Eccles
Ragged idiot in a trilby.
As the Kyuss knights stamped into the square, people began to scream in terror and rush to get away. From my position hovering several feet above them, I could see an old man and his elderly wife pushed to the ground and trampled by the fleeing mob. The striding knights continued to lash out at the fleeing backs as they strode through the fallen, hacking down at exposed limbs and necks.
“Assault the foe! Overcome!”
“Retreat into the temple of Hextor!”
“---!”
The three high priests variously bellowed contradictory advice or screamed impotently from within Janga’s bubble of silenced air. The mob of civilians looked confused and were totally unable to decide who to follow, or else were distracted by Flynne cartwheeling up through the air to balance on the spire of the Hextorite temple from where he sent an arrow driving down into the knights on the other side of the square.
Transforming into a lion-headed celestial form, Fez pounced, flying 50 feet across the heads of the astonished citizens, to land in front of one of the worm-eyed knights and hack heavily at it with his adamantine sunblade. Ignoring him, the knight lashed out away from Fez, killing a civilian in an instant, whilst blood spurted from about a dozen others who were killed by the other knights.
From my heightened position, I added my voice to the two audible high priests, shouting that the people should head into the largest of the three temples, that of Hextor, for safety, which the Hextorite priest was already calling for. The Kord priest, bellowing instructions to attack until the muscles in his neck bunched and tightened.
Glaring at him, I began to focus my attention on him. Whilst my words remained unchanged, I changed my cadence and stresses to time with his breaths and his visible pulse. Gradually, he became distracted, and his shouts broke and ceased. As I continued to call for people to run for safety, the Kordite priest could do nothing more than simply stare at me in total fascination.
Janga was busy as well. He hovered over the crowd, tiny wings on his boots flapping madly as he cast a powerful healing spell, which burst over many of the Kyuss knights and caused their flesh to crack and dust to spill to the ground. Two of the knights collapsed completely, whilst half a dozen others shuddered and looked severely damaged.
Flynne’s arrows began to slam down in a constant stream, and as one of the corpse-knights collapsed, he shifted his aim to start to fire on another. Fez, meanwhile, swelled tremendously to tower over the Kyuss-spawn in the form of a Solar. His massive sun-sword grew as well, and he began to move in a blur with the magical powers of his own enchanted boots. Within a moment, three of the damaged undead were lying in pieces strewn across the street.
With fiendish accuracy, the six remaining undead lifted and dropped their tomb-blades in perfect unison and six more citizens spilled their life’s blood across the street.
“Flee the undead! My acolytes and I will resolve the situation!”
It was the priestess of Wee Jass, who had stepped out of the silences sphere – distracting the citizens who still stood out in the square from following the instructions of myself and the other high priest. As I was about to turn my attention on her, Janga flew through the air and simply punched her in the face with one small gauntleted fist. She fell silent in astonishment at the gnome’s nerve and stared haughtily down at him – seeming to have forgotten the attacking undead.
Whilst a few of Fez’s powerful blows went wide, Flynne’s did not, and another of the knights fell, by which time I had called so many of the citizens into safety that the large Hextorite temple was filled, and I had to call out to the others that they should run into the temple of Kord instead.
Janga and the priestess of Wee Jass began to wrestle; flying boots and heavy armour proving telling as Janga’s tiny form was swirtly behind the much taller woman, putting her in a half nelson and forcing her head and shoulders back into the globe of silence. Though I couldn’t hear her language, it looked ugly.
Still under withering fire, two more of the undead collapsed, one hacked in two by Fez’s massive blade. Three more citizens died in response, but then I managed to get all the remaining survivors into the safety of the temple of Kord, and Janga released then apologised to the high priestess of the death goddess.
With nobody to protect, Fez and Flynne were able to make incredibly short work of the last three Kyuss Knights.
.oOo.
