The Quest of the Missing Quill

[Haahque]

Gaheris decides the best course of action is to withdraw from the zombie and use his grappling hook to get to the ground safely. The zombie decides the best course of action is to charge at the rogue to push him off the building. What ends up happening is Gaheris, the quicker of the two, manages to swing over the side of the building in time for the zombie to hurtle past him and fall to the ground unceremoniously. When the zombie lands it loses its belly and one hand, but none the less it gets up again and shambles towards him, ready to eat his brains.

Benjamin, not a fan of having his brains eaten, steps to the side and starts singing an inspiring tune to make his allies fight harder as they listen. His peril is quickly remedied by the half orc with a greataxe, who splits said zombie from head to foot in a single swing. Despite the undead’s apparent lack of regard for bodily damage, this seems to cause enough damage to make it stop moving.

Ishan, not sure where the necromancer got to in the darkness runs forwards and throws a bomb where he last saw it. He doesn’t manage to land a direct hit, but he does hear swearing from the darkness, which would suggest that the necromancer was within the explosion radius of the bomb. Kannock, not perturbed by the darkness at all, steps forwards and decapitates the necromancer without hesitation.

Jasmine, inspired by Benjamin’s song, bats the skeleton’s sword aside with her left hand, while she delivers a powerful blow with her right which seems to bounce off the skeleton’s hard body. However the damage has been done, and when the skeleton tries to take a step towards her, it crumbles into a pile of inert bones.

The remaining cultist near her, heavily damaged, decides that it doesn’t want to face her in single combat, let alone her and all the other adventurers behind her, so he backs away and disappears into darkness. A few words later in dark chanting and the cultist that Kannock killed gets back up.


Benjamin takes a 5ft step to U13 and uses bardic performance: All allies get +1 to hit and damage this round.
Gaheris takes a 5 foot step to X6 and grapples down to the ground in Y6
Zurgo uses Arcane Strike, moves to U15 and attack z1: 22 vs AC, ht, 16 damage. z1 is slain.
Ishan moves to Y18 and makes a perception check: 17, failure. Throws a bomb at AB13: 23 vs 5, hit, deals splash damage to Kannock and to m5: Kannock saves 14 vs DC 12, success, takes 1 damage. m5 saves 9 vs 12, fail, takes 3 damage.
Jasmine takes a 5ft step to X10 and attacks s3: 24 and 12 vs AC, one hit for 1 damage (5 slashing resist). s3 is destroyed.
Kannock moves to AC13 and attacks m5: natural 20, critical hit for 26 damage. m5 dies.
z2 charges off the roof to Y5, taking 2d6 fall damage: 5 damage.
m2 takes a 5ft step to Z10, dissappears into the darkness and raises a body into z3.

[keymeister16]

Seeing no more un-engaged enemies Zurgo steps into the cloud "Jasmine! you alright?" his orcish eyes peer though the darkness, they adjusted quickly and his axe once again lashed out, arcane light cutting though the inky abyss "one chop! one kill!" (arcane strike, move to AA11 and bop em)

(edit:turns out he was within 6 suares and i can see him lol)

[Vrindlevine]

Ishan nocks an arrow and looks around for his next target, he watches the dwarf engage a zombie and notices some minor singing on his beard, "ya great blow up your customer" he mutters to himself.

He watches the edge of the darkness while circling around, crouching down he readies a shot in case the mage launches anymore death at them.

(Move to w14, ready a shot at anything that shoots out of the darkness)

[JadedDM]

Gaheris attacks the fallen zombie with his club. He also calls out to the last necromancer. "You're not going to get away. Surrender and call off your undead mooks, and we'll let you live!"

[HorizonsDream]

Jasmine backs out of the darkness, deciding to go on the defensive at this point.

[Just_Ice]

Although Ben puts his lute away, the tune continues as if he was playing it. He moves forward past the path to assist Kanock, rolling up his sleeve firing a small bolt from a wrist crossbow.

"Upon our path fate has sewn,
trials and hardship and creatures of bone,
fight on friends, you are never alone,
be enlightened by this special tone."



[Free to maintain song, move to 14AA, standard to shoot at z3]

[Haahque]

Although Gaheris finds out the hard way that clubs don't do much against the soft flesh of the zombie before him, his call to surrender does have an effect on the remaining cultist. This effect is amplified significantly by a half orc with a greataxe striding towards him, ignoring the magical darkness and nearly decapitating him, if only the stroke was a second earlier.

The cultist withdraws tactically from Zurgo and turns to run, abandoning his magical darkness as it didn't seem to save him the way he had hoped. This was his last mistake. An arrow plants itself in his back and he falls to the ground and stops moving. Ishan lowers his bow to notice Kannock and Benjamin in battle with one of the zombies. The zombie is slow and predictable, allowing Kannock to easily stay out of danger, while his axe cuts through flesh like a hot knife through butter. Benjamin doesn't have as much luck, his crossbow hitting the zombie, but the bolt doesn't seem to do the same level of damage as Kannock's axe can achieve.

