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Message: <blockquote data-quote="RangerWickett" data-source="post: 22209" data-attributes="member: 63">Chapter Eleven: Uneasy SpiritsIt’s early June, 2000, a Sunday.  Earlier in the afternoon the Dragon Dornankanir was seemingly assassinated, since magical detection revealed a poison in his system that would induce a heart attack.  He was killed in human form, though, and discreetly.  The killer has kept a low profile as far as normal people are concerned; he could have easily just fireballed the building (a fireball was used to kill another Dragon, Flarinaman), but he opted to play along with the Bureau and not reveal the presence of magic to mundanes.After the assassination, the Chief berated Iscalio Maxwell for endangering innocent bystanders with his violent gunfire.  The Chief took him off the case for now and told him to write a report explaining his actions.  Then, since another one of the knights, Michael Dunne, hadn’t reported in yet, the Chief sent off the rest of the group to Savannah to try to track down the paladin.  Michael’s girlfriend, Keira McCormick, was murdered at almost the same time, and the Chief wants Michael to be told.The knights—Cai Maxwell, Jenny Windgrave, Madeline West, Tagin, and Finagle P. Luckshore, make it through the gate into Savannah near one of the dorms of the Savannah College of Art & Design.  They quickly pile into Madeline’s car and drive to Bonaventure Cemetery, where they first met Michael.  Michael often works the “graveyard shift,” cycling between graveyards in Savannah and New Orleans to make sure enthusiasts of the occult do not cause disturbances to the resting spirits.  Also, sometimes he is called upon to deal with the undead.The knights reach the cemetery and park outside because the gates are locked at night.  By now it’s probably only 8 or 9 pm, so Savannah is still bustling outside the graveyard gates.  The group walks through the long lines of trees and tombstones, admiring in the dim light the elaborate craftsmanship on many of the stone obelisks and marble columns marking the final resting places of thousands of rich men and women from Savannah.  In the daytime you can drive through the cemetery along the dirt roads, but it is night now, and disturbingly dark because there are no electric lights for at least a mile leading off toward the river.  The group sticks to the dirt roads, a bit nervous to stray into the family plots in the middle of the night.  As they walk, they can hear their footfalls crunching on bits of gravel in the road, the noise fading dully into the trees around them.  Cai coughs, drawing everyone’s nervous attention.  He mentions that now that it’s been an hour or two, he vaguely recalls seeing someone heading toward the convention center as he neared the car where Keira was killed.  The memory is fuzzy, and it seems to burn his eyes whenever he tries to picture it in his head.  He’s fairly certain he did see something, but that whoever it was must have blocked his memory.  Aside from the fact that he hates not being in control of himself, or his memories, he’s concerned that the only person there who could fiddle with memories was Dalavar.Jenny’s about to question his logic when a footstep crunches in the road ahead of them.  They all look in a moment of panic, and Madeline conjures a cantrip of light to reveal Michael Dunne standing at the edge of the road, staring at them warily.He asks them what they’re doing in his cemetery, and he starts to walk off toward the river, obviously expecting them to follow.  Jenny tells him the Chief wants him back at the Bureau.  There was another killing, and this time one knight was killed and another went missing.  Before they reached the cemetery, Jenny advised everyone to just not say anything about Keira, to let the Chief break the news.Michael is distracted, and he points toward an elaborate gravesite near the edge of the river.  He says that ever since that night with Jericho Wright, he’s felt drawn to this particular grave, as if he expects something to happen here.  Michael and the party stop, and the paladin sighs, then turns to them, explaining that the huge marble structure in front of them is supposed to be the Gates of Heaven.  One rich Savannah resident commissioned it so everyone would know where he was going when he died.  There’s even a life-size statue of St. Peter standing as if waiting for you to walk through the gates.Jenny nods, admiring the craftsmanship if not the sentiment behind it.  She too feels something eerie here, and she tells the party.  Michael nods, then walks for the structure, asking as he approaches it who was killed.  Cai is just about to reply when Michael takes the first step onto the marble, ascending to the gates of heaven.A dull groan fills the still air of the cemetery, and the ground around them seems to stir.Michael draws his arcane blade and activates the curved blade, illuminating the scene in brilliant white as the top of a coffin rips through the earth inches from his feet, followed by a pair of dessicated hands clawing their way out of the ground.Madeline begins to gather spell energy, and all the other knights ready their weapons.  