Part the One-Hundred Thirteenth
In which: we most humbly beg the reader to make note of the chickens.
“They’re what?!?!” Anvil asks, voice filled with outrage and indignation at this affront to Kettenek.
“Skeletons,” Kiara pants. “All of them, skeletons. Why are skeletons farming? They don’t need any food!”
“They will not be doing anything for long.” Anvil mutters. Pulling out his holy symbol, he turns and strides across the field towards the workers. Thatch follows.
The rest of the party hangs back. “Anvil, are you sure this is the best plan?” Eva ventures.
Anvil merely calls back over his shoulder. “Lira! You should practice this!”
Lira shouts back. “Do you want to get me killed?”
(Note: Needless to say, I hadn’t planned on Lira becoming a cleric of Ehkt in the middle of the Kettenek Sovereignty. Fajitas worked out a mechanic that would allow Lira to attempt to bluff her way past untrained observers if she had to cast divinely in front of a Sovereign witness. However, pulling out her holy symbol would pretty much give away the game to even the most yokel of locals. Attempting to turn undead without excessive brandishing of said holy symbol? Not going to happen.)
Anvil breaks into a run. The skeletons have, by this time, noticed his approach, and have paused in their work, staring at him with their empty, undead eye sockets.
One of the skeletons opens its mouth and clacks its teeth at Anvil, as though he’s trying to talk, unaware that he lacks the vocal apparatus necessary for speech.
As Anvil draws nearer, it holds up a hand, teeth clacking faster and faster, desperate. The other workers drop their tools and look at each other, confused.
Anvil raises his holy symbol. “Kettenek! Use me as a vessel of your holy might to cleanse this undead abomination, banishing these unlawfully animated remains back to your earth from which they came!… Begone! Kettenek’s Justice Demands It!”
There were about fifteen skeletons working in the field. All but five of them immediately burst apart into dust. Those that remain, turn and run.
Anvil frowns. They resist the might of Kettenek. Motioning for Thatch to follow, he takes off running after them.
Behind, the rest of the party has approached at a more cautious pace, but whether for good or ill, they’re committed now. Breaking into a sprint, they follow.
###
It does not take long for Anvil to discover the goal of the skeletons’ flight. Coming up over a small rise he finds a collection of mud huts. Gathered in the midst of the huts are a group of peasants. All skeletons.
A few stand, facing him, tools gripped in their bony hands. Behind, skeletons who in life were older men or women cluster. Anvil even catches a glimpse of a small child’s bones peeking out from behind its mother’s ragged skirts. Outside one house, a few skeletal chickens look up from where they had been scratching in the dirt.
Anvil stops and stares. The rest of the party comes skidding up behind him, equally dumbfounded.
The peasant in front clacks its teeth at them, clearly desperate. It gestures, trembling, to the women and children behind. It waves its hands frantically, as though pleading for their unlives.
In three turnings, Anvil reduces them all to dust.
When the air clears, the party realizes that aside from their own breathing, the valley is completely silent.
**********
The party silently walks back to the road and continues on towards town. They pass a few more groups of skeletal workers in the fields. Most of them wave as the party passes. The adventurers grimly wave back, and continue on. Outnumbered more than a hundred times over, even Anvil is forced to accede that turning every skeleton in sight is not the most prudent plan.
If he even could turn them all.
The skeletons are everywhere, and they’re not just the people. The party watches skeletal cows being driven in from the pastures, and skeletal birds madly flapping their wings in an attempt to fly. Thatch notices a few field-walls or outbuildings that have been weathered and poorly repaired. From the looks of it, nothing has been properly maintained for a while.
Lira tries casting detect magic. The skeletons are, unsurprisingly, magical. However, she also notes a faint evocation in the land, and even the air, of the valley. Anvil confirms that it seems as though there was some force that was dampening his turning attempts. He’s not sure if it could be related or not.
Finally, the group finds an isolated spot of ground and sits down to assess their options.
