Session 8: Dragonborn Belly and the Luckiest Skeleton Report
General Summary
The troubleshooters leave the relative safety of the colosseum and Lord Raktavi's demesne and enter the haunted streets of Lord Zarloff's growing kingdom. Still in the Citywalk district, the adventurers must contend with the ever-shifting street scenes, where buildings grow taller or shorter, slide into new configurations, or even stand up and perambulate about on mechanical (or demonic) legs or wheels.
As they move deeper into the maze of streets, though, themselves an every changing array of stairs, slopes, flats, and angles, the four travelers from Helion -- Happy, Cerice, Fallenbridge, and Leonardo -- joined now by the black dragonborn, Silent Sam, find themselves trapped in a short cross street as a small contingent of 25 or 26 (it's 26) skeletons march by in the streets to either side. As the skeletons approach in near silence -- only the sound of their bones clacking together and the pieces of their armor sliding across one another to give them away -- a ground fog rises, created by the chill unlife that emanates from and animates the skeletal horde.
Silent Sam quickly slips through a nearby door and into an empty apartment, motioning for the others to join him. But the skeletons have already seen them and fill the alley from either side!
Rusted swords chop at Cerice and Leonardo on one side, and at Fallenbridge and Happy on the other. Cerice throws up a shimmering shield of magic to deflect the blows directed at her, and Leonardo is a blur of motion parrying with his hand axes. Still, the numbers are too great.
But Fallenbridge is swift as a swift, opening his beak and unleashing a piercing wave of sound that barrels into the skeleton pack just beyond Cerice and Leonardo. A third of those explode into a cloud of bone dust that washes over Cerice's magical shield, while the rest have ribcages, pieces of skull, and whole joints ripped from their bodies.
Leonardo allows his always-festering fury to overwhelm him, and the gnome barbarian throws himself into battle while Cerice brings up more magic to protect herself before darting away from her attackers to join Silent Sam in the apartment. For his part, Sam shoots an arrow at a pair of skeletons across the alley, but the damp, combined with the bone dust in the air, skews his aim and the arrow strikes high, the magic the ranger has imbued it with casting tendrils of thorny vines out across the upper story of the building across the way.
Happy digs within her cuirass and pulls forth the holy symbol of her order. Her normally low and self-effacing voice echoes with power as she invokes the righteousness of her deity. Half of the attacking skeletons cringe, their bony faces somehow contorting into even more horrific visages before they turn and flee into the dim and foggy streets.
But half remain and several strike solid blows on the cleric with their broken and rusty weapons. She breaks away and hurries into the apartment as well.
Fallenbridge unleashes another unearthly avian shriek that blasts most of the remaining skeletons to the north into powder before he, too, flings himself into the apartment.
Leonardo, though, is unwilling to break off his rampage and beats down two of the skeletons slashing at him before he puts his back to the wall next to the apartment door.
Cerice casts more protections while Happy brings down the bane of her god on the skeletons surrounding the gnome. Fallenbridge pierces one of the undead at the door with his dagger, and Sam hits the same one with another of his spell-imbued arrows, this time causing thorns to erupt from within the horror's chest -- thorns that spread out to spear all the skeletons surrounding it, but not before one of those manages to put the blade of its sword deep into the dragonborn's belly.
With a few more blows, only two skeletons are left, one of whom, perhaps the luckiest skeleton unalive, completely unharmed by anythin the adventurers have thrown out. But the building itself shakes, then begins to lift itself up on three massive lizard-like legs, with Leonardo still on the ground with the remaining two undead!
Sam flings out an arm and Leonardo grabs hold of it, allowing the building itself to pull him up and to relative safety.
The building turns and begins making its way north, leaving the two skeletons behind, shaking their swords ineffectually at the retreating party.
But more trouble awaits: the building makes its way north for several blocks, then climbs atop another building and settles down. The apartments nearby are also still in motion, however, and (perhaps coincidentally, perhaps not) several of them stagger their heights and locations so as to provide a straight shot for a terrible, charging creature that seems to have targeted the gang specifically. It is a massive bull, plated in iron and venting a green gas from its nostrils as it charges, drawn perhaps by Fallenbridge's screeches and the holy power channeled by Happy to chase forth the skeletons.
A gorgon!
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