Session 11-12: Bones and Black Hearts Report

General Summary

Lord Zarloff, calling him(it-)self The Lord of Death, rules his domain from within Greymark Citadel, but the Citadel is not a castle, nor a dungeon, nor any sort of edifice the Explorers have seen before. Instead, it is an animated skeleton a hundred and fifty feet tall!   The great skeleton takes a step out from the sandstone wall in which it has been embedded for so long, boulders and massive shards of stone falling to the dessicated cityscape beneath, crushing what is left of already razed homes, shops, and towers.   The Death Lord's voice booms again, "Powered by your souls, the Circlet of Worlds will open wide enough for my vast legions to devour all of Helion!"   But the adventurers are already springing into action. They charge through the ruins even as blue-furred goblins swarm down the bridges and stairs that lace the body of the animated citadel-skeleton. Leonardo is there first, already climbing the steps as Silent Sam, Happy, and Cerise lob arrows and spells and while Fallenbridge bolsters them with his own inspiring bardic songs and speeches. Leonardo cuts down the first of the blue goblins, barely slowing on his ascent of the stairs.   But then a demonic black light blasts forth from the skull of the citadel-skeleton as the Death Lord uses an arcane weapon there to spear the heroes.   Cerice, seeing the terrible danger that poses, takes to the air, using magics discovered during her time here in Morbus Gravis, the Unending City of the Damned. She and the Lord of Death begin to exchange fire in a lightshow high above where the others fight.   Happy makes her way to the leg opposite Leonardo, where fewer of the blue goblins have come barrelling down the carven-bone steps. Fallenbridge blasts away part of the stairway behind Leonardo, keeping the goblins from further advance toward the ground.   Hellfire continues to roar in the sky around the citadel-skeleton's head, but then the Death Lord places a gauntleted hand on the brainstone of the thing and cries out, "ARISE!"   There comes a great shaking of the razed cityscape and thousands ... perhaps hundreds of thousands ... of skeletons rise up from the black dust as the citadel-skeleton's blackstone heart pulses once with a deep, purple light.   The skeleton horde moves to converge on the fight.   Fallenbridge turns to this new mass of foes, steeling himself for death but determined to bring down as many as he can with his shattering cry.   Happy drops back down to the ground to aid the Kenku, while Leonardo makes it through the goblin barbarians to the blackstone heart -- easily the size of a small house -- followed swiftly by Silent Sam. Leonardo leaps across the space between the bridges and the stone and lays into it with his axes, while Sam splits fire between the stone and the tendrils of sinew that hold it in place in the breastbone of the citadel-skeleton. They hope, of course, that if they destroy the heart, then perhaps -- just perhaps -- they can reverse the summoning that just brought an army of undead nipping at their heels.   Cerice, meanwhile, has continued pummelling the Lord of the Death with violent spells, but Zarloff has had enough, he gives the brainstone commands and the citadel-skeleton's eyes begin the slow, grinding process of closing.   Cerice, unwilling to let him armor himself in this way, but knowing that it might mean her own death, throws herself into the skull cavity before the eyes completely close, locking herself in with the mad wizard.   On the ground, Happy and Fallenbridge take out the vangaurd forces of the undead army and retreat to the deadly footfall shadows of the citadel-skeleton. Running low on spells, battered and bloody, they still know that it is up to them to give Leonardo and Sam the time they need.   In the breastbone of the dead god, sinew snaps and the blackstone heart cracks. Leonardo loses one of his axes, but continues to whale away at the stone with the one that remains. Sam is down to his last few arrows, but spares them not.   The great heart cracks all the way through, revealing a purple soullight shining from within.   Sam takes aim with his last arrow.   In the skull, Cerice is torn and terrible to behold, but still fighting with her last spells and her last breath. The Death Lord, too, bears terrible wounds, but he lifts his lance to deal the killing blow to the holy warlock.   And it is then that Sam's arrow pierces the soullight.   A pulse of purple light flares out from within the citadel-skeleton's breast, reducing the undead horde to a fog of black dust. The citadel-skeleton shakes ... and begins to come undone.   Sam swings to Leonardo on a severed cable of sinew and grabs him, taking them down as fast as he can, even as ribs and connective tissue rain all around.   Above, the great skull of the dead god cracks apart and begins to fall. The Death Lord gasps out a single incoherent sound of negation, but, seeing her chance, Cerice flies out of the skull through a newly-opened crevasse. When she is safely away from the citadel-skeleton, she turns in the sky and watches as the once-god-thing fragments and cascades to the ground in a cacophony that shakes boulders from the sandstone formations spearing up from the destroyed city.   The Death Lord crawls out from the rubble, raises one hand ... and dies.   Sam, Leonardo, Happy, and Fallenbridge stand at the edge of the ruins and stare for a long time ... and bleed.   Cerice joins them, and they all turn toward the living city and begin walking.