It Is the Tide, Act 1

[Grey]

The stranger does not hesitate, meeting the shambling things half way. The mark of death is certainly upon them, and whatever sorcery animates them, has sickened them - the scholar sees the weakest points.


With a casual, side-on stance, he withdraws his pipe and jabs the stem here and here and there at joints and chakras to disrupt their essence, weaken their limbs.


And drop a stone-stricken corpse in the path of its still-running fellows.

 

[Random Word]

With flashing steel and graceful flowing motion Sun Minh severs tendons and limbs, weaving her way through the shambling horde as it stumbles and falls around her. She clears the throng and turns on her heel, one knee bent, blade raised high overhead, the sun shining brilliantly off its blood soaked edge.


"I think your cutting arguments and dire portents deadlier than you let on, humble scholar."

 

[Shining Lotus Sage]

A few of the walking dead stop walking at once, felled in a single pass by the combined efforts of the magistrate and the philosopher. And against mortal troops, the casual ease they were dispatched with might shake morale, or prompt a reconsidered approach. But the dead are simple beings of hunger and rage, and they simply turn, and simply fall upon their attackers with gnashing teeth. There is no order or discipline, here, only savagery and the emergent behavior of a homogenous mob. It seems to work well enough, though, when they outnumber their enemies two to one.


And it's only such fair odds for now. The splashing from inside the dust cloud Heinz whipped up is growing almost frantic in its intensity. A strangled gasp from atop the wall is followed shortly by an especially loud splash, and then an unfamiliar voice chanting. And to make matters about as worse as they come, the last group of the dead is charging up the terraces at a speed nearly matching Snake-in-Pot's race up the road.


But that's the future. The present is full of zombies, and they are full of teeth.

 

[Random Word]

From the beginning of her martial training Sun Minh has been taught the power of discipline and technique as force multipliers, breeding in her an unspoken contempt for the mob. A disorganized rabble is it's own worst enemy, and these abominations are incapable of even aspiring to such lofty heights. They scream their attacks for all to see seconds before they make them, halting jerky motions with the power to rend flesh from bone - had Sun Minh not already cleaved the offending limbs from their ungainly owners. Her expression is grim, disgust plain upon her face as she steps lightly aside and brings her sword down to cleave an arm, carrying through with her strike to take off a nearby leg, stepping into her momentum to avoid grasping gnarled claws, crouching low to avoid gnashing yellowed teeth, bringing her sword up to sever the outstretched neck, all without breaking stride or slowing. These creatures must be dispatched quickly so she can catch up with the group headed deeper into the defenseless village.

 

[HeinzByTrade]

The storm's an old friend, and the panic it spreads a familiar taste on the air. The single mindedness of the raging undead makes them predictable and thus easily frustrated by Heinz stepping between a pair of colliding shamblers. He similarly steps around a larger group of grasping hands to find a space to catch a second to locate the elephant,

 

[Grey]

The scholar does not remain still; as the first of the dead lunges he leaps, and steps from skull to skull until he stands atop a broken section of wall - presumably the border of an animal pen, once upon a time.


He lights his pipe and observes the zombies with an air of disappointment.

 

[Shining Lotus Sage]

Up close, it seems likely that these beasts are former residents of Sunlight Rain. Behind the waterlogged bloat, the discoloration of rot, and the assortment of new and old wounds, the faces look native enough.Two fall to pieces, limbs severed by Sun Minh's flashing sword. One utterly loses its animus under Mask's precise assault and drops like a stone, tripping two others. Heinz flits through the mob as though it were merely a crowded bazaar, scarcely even glancing at their putrid flesh.


The lurching dead are too predictable and graceless to seriously threaten any of the Mighty, especially the profane Anathema. They get in each other's way; they get in their own way; they bite at absolutely every feint. But they are far more durable than in life, and it takes precious time to put them back to rest. The group chasing Snake-in-Pot up the hill has made good use of the time, quickly turning distance from the villagers into distance from the Exalted fighting at the base of the hill.