Cai grips his sawed-off double barrel twelve-gauge shotgun, Jenny her spear, Tagin his pistol, and Finagle his jury-rigged gyroscopic compressed air rifle (he replaced the tranq darts with small explosives, akin to big firecrackers).  All around them, corpses tear their way out of their graves, totally perhaps a score or more, and they begin to advance on the group.  They are all dressed in fine clothing, now rotting off.  Some even wear their wedding dresses or tuxedos, and as they shamble forward, their stench assaults the nostrils of those present who still have actual working organs.Finagle pops off a shot at a zombie crawling out of its grave before it can get to its feet.  The shot lands flawlessly into the undead’s cranium, then explodes, knocking the zombie back into the dirt.  The explosion leaves a small hole in the corpse’s face, but only slows it down.  It seems unfazed by having half its head destroyed.Cai blasts a second zombie with his sawed-off double barrel twelve-gauge shotgun, ripping off both its legs.  Michael slices off the head of the one nearest to him, and Madeline begins to cast a magic nissile spell.  Her ghost, Catherine, is panicking because the zombies are around though, and her spell goes wild.  Madeline begins to panic herself when she begins to levitate over the field of combat, hovering 20 feet in the air with nothing to direct her movement.  She shouts for Catherine to calm down, but otherwise can’t do very much.Tagin pops off a shot at one of the zombies and misses because it’s dark.  He frowns, then backs away, rummaging in his pocket for his penlight.  Then he shakes his head, realizing that he has no way to attach the two.  Shrugging, he pulls out the penlight, just to make himself feel useful.Jenny runs forward, intending to do battle with the unearthly creatures.  Both she and her ghost Pataman give a war cry as Jenny charges toward the nearest zombies, but Jenny misses.  Zombie must’ve dodged or something.  *shrug*Madeline calls desperately for someone to get her down, and though Finagle could probably pull it off, he’s too busy shooting things to bother being an actual wizard.  He shoots another zombie, this time in the thigh, ineffectually trying to blow out its kneecap. Meanwhile, Cai casually blasts any zombie that gets within 10 feet.  He calls out to Michael to ask why the dead decided to start walking all of a sudden.Tagin sees a Zombie coming up from behind Michael, about to slam the paladin with his arms, so the hacker pops off a shot.  It flies over Michael’s shoulder and grazes the undead, but Michael is alerted to the danger and takes the Zombie down with a nice pair of slashes from his scimitar.  He then shouts to Cai that corpses never animate spontaneously.  Something must be causing it.Madeline, trying to make the most of the situation, spends the round telling her ghost Catherine not to be scared, because the Zombies can’t hurt her.  Catherine replies that she can hear another ghost crying out in misery though, coming from somewhere nearby.  When Madeline relays that information, everyone gets a clue to who must be animating the zombies.Jenny ducks a clumsy swipe from the Zombie she’s battling, but her own spear thrust misses wildly.  Sighing in frustration, she tells Pataman to go help Madeline’s ghost.Cai kills another zombie, while Finagle finally succeeds in stopping one, hitting it in the throat, which then explodes in a gruesome decapitation.  One of them finally gets close enough to clobber Finagle on his head, nearly dropping the scrawny man to the ground in one hit.  Cai tucks his shotgun under his arm and draws his katana, intending to go rescue Finagle.  Tagin shouts to see if Jenny needs help, but Jenny is resolute to take this thing out on her own, so Tagin shrugs and instead runs away from all the Zombies that were getting a little too close to him.  He gets near Michael, and uses the paladin as a shield from behind which he fires.  Michael, Tagin notices, seems to hestitate, as if he’s uncertain what to do.  Still, though, the man’s on top of his game, and is able to chop down the first Zombie that gets too close to him.  Another four Zombies try to surround him, but they’re so slow that Michael and Tagin just back up to avoid them.Madeline fires a magic missile at the Zombie beating on Finagle, but doesn’t stop it.  She then shouts to Catherine to try to see what’s going on with the ghost that’s causing this trouble.Meanwhile, Jenny tries to trip the Zombie with her spear, hoping it’ll be easier to deal with when it’s on the ground.  The Zombie, a finely dressed man with a decomposing beard and rotting eyeballs, somehow avoids her trip attempt, even though it’s not particularly fleet of foot.Cai beheads the Zombie attacking Finagle, and Finagle, just to be safe, shoots said Zombie in the chest.  Since it’s only 5 feet away when it’s bursts outward in a tiny explosion, and Cai and Finagle are covered in Zombie bits.“Next time rescue yourself,” Cai mutters, walking off to kill more Zombies.  He sees Jenny in trouble and walks toward her, but she waves him off, saying she can handle it.  