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Message: <blockquote data-quote="el-remmen" data-source="post: 1391076" data-attributes="member: 11">Session #53 (part ii)“Wake up! Wake up!” Martin shook Jeremy and Derek at once, while Kazrack sat up looking around in the dark.“What’s going on?”The earth was shaking and the great broken slabs of stone groaned as they tried to give way to each other.  Dust rose in great cloud choking their lungs, and a rain of pebbles came down around them.“We need to move camp!” Ratchis said, his arms full of everyone’s packs as he kicked Beorth awake.  “We need to get out from underneath this overhang in case it collapses.”The Fearless Manticore Killers moved out from under the overhang and down to the great plateau that was out under the dark cloud-covered night sky.The shaking only lasted a few moments, but the echoing cracks, and the settling groans of the great slabs made them nervous.  It took some time for them to settle back in their bedrolls.Derek and Jeremy took over the watch.It was not long before Jeremy was spooked, not by the quiet, but how the long patches of silence were broken up by a singular echoing drop of water, or a breeze blowing through the narrow cracks hundreds of feet above them.“Something could come and we wouldn’t know,” Jeremy said.“Calm down,” Derek replied, his smile was invisible in the darkness.  “I can tell a moth’s wing from a dove’s fart.”Jeremy’s laughter echoed out across the chasm and then he quickly hushed himself.Derek stood up.  “Did you hear that?’“Stop messing with me,” Jeremy replied, laughter still in his voice.“Footsteps in the water below,” Derek put hand to his ear.“I am so gonna beat your ass if you’re messing with me,” Jeremy replied, but then he thought he could hear the arrhythmic splashing as well, and the sound of something clawing the stone wall far below.“I heard it that time,” Jeremy said, even as the things began to whisper words in an indecipherable language.They woke Kazrack, who when he heard the whispering, leapt to his feet.“That is dwarven!” he hissed. “Wake the others.”  The dwarf grabbed his halberd.Derek began to light a torch, while Jeremy kicked Beorth and Martin awake.  Ratchis, having heard the commotion was already on his feet and casting Nephthys’ blessing upon his long sword.Martin an arcane word and his own torch lit up.“You make yourselves targets with those,” Ratchis croaked.Kazrack moved to the edge of the cliff and looked down, at the end of his darkvision he could see a dwarven form slowly coming up the face, digging its white claws into the stone, and looking up eagerly.  Its beard and skin were shockingly white in the reverse world of dwarven sight, but it’s eyes were a disturbing black.  The beard was wet and knotted, clinging to the creature’s hide, and dripping water to echo below it.“What are they saying?” Martin asked, he moved up behind Ratchis who had stood beside the dwarf.“Nothing that matters,” Kazrack replied, waiting above the climbing creature with his pole-arm poised to strike.  “Things to try to unnerve us.”But the hissed words of the undead dwarves did not dishearten the stalwart dwarf, inwardly he knew the words were ones any dwarf might fear.He knew that these were the undead called “the grapplers” in dwarven legends, the cursed dead who died submerged in water, whether it be deep in caves or out at sea, and they wanted nothing more that to drag their former kin to  watery grave as well, to increase their accursed and shameful ranks.“Come back with us,” they hissed.  “We will bring you down to your fathers’ fathers’.  You will feel the sweet ecstasy of your lungs filling.”“Let me turn them,” Ratchis suggested.The first of the dead dwarfs made it to the top.“Let them come!  They must be destroyed!” Kazrack roared, bringing the blade of his halberd down on the head of the first one, cleaving it open.  The creature screeched and tumbled off the clif to land on the plateau twenty-five feet below.   Derek spotted another of the things coming over the cliff twenty feet further to Kazrack’s right.  He ran towards it and Martin and Beorth hurried after him.   The dead dwarf hissed with black teeth.  Derek could see the thing’s black knotted hair and deep blue-black skin, but blind white eyes.   He buried the axe in its head as it came up and then yanked it back out.  The dwarf laughed and black water poured out of his mouth.  Martin swung his torch at it ineffectually.  Beorth struck it with his longsword, and it shook as if it was about to lose its grip, so Kazrack ran over and gave it another hard blow.  The grappler roared as it tumbled back off the cliff face.“Now your family is forever safe,” Kazrack swore.