Arachan:

After a night of pacing, worrying about Shurjra's failure to return earlier that evening, Arachan leaves his fortress to take a walk through the nearby woods. When he leaves the area protected by enchantments, he senses an odd, undead presence. Slowing his pace and tightening his grip on his staff, he looks around the fringes of the forest before entering.

He goes not twenty feet before a ghoul drops from a tree and onto his back. Five more ghouls, and two wight-priests, drop down from more trees nearby. Arachan smirks slightly, "What fool would think to send such weak undead after a Necromancer?" The ghoul on his back has begun to bite him, and rips out small chunks of his flesh, but Arachan pays him no mind. Speaking several words of power, Arachan casts Undeath to Death, and the ghouls crumble to dust around him. The first wight-priest raises his focus and speaks a prayer to the Devourer, casting Searing Light, but before it can hit Arachan, it rebounds apon the priest, outlining it in a halo of light before it is destroyed.. Arachan turns to face the remaining priest, and taps his staff to the ground. A bolt of lightning leaps from the head of the staff, and the wight is destroyed.

 Arachan then turns around, headed back to the fortress, where he can send messages to his children and grandchildren, and warn them of the potential threat.

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Daisliv:

Daisliv exits the Catacombs, having dealt with an infestation of undead there. Upon doing so, he finds that he is surrounded by yet more undead, blocking him into the doorway. "They must have found a different way out, and came to head me off." Before he is able to react, the two ghouls nearest to him grab at his feet, trying to pull him to the ground where they can bight him to death. Daisliv feels the chill of their undead hands through his robes, but, having lived with a lich, they are of little bother to him. He kicks one in the face, sending it sprawling, but the wight and the other ghoul have been advancing, while the ghoul left on his other leg is now trying to climb up the side of Daisliv's body. Temporarily overwhelmed, he retreats into the doorway, where the sounds of battle have begun to attract priests of the Flame. Seizing the head of the ghoul climbing on him, he speaks a word and casts Chill Touch, impressing upon it that he is powerful enough not to be bothered. As it turns to flee, it, and the other undead, are cut down by beams of light from the hands of the Flame priests. He gives them a curt nod before activating a pendant keyed to a teleportation circle in his father's keep.

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Starach:

As the cleric of the Host leaves the home of one of his parishioners, he senses a faint aura of undeath. Murmuring a prayer to Dol Dorn, he pulls his longsword from its sheathe and places his back to a wall, that none might come behind him. A trio of ghouls, led by a wight, comes scampering out of the alley, ignoring the common people, though sending them into a panic, and heading directly for Starach. Starach concentrates on finding the power of the Host, then channels it through his body, destroying two of the ghouls, but having no effect on the others. He speaks another prayer, feeling the strength of the Host that is leant to him, and brings down his blade upon the head of the remaining ghoul, cleaving it from head to navel. It lays nearly in two pieces before crumbling into dust. He turns to make a similar attack on the wight, but is forced instead to block its ferocious attack at his midsection. Starach strikes the wight in the head with the flat of his blade, knocking it over, then speaks a final prayer and extends his hand, casting Searing Light. The wight has joined its fellows in destruction. He frowns at the piles of dust, now beginning to blow away, and pronounces, "From dust they are, and to dust they shall return." Thinking that his father will be interested in the undead in the city, he speaks his Word of Recall and is behind the alter in the temple to the Sovereign Host in his father's fortress.

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Ohtar:

Ohtar is on patrol in the marketplace when the Banelord's attack finds him. He appears signifigantly older than he did even a few days ago, as if the years of his life are quickly catching up with him.

When he reaches a narrow street, ghouls burst out of an alley in front of him. He turns to flee, but finds himself face-to-face with a wight. The wight knocks him over before he can remove the shield with the characteristic emblem of the marketplace on it from his back, trapping it under his weight. The wight goes for his throat, but narrowly misses and is turned away by the mail covering the lower parts of Ohtar's neck. Ohtar desparately draws the shortsword from its sheate at his waist, being unable to reach the hilt of his hand-and-a-half, its baldric having been knocked askew in the fall. He tries to stab the wight, or knock it off of him, but he is unable to do so in his weakened state. The ghouls grab at his face, and he is paralyzed with fear. The wight readys its blade for another strike, then drives it into his neck, severing his spinal cord. Mercifully, he cannot feel the pain. As his brain begins to shut down from lack of oxygen, he thinks he hears an evil laugh, and the words, "You fall, son of my enemy.  You will rise my slave."

The last thing that Ohtar thinks is, "If such must be the price of vengance, so be it. That he slays me for my treachery will only cause people to lend greater credence to the lies I have fed them."

