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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lazybones" data-source="post: 3582675" data-attributes="member: 143">Thanks for delurking to comment, aus_autarch!I've updated the stats for the core characters in the Rogues' Gallery thread (see my sig for the link).RE the enhanced undead: per the module, any undead with 50 yards of the source of the evil aura (which we'll get to tomorrow) gets its hit dice tripled, a +12 against turning attempts, +4 to AC, and +6 to attack, damage, and saves. Basically it's a mobile desecrate spell on steroids. Today's theme is "just when you thought it couldn't get any worse..." Basically, the motto of the Doomed Bastards.* * * * * Chapter 186THE TRUE METTLEDar was surrounded.  Talen was down.  Shay and Kalend had been driven up against the tunnel walls, under heavy attack.  And behind the front ranks of foes, dozens and dozens of zombies continued to push forward.  Dar refused to go down, even with four zombies grappling him, and at least a half-dozen others trying to push around their companions to get to him.  But even with his incredible strength, he could not work enough leverage to pull free.  A zombie, knocked over in the struggle, was trying to get hold of his ankles. Varo stepped forward, and touched one of the zombies holding onto Dar on the shoulder.  Blue light flared, and rotten flesh melted away from his touch as the cure serious wounds spell coursed through it.  With his hide from undead dispelled by his attack, the zombie turned away from Dar and lunged at Varo, delivering a powerful blow that clipped him hard on the shoulder.  Varo did not retreat, and met the zombie’s surge with a pair of clumsy but powerful slashes from his magical dagger.  The odd mithral blade sliced through the zombie as though its flesh were parchment, and it crumpled.  Varo started forward to attack another of Dar’s foes, but the fighter had taken advantage of the help to finally tear free.  Staggering back, avoiding the swipes from the zombie on the ground, he unleashed a full attack into the monsters following him.  There were few creatures, living or dead, that could withstand blows from Valor when the fighter wielded the weapon with both hands and his full strength behind the blows.  The first zombie was hurled aside with a missing leg and an arm dangling by a few tenuous strips of sinew.  Dar followed through on the second blow, taking off the next zombie’s leg at the knee, toppling it over into a third.  The crippled zombie fell onto the ground but kept coming, using its arms to flop forward, even as its companions trod heavily upon its back.  “Thanks,” the fighter muttered to Varo, as the two fell back into place in the defensive line. Talen had likewise been in a very difficult position, although his armor kept him from being torn apart in those first few seconds after he’d fallen.  He slipped his arm out of the straps of his shield, and tried with both hands to free his sword from the chest of the zombie that had pulled it away.  The zombie holding his shield fell back clumsily, but almost at once another was there, pounding his side with both fists.  Another got ahold of his helmet, and with the broken chin strap it was able to yank it off his head, gashing his cheek in the process.  Talen could not see, but he could imagine the hands coming down toward his exposed head, ready to tear his flesh from the skull...A woman’s cry drew the knight’s attention up, through the press of hands and the chorus of moans that enveloped him.  Allera and Serah charged forward to Talen’s aid, and they brought the holy magic of their calling with them.  Each seized one of the zombies atop Talen, and while their pushes were not strong, positive energy flowed at the contact, and zombie flesh boiled away.  The zombies tried to turn to face these new threats, but lying half-upon Talen they lacked leverage, and only managed to roll off the embattled knight.  Several zombies rushed forward to engage the two women, but were distracted as Snaggletooth became visible and darted low overhead, lashing out at a few of them with his hind claws as he passed.  The zombies reached up at the faerie dragon as he passed, but he ducked and weaved and avoided their clumsy grabs.  “Get up, Talen!” Allera yelled, grabbing Talen’s arm and helping him to his feet.  Two zombies continued to tug on his armor, but with a grunt of effort he tore free.  Beatus Incendia burned bright in his hand, and as he stood he was finally able to rip it free from the fallen zombie’s chest.  Serah yelled in alarm as a zombie grabbed onto her from behind, locking an arm around her neck.  Talen, guided by her cry and the rough moan coming from the zombie, thrust his sword up through its head, impaling a foot of steel through the middle of its skull. “For Camar!” Talen yelled, taking the hilt of the sword in both hands, and swinging the blade, with the zombie still stuck on it, across the charging rush.  The zombie he’d stuck crashed into another two, sending all three to the ground.  The first zombie’s head came apart as it fell, freeing the knight’s sword.  Another zombie came at his flank before he could recover, but Allera stabbed it with her wand of healing, holding the device like a dagger.  A big chunk of the zombie’s torso came apart.  It turned and struck Allera hard across the chest, knocking her back, but before it could follow up Talen smashed his sword across its back, driving it to the ground.  Shay found herself back against the wall, with nowhere to go.  The zombie reached up toward her face, so she fell into a crouch.  The zombie crashed into the wall, but quickly recovered, and bent to grab the scout.  Shay sidestepped, but quickly realized that all routes led only into more zombies, as another pair tried to cram into the niche.  She deflected a grab at her arm, and leapt straight up, spreading her legs wide at the apogee of her leap to catch on the walls of the alcove.  Hanging there, precariously balanced a few inches above the reach of the zombies, she started hewing with her sword.  Kalend had turned from the painful critical hit that had crushed his jaw to see another undead fist coming down to finish the job.  The thief resolutely lifted his sword to try and take the foe down with him, but before the zombie’s punch could land, the creature staggered to the side and fell, right into the path of Kalend’s other opponent.  The second zombie diverted around its fallen ally, but the distraction gave him a chance to get in a few strokes of his sword.  His weapon had once belonged to a legion commander, and bore an edge that never grew dull.  The story of its passage into his hands was a long one, but it sufficed that it cut deep into the zombie’s body.  His foe staggered as something cut into it from the side.  