Zurgo moves to Z11 and attacks m5: 11 vs AC, miss.
Ishan moves to W14 and readies an attack.
Gaheris attacks z2: 20 vs AC, hit, 0 damage (10 bludgeoning resist).
Gaheris intimidates the remaining cultist (move action)(1d20+1): 13.
Jasmine takes a 5ft step to W10 and goes into full defense (+4 dodge bonus to AC, can't make AoO's).
Benjamine continues singing, moves to AA14 and shoots at z3: 10 vs AC, hit, 0 damage (5 piercing resist).
Kanock attacks z3: 10 vs AC, hit, 11 damage.
(cows move)
m5 takes a 5ft step to AB11 and runs towards AH10, this triggers Ishan's readied attack: 24 vs AC, hit, 6 damage, m5 is slain.
z2 attacks Gaheris: 10 vs AC, miss.
z3 attacks Kannock: 6 vs AC, miss.

Now comes the part where I like to end battles early, when it appears obvious that the party outmatches the enemy by such a huge margin that the enemy appears to be no threat.

The zombies, while mindless enough to fight to their last unbreath, don't fare well against a group of well equipped adventures. Gaheris figures that his bow and his club aren't very effective against the zombie, while other people are doing well with axes against them, so he switches over to his short sword and gets some more satisfying results in cutting it down. He's helped by Jasmine, who systematically dismembers what is left of the zombie with her twin blades. Zurgo and Kannock have little difficulty cutting apart the remaining zombie with their axes, and finally it appears that nothing left moving, wishes to kill them.

Combat is over.

[Just_Ice]

Benjamin pulls his shirt over his nose and checks the corpse where his bolt failed to make any impact. "You certainly made short work of them with those hatchets of yours. That works for me- I was having trouble remembering the next verse anyways. Let's take a look-see if these bags of bones have any bags of bones, if you catch my meaning."

[check minion corpses quickly without touching them directly, grab bolt]

[JadedDM]

"Well, so much for interrogation," Gaheris mutters. "Now we may never know who they were or what they were up to." He sighs and then winces, the movement causing him pain. "I think I might have a cracked rib or two," he admits.

Gaheris will try and retrieve any arrows, if he can, and then help in searching the corpses for anything noteworthy.

[keymeister16]

"i like to abide by a 'take alive if it is reasonable to do so' approach," Zurgo gruffed as he wiped rancid brain matter from his axe on the dead cultist's robes. "if we REALLY need information, i know clerics that can make the dead speak again,"

he flipped over the corpus, scanning it for anything of value.

(perception for loot, looking for spell books in particular)

[HorizonsDream]

Jasmine puts away her swords and lets out a sigh. "I much prefer it when things that I kill remain dead."

[Vrindlevine]

Ishan wipes his forehead and breathes to overcome the post combat rush. Even as a veteran he still gets the shakes.

After regaining some composure he turns to the others, "I apologize for this I've never run into a cult in this area before, lets just hope this isn't something we have to deal with regularly."

"Seeing as I failed as your guide I won't expect payment for today, (he is in genuine pain when he says this, it is written on his very soul, it scars his very being) When your ready we can keep going, this isn't a good place to hang about."

[Haahque]

With the undead redead the party divides itself into searching them for treasure and discussing their future plans. Between the searchers, they find some small amount of treasure, it doesn’t appear that the cultists were exceptionally well off or carried any rare and valuable items.

Zurgo does find a spell book like he was looking for, it’s somewhat hard to read since it slips from common into phrases in abyssal and sometimes into undercommon or another language. He however knows most of the languages within it, and can understand that it’s a necromancy spell book, likely of a very basic level, which means it’s not something he can pick up very easily.

Most of the other items they find seem even more useless, with the exception of one pouch found on one of the cultists (the clothes he left behind when he went undead) which contains a few gold coins, buried in quite a bit more ash. If people are willing they can fish out the gold, it’s official currency so it should be worth just as much regardless of where it came from.

A quick examination of the crude diagram they drew on the ground before they were interrupted yields no information of where they were from, but a bit of leafing through the spell book gives Zurgo the idea that they were probably trying to create bovine zombies.

Treasure:
Simple necromancy spell book
6 daggers
1 broken sword
6 sets of torn up cultist robes
2 skulls on a chain
1 pouch containing ash, and 20 gold buried in the ash
1 satchel containing 6 days of rations

Ok, here’s what I think I’ll do for ammo: If you can fire for 15 rounds at your current rate and not run out of ammo (about 7% per turn), I’ll consider your ammo effectively infinite, thus I won’t subtract arrows/bolts, assuming that you’ll eventually pick them up after. This means if you fire 1 arrow per turn and have 15 or more arrows, you’ll never run out of ammo. If you fire 2 arrows per turn, then I’ll keep track of your ammo unless you have at least 30 arrows.

[JadedDM]

Gaheris will use appraising on the spellbook and the daggers. He assumes the broken sword and robes are useless.

"Who is interested in what?" he asks, placing all of the loot in a pile.

(OOC: Regarding the spellbook, I'm hoping to get an actual GP value. If the daggers are masterwork or magical, he'd be interested in that, too. Basically, he's trying to figure out the best way to divide things up among the six of them.

Are the skulls actual skulls, made of bone? Animal or humanoid?)

[keymeister16]

"let me know before you sell the book," Zurgo had brought his findings to the group, trading in the book for a closer look at the skulls and chain. "i'm probably gonna find something fun in there to play with, cultist's always make the best spells," his eyes flared up with arcane light that enveloped the fetish he was holding. "now, what about you?" (detect magic and spell-craft on the skull thingy)