“I have cast a spell of divination,” roared the high priest of Kord into our faces, ignoring the fact that he was clearly spitting across our armoured bodies. Either the man was almost completely deaf, or treated even simple things like conversation as a challenge.
“In my visions, I saw an altar,” he continued loud enough to be heard across the now empty square. “The powers of the altar assist the worm God and casts this deathly pallor across the city. It is to be found ‘beneath the lair of the silver dragon’, but I do not know what that means.”
We looked at one another. “We do,” I told him, then shouted it a second time in case he hadn’t caught me.
As we turned to go, easing weapons from their scabbards as we set off.
“Return when the dragon is slain,” shouted the priest of Kord. “It would be a righteous subject for a guest sermon. I shall be speaking for the next three hours, but then you would be free to talk for a little.
I nodded, but before I could leave another voice spoke up.
“Thank you for the audience,” came the sneering voice of the priest of Hextor. The sacrifices begin in four hours. As he stepped back into the temple, there came the sound of chains and a bar falling across.
“We’ll add it to the list,” we agreed as we headed for Lashonna’s mansion house.
.oOo.
In crossing the town to Lashonna’s home, we passed close to the DeLuxury, the massive hotel we had stayed at whilst we were in the city months ago. Down a side street, we spotted a gout of fire bursting across the barricaded front doors – perhaps two dozen undead pulled at the wooden supports whilst three robed figures flung spells to blast the hotel open. Several vampires and a tall Kyuss Knight led the assault.
From a top window, we could see the owner, Armin, ducking away from a spell before yelling for help and flinging a number of heavy brass pans down towards the attacking undead. Shag Solomon could be seen praying in another high window.
Sighing deeply, we stepped off our course as we did what we could to help.
.oOo.
Running towards a pair of the four vampires, Fez began waving his sunblade overhead, and piercing daylight erupted around him; cowering away as their skin hissed and burned, they moved towards Janga, Flynne and myself, soon joined by their two comrades. Flynne wasn’t expecting this, and was looking at the heavily armoured Kyuss Knight as he sent 5 arrows slamming through the figure’s backplate. All of the arrows punched through, but the figure turned to stare at us – two thick worms in its eye sockets questing towards us.
Three dark spells lanced at Fez, snapping and crackling with evil powers, but they all slammed into his back; but some property of the celestial form he was wearing threw off the magic of the three disintegration spells.
I pulled out a staff I had commissioned months before, and fired a blast of sunlight which tore off the head of the closest vampire; beyond an elderly woman was torn out of a window by one of the vampire spawn, and I started to call up instructions to the defenders on how to stay safe.
The Kyuss Knight lunged at Fez, and one of the worms in its eye sockets lashed out and swelled noticeably as it tore something from him. The steadfast barbarian howled in pain.
Janga smashed at a vampire with his little mace, whilst Fez grew into a massive earth elemental. His sunblade (now eight feet in length), lashed down onto the Kyuss Knight, bisecting it almost instantly.
Flynne fired a series of arrows into the pointy teeth of the closest vampire, and they reacted by all leaping savagely on Janga’s small form. The sound of pounding fists and teeth scraping along steel armour shrieked through the air, but from under the three pale bodies came the muffled voice of the cleric.
“It’s fine. I’m fine. It’s dark under here, though…”
Fez’s earth elemental form was crumbled slightly by another series of dark lancing spells striking him. Between shouting instructions up at the building, I cast a spell at the three liches, and one of them began to make the noises of a popular children’s skipping rhyme.
Janga’s muffled voice sounded like an effort to repel the undead, but they remained piled on top of him, whilst in the background Fez turned into a tall were-tiger, which pounced down onto the liches, sweeping two of them aside in only one blow, and he unleashed the remainder of his fury on the last one, which collapsed to the floor amidst the sound of dozens of delighted and laughing children.
