Bring out your dead...not all at once please.
It seems that the plague was the least of my worries. It was more the sugar coated topping.
Let's see, where did I last leave off. Ah right, there was a pounding at my door. It turned out to be an angry mob of villagers, complete with burning torches and pitchforks. Cliche, yes, but effective. They broke down my door, and leading the way was my snake of a landlord, the coppersmith...whats-his-name. Oh the fickle relationships of coin and coffer. I thought we had an understanding!
The mob looked absolutely dreadful to be honest. Not in the scary sort of way, more in the Sweet-Hermes-call-these-people-a doctor way. They were sick, all of them. And they blamed me.
Typical.
Maybe I can give them some credit though as I wasn't their first choice to lynch but third. The first had been some old unmarried woman (ain't that always the way?) who I hear burned up fairly quickly. When no one felt any better, they had gone after a hermit who lived in the woods. They stacked about thirty stones before his heart went out. Of course they still felt plaguey and decided to go after that dashing new stranger in town...me.
You just can't talk sense into some people when they've got an idea stuck in their head. No, it's not until you see the proof staring you in the face with undead eyes that you realize you may be wrong.
Someone in the mob, I don't really know who, succumbed to the plague and dropped dead. I was being hauled out of the coppersmith's when one of them rolled up his eyes and collapsed on the ground. The group paused briefly before moving on, and then something happened. The dead man rose.
Now I've known a few necromancers in my time and being from Legend, every halfway decent vina mage can animate corpses, but I took it from the reaction of the villagers that it wasn't something they had seen before. No, instead of killing it right there, they hemmed and hauler'd, waving their plaugey hands in the air, while the zombie proceeded to bite the life out of two more villagers who then of course rose and started to do the same.
At some point between hemming and haulering I was released. But there was the matter now of the zombies. The quickest and most effective means of dispatching a zombie is the id vial: a noxious blend of potent dark magic capable of stilling mostly anything mobile. It so happened that I packed an id vial before setting off on this misadventure; it was just a matter of finding it in my voluminous satchel. That nearly cost me an arm.
You know, I don't have a problem with most creatures that call themselves the undead; I am after all a son of Malicious, but zombies I cannot tolerate. For one they're not much for conversation, for another they're completely and utterly ruled by their baser instincts. There's no ἀρετή, whatever made them human before has left them and they're little more than husks.
Yes...so one of those husks caught me off guard while I was searching for the bloody vial and managed to latch onto my forearm with their teeth. Hades, those things can bite.
I struck quickly, poking two fingers into the husk's eyes and poured the spell flame strike into its skull. I was surprised at how well it worked at close range; the zombie dropped immediately, though I had to pry my arm out of its charred skull.
The villagers who had finally subdued the two other zombies looked at me like dumbstruck fawns. These people hadn't been exposed to much magic, but at least they're wary of me now. They might think twice before attempting to lynch me again.
The dead rising at the coppersmith's wasn't an isolated event as we soon discovered. They were everywhere, all the plague victims and even the dead from before the plague, were roaming the streets.
I led the group to a large sturdy looking inn and kere-pur-bhu'd the entrance with stone wall. A temporary solution at best but the display of magic had the villagers eager do what I asked so I set them to boarding up the bottom floor windows and baring the door.
Things where quiet for a day or two until a priest from Klein stumbled onto our predicament and nearly got himself and a little boy killed in the process. I'll never understand these monotheists. The child hasn't said a word since he came in with the priest but he's been through a lot. This priest who calls himself Meer is a real piece of work. He hasn't stopped preaching since he's gotten here. He has all the answers, this one: the cause of the plague, the reason the dead have risen; it's his god's punishment on we the wicked and a test for the faithful.
Well I know the reason and it has nothing to do with his god. There's a vina mage out there, an extremely powerful one at that judging by the number of zombies and skeletons they can control. If we can find and kill this mage our problems will be solved. I've been going back and forth with the priest on this one from shortly after he arrived and now I have a headache.