Cai shrugs and gets out his shotgun again, deciding to give her a chance to prove herself.Michael and Tagin are getting backed toward the Gates of Heaven sculpture, surrounded in a circle by Zombies.  Tagin calls for help and tries to shoot a Zombie in the crotch, but to no effect.  Michael and Tagin begin to climb the steps to the gate, and Michael slices down through one Zombie that gets too close.  Catherine and Pataman, the two ghosts stand incoporeally nearby Tagin and Michael, staring at the sculpture, which is the source of the moaning only they can hear.  Catherine calls out, asking for the ghost to tell them who he is.The statue of St. Peter reaches out past Tagin and touches Michael on his shoulder, saying in a voice filled with agony, “I’m . . . Gerrard.”Tagin shrieks in panic and jumps away from the statue, landing in a pile of Zombies, but firing blindly into the statue.  His bullets chew through the statue’s face, but it still reaches out to Michael.  The blonde paladin gasps in surprise and barely restrains himself from hacking off the marble arm.  In his moment of fright he is torn at his back by the Zombies.  Tagin doesn’t fare too well either, as a trio of Zombie begin kicking him while he’s down.  Good thing he is down, though, as Cai’s blast from his sawed-off double barrel twelve-gauge shotgun rips into and through three Zombie torsos.  Finagle covers himself with Mage Armor, because Cai has run off, leaving him alone to fend for himself.Jenny, needing to finish off this Zombie fast and go help her friends, decides to try something new.  She waits for the Zombie to throw itself at her, and then she drops to the ground and holds her spear up to pierce the undead’s chest as it falls upon her.  The DM rules that the Zombie wasn’t actually trying to slam into Jenny, though, so Jenny is just lying on the ground where the Zombie can kick her.  In frustration, Jenny slams her spear into the thing’s chest, hitting for a full 8 damage.  Still, though, the Zombie doesn’t fall over.Michael gets his wits about him and begins hacking at the Zombies that are trying to pull him to the ground, and Cai rushes in, sawed-off double barrel twelve-gauge shotgun a’blazing.  Tagin barely crawls away with his life intact, but between his pistol and Madeline’s magic missile, the Zombie that was trying to kill him goes down.Jenny leaves the Zombie with a spear stuck in its chest and runs to help and heal Tagin.  Finagle asks her for help, but she thinks that he’s handling himself well enough on his own, so she runs past him toward the wounded hacker.  Finagle sees a Zombie with a spear in its chest lumbering toward him, and he blows its head off.Catherine and Pataman, the ghosts, are trying to talk down the other ghost, Gerrard, which has possessed the statue.  Pataman figures that Gerrard must be responsible for the Zombies, and since they don’t know how to get him to stop, they just try to get him to calm down.A frenetic hack fest takes place just outside the Gates of Heaven, and in a few more seconds the ground is littered with two dozen zombies in varying states of dismemberment.  Jenny helps Tagin to his feet, and Finagle mage hands a rope up to Madeline so she can pull herself down.  In the distance they can hear more people (well, zombies actually) shambling toward them, and Madeline and Jenny’s ghosts tell them that Gerrard, the ghost in the statue, isn’t doing it on purpose, but that he can’t control his powers because he’s ‘lost.’Jenny asks Michael if he can exorcise the ghost, but Michael says he can’t.  Jenny, suspicious, wonders why Michael didn’t use any magic against the Zombies when they attacked.  If this ghost Gerrard is ‘lost,’ that might mean he was forced out of whoever he was in before.  Just to be safe, she asks Michael to prove that he can still do magic.  Michael grumbles at her lack of trust and waves his hand to conjure a ball of light.  “There, happy?”Jenny is worried, but the rest of the group is too busy making fun of the fact that she couldn’t even kill a single Zombie for her to gather her thoughts.  Cai tells her to be careful in the future, and leave the Zombie fighting to him.  Then Cai pulls out his cel and tells the Bureau they’re on their way back, but that they need to send someone out to exorcise a ghost.  They want to get out of there before any more Zombies show up.The group rushes out of the graveyard, Cai and Finagle blasting any Zombies that get within 10 feet.  As they get to Madeline’s car, the Bureau agents show up to exorcise the ghost.  The knights cram into Madeline’s car (Madeline threatening to hurt them if they get blood on her seats), and they head back to the gate to the Bureau.Michael, now that the shock has worn off, asks again which knight was killed earlier that day.  Before Jenny can stop him, Cai replies that it was Keira, and Michael goes cold again.  He slumps against the window of the car and manages to hold back his emotions, but obviously he’s torn up inside.  Finagle tactlessly asks whether it was true that they were going out.Finagle gets smacked on the head by Tagin for that one, and the rest of the car ride is in silence.</blockquote>

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