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Adrialae:

Having lain to rest a horde of undead in House Jorasco's graveyard, Adrialae is heading to the Open Palm Inn for a drink before returning home when she recieves her grandfather's message. Sure enough, as the message concludes, she sees a three ghouls and a wight coming from between the crypts. Before they can get close, she points a finger at the wight, speaking a word of power and drawing a symbol in the air. Command Undead. The wight looks as confused as is possible for an undead, and stops walking. "Kill the ghouls!" Adrialae commands, and before waiting to see what happens, she pulls a scroll from one of the cases at her waist, and reads it, teleporting to the great hall of the keep.

Xymorel

Xymorel Trannyth pushes hard at the manhole cover, trying to achieve leverage while clinging to a rope with her knees and one arm.  She is not strong - the arm with which she is now shoving is toothpicklike in its diameter and muscle tone - but the covers in the Southern Marketplace tend to be often used and seldom stuck.  Presently she succeeds.  The disc of metal slides up and away, and fresh air pours down into the sewer.  

Xymorel clambers out onto the street, inhaling gratefully. She is not a racist person, possessing prejudices of a very different sort, but at this moment she would not be sorry never to see another troglodyte. This time, at least, she is relatively clean.  Her robe is a little scorched, but that is so very commonplace that she does not notice it.  There are sources of pure water even under the city,thank whatever gods exist (Xymorel is inclined to be agnostic on this point), and she has begun to know how to find them.

A passing dwarf in a workman's apron pauses to stare at the skinny human in the worn robe.  She's a sight, skin ashen and black hair all afrizz, but all kinds of things crawl up out of sewers in this district.  Many are much more frightening in appearance than the trembling creature in front of him.

Xymorel looks back with wide, wary eyes.  They are hazel, but the constant reflection of flame tends to make the irises look red. There's nothing about the dwarf to suggest stealth or magical power, but every stranger is suspect. She stands with her ever-shaking hands folded tight around each other at chest level until he shrugs and moves on.

Once the dwarf is out of sight, a brief burst of flame purges the remaining uncleanness from her hands.  She is proud of that, for it is not long since she achieved the degree of control necessary. She has been working hard at it since the night she killed Xyries. Xymorel shudders again as she adjusts the straps of her knapsack and turns toward home.  It's a couple of miles walk, and she will have to watch every shadow.  It is her misfortune to have concluded her work at the time of night when those she considers her natural predators are most often about.

She's not so afraid of rogues as she once was.  Partly this is because she has learned that wizards are equally capable of harming her, but she still considers this progress.

It is only a tense half-mile or so before she notices the footsteps.  Xymorel stops, pressing her back to the closed front of a shop, and listens.  The pursuit stops, but not so quickly that she is unable to hear it.  Either there are many of them, or some are traveling alternately on all fours.

Xymorel hastily downs a potion from her belt.  Magic fizzles through her veins, restoring her partly-exhausted arcane power.  It builds behind her eyes like water behind a dam.

"I know you're th-there," she says, her hoarse alto loud in the quiet street.  Her chronic resurrection sickness gets better and worse, depending on how recently she has died, but the stammer never seems to go away. "Show yourself!"

Forms emerge from the shadow of an awning across the street and to her left.  They move low to the ground, going alternately on two and four like apes. None wears more than a loincloth.  All have gray skin shriveled tight to their bones, and she sees the gleam of yellow teeth in the light of the everbrights that shine from upper windows.

Ghouls. Xymorel's fingers itch to burn them, the instinct of violent terror that she is still learning to quell. The pressure is almost unbearable.  But she has fought many undead since her arrival in Stormreach, as every surviving adventurer must. She knows to look first for others.  Her darting eyes find the straight, pale form of the wight, with its head of stiff black hair and its ancient breastplate. She recognizes the staff in its hand in time to throw herself to one side.  The Hold Person spell misses.

Then the ghouls charge forward, seeing their opportunity.  Xymorel shrieks, scrambling upright as one swipes at her with a claw.  It tears a strip from her robe and leaves a bloody gouge in her arm.

 Xymorel raises both hands and lets the fire go. Inferno sweeps the street in front of her with a hiss and a roar.  The ghouls are gone immediately.  The wight has time to snarl and hurl itself forward before it, too, turns to ash.

Xymorel is left shivering, staring at the burning remains of the awning.  A barrel nearby has caught fire as well.  She quells them both with a cold ray - it is almost the only use she has for the lesser ice spell - and turns toward home.  She does not want to be in view when the owner of the awning finds out what has happened.  Besides, her arm aches and burns, and she knows her sister can easily heal it.