The dead men in the water have done less well. Treem Ngôc, the elephant, can be seen following the inside of the wall out of the commotion, and not a scratch on her. The zombies are still obscured by sand and grit, but none of the noises within the cloud sounded like a wall being torn down. In fact, as the splashing ebbs, only the sound of a man chanting from atop the wall can still be heard over the elephant's stamping. His voice is reedy, and the accent is local. The language is like nothing of this world, though, full of guttural sounds and rattling gasps, as though he were being murdered a dozen times all at once, and it's building rapidly in volume.


The caravan crew have taken shelter and readied their pitchforks and hammers. Snake-in-Pot has started wasting breath on screaming, and it's only slowing him down. Ki-Lan—


Ki-Lan is missing.


And the nearest corpses are pulling themselves up for another attempt to feed.

 

[Random Word]

Sun Minh spares one quick glance at the shambling horde heading for the village before her eyes snap back to the necromancer on the wall and she makes her decision. The dead will kill some should they reach the village, but the village may no longer exist should the necromancer complete his profane incantation. She slips between two grasping claws and breaks for the wall, squinting and cursing the unnatural sandstorm in a humid jungle. She leaps into a flying kick at the indistinct silhouette of one of the dead, carrying her momentum and pushing off of it as it topples over, landing on one of the guard platforms and pushing off again to reach the top of the wall. She holds her sword out in front of her eyes to shield them, following the horrifying sound to its source.


"I regret to inform you this asylum is already overfull. Your application is, however, compelling; Allow me to bestow upon you the most merciful benediction of the Dragons."

 

[Shining Lotus Sage]

Through the sand, it's hard to make out the chanting figure, but he seems to be twitching and jerking as the sounds drop from his tongue. His movements are erratic in a way that instinctively disgusts—the way the rabid move, when the contagion is steering them crudely. His arms are held over the watering hole, and he has something long and thin strapped to his back, but beyond that, details are scarce. The smoke that pervades the air smells particularly stale, as Sun Minh races closer.


Snake-in-Pot isn't just screaming. He's screaming in the local dialect. Actual words, though not many of them. Just, "Conqua is back!"

 

[Grey]

Thousand Screaming Mask frowns. That is an exercise of power.


There's a definite, jaunty spring to his step as he uses the undead as stepping-stones before leaping up, towards the wall beside this jerking dabbler.

 

[HeinzByTrade]

Heinz waves his hat in front of his face, creating a clear pocket in the air in front of his face. He calmly takes measure of where the elephant is positioned and cocks an eyebrow as an idea begins to form in his head. He takes several steps off the wall and up into the air on stairs that form themselves from the sand whipping through the air under his feet.


He squared his hips and unclaspsed one of his gun holsters, if not for the wind a horrible whine could be heard beginning to escape from the leather. When he pulled the gun from his holster the terrible wailing that erupted from the gun he lay across his left arm for ease of aiming was almost paralyzingly loud, and just audibly over the whipping winds, but it was nothing new to Heinz. The screams had become almost comforting at this point in his life. Taking a deep breath in Heinz held it as he gazed down the orbital bone sight and along the barrel made of spinal column, sinew, and well tanned skin at a barrel of his companies own fuel just beyond the elephant. He smiled, continuing to hold his breath, easily sighting his target from his somewhat lofty perch and exhaled only once the screaming hellfire bullet blasted out of what was left of his brothers mouth and towards its current target.

 

[Shining Lotus Sage]

The air writhes and flexes around the missile in a way too rhythmic to be convection eddies. When it hits the barrel, it doesn't explode as much as it superimposes the barrel onto a million incompatible escape vectors at once, and lights them all aflame. The resulting fireball just appears full-sized, without deigning to expand rapidly up to that point. Treem Ngôc rears and wheels away as gracefully as her tonnage permits, glowing orange and gold in the sudden light, before crashing back to earth with a heavy thud. She bolts away from this new terror, straight into the storm.


And what a storm. The growing whirlwind holding Heinz aloft is as much sand as air, molten by the shot and cooling into slivers of glass. In the eye of the storm, a bonfire burns around him, heatless and as fiercely green as the surrounding forest. The updraft draws it up a mile into the air.


It is under these conditions that Treem Ngôc crashes back into the watering hole, and she promptly begins making an absolute mess of things.


 
Up close—after all, Sun Minh is very close now—it is clearer what the necromancer is doing. The stiff, shuddery motions are no affliction; she has seen them before! Some mudra, dedicated to... dedicated to...