As an aside: I think there may be something wrong with the magic here or my mana. And that makes me very concerned.
Let's see, where did I last leave off. Ah right, there was a pounding at my door. It turned out to be an angry mob of villagers, complete with burning torches and pitchforks. Cliche, yes, but effective. They broke down my door, and leading the way was my snake of a landlord, the coppersmith...whats-his-name. Oh the fickle relationships of coin and coffer. I thought we had an understanding!
The mob looked absolutely dreadful to be honest. Not in the scary sort of way, more in the Sweet-Hermes-call-these-people-a doctor way. They were sick, all of them. And they blamed me.
Typical.
Maybe I can give them some credit though as I wasn't their first choice to lynch but third. The first had been some old unmarried woman (ain't that always the way?) who I hear burned up fairly quickly. When no one felt any better, they had gone after a hermit who lived in the woods. They stacked about thirty stones before his heart went out. Of course they still felt plaguey and decided to go after that dashing new stranger in town...me.
You just can't talk sense into some people when they've got an idea stuck in their head. No, it's not until you see the proof staring you in the face with undead eyes that you realize you may be wrong.
Someone in the mob, I don't really know who, succumbed to the plague and dropped dead. I was being hauled out of the coppersmith's when one of them rolled up his eyes and collapsed on the ground. The group paused briefly before moving on, and then something happened. The dead man rose.
Now I've known a few necromancers in my time and being from Legend, every halfway decent vina mage can animate corpses, but I took it from the reaction of the villagers that it wasn't something they had seen before. No, instead of killing it right there, they hemmed and hauler'd, waving their plaugey hands in the air, while the zombie proceeded to bite the life out of two more villagers who then of course rose and started to do the same.
At some point between hemming and haulering I was released. But there was the matter now of the zombies. The quickest and most effective means of dispatching a zombie is the id vial: a noxious blend of potent dark magic capable of stilling mostly anything mobile. It so happened that I packed an id vial before setting off on this misadventure; it was just a matter of finding it in my voluminous satchel. That nearly cost me an arm.
You know, I don't have a problem with most creatures that call themselves the undead; I am after all a son of Malicious, but zombies I cannot tolerate. For one they're not much for conversation, for another they're completely and utterly ruled by their baser instincts. There's no ἀρετή, whatever made them human before has left them and they're little more than husks.
Yes...so one of those husks caught me off guard while I was searching for the bloody vial and managed to latch onto my forearm with their teeth. Hades, those things can bite.
I struck quickly, poking two fingers into the husk's eyes and poured the spell flame strike into its skull. I was surprised at how well it worked at close range; the zombie dropped immediately, though I had to pry my arm out of its charred skull.
The villagers who had finally subdued the two other zombies looked at me like dumbstruck fawns. These people hadn't been exposed to much magic, but at least they're wary of me now. They might think twice before attempting to lynch me again.
The dead rising at the coppersmith's wasn't an isolated event as we soon discovered. They were everywhere, all the plague victims and even the dead from before the plague, were roaming the streets.
I led the group to a large sturdy looking inn and kere-pur-bhu'd the entrance with stone wall. A temporary solution at best but the display of magic had the villagers eager do what I asked so I set them to boarding up the bottom floor windows and baring the door.
Things where quiet for a day or two until a priest from Klein stumbled onto our predicament and nearly got himself and a little boy killed in the process. I'll never understand these monotheists. The child hasn't said a word since he came in with the priest but he's been through a lot. This priest who calls himself Meer is a real piece of work. He hasn't stopped preaching since he's gotten here. He has all the answers, this one: the cause of the plague, the reason the dead have risen; it's his god's punishment on we the wicked and a test for the faithful.
Well I know the reason and it has nothing to do with his god. There's a vina mage out there, an extremely powerful one at that judging by the number of zombies and skeletons they can control. If we can find and kill this mage our problems will be solved. I've been going back and forth with the priest on this one from shortly after he arrived and now I have a headache.
As an aside: I think there may be something wrong with the magic here or my mana. And that makes me very concerned.