Amidst the twang and thwack of heavy arrows into dead bodies, the vampires continued their assault on Janga, all trying to grab him and drag him to the floor; they slid off him as a forgotten spell took effect; I blasted the flesh off one of them, and Fez turned with a gleam in his eye.
After that, it was just mopping up.
“Assault the foe! Overcome!”
“Retreat into the temple of Hextor!”
“---!”
The three high priests variously bellowed contradictory advice or screamed impotently from within Janga’s bubble of silenced air. The mob of civilians looked confused and were totally unable to decide who to follow, or else were distracted by Flynne cartwheeling up through the air to balance on the spire of the Hextorite temple from where he sent an arrow driving down into the knights on the other side of the square.
Transforming into a lion-headed celestial form, Fez pounced, flying 50 feet across the heads of the astonished citizens, to land in front of one of the worm-eyed knights and hack heavily at it with his adamantine sunblade. Ignoring him, the knight lashed out away from Fez, killing a civilian in an instant, whilst blood spurted from about a dozen others who were killed by the other knights.
From my heightened position, I added my voice to the two audible high priests, shouting that the people should head into the largest of the three temples, that of Hextor, for safety, which the Hextorite priest was already calling for. The Kord priest, bellowing instructions to attack until the muscles in his neck bunched and tightened.
Glaring at him, I began to focus my attention on him. Whilst my words remained unchanged, I changed my cadence and stresses to time with his breaths and his visible pulse. Gradually, he became distracted, and his shouts broke and ceased. As I continued to call for people to run for safety, the Kordite priest could do nothing more than simply stare at me in total fascination.
Janga was busy as well. He hovered over the crowd, tiny wings on his boots flapping madly as he cast a powerful healing spell, which burst over many of the Kyuss knights and caused their flesh to crack and dust to spill to the ground. Two of the knights collapsed completely, whilst half a dozen others shuddered and looked severely damaged.
Flynne’s arrows began to slam down in a constant stream, and as one of the corpse-knights collapsed, he shifted his aim to start to fire on another. Fez, meanwhile, swelled tremendously to tower over the Kyuss-spawn in the form of a Solar. His massive sun-sword grew as well, and he began to move in a blur with the magical powers of his own enchanted boots. Within a moment, three of the damaged undead were lying in pieces strewn across the street.
With fiendish accuracy, the six remaining undead lifted and dropped their tomb-blades in perfect unison and six more citizens spilled their life’s blood across the street.
“Flee the undead! My acolytes and I will resolve the situation!”
It was the priestess of Wee Jass, who had stepped out of the silences sphere – distracting the citizens who still stood out in the square from following the instructions of myself and the other high priest. As I was about to turn my attention on her, Janga flew through the air and simply punched her in the face with one small gauntleted fist. She fell silent in astonishment at the gnome’s nerve and stared haughtily down at him – seeming to have forgotten the attacking undead.
Whilst a few of Fez’s powerful blows went wide, Flynne’s did not, and another of the knights fell, by which time I had called so many of the citizens into safety that the large Hextorite temple was filled, and I had to call out to the others that they should run into the temple of Kord instead.
Janga and the priestess of Wee Jass began to wrestle; flying boots and heavy armour proving telling as Janga’s tiny form was swirtly behind the much taller woman, putting her in a half nelson and forcing her head and shoulders back into the globe of silence. Though I couldn’t hear her language, it looked ugly.
Still under withering fire, two more of the undead collapsed, one hacked in two by Fez’s massive blade. Three more citizens died in response, but then I managed to get all the remaining survivors into the safety of the temple of Kord, and Janga released then apologised to the high priestess of the death goddess.
With nobody to protect, Fez and Flynne were able to make incredibly short work of the last three Kyuss Knights.
.oOo.
“I have cast a spell of divination,” roared the high priest of Kord into our faces, ignoring the fact that he was clearly spitting across our armoured bodies. Either the man was almost completely deaf, or treated even simple things like conversation as a challenge.