“Are there more?” Martin asked, and as if in answer two more began to pull themselves over the edge. Derek and Beorth went to chopping at one, while Kazrack and Ratchis went for the other.Beorth cleaved the head from the one he dealt with, but the other leapt off the cliff deftly.“You will join us, son of Rak-kazum,” the dwarf said to Kazrack, as he leapt.Kazrack’s eyes went wide, and without hesitating he leaped after it.  “Kazrack!” Ratchis cried, and he leapt as well.  “What are you? Crazy?” Jeremy called after them, but he leapt as well.Kazrack landed with a grunt, his left leg nearly collapsing beneath him as pain ran up it and into his chest, but he did not stop.  He thrust his halberd at the fleeing undead dwarf, and black blood spurted from it.  Ratchis ran at it and it screamed and leapt at him, arm’s forward in a wrestler’s stance.  The half-orc shoved his sword through its gut, and the bones of fish and the rotten corpse of snake fell out of it, along with the stretching coils of guts.  It reached for him, but then stopped moving.Ratchis whipped his blade to get the corpse off of it.“When our quest is over we must make an oath to return here and destroy every last one of these horrible things,” Kazrack said, and spit.  “We must burn these corpses.”When they had done just that, they climbed back up to the camp.Kazrack took Beorth aside,  “Beorth, do the dead have some knowledge of the dead from where they lie?”“What do you mean, Kazrack?” the paladin asked.“The undead dead thing he called me ‘son of Rak-Kazum’, that is my father’s name.  How could have know that,” Kazrack explained solemnly, sadness creeping into his deep voice.  He tugged on his beard nervously.“All undead draw their power from one source,” Beorth intoned.  “So it stands to reason that they might share knowledge through that source – but that does not mean your father is dead.”“I hope not,” Kazrack replied.“What does your heart tell you?” Beorth asked.“It is shrouded with doubt,” Kazrack replied, and walking away, he paused.  “Thank you.”The party discussed if they should return to sleep or try to press on immediately.“We will need to rest all though tomorrow, I think,” Kazrack suggested.  “With our sleep interrupted we will be too tired to channel the power of our gods and prepare for our miracles in the morning.”Ratchis said,  “We are close to the Pit of Bones; a place where hundreds if not thousands of dwarves and men died grizzly death, swallowed by the earth.  It will get worse before it get better, we need to make sure we have all our available resources or we will not make it.”“We may not all make it regardless,” said Beorth.“We may want to travel during the night and rest during the day when the undead are less active,” Martin said, ignoring the paladin’s pessimism, though there was both resignation and fear in his voice.It was decide that Beorth and Jeremy would watch the rest of the night.  As dawn approached, the young Neergaardian warrior collapsed in exhaustion, and Beorth woke Ratchis and Kazrack.  Derek and Marin remained asleep. (1)Derek yawned and stood watch while the dwarf and half-orc prayed to their respective gods for guidance and their daily allotment of divine miracles.---------------------------------------------Kazrack kneeled with his forehead pressed to his twenty-pound prayer stone.  His calloused hands held it in place, and felt the many dwarven runes carved upon it that told the tale of the significant events of his life, every birthday, every honor, and one day the name of his wife and his children.Ratchis sat with his knees up, and his head leaning on them, and his arms flat on the ground.  He had his belt of scored chain links draped over the back of his neck, muttering words to his benevolent goddess.Splat!Something splattered on the hard stone before Kazrack.  He did not rise from where he was, but Derek walked over and looked.  It was a small bird with spotted brown feathers.   A whippoorwill.“What that…?”Splat! Splat Splat!Three more bird plummeted from the air, dying immediately as blood and feathers were smashed against the surface of the plateau they were camped on.Ratchis looked up.And then they came down like a rain of dead birds, until the floor was awash with tiny fractured bones, feathers and blood.  There were scores and scores of them.Martin, Jeremy and Beorth awoke, and again the party was forced to flee back beneath the overhang, and then a moment later, the birds stopped falling.“Whippoorwills,” Martin said, solemnly.  “An omen of death.”End of Session #53----------------------------------------------------------Notes(1) Martin had not yet put his ring, Lacan’s Demise, back on.</blockquote>

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