The walk from Xyries' house to the Rusty Nail was not long, but Reuken deliberately slowed his pace so as to linger and breathe in the fresh air. Despite the cleric's hospitality, the tension lingering between them was taking a toll on his patience, and the outdoors helped to keep down the slight headache beginning to form behind his eyes.

Other than the splashing of the tiny pool a ways off, the night within the Marketplace is mostly quiet; not many civilized souls wandered the streets at this hour. Though he could still hear the footsteps of other, possibly less savory, entities lingering around, he keeps his pace towards the Rusty Nail. Recent incidents will hopefully ensure his tenuous safety for the days to come, yet despite his confidence, his eyes begin to scope the rooftops and alleys, for he could not afford to be too complacent--

And that is the only thing that saved him from taking the ghoul's razor-sharp teeth in the worst possible place--the spine and the back of the neck, where it would doubtlessly have incapacitated him completely. Acting on reflex, he twists his body aside, letting the teeth clamp into the stiff leather and steel plating on his shoulder, a much more preferable area of effect. Nevertheless, he crashes to the ground on his back, borne down by the ghoul's weight, his shoulder on fire from where the undead's teeth finally pierced through and dug into flesh. Off in the distance, he can hear more panting and loping as more ghouls close in, lured by the smell of blood.

Cursing his inattentiveness, Reuken's hands lash forth and grab both the ghoul's head and lower jaw, fingers digging for a foothold. Heaving his muscles, the half-elf utters a bellow as he rips the ghoul's jaws apart, and as the ghoul tries to shriek with what was left of its mouth, he staggers to his knees with a grunt and shoves the creature away with his other hand, still clenching the ghoul's lower jaw.

The reek of the undead fills the air, and Reuken barely gets out one blade just in time to parry another ghoul's arms clawing at him. The creature grabs hold of the blade, ignoring the foul ichor dripping between its fingers, and thrusts its face forward, teeth bared. Reuken had to jerk his head back to avoid having his nose bitten off, and he lashes out his free hand in an uppercut, smashing the ghoul full in the jaw so that its teeth click shut, biting off a portion of its lashing tongue, and the other ghoul's severed jaw attached to its neck.

The undead staggers back, more from the force of the blow than actually being stunned, and taking advantage of the brief interlude, Reuken quickly draws his other blade and aims for the creature's throat. Instead of slashing, he thrusts the weapon straight in, piercing trachea and splitting vertebral discs, and with a grunt, he rips it out to the side, nearly decapitating the ghoul. Its head wobbling from a chunk of flesh, the ghoul's hands release their trapping grip from the first blade and begin thrashing around, fingers curled into claw-like shapes, and Reuken's freed blade sweeps upward and across, deftly severing the hands and a good chunk of the arms. Fueled with the self-disregarding persistence only undead can have, the ghoul lunges again, trying to bite the half-elf with its comically dangling head, and Reuken, his expression utterly blank, lashes out with his blade, finally separating that bit of flesh. Teeth gnashing at empty air, the ghoul's severed head drops to roll on the stained earth, and the half-elf completes the coup de grace by booting the decapitated ghoul in the sternum, sending it sprawling.

A gargling shriek fills the air behind him, and Reuken quickly turns to find the jawless ghoul pouncing upon him. Reflexively, he thrusts his blade forward and upward, impaling the creature mid-flight, and the ghoul, seemingly ignoring the weapon protruding from its gut, snakes its arms around to clasp the half-elf's throat.

Panic nearly overwhelms Reuken as he begins to choke, the ghoul's thumbs pressing cruelly into his trachea. His lungs began to burn, then seize for air that would not come, and even amidst the ringing in his ears, he could hear the scrabbling of feet. Even with his vision distorted by pulsing afterimages, he managed to discern another ghoul and a wight behind his strangler, their hunched, crawling forms approaching with cruel determination, clearly eager to prolong their enjoyment of the hunt.

Baring his teeth in a snarl, Reuken twists his head aside, allowing some air into his starved lungs. However, he could still feel the ghoul's thumbs digging into his neck, through the muscle and into the carotid artery, and with a snarl, he swings his free blade up in an arc, severing one arm with the sheer momentum before burying itself into the other. The ghoul screams, and Reuken, clenching his teeth, draws the blade back and forth in a sawing motion until the other arm finally snaps loose. Eyes narrowing, trying to concentrate on the ghoul and not on the hands still on his throat, the half-elf jams his foot into the ghoul's body and, using the creature as a brace, rips the blade out and kicks it into the two others. The wight nimbly hops to the side, while the other ghoul was not so lucky and shrieked as it is bowled over by its mutilated comrade's body. The shrieks quickly turn to slobbering as, driven into a frenzy by the smell of blood, the intact ghoul begins to devour the injured one in a mess of thrashing limbs.

