Session 2 (18. 01. 2020)

On the wide road to Vardona, smoke and sparks trail skyward from the impromptu squad’s small campfire, most of them lying asleep in their bedrolls. It is still night, and watches are being set up. Vasya and Cadfan’s passes in relatively comfortable silence, with Vasya’s visions quiet for now. Maverick and John hear distant wolves howling in the fields, and talk strategy. John wants to know how to interact with the local populace of Vardona when they arrive, and not be caught off-guard by anything. Maverick tells him that most everyone in Vardona is hardworking and decent folk, though hints at a slight criminal element of illegal goods smuggling. John will have to get used to the more lax attitude that guards have away from the big cities. Maverick also gives the new lieutenant advice on how to talk to his captain, Lem Stillgrove, explaining that tradition is very important to the man, but to act friendly with him to gain his trust.  While talking, Maverick spots something small moving through the nearby wheat close to the road, and him and John hear creepy, childlike laughter. Whatever is spying on the group appears to move very quickly, rustling through the grain and stopping in the blink of an eye. John loudly plays his bagpipes to wake the party, resulting in some drowsy grumbles about the combat effectiveness of instruments that quickly fade as they are filled in on the situation. Maverick notices that a piece of bread from his rations is missing; the creature might be looking for food.John comes up with the plan of pretending to be asleep to lure it in, which most of the squad promptly ignores, Vasya pressing into the wheat and Sophia throws glowing pebbles to try and see what is assailing them. The giggling continues from whatever it is as it kites everyone between the two fields, but Sophia finds some small, webbed footprints and after trying to stab the prints, Vasya spots a hole that could indicate the creature is burrowing. As they slowly regather to the campfire, Cadfan hears chewing sounds and more laughter, though quieter this time. She follows the noise into the wheat, eventually coming upon a squat, ugly creature with a wide sharp-toothed mouth, bulging eyes, and slimy grey skin. It is munching away on Maverick’s bread, and appears interested in Cadfan’s offer of her own rations. She tries to convince it to stay away, and it speaks to her in Sylvan, saying ‘friends’, before snatching more of her food and disappearing into the field.
The night continues. Agis and Sophia are next on watch, with Agis not entirely pleased by this fact given the pair’s earlier conversations. He muses aloud on whether or not to poke a hole in John’s bagpipes, which Sophia rebuffs, acknowledging that they had been useful to wake everyone up at once. Sophia writes her report to the clergy, and as their watch ends, the morning comes without further incident. Cadfan finds many small tracks around the space where she had left another day’s rations, now gone. The creepy laughing creature must’ve returned with ‘friends’, but when checking their packs the rest of the squad find nothing missing. The group packs up camp and continues down the road, with Maverick informing them that they have around five further days of travel to reach Vardona, but should come across the small village of Keld later that day.
On the road, John spots another wagon, heading their way. In it are three young women dressed in simple farm clothes and chatting with one another. They begin to laugh amongst themselves and cast glances at the group’s cart, with Agis determining that John’s rugged good looks are the cause. Vasya waves to the girls, who call out to the party as they pass. Both wagons slow, and the women reveal themselves to be pilgrims from a few of the nearby farms, heading to the Ancestor’s Sanctum in Merak for the first time on a journey that every Hespathian makes when they come of age. Vasya gushes about how great the religious services in the temple are, and Sophia is recognized as a cleric of the Eternal. She mends a tear in one of the girls’ dresses to demonstrate her power, and informs them that spiritual purity is the way to becoming like her, thoroughly exciting them. Agis makes a dirty joke in bad taste, and the groups continue down their respective paths.
Clustered outbuildings begin to line the road, slowly growing closer and closer together. They have arrived in the farming village of Keld, and make their way down the main road into town. No one is there. Not one person in any of the nearby homes, no one on the street, no one in the town square. John stops the cart, and the group approaches one house to make sure it is well and truly abandoned. Maverick picks the lock, Cadfan, Vasya, and Sophia entering. Cadfan smells the stench of undeath, though finds nothing else out of the ordinary in the house, besides the suspicious lack of people. Scuffed tracks in the square lead the group down a side road, passing a church of Kalash with wide-open doors. Cadfan follows the tracks, determining that they were made by four or five human-sized creatures about a day before, which would’ve been around the same time that the group fought zombies on the road. The tracks split off, a few leading to the closed doors of a large barn, and a pair to an adjacent farmhouse near the edge of the village. Sophia, Cadfan, and Maverick go to the front door, while John, Vasya, and Agis circle around the back, expecting trouble. Maverick notices someone pulling aside the curtains on a nearby window, and knocks on the door. Sophia goes to tell the others not to kick the back door down, as there are living people inside.
Many locks open from the inside of the front door of the farmhouse, a few more than may have been strictly necessary for a house this size. A tall farmer with long red hair and an incredibly bushy mustache opens the door with wild eyes, wielding a pitchfork. After seeing Maverick’s Vardona guard uniform and Lieutenant John identifying himself, the farmer reveals his name to be Cornell Kovacs. He calls his massive, equally crazy-looking wife Nanette in from the other room. She sticks a kitchen knife threateningly over her husband’s shoulder, both of them clearly untrained in using their tools as weapons. The group learns from the couple, through a number of crazed rants, that Keld was attacked the previous day by undead. Cornell raves about having to stab his friends, and the zombies entering the barn.
