DM
The village of Witchlight sits atop the island's highest peak, offering a peerless view of the Varisian Gulf-black waters under its glum, overcast sky. The abandoned buildings have long since fallen into disrepair, not to mention the recent impact collapsing the weakest of the walls.
Racaille
Racaille sighs and finger-combs his wet black locks out of his face. At least it isn't raining anymore. He jerks his chin at Kwava.
"I guess we should search the premises for your perp."
Medomai
Medomai tucks his parasol away.
"Let's split up," he grins.
Racaille: Medomai
"Gods-damn it."
Serem
Serem shakes the rain off himself like a dog. It had actually helped wash off the blood and other fluid from the beast-butchering.
"I mean, splitting up's more efficient. It's just a village. Holler if you need help-I'm sure we'll hear it."
DM
"And so will the perp," says Kwava, dry as ever under his leafy cloak. "So avoid hollering if you can."
Racaille
Fine. Fucking. Fine. Racaille throws up his hands and walks off to the nearest building.
-/-
DM
Racaille approaches a stone house with a slate-covered roof. A portion of the roof has collapsed but the rest seems intact.
Racaille
Racaille peaks through the windows for any sign of the renegade elves.
DM
He can't see any from outside the building.
Racaille
Asmodeus's balls. Racaille opens the gods-damned door and walks inside the janky-ass house.
DM
Inside, the walls creak and the roof sags dangerously. The mere pressure of his footsteps causes the floorboards to groan dramatically. Racaille realizes that although portions of these buildings' roofs remain intact, this is more a fluke than any real testimony to architectural design.
Racaille
Yeah, no, this place is definitely about to come down. Racaille heads out before it happens.
DM
But before he can(!) the building shakes, an ear-stabbing creak tearing out from the walls and ceiling. They come crashing down.
Racaille's reflexes are uncannily fast, however. Not only does he leap clear of the collapsing building, but even the flying shrapnel that would have knocked down the likes of his teammates can't touch him.
Racaille
Racaille, apparently landing on his feet, stands slow and turns to see what became of the house.
DM
A sheet of dust rises from the flattened ruins of the old house.
Racaille
"Clear," Racaille mutters, rolling his eyes.
-/-
DM
Medomai's building, while built of rotten timbers, still bears flecks of colorful paint. The structure has almost completely fallen in on itself, the roof long gone.
Medomai
Medomai pushes the door open with the business end of his crossbow.
DM
The door shrieks open on its rusted hinges, but nothing else stirs within.
Medomai
Medomai sneaks inside and cautiously searches the room(s) inside.
DM
Medomai, taking his time to comb over the ruin, discovers an
old silver comb set with strips of ivory partially buried under a collapsed wall. It's worth a pretty penny.
Medomai
Medomai slips the comb into his silk sleeve and steps outside.
"Clear!"
-/-
DM
Serem's large timber-and-stone structure stands at the edge of a steep southern slope, overlooking the sea far below. Large windows facing the village's main thoroughfare suggest a shop, but the windows have been hastily boarded over. Several corpses lay near the outer walls of the building.
While this is a source of interest for the circling turkey vultures above, Serem notes that the scavengers have not yet landed to feed.
Serem
Serem crouches by the corpses but keeps a wary eye open. Something was/is keeping the vultures at bay.
DM
The corpses were slain by numerous slashing blows and what appear to be bite marks. More unusual, however, is the mutilated nature of their faces. Each body is missing its lower jaw; in its place is a nauseating, gray-green, twitching tendril that looks almost like a bloated tongue.
Serem
A-hah. So it's the corpses keeping the vultures away with their "tongues". Serem is just gonna sneak back away from the "dead".
DM
Too late. The four undead rise in a silence broken only by the muffled slosh of their slithering tongues. They fall upon Serem with mindless fury.
Only one zombie's movements are still nimble enough to strike through Serem's guard. Its fist slams into Serem's ribcage, snapping bone. As Serem staggers, its tongue whips across his face, draining blood and strength through spiked tendrils.
Serem
"Guys, a little help here?" says Serem, shifting into his bull-tiger chimeric form.
He slashes at the zombie that took a drink out of him.
DM
The zombie goes down, but Serem's teammates are still too far off to reach the undead mosh pit.
A second zombie whales on Serem, slamming him in the chest. Its tongue, however, sloshes just past his pointed ear.
Serem
Serem claws at this next contender for most dangerous, mindless bone-smasher.
DM
The zombie drops in a heap of rotten gore and dark fluids. Its brethren strike back at Serem but to no avail.
Fortunately for him, the cavalry have arrived.
Racaille
Racaille comes in sweeping with crossed blades.
DM: Racaille
Unfortunately, Racaille slips in the mud as he strikes. Both blades windmill aimlessly through the air.
Serem
"Thanks."
He tried. Serem tries next, hacking at the nearest zombie.
DM: Serem
Serem's claws shred the zombie to grisly ribbons.
Medomai
"Kwava, get the last one, will you?"
Medomai whips out a wand and proceeds to cure Serem's wounds. Lightly.
DM
Kwava fires two shots from his longbow in rapid succession. They plunge through the zombie's two eye sockets. It falls back now in perma-death.
Racaille
"Damn. Mase wasn't kidding about this place being haunted," says Racaille, sheathing his blades.
Serem
"Maybe. There was something off about those tongue zombies-more off than usual. And thanks for the healing," Serem calls back over his shoulder.
He shifts back to his usual elven self.
Medomai
"Not at all. Actually, you'd better let me give you one more for the zombie-infested road."
Medomai fires off a final charge before stowing the wand.
DM
Kwava crouches down in the space vacated by Serem and re-examines the zombies.