The goblin Filcher appeared, dodging both the grab of the one he’d tripped, and the attack of this second foe, as he fell back to take up position beside Kalend. “I thought you’d gotten out of here,” Kalend said—or tried to; his broken jaw made the sounds jumbled and indistinct.The goblin seemed to understand the gist of what he’d tried to say, however.  “I do not swim very well,” he said, lifting his own small sword as the pair of them met the zombie’s rush.  A head flew past and bounced off the wall near them, rolling to a stop at their feet; Dar was still hewing away not three paces distant.  The zombies just kept on coming, as fast as the companions could kill them.  But somehow, despite the constant push, the line held.  The companions were driven back, slowly, step by step, toward the river at their backs, leaving a mound of corpses in their wake.  Talen and Dar, anchoring the line at its center, formed a blur of steel around them, into which zombies were fed like vegetables to a chef’s dicer.  The heaps of destroyed corpses were making footing difficult, and zombies were falling to the ground as often as they were able to unleash attacks.  Shay was caught behind the zombie lines by the retreat, but she was able to kick off the wall and land next to Allera, spinning and returning to the line just in time to deflect a zombie coming at Talen’s flank.  Allera and Serah worked up and down the line, using their wands to alternately heal their companions and damage zombies, as the case demanded.  Even Snaggletooth got into the fray, flying low over the front ranks of the zombie horde, distracting them, occasionally dropping small sharp stones onto their heads accompanied by little chirruped taunts.  They fell back, leaving a wreckage of bodies in their wake.  The zombies paid no heed to their losses; this was an enemy that would not cease its attack short of utter annihilation of either themselves or the foe.  Those that stumbled over the bodies of their allies either pulled themselves awkwardly back to their feet or simply crawled forward on their hands and knees, trampled by their fellows in the chaotic rush to get to the living beings ahead.  They were all showing signs of fatigue, especially the two fighters that formed the lynchpin of their line.  The zombies did not get tired, and their rush was just as ferocious as it had been in the initial surge.  Somehow Dar and Talen kept their stances intact, sweeping their deadly blades around with mechanical precision into the ranks of the foe.  Shay kept her position at Talen’s left, directing him with subtle cues, staying back enough so as not to step into the reach of his blind swings.  She was not idle; zombies continued to press forward along the wall, and she was forced to put her own blade to work keeping the foe from turning their flank. On the opposite side of the line, Kalend and Filcher kept up their defense, the goblin tripping foes while Kalend hacked at them with his sword.  Serah had come to their end of the battle long enough to heal the rogue with her wand, and poke a zombie that had tried to grapple Filcher.  The goblin was like quicksilver, slivering out of the grasps of the undead before they could get a solid purchase on him.  They continued to give ground, reforming their defense with every step back, leaving dead zombies in their wake.  But then the river was behind them, and there was nowhere left to retreat.  As if somehow capable of sensing that the tide was about to turn, the zombies surged forward, putting added pressure on the defenders.“Tell me you got another trick up your sleeve, priest!” Dar yelled over his shoulder at Varo, as he cut through a zombie’s skull with a two-handed swing from Valor.  The cleric, standing a few steps back along the edge of the river, did not respond.  Dar could not spare him any more attention, as four zombies pressed forward in a tangled mass, threatening to overbear him with sheer weight, and drive him back into the fast-moving water. And that’s when the flame strike hit.  Their only warning was a soft roar, barely audible over the noise of the river, that immediately exploded into a coruscating column of eager yellow fire.  The spiraling flames surged down from the tunnel ceiling above them, crashing into the center of their line, enveloping the two fighters.  Dar and Talen both screamed as the fire blazed through their armor and mercilessly scored their flesh.  The flames did not discriminate friend from foe, and likewise the front ranks of the zombie horde were swept, the holy fire searing the rotting flesh from their bones.  But the zombies could afford the losses, and even as a half-dozen crumpled in mangled black heaps, more were staggering forward over the corpses, showing burns that would have left a living foe screaming on the ground in pain. The flames washed out from the point of impact of the strike.  Allera covered her face with her arms, the white flesh crinkling and turning black as the blast washed over her.  Serah, standing next to Varo, was just a heartbeat slower, and took the force of the spell full in her face.  The cleric was knocked over onto her back, her hips bisecting the line between the river and the tunnel, her upper body quickly sinking into the torrent.  Varo, less than a pace away from the priestess, did not seem to be affected at all, the flames rushing around him as though he was not even there.  Though the exploding flames filled the breadth of the tunnel, those on the flanks were able to avoid the worst of the spell.  Kalend and Filcher were able to step behind the bodies of the zombies they were fighting, letting the undead absorb the force of the blast.  On the other side of the battle line Shay just got lucky, as a zombie had leapt onto her seconds before the blast, serving as an impromptu shield for the scout.  Both were driven against the adjacent wall, but as the flames died she elbowed the now-limp creature off her, its entire backside a sickening mass of roasted flesh.  Dar glanced back, ignoring the stabbing pains that seemed to pierce through every inch of his upper body.  Stinging tears filled his eyes as he tried to blink away the smoke and confusion, but he could still see Serah slipping away into the river, and Varo standing there motionless beside her.  “Help the priestess!” he yelled at the cleric.  When Varo did not respond, he took a step toward her himself, but was forced to stop as the next wave of zombies fell upon him.  Growling a curse, he reached out to grab Varo and thrust him toward the unconscious woman.  To his surprise, his hand went right through the cleric.  It was an illusion; Varo was not there. "Freaking bastard!” Dar exclaimed.  Off balance, he could not recover in time as the four zombies lurched into him from behind, knocking him over.  The lot of them passed right through the mocking figment of the cleric, falling with a loud splash into the river.</blockquote>

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