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.
