We had decided to do the almist-customary-now speak with dead with Katiana, but somewhat to my surprise, this time Qatana wanted the whole body. I thought we only needed the head?\u00a0 Certainly we’ve done that in the past, but she said something about “it works better if you have more of the body”.<\/p>\n
Well it also works better if you don’t kill the body (you’re not limited to four questions!), but I’m not really recommending that as a strategy. I may be half elven with a magical heritage, but sometimes I just don’t understand how these spellcasters work.\u00a0 So, okay, we’ve got a whole-but-grievously-wounded body for tomorrow. We’ll see if this improves the quality of the answers.<\/p>\n
Before we set off in the morning, Qatana spoke with Katiana. I was not impressed with the quality of the answers.\u00a0 I paraphrase here:<\/p>\n
Q: Who were the others you were working with?
\nA: Fell creatures of the frozen north who are allied
\nagainst you and your cause!\u00a0 they may yet thwart you!<\/p>\n
Q: What was the purpose of the storms?
\nA: To further the glory of the lord Sithud! You will feel
\nhis wrath and die at his hands and he will serve death to
\nyou on a putrid platter with a side of fell broccoli.<\/p>\n
Q: Who else is assisting Sithud?
\nA: My underlings, the fell creatures of the frozen north
\nwho are allied against you and your cause!\u00a0 They will
\ndefeat you and you will join their ranks as the frozen
\nice becomes your new home and … and you bow down before
\nthe great Lord Sithud as he, ah, as he serves you death on
\na fell platter of MASTER construction with a side of, uh,
\nmoldy yams. Frozen moldy yams. Of death. But which may
\nonce have been candied, but their being of death it
\nreally matters not. Ha ha-ha-ha!<\/p>\n
Q: Are you working with the oni of the 5 storms?
\nA: I serve the great Lord Sithud whose legions of foul
\ncreatures, a subset of which also serve me although
\nof course his orders would supercede mine should he
\ngive them any, which he doesn’t, so it’s irrelevant,
\nthe legions of which shall oppose you at every step,
\nor rather every third step because fell creatures
\nlose a step or two when they originally fell, but
\nnot so much that they fall very far behind, for they
\nare tireless, and, uh, right.\u00a0 Who will oppose you – I
\nmean do ALREADY oppose you with great … opposition
\nand will defeat you in battle – no, it will be no battle
\nat all when you fall before the frozen but plodding
\narmies of … wait, curse Common, I don’t think that’s
\nthe right word .. frozen but STEADFAST, that’s it,
\nfrozen but STEADFAST armies of Sithud that shall –<\/p>\n
and at that point the head stopped talking and Qatana informed us the spell had run its course.<\/p>\n
Or at least, that’s what I remember. I didn’t have a pen ready so I may not have captured it word for word.\u00a0 Overall, having the whole body there seemed to mean she spoke more but said less.\u00a0 Not sure if it\u00a0 was really worth the trouble. I guess we did learn we may want to be more vigilant.<\/p>\n
Ulf told us that our best route out of the ice now would be by way of Dead Man’s Dome, and being a fantastic shill I immediately said, “Dead Man’s Dome?\u00a0 Why is it called that?” and Ulf managed to look ominous, sinister, and mysterious even though it was the brightest darkness of the day, and said, “aye, there’s a story there, but it needs wait for dinner” because Ulf realized, of course, that the dancing shadows and captive audience provided by the evening fire would be needed to properly tell this story.<\/p>\n
In the evening, as our relatively small fire shone brightly across the miles of flat unbroken ice, he told us a tale of a tower that, over two hundred years ago, was used to guarantee safe passage between the ice and the lands beyond.\u00a0 The area was known to be home to not just fell beasts but disagreeable giants and others.\u00a0 The last caravan of the season was exiting the ice later than normal, and their scouts reported having seen signs that they were indeed being followed. They reached the guard tower just as an army of undead and giants attacked them.<\/p>\n
At this point I realized uncomfortably that this almost perfectly described OUR caravan’s current situation.<\/p>\n
The tower was not without armaments, and the caravan had at least reached its elevated base safely.\u00a0 Still, the attack was ferocious and it didn’t take too long to realize that the tower (and the caravan it was guarding) was destined to fall.<\/p>\n
One of the remaining soldiers from the tower came forward and offered a plan.\u00a0 Since the attacking army may not know how close the tower was to falling, it might be possibly to make the army think there was a massive counterattack preparing.\u00a0 Distracted by the apparent counterattack, the caravan may yet escape even as the tower fell.\u00a0 It was, of course, a suicide mission for the lone soldier but it was all they had.<\/p>\n
And it was successful.\u00a0 What was left of the attacking army – for they too had truly taken significant losses – moved up to defeat the apparent counterattack.\u00a0 The soldier used what little magic and weapons he had left to appear to be a small platoon of troops, when in fact it was just him.\u00a0 As the attackers angrily surged forward, he played his last card, collapsing the tower upon the attackers and guaranteeing there were too few left to chase the escaping caravan.<\/p>\n
Nobody ever learned of the soldier’s name, but the tale of his bravery moved rapidly from campfire to town to garrison, and the remaining wreckage became known as Dead Man’s Dome.\u00a0 And legend has it (of course) that he guards the pass still, against any evil that would dare attack a passing caravan.<\/p>\n
When we get there, we’ll see how much of what remains supports the story. We anticipate it taking over a week to get there.\u00a0 But Ulf certainly did tell it well.<\/p>\n
Things had been pretty uneventful until tonight, when a guard reported a woman out on the ice, approaching our position.Ivan, Qatana, and I cautiously approached the figure.\u00a0 Ivan had cast a spell called ‘deathwatch’ which apparently allows him to discern at a glance if a being is truly alive or not.\u00a0 A maiden in a red silk robe – which looked dreadfully out of place here on the ice – hesitantly drew nigh and announced, “My name is Uki.”<\/p>\n
Sparna quietly moved to the perimeter.<\/p>\n
