes on one Greed Elemental in particular and decides he will fall; he takes a lot of con drain as it is only barely possible for him to make the save.

The battle commences in earnest, with the 4 Greed Elementals trying to hold off the Dread Wraith with limited success, but their Shocking Grasps seem to at least phase it. Beltin and Jake emerge from their beds and Beltin realizes what these things are and is intrigued. Unfortunately their +15 Will save protects them from his domination attempts.

Fighting continues and the marked Greed Elemental finally falls, his life force consumed completely, but by this point both bloated spirits are heavily damaged. Each attempts to pull back and regroup, but then is overwhelmed and breaks apart into nothing. The men stay wary but think it is over when Beltin tells them to surround their fallen ally and get ready. He will rise again, but not in a way they will like.

The wraith of the dead man rises and tries to feed on his comrades, but is quickly put down. The battle is over, but the men are shaken. They have now lost two men and each knows it just as easily could have been them.

Beltin heals the wounded and restores the Smith's precious constitution. Rest and watch resumes, but nothing beside a brief spat of acid rain disturbs the night again.

Day 30

The next morning the group packs up and heads west toward their destination. The Secure Shelters still have some duration and as such are left for any "lucky" travelers who would have need of them... until of course the duration ends, most likely at the least opportune moment for any potential squatters.

After several hours the party sees a hill with a log wall surrounding the are on top. It appears to be deserted, but from what the rangers told them before they left the Camp they have reason to believe this is not the case. The rangers never investigated closely, but had seen gigantic rocks catapulted from the fort at times, seemingly at nothing. Intriguing, thinks the party.

About half a mile out of the fort, Jake calls a stop and sets up another Secure Shelter. He tells his men to wait here and keep watches. The party begins to move forward toward the hill with Jake invisible and teleporting ahead to scout. He investigates around the perimeter of the fort and at times sees flickers of movement at the top of the walls; maybe the tip of a spear being lifted and poking over or at other times the top part of a helmeted head doing a turkey peak before moving on.

At the southern end he sees a path heading up a wooden barricade where a gate should be and along the path he sees a destroyed cart with a couple human skeletons laying under it. Surprisingly these are true corpses, not undead. The same is true for the horse skeletons near the cart, still in their harnesses for pulling.

Jake goes back to the party and reports on this and it is decided they will try to hail whoever it inside. The party, undead in tow, advances to within a few hundred feet of the fort and yells out that they wish to have an audience. No response. They try again. No response. And then they hear a whoosh and a boulder is shot out of the encampment and lands a few hundred feet shy of and to the right of the encamped Greed Elementals. If the party had made their perception checks they may have heard the sound of a catapult being reloaded and aim being adjusted.

The party isn't stupid though and the meaning is clear. Initiative.

The party rushes toward the barricade, trusting that the Greed Elementals will know to move away from the obvious target as they too are not stupid. As they near, several humanoid figures rise up on the walls and a volley of arrows flies toward the party with minimal effect. Jake then dimension doors Smith, some giant skeletons, and himself inside behind the barricade and they find themselves in the middle of at least 50 armed soldiers, clustered together in formation. They look at these soldiers and recognize them as undead, but intelligence obviously gleams in their wide eyed, unblinking stares.

A ruined building stands next to them and beyond the men they three catapults and three obviously undead ogres, zombies. On a pile of giant stones, ammunition, stands a figure in a ragged military dress uniform, and even through all the age and dust the medals on his chest gleam. He begins to shout out in a language the party inside does not recognize, for it is the language of the dead, Necril. Still, the basic meaning is clear. He is shouting orders and his men are moving to obey, obviously more dangerous with him at their back.

The Smith uses his psionics to grow to titanic proportions and between himself and the undead giants, the soldiers are clearly outmatched. With each swing of his hammer, perhaps 10 fall, and no amount of military strategy can change this. Almost as an after thought he smashes the barricade blocking entrance to the fort. By this point Beltin and his remaining undead have arrived and Beltin recognizes the soldiers for what they are at once: Juju zombies, undead that retain both their skills and intelligence even in death.

He also notes that their gear and armor is typical of that used during the first war against Tsar. Not surprising, but he also notices that though he sees the insignias of many different companies of the Army of Light, he also sees soldiers bearing the insignias of Tsar. Perhaps in undeath the once sworn and bitter enemies have found a common ground.

Though his forces are being decimated before his eyes, the undead commander stands his ground and from his perch on the ammunition Jake sees a spell he recognizes, though with a metamagic twist. The commander casts a fireball into the the midst of the fighting, but instead of fire it explodes into electricity. The juju zombie soldiers are unaffected, but Beltin's undead and the Smith take a staggering blow to their hit points. Jake of course evasions out like a badass.

This changes priorities of who needs to die and Jake begins to Damnation Stride combo around the commander, bringing the Smith with him. The ogre zombies blasted apart as a mere after thought, but what's this?! Jake isn't the only one with Emergency Force Sphere. The commander is protected from from Jake's assault and the Smith finds himself hammering a barrier of sheer force, but under his blows it is beginning to crack.