And then it clicks. It is even closer to rabies than just visually evocative. Sun Minh has witnessed the propitiation of the least god of that disease. There was a drum circle of savages a few years ago, making the same sort of movements in a blasphemous attempt to cure a young boy who had been bitten by a bat. Somewhere between silly pagan superstition and seditious aiding and abetting. This is almost assuredly not the same ritual, but its resemblance is unmistakeable. The important parts, she learned before she arrested everyone involved, were the song and the dance steps. The rhythm and placement of their footfalls was a perverse obsession, and they resisted being dragged off course more than they cared about being lashed for resisting.


And there he is, jittering around on a platform barely six feet wide.

 

[Random Word]

Every Magistrate is taught the first rule of fighting in the dark of a Yozi worshippers' cellar, the smoky interior or a local gang bar, or amongst the hanging racks of a mad killer's abattoir: Keep them talking. Especially if there's a group of them, the more you keep them talking to you, the less they communicate, and the easier it is to track their position. In this case, the Necromancer requires no prompting on Sun Minh's behalf, as his erratic but enthusiastic chanting mark his position in the sandstorm as surely as a flare. Once you have their position, keep them off balance. Fear, surprise, and too many elements to keep track of all work wonderfully for this.


She dives forward into a roll to cover the distance, lashing out with a precise jab at the location she knows his dance must carry his feet. From her crouched position she swiftly rises to her full imposing height, using her sword to prevent the next spastic twitch of his head and keep his eyes locked firmly on hers. "Your Golden Lord has found you, wretch. I bring his swift and terrible justice," her voice carrying over the explosion, wails of the dead, and the sounds of the Treem Ngoc's rampage, her eyes burning bright with Hesiesh's inner light, perfectly contained and all the more terrible for it. Having metaphorically upset the Necromancer's balance, she promptly follows up with a more concrete lesson as she plants her steel booted foot on his chest and pushes off. We'll see how well he can dance under water.


Looking up, she sees the baleful green light amidst the swirling sands. Mercies of Mela, the Necromancer didn't make this sandstorm to protect himself. That's an... "Anathema!" she cries, thrusting her sword almost as an afterthought at the plummeting Necromancer. Focus on one threat at a time, she chides herself.

 

[Shining Lotus Sage]

Up close enough for eye contact, the chaos of the storm fades away. Sun Minh and the spellcaster are afforded an instant of peace. Truth. If she were any closer, she could surely take the measure of his soul.


He is young. Pretty. Looks lost. In the instant she draws her blade up past his face, he catches something reflecting in its edge, and his emotions explode into chaos. Her boot meets no resistance.


He splashes into the water, but quickly rights himself. Pulling the bow off his shoulders while dodging Treem Ngôc's rampage occupies most of his attention, but at least the zombies are helpfully throwing themselves under his feet to keep him mostly out of the water.

 

[Grey]

Mask arrives after the Imperial hound, but doesn't lose momentum. He snaps a chunk of the crumbling palisade off in one gnarled fist and hurls it at the Necromancer - hard enough that the fragment splinters. His intent is to cripple the Necromancer - a dead enemy can't know he's lost, until Mask has found a reliable means to keep ghosts around long enough to gloat.

 

[Shining Lotus Sage]

The necromancer leaps aside, but too late. The distraction of dodging an elephant is too much to really let him focus on a handful of shrapnel, somehow. Can't imagine why. The cloud of wooden fragments obliterates the light cloth wrapped around his lower legs, and pulps the flesh beneath, knocking him completely off his feet.


But he rolls, when he lands, right across the water's surface. And the water turns to blood as he passes over it. And it's a lot more blood than is coming out of him.


He nocks and draws as he tumbles, sighting across the reddened surface, and fires down his own path. When his arrow flies, it kicks up an opaque red spray that hides his movements for one critical moment. At some point, while obscured, he must have fired a second arrow high in the air, because one comes streaking down from the sky momentarily, directly for Sun Minh's throat. A gray-green cloud wreaths the descending arrowhead and expands into a choking cloud of condensed screaming, filling the air with pain.