The squad leaves them to their hysteria, approaching and inspecting the barn. The smell of rot is almost overpowering here, and everyone discusses what to expect inside, already hearing the telltale moans of undeath from within. Maverick knows that with the recent happenings around Hespath, villages like Keld prepare a number of safehouses in case of an emergency just like this. The barn, with its thick walls and huge doors, would be a good candidate for villagers to defend. But this safehouse has been breached, and a few zombies would have been more than enough to turn whoever had been hiding here. The group can only hope that the entire village hadn’t sheltered inside. John and Agis patrol the perimeter, finding a loft door in the back of the barn that could’ve been a good point of entry if it wasn’t so high off the ground. With no way to get in there, they regroup in the front to talk strategy. Without knowing the extent of the infection inside, the idea of just burning the whole thing down is suggested. The resulting discussion draws zombies to bash open the barn doors from the inside, ending the strategizing and drawing the group in without a plan. The two undead who slammed open the doors are quickly dispatched, and Vasya enters, finding the barn to have been converted into a sort of storehouse. He is quickly attacked by a disembodied, rotting hand that tries to latch itself onto him. The rest of the group enters one by one, taking stock of the situation. Most of them are immediately attacked by similar hands, which dive from the tops of shelves and between clustered barrels, also scuttling along the long walkway that leads to the loft at the back. The hands are weak but plentiful and fast, able to climb around on people while scratching them repeatedly. The party hears sounds of larger undead from deeper within, and soon a bloated zombie emerges. With some clever positioning, Agis lures the thing right next to a few of the hands, before darting out of the way. Sophia torches all of them with holy fire, and with a few more hits the bloater detonates without catching anyone in the blast. When it had tried to move, it had activated a thunderous spell placed on it by Maverick, though the rest of the group didn’t know its source. Vasya pleads with his censer for protection, and runs deeper into the warehouse, ignoring John’s hastily assembled plan to regroup around the advantageously positioned Cadfan.
John and Sophia run after the erratic Ferryman after taking care of a few more undead, who hears the largest noises coming from the back loft and had spotted something up there earlier when he climbed atop a shelf. The group is greeted with a disgusting sight- a massive pile of moving corpses, fused in place together by decaying, fleshy lengths. The bodies had been ripping off their own hands to throw around the warehouse. John watches as Vasya raises his censer, blasts of clearly unsanctioned, shadowy magic erupting from it towards the mass. Maverick takes potshots from another shelf with his shortbow, piercing through the heads of a number of the bodies, but the pile as a whole stays animated. Cadfan climbs a ladder up to the walkway, also sniping at the thing from across the warehouse. Agis repositions, running to catch up with the others, though ends up on the other side of the loft from them. Vasya charges it with his spear, followed closely by a worried John. The pile spits more hands at Agis, and Sophia uses the last of her magic to envelop the whole thing in bright blue fire, lighting it up for the others to be able to hit it easier. Vasya uses more magic to draw moisture into frosty armor for himself, this time clearly seen by Sophia and the others. John and Vasya carve away at the pile, while Agis kicks more and more hands into the back wall. The group keeps blasting away at the thing, which eventually runs out of hands to throw. Maverick joins the rest at the loft. Vasya and John are seriously injured as the corpse mound lashes out, but Agis, who was already weakened from being slashed by so many claws, is knocked out. Vasya drags his body away from the undead before Agis can be dragged into it, and John feeds him a healing potion to get him back up. Agis then slams the bodies back into near death, but Cadfan scores the killing blow, her arrow piercing deep into it and cracking something metallic inside. Everyone unites at the loft, with John and Cadfan preparing to burn the body mound. Before they can, Vasya pries a talisman out of the center, an amulet with a cracked purple crystal and an inscription reading ‘For Alice’. He hands it off to Sophia for inspection, and the bodies are set alight. On the way out of the warehouse, Vasya lingers for a moment. A towering figure approaches, fully formed from the smoke, and asks about confirming a selection. With a start, Vasya, backed against the wall of the warehouse, realizes that the figure isn’t talking to him. Outside, another figure appears to the larger group: a strange, formally dressed elven man, slow clapping as he leans against the barn’s wall, before disappearing.
Unfortunately, the fire spreads to the warehouse itself, and Cornell runs out of his farmhouse to put out the blaze. John chews out Vasya for disobeying orders, for which he apologizes, blaming his lack of combat experience and compulsion to destroy undead, and promises to do better in the future. John also praises the group for their improved handling of the situation, how they tactically destroyed the bloater with no injuries, and killed a great many zombies. No one comments on any of the magic yet, focusing on helping Cornell put out the fire. With that work done, they turn their attention towards the wider village. Twelve total hands from the pile, a bloater, and a few regular zombies means that only a part of the village had sheltered there. The group reenters the main village, determined to search for survivors.

Characters

Sophia (Luecaster)
Vasya Volkov (Max)
Agis Tordove (Brayden)
Cadfan Groveborn (Cheese)
John Deercow (Adam)
Maverick Humbleward (Dil)

Locations

Keld