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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dr Midnight" data-source="post: 3643920" data-attributes="member: 69">Session 3 - Chapter 2 DEAD CITYThe two adventurers and the black leopard carefully wove their way up the street, taking the time to avoid touching zombies as they passed. “Remember,” Gerrit said. “If we attack, the spell that hides us is canceled.” Arianna nodded.The scenery was horrific. Groaning zombies melted into and out of view on a desolate street. Doors or windows that weren’t barricaded were smashed in, and the grisly details seen within suggested tales of terror,  hopeless fighting and screaming death. Looking in on the gore was weighing on the minds of the halfling and the elf, bowing them from the strain, so after a time they did their best not to look.The everpresent mists cleared slightly, revealing a human body lying face down in the street amid the garbage. One of the buildings facing the street had its door smashed in. It looked like this poor fellow had been dragged from him home and partially devoured. His face had been gnawed off and the skull gleamed white where it peeked out from the black-red mess of his uneaten musculature.Gerrit made a motion that he would go and scout ahead… there was a fork in the road coming, and he wanted to pick the least populated direction to move in. He walked off, leaving the elf and her panther to stand near the eaten man. The corpse’s shoulder twitched. In a flash, Arianna had her bow drawn and an arrow nocked. She and Jade stepped back from the corpse and watched it. Its chest began to jerk. Its neck wriggled, slightly. Arianna watched its head for any movement, fully expecting the corpse to rise as a zombie. That’s why she was so surprised when its ribcage burst open with a moist cracking sound. Coagulated blood misted up around the wound as an immense, fat, pulsating worm rose up from the chest cavity like a cobra. It was a maggot, clearly, but it was maybe a foot in diameter. Its black mandibles clicked and it seemed to be looking to Jade. It chittered and hissed. Arianna’s lip curled up out of disgust. At least it’s living or it couldn’t see us, she thought. Not undead…which means it’s okay to put it out of my misery. She aimed her bow at it.Gerrit, maybe twenty feet away, had gauged that he wanted to take the right path. A zombie emerged from a door and the halfling had to jump back to avoid being brushed by it as it passed. Pressed against a wall as he was, he saw Arianna with her bow drawn against the maggot. He extended an arm and said “Arianna, no!!” It was too late… She’d released her grip on the string and it thrummed. The arrow shot into the maggot with a wet spluck sound. The zombies all around turned to them and started opening their jaws, walking forward.“I thought you said don’t attack any undead and we’ll be safe,” Arianna cried.“No, I said don’t attack! Anything! At all!”“Arrgh… well, I don’t know these things!” The elf pulled two arrows and plugged them into the zombie behind Gerrit, sinking them to the fletching. It kept coming and made a grab at him. The exposed finger-bones of the zombie scraped small cuts in Gerrit’s skin and immediately he felt something flush into his bloodstream. He kicked the zombie in the leg and spun away.The corpse on the ground writhed again as another maggot burst from the abdominal area, trailing intestines down its length. The maggot that had been shot was still very much alive, and together, they lunged for Jade. They bit at her and a quick paralysis overtook the large cat’s nervous system. Meowing slightly, she fell over on her side with a thud. The maggots clicked their mandibles together, anticipating their meal. Viscous drool oozed from their maws. Arianna reacted by feathering the maggots with arrows at a blinding speed. Try as she could to pin them down, their shapeless jelly-bodies didn’t die and the maggots lurched for her cat. Zombies were emerging from buildings and coming from the mists. They tried to overwhelm Gerrit but the halfling moved quickly, ducking and dodging among them. The maggots sank their jaws into Jade and began gorging. Arianna panicked… try as she might, she couldn’t seem to kill the things. It was clear that a few more moments and the cat would be dead. “Hold on!” Gerrit said. He began preparing a spell that would heal the cat, and he moved towards them. The spell glowed in his hand, ready to be cast. “I’m coming! I won’t let them… agh!!” A zombie had come from behind and sank its teeth into the firm meat of Gerrit’s shoulder. The halfling grunted from the pain and his arm whipped up to punch the zombie with a snap-backhand. “Get… off!” He discharged the healing spell as his fist-connected, and the zombie’s head rocked back from the blow. Holy energy coursed within its head, making war with the unholy forces that made the dead walk. The zombie fell down dead.Arianna planted two more arrows into one of the maggots, then two more, then two more. The pudding-skin of the thing burst and foul-smelling white jelly spread from it. It was down, but its brother survived. Gerrit called upon the power of Vennia to turn the undead. His holy symbol flared to brilliant greenish-white life and the majority of the zombies around them shielded their eyes, lurching away. Arianna planted both hands on her dying panther’s body, releasing healing energies into it. At the same time, her foot shot out and ground the remaining maggot into paste. It popped as the other had and died in a splash of pearlescent, clotted yellow-white. Gerrit was fighting zombies in hand-to-hand combat. It wasn’t working tremendously well, and Arianna’s own attacks weren’t having much success either. The halfling yelled an explanation as he ducked a clumsy swipe. “The zombies don’t respond well to arrows or blunt damage… which, I’m afraid, is all we have. Slashing weapons work best!” Arianna thought on that for a second, then went to the side of the road and pulled a plank off of one of the barricaded windows. With her druidic power she shaped the wood, running a hand up and down it, forming a handle, forming a blade.Jade got shakily to her feet, hissing at the maggot-corpses. She ran and leaped, tackling a zombie that had been approaching Gerrit. Her jaws bit and her claws raked, tearing off grayish bits of meat with each attack. The zombie pushed at her fruitlessly, and then got a grip on her neck, then leaned forward to bite.A shadow fell over the zombie, and it looked up to see Arianna holding aloft her rudimentary wooden sword. “Hands off my kitty,” she growled as she swung. The zombie was killed. The zombies were retreating or dead, but more were approaching through the mists, as Gerrit could hear. “Come on,” he called. Together they ducked into the building with the smashed-in door, and ran up the stairs. Once there, they gathered beds, bureaus, anything they could find and pushed them down the stairs to form a barricade at the staircase’s bottom. They hid in one of the rooms, healing, as the undead milled about downstairs.Coming up HORROR  IN TOWN SQUARE.</blockquote>

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