“What the hells is going on here?”
“Did you see the chickens?”
“Do you think everything in this valley is a skeleton?”
“Did you see the chickens?”
“The peasants were acting like they didn’t even realize they weren’t alive.”
“Maybe nobody told them.”
“Are we going to turn into skeletons?”
“Did you see the chickens?!?!”
“Yes, Thatch, we saw the chickens!” Eva rubs her forehead, trying to fight the headache growing there. “Okay, the skeletons are creepy, but they don’t seem to be bothering us as long as we leave them alone. They’re the Sovereignty’s problem, why should we solve it for them?”
“Is there any way to talk to them?” Lira asks.
“Why do you wish to speak with them?” Anvil wants to know.
“These are skeletons who are going about their daily lives as if no one gave them the note that they are all undead. You don’t want to know what they have to say?” Lira asks, incredulous.
Anvil shrugs. “I can speak with dead, but it won’t help. They have no voices.”
“I believe Eva is right,” Reyu interjects. “If the entire population of this valley has been reduced to animated skeletons, then we cannot hope to turn or destroy them all, even if Lira helps. Our mission is to find the wizard Petros.”
Lira shrugs. “Also, serves the Sovereigns right to have a valley full of skeletons in the middle of the country.”
“Why haven’t the Sovereigns done anything?” Thatch asks. “I mean, they must have noticed, right?”
“Never can tell with the Sovereigns,” Eva mutters.
“Their religion could not lead them to… approve of this?”
Anvil shakes his head.
(DM quote: “The only sect you know of that doesn’t regard the undead as abominations to be destroyed on sight are the Crossers of the Barrier… and they’re generally regarded as necromantic yahoos.”)
“You don’t think… Petros did this, do you?” Kiara suggests hesitantly.
“Let’s hope not.”
Anvil stands, and dusts himself off. “To know that, we must first find him. That is our primary mission, and must remain our chief goal. Then we can cleanse the valley of this abominable blight.”
No one really has anything to add to that. And so, everyone gets up and they continue on their way.
###
Kiara wings her way across the valley, looking for any signs of Petros’ tower. There are several small clusters of houses scattered amid the fields of the valley, more like homesteads than the villages where Lord Fau Meen’s people lived. Following the main road, she eventually finds the town of Bountiful.
It’s certainly smaller than Dar Pykos, but still moderately sized. The town is surrounded by high walls, and divided on the inside by a river running east to west across the valley. Most of the residences appear to be on the south side of the river, while the north is dominated by a large, walled keep. None of the buildings really look like a giant moving tower.
However, as she passes over the city, she does spy something off in the distance. A lone spire, some distance from the walled city, tucked away near the foot of one of the high mountains surrounding the valley.
She flies closer to investigate…
###
“It was square, but kind of slant-y, so it’s skinnier at the top than it is at the bottom.” Kiara demonstrates the shape with her hands. “All the windows are on the second level, but they had shutters so I couldn’t see inside.”
“Did it look like anyone was there?”
Kiara shakes her head. “There was no smoke from the chimney. I tried to sneak in that way, but there was a grate over the top.” She steals a look over at Annika, and adds hastily. “And I knew you wouldn’t want me to do anything dangerous so I came right back.”
“I wonder why no one was there?” Eva asks.
“Chi’i did say that she hadn’t heard anything from Petros in about three months,” Lira points out. “Maybe something happened to him.”
The party continues towards the tower on foot into the late afternoon. Reyu and Benedic split off from the party as they pass one of the clusters of farm huts, hoping to learn more about what might have happened in the valley by observing the skeletons.
(In other words, Benedic is an NPC and Reyu’s player couldn’t make the game that night.)
By the time evening falls, they are within sight of the main town. Rather than venture inside, the party elects to make camp in an empty field. They pass an uneventful evening, and eventually set watches and turn in for the night.
Eva and Anvil are on watch when, at precisely midnight, the unnatural silence of the valley is abruptly broken.