Reuken averts his gaze from the gory spectacle as he teases one of his blades between the remaining hand and his neck, having finished removing one. With a dismissive flick of his arm, the severed appendage flies loose from the half-elf's bruised throat and hits the ground before the wight, fingers contracting at thin air. The wight peers at it, razor-sharp teeth gleaming, before leaping over it to swipe at Reuken with sharp claws.

The half-elf lifts his weapon, and there is an awful scraping screech as the wight's claws skitter harmlessly off metal. Snarling, the undead leaps back, circling its prey, a maneuver that Reuken imitates, until the two are circling together in an ever-tightening spiral.

The slobbers of the ghoul devouring its companion fill the night, a sound that Reuken closes his ears to, trying to focus entirely on the hunched figure before him. The wight lunges, and Reuken lifts his blades; but it is a feint, and the creature quickly skitters and strikes towards his unprotected flank.

Fire blooms in Reuken's left side as the wight's claws connect, and he staggers off to the side, pain whistling between his teeth. He lashes out with his blade, but it had already jumped back, a grin twisting that pale, haggard face as blood drips from its right claw.

Any move not an attack is ground lost.

Compressing his lips against the pain, Reuken limps forward, blades in hand, and the wight hops back before lunging forward, claws outstretched towards his face. The half-elf grimaces in pain as the talons lay open the flesh on his face, feeling the claws dig into his bleeding cheeks, oh so close to his eyes. Grimly, he leans forward into the attack and buries both his blades into the wight's body, and calling all of the remaining reserves of his strength, he screams and tears the blades out diagonally in opposite directions, effectively nearly bisecting the wight from shoulder to hip. The undead folds backwards in on itself and crumples to the ground, thrashing and spilling fluids everywhere.

The final ghoul looks up from its meal just in time for Reuken's foot to drive into its head, pinning it to the ground. The half-elf's ravaged, bloodstained visage bears no expression as he slams a blade into the ghoul's right arm and begins sawing the limb off with the other, ignoring the creature's helpless writhing and thrashing.

The arm finally comes off with the final sound of snapping tendons. Reuken begins to repeat the process with the other arm, and his heel digs deeper into the ghoul's skull as it begins to scream.



The door to the Rusty Nail slams open, and colour drains from Jordan's cheeks as he catches sight of Reuken. Without a word, the half-elf strides past the bar, grabs the longbow and two quivers leaning against the corner, and calmly clips the quivers on, seemingly ignoring the blood flowing freely from his shoulder, flank, and face.

After adjusting the straps, Reuken hooks his longbow under one arm, storms out of the tavern, and takes off towards Xyries' house as fast as his wounds would allow.

Xyries:

The cleric stands in the street, a thin human in very heavy armor.  The aura of positive energy gradually builds around her.  Others might see a cloud of golden sparks and a diffuse glow extending a few feet in every direction.  Her armor is beginning to feel heavier than it was earlier this evening, but this is not evident from her straight posture.

She is peripherally aware of Reuken Kjersti standing poised nearby.  Xymorel is an unbalancing presence herself, an island of arcane power barely contained as she makes her own preparations. 

But Xyries has no time to consider the others.  The sound of air being disturbed by a teleportation spell is audible up the street, between them and the approaching ghouls.

Arachan and Leon materialize in the street in front of Xyries' house. Leon glares at Arachan, and mutters, "Warn me before you do that again, bloody necro." Arachan, ignoring him, sees Xyries standing in the street, as well. "Good evening, Cle-" Arachan realizes that Xyries is practically glowing, and that Xymorel and Reuken are standing near the doorway. "We have not come a moment too soon, have we?" Arachan glares at Reuken, but turns to face the noise of the ghoul pack.

Behind him, Leon already has an arrow to the string, and he fires before Arachan can begin his spellcasting. The arrow cleaves through two of the ghouls and into a wight, its electrically charged shaft sending electricity through their bodies, effectively frying the creatures. Arachan lifts a hand, and a wall of fire appears between the group of (mostly) living and the group of undead. Two of the remaining ghouls charge through the flames, burning, the rest skid to a halt behind the wall. Reuken charges one of the flaming ghouls, and kicks it back into the flames, where it is destroyed. The remaining ghoul runs past Reuken, Arachan, and Leon, and tries to attack Xyries, who still stands where she was when the fight began. Xyries extends a hand and speaks a prayer, and that ghoul joins its destroyed brethren. By this point, Leon has nocked five more arrows, and he releases them. As they sail through the firewall, they seem to pick up some of the magical fire. Three sink into the wight, and the other two into the remaining ghouls. Arachan waits a moment, then waves a hand, and the firewall is gone.