"These...weren't created by necromancy."
They are void zombies, corpses puppeted by the larval tongues feeding off them. The larvae belong to an alien creature Kwava has never encountered.
"Akata, I believe they're called. There's no chance these larvae will ever grow into-"
Lights burst in a thunderous explosion from the top of the last tower in Witchlight. A shower of vibrant golden-red sparks rain down its stone sides.
Racaille
"Your perps wouldn't happen to be the least subtle elves on the planet, would they?"
DM: Racaille
"I wish," mutters Kwava before continuing at a regular spoken volume. "Nevertheless, that's something worth investigating."
Serem
"Off to the exploding tower!"
Medomai
Medomai snickers behind lavender-painted fingernails and follows the others onward.
-/-
DM
Ruran and Mase are trekking through the woods to Witchlight when the explosion of pyrotechnics goes off. Mase stops, whiskers twitching.
"Good news, we're going in the right direction. Bad news, at this rate we won't reach the village until sundown."
More bad news. Nine leonine beasts come crashing and roaring through the trees. Unlike lions, they're hairless and blue-skinned. Each has two tentactular tails and a mane of thick, lashing blue tentacles.
Ruran
Ruran's gut falls leaden through the forest floor. They can't run through this underbrush.
"Mase-use your druid run and get out of here!"
Ruran's hand closes around their crystal wand. They levitate twenty feet up through the trees.
"Come on, zombie."
They send their zombie slamming and lashing at the nearest blue lion.
DM
"I'm not that kind of druid!" Mase shrieks, his fur hardening like tree bark.
The void zombie slams the first akata for all its shambling worth. Bones snap beneath its blue skin. The tongue comes in for a blood-draining whip across the purpling wound.
The blue lions attack, biting and lashing. Five fall upon Mase in a blur of white teeth and blue tentacle, but none can breach his armored skin.
They're so wild in their attacking, that two tentacles slam into the wounded creature, tearing through its flesh. The blue lion goes down, trampled by the three who attack the zombie. They bite and lash into its rotten flesh, but it doesn't go down just yet.
Ruran
"Hang in there Mase!"
Ruran holds their crystal wand in one hand and pulls out their poppet in the other. They point the poppet at one of the three blue lions on their zombie. Time to shake some bones.
Their zombie attacks a different nearby creature.
DM
The poppet's magic strings grip that beast's spine and shake it like a child would a ragdoll. As it gets thrown about, bones snapping willy-nilly, the zombie even gets in a free, killing blow.
The void zombie punches the first of the two blue lions left on its tail. This time, it barely leaves a scratch.
Mase holds on as best as he can, slashing with his scimitar. He makes a solid cut but only infuriates the beast.
The blue lions attack. The two on the zombie leave it on its very last leg of hit point, singular.
Of the five on Mase, only one tentacle breaks through his armored skin. Its an ugly blow, tearing through the flesh down the side of his face.
Ruran
Ruran points their poppet down at the two dead blue lions under their zombie. Time to raise the cavalry.
They loose the first zombie and the two new zombies onto the two living blue lions.
DM
The living aren't prepared for the might and fury of the undead. The small zombie horde tears down the two into piles of blue flesh.
Mase slashes through the throat of the wounded blue lion. It falls dead up on the underbrush. The four remaining continue to whale upon the ratfolk.
Luckily for Mase, his armored skin deflects all of their blows.
Ruran
Ruran cracks their neck from side to side. The cavalry isn't enough. It's time to get unholy.
Ruran points their poppet at the zombie horde. A descretating veil descends upon them, strengthening their tentacles and slam respectively with sheer, death-defying energy.
They send their empowered horde into the fray.
DM
The undead horde paints the town blue dropping two blue lions in under six seconds.
Mase hacks at the third. Fuelled on the high of the zombies' success, he howls and sweeps his scimitar right through a blue lion's skull.
The one remaining beast recognizes its imminent mortal peril. It runs back off into the trees.
Mase, panting, sweating, and bleeding, sheathes his scimitar. He cups one hand around his muzzle and yells up at Ruran.
"Tits of the Pirate Queen, you really oughta be charging more."
Ruran
Ruran lowers the crystal wand, descending back down to the forest floor.
"Thanks," they cackle, "but are you gonna be okay?"
DM
Mase pulls out a wand of his own.
"Don't you worry about me, Doc. I came prepared."
Ruran
Ruran looks over their barely standing void zombie and the new blue lions. They'd also come prepared.
Ruran stows the wand and places their free hand on the void zombie's shoulder. Necromantic magic sludges black from their poppet through the line of Ruran's arms and into the zombie-healing for the undead.
DM
Mase shivers at the unhallowed casting. But shrugs and taps himself twice with his wand. He rolls out one shoulder and then the other.
"Yep, that'll do it. You and the horde all set?"
Ruran
Ruran stows their poppet. Short answer, yes. Long answer…
"Mase, that burst would definitely draw the boys team. I can't bring a horde of undead in sight of Kwava," or Racaille, honestly, "but I can't let them go in case we get attacked again."
DM
"We should really, probably, check out Witchlight at some point, but there are a couple of other places Syleg could be."
Mase pulls out his map. He points at two marks on the eastern and western tips of the crescent-shaped island.
"These are lighthouses. We should have time to make it to one in about the same time as it would've taken us to get to Witchlight. Actually, no. We could make it to the eastern lighthouse."
Ruran
"Alright, eastern lighthouse it is."
Ruran starts clambering over the underbrush. They stop, looking back over their shoulder.
"Thanks, Mase."
DM
"Hey, the contract's dead-or-alive-Syleg can afford to wait. But you're welcome, Doc."