 

[Random Word]

Sun Minh's gaze flicks after the crimson geyser, seeking its ill-starred victim. Finding nothing, her eyes return a fraction of a second too late to dive out of the way of death careening down towards her. Something within her stirs, something rejects not the arrow but the miasma of pain and suffering around it. She fights to keep it contained, but it cannot be restrained. It will not allow her to flee before the encroaching darkness. It calls out, and something answers - death is not all that rains from the sky. The sandstorm parts before a shaft of sunlight from above, met by - much to its surprise, perhaps, for no one tells the messengers much of anything - a shining ray of sunlight from below. Caught between two blazing icons, the miasma is scourged from Creation. Unfortunately for Sun Minh, her now blazing anima provides no protection against the purely mundane arrow as it deflects painfully off her breastplate.


For the first time today, she's glad she put it on.

 

[Shining Lotus Sage]

The blighted aura disperses, though not before giving Heinz and Mask a good taste of their own organs. And not the fun ones, like the pancreas.


Ahead, up on the hill, the shambling dead have been reduced to a standstill, and one dark shape is moving rapidly through them. But the details are impossible to make out: the sunlight and the sandstorm conspire to render nearly invisible anything beyond their immediate vicinity. Even the dead below, hurling themselves into their master's path to provide firmer footing, are indistinct and easy to miss. Unless you're a labor elephant being slowly traumatized into serving as a war beast; they're actually really easy to hit, in that case. Limbs are crushed into the mud, bodies burst and flattened. Half a dozen break away from the main pack and turn to hem in Treem Ngôc, limiting the damage to the rest of the group. They have no real chance of harming her, without weapons, but they can contain her fury to themselves. The rest gather protectively close to the necromancer as he moves toward the path, and the gate, where their fellows are still stumbling toward Heinz's caravan. Mask and Sun Minh did a number on their numbers, though, and the guards are considerably better-armed than the villagers here.


The scent of smoke is fading, and turning distinctly sour.

 

[Blackadder]

A Sidereal arrives never early or late, he arrives exactly when he is supposed to. Or so one of Diax's would-be sifus had said. He didn't remember which one - the expression 'gone to train Diax' had become a byword for futility among the elders of the Fivescore Fellowship. Really, the phrase was as pretentious as they always were. Why after all, did it take advance preparation and time to fix all those 'necessary' events into place?


Which - along with enough moral compromises and cross the line points - was what had convinced Diax Grey to leave behind the opulently fake heaven of Yu-Shan. He'd never figured himself to be a big picture person, but he knew the world couldn't go on like this. The Realm certainly wasn't.


An-Teng seemed as good a place to try what he could, especially given the prophecy he had peered into. Also, certain matters of atonement and justice were in the same region.


As the shaven-headed man pushed out of the steamy undergrowth, he found himself beholding a scene of chaos. Smoke, a strange sandstorm with hints of emerald green flickering, sunlight of a suspiciously familiar potency and glow. Mixed in were the screams of panic, a frantic elephant, moans of zombies and more.


Sweet Rest Hilltop definitely qualified as a village of destiny right now.

 

[Shining Lotus Sage]

Conquạ, they called him. Someone will have to ask Snake-in-Pot whether that's a title or a name. Conquạ leaps into the air, boosted aloft by a handful of his mindlessly loyal troops all shoving at once. The air beneath his feet blackens and sizzles into angry-looking cracks, as though they were wrapped in electrical discharge that swallowed light instead of shining. Somehow, it gives him a foothold on the tornado, and he begins rising fast into the air.

 

[Grey]

Mask stands watching this display of nightmarish puissance, and strokes his moustache with a mocking smile.


"A wise - and outnumbered - commander would stay among his troops. Particularly if he has only a bow; not well suited to fending off your foes, hm?"


He laughs, tapping a burning ember from his pipe while looking into the maelstrom of sand and fire. And then, as an afterthought, pushes a now-burning chunk of the rapidly crumbling palisade into the tornado, watching it circle around towards this Conqua.

 

[hellrazoromega]

Winding Endless River had watched events unfold with her usual curious and quiet calm. She was not ever one to get involved in things she did not take the time to understand, rash action was not her way. But she had never seen others who could do things similar to what she could, oh she had heard the stories and the now obvious lies that the Immaculates spread. Anathema indeed, she was not perfect but she was not that. This was something else altogether, maybe the time she had spent wandering as a doctor had paid off finally.


