The Ghostlands was just as awful as I remembered it, a massive forest of dead trees and rotten land, constantly in a state of dusk not unlike Duskwood.
Now there was just more undead roaming the place. Enough that I was actually worried about what the main horde would look like.
Most of the Scourge should be either along the dead scar, or inside the dark fortress of Deathholme. Our boats had landed us on the southern portion of the Ghostlands coast.
We avoided the ruins of Windrunner village as we moved inland, a place with quite a bit of history, populated with the ghosts of my people. Eventually we found our path.
I let First-hunt take the lead. He made a marvelous show of things.
An large battle axe swung with frightening speed, hewing ghoul, zombie, and skeleton alike as we made our way down an elven road.
My body guard was not skilled or practiced, but he was strong, fast, and brutal. Ocassionaly a few too many undead approached at once, their blows hitting the gnoll before he could cut them down.
He barely reacted, his battle plate absorbing the damage, only taking light scratches from the rusted and broken weapons the undead weilded mindlessly.
Once a luck zombie managed to slip his guard, and plant a broken sword into his side, before a gauntleted backhand tore the head from its body.
It took quite a bit of work to get the undead gnoll and the golem he was wearing to work in tandem, but once I was able to link the two the affect was immediate.
Perhaps Hogger was simply that impressive of a gnoll, or perhaps my design was better thought out than I imagined, but either way I felt we would have a marvelous time together.
I smiled as a hand reached out, crushing the skull of a skeleton warrior and his helmet at once, before the remains were tossed into a crowd of charging ghouls, scattering several of the creatures.
Marvelous indeed. We traveled down the road for two hours, allowing my new favorite minion to slaughter his way through the directionless Scourge in our path.
The first real test was when we closed in on a ziggurat situated on a hill, with streams of energy stretching outward towards where I knew Deathholme to be.
An abomination, empowered by the ziggurat and far more dangerous than the chaff we encountered thus far stomped down the road, I could feel the ground shake lightly with its every step.
It was massive, even for one of its kind, nearly twenty feet tall and wielding a hook in one hand and a meat cleaver in the other. The moment its eye locked upon us it charged, thundering down the road towards us.
"Kill!" it yelled out, its voice childishly excited. First-hunt answered with his own charge, meeting the abomination just before it could reach the rest of us.
I channeled power into my gnoll, making certain my investment would not be easily beaten. His murky green eyes glowed even more brightly, and the inscriptions on his armor shined.
He stopped just short of the abomination, swinging upward and catching the blow of it's cleaver, tearing it from the beasts grasp and into the dying grass behind them.
The abominations hook caught along his pauldron at the same time, tearing it from my guards armor. The gnoll's axe met its knee moments later, breaking the stitched together limb and forcing a howl out of his opponent.
"Hurts!" yelled out the abomination as it collapsed slightly, held up only by its other leg, bringing it closer to my gnoll.
First hunt drew the axe back, before he let his weapon fly directly into the skull of the abomination, cleaving deeply into its head.
It froze for a moment, before laughing as one of its hands grasped my gnolls blade with one hand, its other shooting out and wrapping around my gnoll before he could react.
It ripped the axe out, before it readied to swing against my now defenseless creation.
A bolt of shadowed flame met its head moments later. I sighed as the abomination collapsed and my bodyguard ripped his weapon from the now dead abominations hand.
I would have to work on his response to different kinds of monsters. Anything but decapitation was usually only superficial damage to the undead.
Still, he had done well, taking minimal damage and immobilizing a foe to better slay it. If he had done that to a living creature I would have found this trail to be a resounding success.
I turned to the ziggurat situated on the hill, before I directed my party towards it, this time with me taking the lead.
I entered the dark construction with a thin shield of magical power in front of me, taking several shadowbolt to it as the Darkmages within defended one of the power sources to the Scourge in the area.
Lightning and flame came from behind me as my slaves attacked, killing the living servants of the scourge before they could properly shield themselves.
Inside the ziggurat was a small room surrounding a pool of viscous green liquid, and above it hovered the crystal core of the ziggurat.
I reached out to the magic, humming to myself as I remembered the last time I was in this land, looking at a crystal just like this.
My magic curled around the crystal, before it cut off the flow of energy entirely. I looked to First-hunt, and with a small application of will he secured his axe to his back and grasped at the crystal.
His gauntlets sizzled at the contact, but he took the crystal from its place, and together we departed, making for the twin of this crystal, lodged within the ziggurat on the hill just opposite of this one, past the dead scar.
The great road of rot that was the dead scar was completely empty, without a single minion of the Scourge in sight.