Inside the sphere a contingency goes off, and the commander appears on the top of the ruined shack near the gate and chain lightning erupts form his finger tips toward Jake and the Smith, who is now not feeling very well. The Smith advances toward the shack and is tall enough to both see and swing over the roof and the commander stoically takes a blow that would kill most lesser men.

Jake has had enough at this point and parkours his way up the Smith and, as he stands on his shoulders, he shouts out Vol's name, and Vol is suddenly there, gnawing on the commander who is now barely standing. The Smith finishes him by knocking him first into the air and then baseball batting him so hard that he flies 30 feet, hits against the wall of the fort, and then slides down, obviously broken beyond repair.

For a split second Vol turns and eyes the barely alive Smith, but before he can even think to act, Jake dismisses him and he is gone in a small burst of light and sulfur. Beltin's undead finish the remainder of the undead troops who fight fanatically to the last man. And then there is again silence in the Desolation.

Jake goes to his men and commands them to the fort; they are proud of themselves as they managed to take down a party of mindless undead and ghoul wolves all by themselves while the party was fighting. No casualties! Very impressive says Jake with the air of a man who is not impressed at all. Now get up, we have work to do.

No one bothers to check the formerly undead, now dead, soldiers and instead everyone investigates the firebase for more threats. Inside the ruined shack they find the remains of a storeroom; nothing of use remains inside. Next to it is a shattered watch tower and beyond that is another shack. This one has part of a wall missing, but still seems strangely preserved somehow. Some of Jake's men go to investigate when suddenly they cry out in alarm and retreat.

Inside the last shack the party sees a Clay Golem, seemingly ordered to protect the storeroom but not advance beyond it. The creature stands impassively, but from behind it the party can see racks of perfectly preserved metal cylinders, perhaps ammunition of some sort. There was obviously some sort of magic protecting this room from the years and the elements.

Beltin tries to walk into the room to see what the golem does and once he steps inside it moves toward him, obviously intent on harming him. He steps outside and it stops at the entrance of the shack, now unmoving. The Smith moves forward to destroy it, but Beltin stops him. Instead he tries to guess the creature's pass code, using the common words for such things but after 10 minutes is unsuccessful (Note: He had a 5% chance per 10 minutes spent trying, non-cumulative).

At this point the Smith loses interest and just breaks the damn thing. Beltin is disappointed. They decide not to investigate the canisters inside the guarded room but Beltin hazards at a guess that perhaps they are explosives. Who knows, well, besides the DM.

Next up the party checks out the catapults and it seems those are the only thing in the firebase in good repair. The Smith looks for fixes to make but finds none. Jake begins to ponder training his men to use them. Beltin spies more of those canisters he saw in the shack, but these ones are rusted through and empty.

The fort now secure, Jake orders his men to take the corpses out of the fort as he doesn't like them stinking up the place. At this point the party realizes the undead commander's corpse is missing and they are immediately at guard. Betlin casts Locate Person and it fails; it seems the commander has fled and is not waiting in ambush. Fucking casters, thinks the party, unaware of the true reason for the commander's survival: Being a Fext is pretty awesome.

The party decides the mystery of the missing commander is a mystery for another day, and Jake again orders watches and has his men build up a barricade to replace the smashed one using the remains of the watch tower. By this time it is starting to get late so it is time for rest. Sleep time.

End of session. No casualties.

Notes: Had the party paid attention to the bodies right afterward (i.e. attempting to loot) they would have been able to witness the Fext commander rise again and perhaps capture him. Instead, they learned of what he truly was and the story here strictly out of game.

The undead in the fort had banded together with the Fext as their leader, still waging a long finished war as war is all that they could remember. But none actually remembered what the conflict was or who was the enemy. Those facts were lost to time and as such it was decided that their orders were to hold the firebase from all enemies, which in their mind was anyone not them. And so this lasted for hundreds of years, the time passing in a blink of an eye to the "undead," if they even realized they were undead, within.

Now they are destroyed and at peace, except for the commander who fled in sorrow, rage, and shame with his men all gone. Now he will walk the wastes and perhaps in time the haze in his mind will be lifted and he will realize that the war he had been fighting has long been over, that the world has moved on without him realizing, but that a new battle is brewing. War is his purpose for being, so perhaps this will again give him the purpose he needs.

He has no love for either side of the conflict, only for battle and glory, so perhaps he won't heed the call of those that still dwell in Tsar. Perhaps he will find his way to the Camp. Perhaps he will seek out and learn the identity of those mighty warriors who crushed his forces. Perhaps, intrigued, he will cloak himself in illusion and try to join them. He bears no ill will after all; he respects strength. He simply seeks more men to lead to glory and conquest. The Greed Elementals could use a man like him...

That's a lot of "perhaps." We'll see in time how it works out.