When we bade her to come nearer, she said she was afraid and actually backed up.\u00a0 We looked at each other, and Ivan shook his head. There was no life here.\u00a0 We called for the rest of the party, and at that moment the wind inexplicably increased and started becoming an issue.\u00a0 Hailstones fell from what had previously been a clear sky, and they definitely hurt.\u00a0 I instructed Suishen to turn up the flame, and Ivan provided a wall of flame behind Uki to encourage her to move closer.<\/p>\n
She tried to use her waif looks to captivate us, but was unsuccessful. We then attacked, and although she was much tougher than she looked, she was soon not a threat at all.<\/p>\n
One of our wagon drivers has been acting strangely, but today it turned to the irrational.\u00a0 He became afraid of the horses and refused to drive.\u00a0 We suspect this might be a case of the “Howl of the North” that Ulf had warned us about.\u00a0 So far we have been fortunate to avoid it, but we had acquired resources before we left town that would allow us to mitigate it.\u00a0 Qatana was able to use some diamond dust to create a spell of Restoration to help with the healing.\u00a0 While that did make him better, he is still by no means healed so we have shifted some of our roles around to cover for the missing driver, who now is under the personal care of Koya.<\/p>\n
Owing to Katiana’s clear premonitions, we suspected this day would come. Today, we noticed in the distance, figures following us.\u00a0 I quickly rode back a bit with Kasimir and observed, yes, I saw at least 10 skeletons plodding, er STEADFASTLY plodding towards us.\u00a0 They were not really overtaking us, but the problem is that they were tireless, but we’d have to stop and rest at some point. They <\/span>would<\/em><\/span><\/b> eventually catch up to us.\u00a0 Ivan scouted ahead to make sure we weren’t being herded into a trap, and as far as he could tell, no, we weren’t.<\/p>\n Ulf pointed out we could probably make Dead Man’s Dome and in a quick meeting, we concluded it probably would provide the most defensible place.\u00a0 It was apparent that more undead were joining the skeletons and it was anybody’s guess how many we’d ultimately be facing.\u00a0 High ground seemed like a good idea.<\/p>\n By evening, we’d reached Dead Man’s Dome, and we quickly sized it up. We probably had 20-30 min before the horde caught up to us, and in consultation with Ulf we came up with a plan to funnel the undead towards us using walls of fire.\u00a0 Once they were in the kill zone, some area effect spells would hammer them before the fighters moved in to clean up.\u00a0 I asked Suishen for protection from cold, and we moved up to execute.<\/p>\n As the greatly reduced undead advanced towards us, among our fighters rose a ghostly figure from the ground. The Dead Man had risen to defend the caravan, just as legend foretold!\u00a0 His great sword sliced a wight in half as he gave a half nod to the fighters around him.<\/p>\n Ivan kept a steady stream of arrows heading out to the advancing undead.\u00a0 We destroyed the rest of the undead in short order, with little damage to us.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 And that’s when we saw the second wave advancing.<\/p>\n Since we again had a few minutes to prepare, we quickly brought Ulf up to see the Dead Man.\u00a0 Ulf never expected to see the subject of one of his stories before him \ud83d\ude42 and the look on his face was worth the effort.\u00a0 For his part, the Dead Man again politely nodded at Ulf much as he had to us.<\/p>\n The walls of fire had provided not only a funnelling effect, but also light.\u00a0 But they would be expired for the second wave.\u00a0 We adjusted our strategy a bit.\u00a0 Ivan shot some lit arrows out behind the second wave, and that provided some backlight to help see them advancing.\u00a0 A few tried to move off to flank us, but the nice thing about undead is that they don’t think very hard. they pretty much move directly to the target.\u00a0 Our basic area effect spells still took out a goodly number.\u00a0 The Dead Man again proved indispensible. In the end, we easily killed over 30 undead between the two waves, and we did save the caravan.<\/p>\n Instead of disappearing or sinking back into the ground, the Dead Man walked slowly up the hill. He still looked very distinguished in his dated full plate.\u00a0 But then he reached a pile of rubble, and slowly pointed at it.\u00a0 I thought we might find his remains there, but what we found was more valuable than that.<\/p>\n [431] terra cotta statue We believe we have exhausted the undead army, but we will nevertheless proceed with caution for the next few days.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Starday, 22 Kuthona We had decided to do the almist-customary-now speak with dead with Katiana, but somewhat to my surprise, this time Qatana wanted the whole body. I thought we only needed the head?\u00a0 Certainly we’ve done that in the past, but she said something about “it works better if you have more of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[34],"class_list":["post-2822","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-journal","tag-olmas"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dungeonetics.com\/gamediary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2822","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dungeonetics.com\/gamediary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dungeonetics.com\/gamediary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dungeonetics.com\/gamediary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dungeonetics.com\/gamediary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2822"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.dungeonetics.com\/gamediary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2822\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2824,"href":"https:\/\/www.dungeonetics.com\/gamediary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2822\/revisions\/2824"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dungeonetics.com\/gamediary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2822"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dungeonetics.com\/gamediary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2822"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dungeonetics.com\/gamediary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2822"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n-once per day one can reroll a d20 attack roll w\/+1
\n– once per day one can call upon a spiritual ally for 7 rds<\/p>\n