She was not ready to act, things were still flowing too swiftly. A swift rushing river was often filled with rocks and other dangers, distractions at such junctures could be lethal. It was best to wait a bit longer and see if the river reached a calmer place, a slower flow---it always did even if only briefly.


Suddenly, that calm place was reached but the threat of more rapids loomed ahead, this was also the way of things---ebbs and flows. It looked as if battle could flare up again in an instant, flare like the auras that marked the Chosen of the Sun. River did not know if she would act, but she made ready just in case.


[dice]8195[/dice]

Spoiler

Well if you could so straights I'd be in good shape lol, but in this system I think I am hosed

 

[Shining Lotus Sage]

Endlessly Winding River was searching the terraces for the inevitable fire-friend berries that grow in the wake of such burns. Very good medicine for fever, those, and there are plenty of infected wounds to treat, lately. Whether by circumstance or design, she found herself caught far from shelter when the fighting broke out, but very close to an earthen hollow, sheltered by charred roots and hard to see before you stumble across it. It should have been safe. But then the dead began pouring up the hill, directly toward her.


From her bolt-hole, she can see them charge, and she can see the wounds that should prevent such exertion. Tibias jutting through the skin still manage to bear weight. Intestines dragging on the ground slither lightly over rough terrain. The lifelike dead are not merely unnatural, they are wrong.


And she has the best possible view as the first one to start climbing to the next level knocks over a cunningly balanced branch, releasing dozens of whippy saplings hidden under the ash. Sharpened branches pierce the flesh of the attackers and pin them to the ground, pin them to each other, even hoist one into the air. Ki-Lan bursts from cover, machete flying. But River can also see that it won't be enough. A single mortal is no match for the tireless pack of corpses, to whom injuries and pain mean nothing. Her movements grow increasingly frantic as the trapped zombies begin, inevitably, to free themselves and encircle her.


Meanwhile, back at the maelstrom, Mask's casual contribution to the chaos has borne fruit, and the fruit, all dressed in tattered black cerements, is falling heavy from the tree. Dodging the projectiles already whipped into the air was difficult enough. When the scholar knocks a bit of burning timber into orbit above Heinz, it soars unerringly into the necromancer's path, as though guided by sadistic intellect.


He dodges it, effortlessly. But he dodges right out of the updraft, and plummets back to ground, back into the waist-deep mudsink, full of body parts and stained with decaying blood. To think, it was once so busily sprouting cattails. What water remains that is more water than filth recoils away from him. It splashes into a high crown before he quite impacts it, and Treem Ngôc shrieks in dismay like an entire bugle corps with whooping cough.

 

[HeinzByTrade]

Buoyed by balefire and twinkling sandyglass Heinz reholsters Otto, and with two more steps through the storm leaps for the back of Treem Ngoc. Landing almost gently he grabs whats left of her work harness to secure himself. "Easy friend!" He shouts over the howling around them, loosing the whip from where it hung at his back. "I'm about to make this easier on all of us!"


With the touch of someone who's had to handle a panicking animal before Heinz wrangles Treem with whats left of her harness, whipping at the zombies penning her in and guiding her as best he can manage where her bulk can most be put to use. "Pull through for me here and we'll share in all the glory friend!" he shouts to the elephant, eyes twinkling.


[dice]8294[/dice]

 

[hellrazoromega]

River leaps up quickly joining the fray against these abominations, if there are any Anathema here it wuold be them. Drawing her sword as she leaps she dances amongst the burned out terraces, flittering like a hummingbird in a field of flowers. These things offended her both as a Chosen of the Unconquered Sun and as a doctor all things die to be spun out in the wheel of life another time, it was the way of things and try as they might even the best doctor could not change that fact. To cheat the cycle was an affront, at least if they were going to bypass the cycle they could have the decency to be well kept about it---entrails dragging on the ground indeed!!!


Taking a last leap from the lower terrace River dove to try and slice across the horde of undead.

OOC

looks like I am 4th in the initiative order so I will roll once they have gone, in the event they change the scene