“In my visions, I saw an altar,” he continued loud enough to be heard across the now empty square. “The powers of the altar assist the worm God and casts this deathly pallor across the city. It is to be found ‘beneath the lair of the silver dragon’, but I do not know what that means.”
We looked at one another. “We do,” I told him, then shouted it a second time in case he hadn’t caught me.
As we turned to go, easing weapons from their scabbards as we set off.
“Return when the dragon is slain,” shouted the priest of Kord. “It would be a righteous subject for a guest sermon. I shall be speaking for the next three hours, but then you would be free to talk for a little.
I nodded, but before I could leave another voice spoke up.
“Thank you for the audience,” came the sneering voice of the priest of Hextor. The sacrifices begin in four hours. As he stepped back into the temple, there came the sound of chains and a bar falling across.
“We’ll add it to the list,” we agreed as we headed for Lashonna’s mansion house.
.oOo.
In crossing the town to Lashonna’s home, we passed close to the DeLuxury, the massive hotel we had stayed at whilst we were in the city months ago. Down a side street, we spotted a gout of fire bursting across the barricaded front doors – perhaps two dozen undead pulled at the wooden supports whilst three robed figures flung spells to blast the hotel open. Several vampires and a tall Kyuss Knight led the assault.
From a top window, we could see the owner, Armin, ducking away from a spell before yelling for help and flinging a number of heavy brass pans down towards the attacking undead. Shag Solomon could be seen praying in another high window.
Sighing deeply, we stepped off our course as we did what we could to help.
.oOo.
Running towards a pair of the four vampires, Fez began waving his sunblade overhead, and piercing daylight erupted around him; cowering away as their skin hissed and burned, they moved towards Janga, Flynne and myself, soon joined by their two comrades. Flynne wasn’t expecting this, and was looking at the heavily armoured Kyuss Knight as he sent 5 arrows slamming through the figure’s backplate. All of the arrows punched through, but the figure turned to stare at us – two thick worms in its eye sockets questing towards us.
Three dark spells lanced at Fez, snapping and crackling with evil powers, but they all slammed into his back; but some property of the celestial form he was wearing threw off the magic of the three disintegration spells.
I pulled out a staff I had commissioned months before, and fired a blast of sunlight which tore off the head of the closest vampire; beyond an elderly woman was torn out of a window by one of the vampire spawn, and I started to call up instructions to the defenders on how to stay safe.
The Kyuss Knight lunged at Fez, and one of the worms in its eye sockets lashed out and swelled noticeably as it tore something from him. The steadfast barbarian howled in pain.
Janga smashed at a vampire with his little mace, whilst Fez grew into a massive earth elemental. His sunblade (now eight feet in length), lashed down onto the Kyuss Knight, bisecting it almost instantly.
Flynne fired a series of arrows into the pointy teeth of the closest vampire, and they reacted by all leaping savagely on Janga’s small form. The sound of pounding fists and teeth scraping along steel armour shrieked through the air, but from under the three pale bodies came the muffled voice of the cleric.
“It’s fine. I’m fine. It’s dark under here, though…”
Fez’s earth elemental form was crumbled slightly by another series of dark lancing spells striking him. Between shouting instructions up at the building, I cast a spell at the three liches, and one of them began to make the noises of a popular children’s skipping rhyme.
Janga’s muffled voice sounded like an effort to repel the undead, but they remained piled on top of him, whilst in the background Fez turned into a tall were-tiger, which pounced down onto the liches, sweeping two of them aside in only one blow, and he unleashed the remainder of his fury on the last one, which collapsed to the floor amidst the sound of dozens of delighted and laughing children.
Amidst the twang and thwack of heavy arrows into dead bodies, the vampires continued their assault on Janga, all trying to grab him and drag him to the floor; they slid off him as a forgotten spell took effect; I blasted the flesh off one of them, and Fez turned with a gleam in his eye.
After that, it was just mopping up.
