Cerebral Paladin
First Post
With the metal spirits dealt with, I returned to sleep. At the end of his watch, Spring woke me. I took over his station at a makeshift command post in the center of the tribe, while Sergeant Cilorean and Durak patrolled around the edge of our camp. A few hours before dawn, one of the pickets came running into camp, screaming “Bone ooze! Bone ooze!” We would later learn that she was the second picket to see the bone ooze, but the first had died horribly, engulfed by the ooze without even the opportunity to scream first.
Bone oozes are a freakish effect of a confluence of a large number of bodies or skeletons and substantial abyssal energy. Under some circumstances, the abyssal energy will infuse the skeletal matter, turning it into a mindless but destructive undead ooze. Bone oozes seek out life, consuming it when they find it and adding the additional bones and flesh to their form. Occasionally, a sufficiently large ooze will split, but otherwise they just keep growing and destroying. Only the most powerful can hope to defeat a bone ooze in battle, but bone oozes move slowly. Under most circumstances, an alert group can easily escape a bone ooze by simply running.
I sent Bonepicker to inform Sergeant Cilorean and to request permission for me to attempt to deal with the ooze. He granted permission while he readied the camp to flee, and I approached the ooze. I cast command undead and willed the ooze to stop. The ooze stopped moving, remaining completely still in obedience to my command. Mindless undead cannot resist that spell, and while the bone ooze was powerful, it was also mindless.
I ordered the ooze to remain in place and returned to the camp to report to Sergeant Cilorean. He asked how long the ooze would remain under my control, and I informed him that my control would last for four days, but that I could renew it before it failed. As we were perhaps a day from the border to Tarkenia, we could destroy the ooze before my control of it failed. Sergeant Cilorean instructed me to send the bone ooze ahead of us to clear our path. It traveled more slowly than the tribe could, but we could give it a lead by starting it moving before the break of day, and the ooze would not tire or need to rest.
Bone oozes are a freakish effect of a confluence of a large number of bodies or skeletons and substantial abyssal energy. Under some circumstances, the abyssal energy will infuse the skeletal matter, turning it into a mindless but destructive undead ooze. Bone oozes seek out life, consuming it when they find it and adding the additional bones and flesh to their form. Occasionally, a sufficiently large ooze will split, but otherwise they just keep growing and destroying. Only the most powerful can hope to defeat a bone ooze in battle, but bone oozes move slowly. Under most circumstances, an alert group can easily escape a bone ooze by simply running.
I sent Bonepicker to inform Sergeant Cilorean and to request permission for me to attempt to deal with the ooze. He granted permission while he readied the camp to flee, and I approached the ooze. I cast command undead and willed the ooze to stop. The ooze stopped moving, remaining completely still in obedience to my command. Mindless undead cannot resist that spell, and while the bone ooze was powerful, it was also mindless.
I ordered the ooze to remain in place and returned to the camp to report to Sergeant Cilorean. He asked how long the ooze would remain under my control, and I informed him that my control would last for four days, but that I could renew it before it failed. As we were perhaps a day from the border to Tarkenia, we could destroy the ooze before my control of it failed. Sergeant Cilorean instructed me to send the bone ooze ahead of us to clear our path. It traveled more slowly than the tribe could, but we could give it a lead by starting it moving before the break of day, and the ooze would not tire or need to rest.