The Shattered Soul

[Psychie]

For most of the ride, Amber is bored and is letting her mind wander, keeping enough of her attention on the road to keep the horse on the path. Then, when Dreamy pulls out her sling and starts to let fly with a stone, it snaps her back to the here and now, making her quickly reach for her short bow that is across her back. She tries her best to spot what might be a possible threat to the party.

 

[Silanon]

Spoiler: OOC

The others are still free to describe their reaction - but since we have two very good perception checks and a direct hit (rolled an 18 for Dann), I figured I might as well get up the first noticeable details.

Dreamy's gestures give the wing's position away well enough - but even if that were not the case, her shot alone would have done the trick. The bullet cuts through a few of the blades, hitting what's hidden behind it without causing any noticeable sound. But there is an obvious reaction. Indeed, the wing in sight begins to frantically twitch in place - and then, just moments later, all life seems to leave it as it drops to the ground once more. There seems to be no further movement anywhere near it, either. Just the wind moving the grains.

Two observers can add more to those observations:
Firstly, Amber's eyes pick up more as the wing moves. There are no feathers, or the like, but instead leathery skin, torn apart in several places. Not quite like a bird - like a bat. Only that Amber has never seen a bat that would have reached its size here in the area. Never, in more than eighteen years. Wherever it came from - Amber is certain that it does not belong here.

And its presence here is wrong in another way. Thomas knows. Seeing that wing move - it shouldn't. Torn apart like that - it should not have moved. But it did. And there's a wrongness in that which perhaps only a priest of Pharasma could pick up at this distance. This creature over there... was an abomination. Undead. Was, because the priest can feel this feeling of wrongness fade away shortly after the bullet hit and the wing stopped its movement.

Captain Hesperus Kaerri jaydude Sherwood Psychie Purr

 

[Captain Hesperus]

"The touch of Undeath is, or rather was, in that thing.", Thomas spoke up, even as he struggled to free his foot from the stirrup and dismounted. He unlimbered the spear that hung loosely in the saddle loop made to hold weapons of that nature and advanced on the lifeless Undead thing. He had to see it, needed to see it. To see would be to know, to know to understand, to understand to find insight into the workings of it's creator.

 

[Purr]

Seeing the results of her shot, Dreamy raises her fist high in triumph. In her excitement, she stammers. "Hah! Yes! Take that you... you evil... whatever-you-were!"

Acolyte Dreamy has no idea what she hit but she knows she does not trust evil. She reaches out with her Desnan gift to Sense Evil again. Inanimate objects possessed no alignment; corpses, as far as she knew, did not radiate evil.

Besides, with the rest of the fellowship taking notice and acting on it, what if the thing is just playing dead? She feels she has to be sure.

 

[Kaerri]

Fijit has been contemplating her latest project, a poison that would serve her needs better than any she'd yet come across. She doesn't care to start from scratch, but existing ones, at least those she is familiar with, just didn't suit. Perhaps diluting, concentrating, or combining some of those existing ones is the way to go. Letting her horse follow the others (which fortunately it seems inclined to do), she grabs a notebook and starts thinking onto the paper, focusing so intently on it that she doesn't notice the world around her until her horse suddenly stops when Thomas's did (he being next to her in their little group). Grabbing her notebook before it could slide off her lap, the little alchemist looks up irritably. "Why --" Then Dreamy's sling whirls and bullets whistle through the air. Automatically, Fijit's gaze follows the shot to see just what on earth the paladin is shooting at. Another "why" is on her lips, but it quickly turns into:

"What is that?" She pockets her notes and pencil, and unpockets her bomb reactants, but keeps them separate until she knows more. "Undeath? Did Dreamy kill it, er, again, then? Or shall I make it go boom?"

 

[Sherwood]

Aysik decides against his little bow, and goes instead to unlimber his large sword, eyes darting around for whatever-it-is that the others have spotted that might come around again. He feels irritated with himself for being distracted by the horse and not focused on the road around them enough to have seen the thing instead.

 

[Psychie]

Amber is quite startled at the sight of the dead thing still moving. It is one thing to hear that there are zombies and other walking dead out there, but it is quite another to be faced with one of these things in person. She grips her bow in her hand tightly, hoping that whatever it is has left and will not be causing them any trouble down the road.

 

[jaydude]

"I'm guessing our lord was right to be concerned." Rodrik commented from the back of the column, his crossbow loaded and at the ready.

 

[Silanon]

Neither of you spot any sign of other threats - it seems that the thing lying on the ground there is the only thing out of the ordinary. Especially Amber, with her sharp senses just now, is certain that nothing escaped through the grains or elsewhere - the only disturbance to the usual peace is the dead body.

Dreamy can confirm this with her gifts - there is no sign of evil as she explores the general direction of the bat. And that one... has lost its aura of evil, probably right when its movements stopped. There will be no reason to make it go boom, it seems.

Thomas, as the only one who steps up to the dead body, gets a closer idea what happened. To his feet, he sees the dead body of a giant bat, with torn wings and a body that's covered with several wounds that speak of weeks, if not months, of slow decay. The newest one is, without a doubt, at its head's right side, where Dreamy's sling bullet smashed the skull - there's no sign of leaking fluids like blood or the like, again giving away that it has not been in a living state for quite a while. Of course, that begs the question why it's down here, then - if it made its way here recently in this state, then what stopped it from continuing? The answer to that can seemingly be found near its neck - it looks like the spine was shattered not too long ago, along with parts of its left wing close to it - like something hit it with high impact in flight, from above.

If someone wants to get more details, feel free to give me a check that you think might be appropriate - other than that, what do you wish to do?

Purr Captain Hesperus jaydude Sherwood Psychie Kaerri

 

[jaydude]

Rodrik looked up to the sky, silently reasoning that the winged creature must have fallen from there, and thus whatever had caused it to fall might still be around.

"So what do we all reckon? Some kind of scout in the Duke's service?" he asked no-one in particular, remembering what Jordenin had said back at the manor.

 

[Sherwood]

Aysik puts his greatsword away and replies with, "That is as good of a theory as any. No way for us to know. We should keep our eyes open and our heads on a swivel. Who knows what kind of threats we are riding into."

 

[Silanon]

Eyeing the sky, Rodrik can make out a hovering falcon, circling through the air high above the ground. Supposedly, a bird of prey could have hit a bat just like they would take out their usual prey; whether they'd engage an undead creature is another matter.

jaydude

 

[Purr]

Feeling relief that the taint from the creature is indeed gone (along with its threat), Dreamy the Acolyte cannot help but grin - her first strike against evil in the name of Desna! Hooray!

Curiosity fills her as she looks about with her friends. Despite her time with Miss Tillie and her feathered friends, Dreamy feels she knows less about birds than anyone raised on the surface world and even less about bats. So... she follows the examples of those who knew starting with Rodrik. Lifting her shield over her head to block any sunrays, her blue eyes follow the handsome dwarf's gaze up into the sky.

Then she looks down on the bat-thing and remembers only then to retrieve her sling bullet (which she does).

"Um... do these marks on the creature match those of... other flying predators around here?" Dreamy takes a moment to look around the area for tracks left by this creature or anything out of the ordinary.

 

[Silanon]

There are no tracks in the surrounding - only the signs of a harsh landing, and a longer struggle on the ground; given that you found the bat still grounded, that struggle clearly was in vain. To examine the wounds in more detail, you'd need someone to take a closer look - preferably one familiar with that sort of thing.

 

[Sherwood]

Aysik slips down from his horse to get closer and take a better look. "Hmmm. Let me see . . . No, those wounds don't look familiar to me, but I am hardly a ranger to know animals all that well."

OOC trying a Survival roll at a +3. Total of a 9

 

[Psychie]

Amber shakes her head. "I'm a city girl. I don't know much about animals at all. Sorry."

 

[Captain Hesperus]

Thomas calmly knelt by the broken dead thing and handled it without concern. The dead, the truly dead, did not concern him, it was simply part of the cycle of life. He turned it over, spread its wings, examined its wounds both old and new. He would get to the bottom of this. He listened to his compatriots' conversation and chipped in as he worked.
"A scout would be a sensible proposition, an Undead construct sent in the dead of night to spy. Bats are known to have senses beyond our five, perhaps this one was gifted with additional ones by way of its Undead nature. Anything it learned could have been gleaned by its creator by arcane means."

 

[Silanon]

Sometimes, just looking is not enough. You also need to know what to look out for. Where Aysik sees little more than the body of a dead animal, more details unfold when Thomas - more familiar with death and all kinds of treated wounds in general - makes it his task to find out more. Indeed, to him, the following observations come with a certain ease that might even surprise himself.

Firstly, the wound that seemingly grounded the creature: The shattered spine and broken wing were caused by a heavy blow hitting the bat's back - the marks of talons that seem just as old tell the story of a bird of prey hitting the creature mid-flight, with the bird's impact enough to break the undead creature's bones and send it to the ground. There are several places where a beak seems to have torn into the undead flesh, too.

Older wounds - some speak of similar fights before, with marks of talons, claws and beaks tearing apart wings and flesh alike. The fight this bat got into above these fields was the last one, but definitely not the first.

As Thomas turns the creature around, another wound reveals itself after careful study - a hole in its lower chest, with a splintered piece of wood sticking out. The remains of a broken arrow, it seems, that has punched through the rotten flesh with ease, but didn't penetrate its back. Removing it from the wound reveals an unusual arrowhead. Rhombical, narrow, meant to pierce more than just an animal's hide. It's also made of cold iron, definitely not the choice of a common hunter.

If someone wants to learn more about the arrowhead, checks in Knowledge Local, History, Planes or something fairly similar might yield results.

Other than that, what would you like to do?

Kaerri jaydude Captain Hesperus Sherwood Psychie Purr

 

[jaydude]

Rodrik just kept his eyes on the horizon. He really didn't much when it came to examining dead things.

 

[Kaerri]

Whatever the thing was, Dreamy has apparently killed it (again? for good?). Fijit puts her bomb reactants away and slides off her horse, getting rather more of a jarring impact from boots hitting ground than she'd expected. "Oof," she mutters, and gingerly follows Thomas to the dead thing. Peering around his comforting form, she watches interestedly, though with a nose wrinkled in distasted, as he examines it. The arrowhead is just an arrowhead to her, albeit of an unusual metal. "Cold iron," she notes, but her attention soon returns to the bat itself, and she wonders where it might have come from.

Spoiler: OOC

Fijit wants to roll Knowledge: Nature to see where this sort of bat is native, or at least where the living versions of its species are.

 

[Silanon]

Spoiler: Dice rolls

Fijit: 5+7=12
Dreamy: 19+4=23

There is little for Rodrik to spot - apart from the group (for now), the circling bird is the only living thing that seems of interest, and even that one does not do anything other than scan the ground for prey. Most likely, at least - it hasn't made an attempt to snatch anything yet.

Trying to recall anything about the bat species here provides very little insight for Fijit. Maybe it's because they are common enough in general, so no one really talks about them too much... but the gnome does not recall the mentioning of any especially large specimen in the area, and that would have likely been a topic at some point during her stay. Perhaps someone else knows more - for Fijit, "from elsewhere" is as precise as she'll be able to answer her question for now.

Dreamy - what is there to say about fighting the undead? A great deal, actually. Few trust the Duke (perhaps rightfully so), and the fight against him also happens to be one of the latest major conflicts - thus, it has often served both as an example of warfare, and inspiration for the arts. One such tale is the one of Lord Castels, a young leader who fought the Duke's forces shortly after they became a threat to the continent. After disaster struck in his first encounter against the foe - his men were decimated in a brutal encounter near the western coast - he drastically broke with the common battle doctrines. Instead of relying on superior archery against an endless swarm of the undead - slow, but highly resilient against arrows - he found inspiration in dwarven successes that focused on well-equipped, well-trained melee forces to take the initiative against the foe and break through the masses; trying to get to the heart of the Duke's army, the mages. When he returned to the same battlefield as before for a second try, the changes proved successful. Warhammers smashed skeletons, and bihanders cut through zombie flesh. And yet, tragedy struck once more: The changes meant that his own archers found themselves, for the first time, outmatched by the Duke's Rangers, and an arrow penetrated the innovator's armor. Some call it bad luck, others speak of a curse. A minority claims that the rangers simply used arrows meant to punch through armor, but there would have been little reason to carry those without knowing about the change of doctrine beforehand. Either way, others decided to not neglect archery as much, but figured that against the undead masses, the number of arrows was more important than their quality; other than the occasional blessed arrowheads, regular ammunition was used.

 

[Captain Hesperus]

Thomas finished his grim task and held the arrowhead up.
"Anyone want to get a better look at this?", he waved the tiny piece of metal over his head, before looking over at Fijit, "You wouldn't have any oil or something on an incendiary nature? I'd prefer to burn this to avoid it's taint seeping into the groundwater or that stream."

 

[Kaerri]

Fijit shakes her head at the bat. "It's not from around here, but where?" she mutters to herself. Then she hears the cleric's question to the group -- which she doesn't, really, arrows not being her thing -- and his second to her specifically. "Sure," she grins up at him, "but you're going to want to stand back a ways first. Anyone else want a closer look before I get the fire going?" She clears the immediate area around the bat corpse so as not to set anything else on fire except her target, then readies her bomb reagents again (boom after all!*), moves just outside her cleared area, and waits to make sure everyone's ready.

*OOC: Fijit's bomb does 1d6+3 direct fire damage and 4 splash fire damage. Splash means it deals damage to "all creatures within 5 feet of the target" per the book, so she's mainly just trying not to start a brush or grass fire.

 

[jaydude]

"Yeah, I probably want to be a good distance away from this." Rodrik replied as he turned Spine around and nudged at her flanks with his heels. The mare was already walking away from the area soon to be a blast zone.

 

[Sherwood]

Aysik shakes his head and nudges his horse to get further away from the bat. "I'm good. Light that sucker up."