First night
CrazyabeI Attempt to set the dammed Corpses on fire, that is one way to keep them down.
Afterwards I help set up camp, Tie up wounds Other Simple things I can help with.
Crazyabe, lacking any firestarting tools or materials, finds some twigs off the side of the road and futilely rubs them together, failing to create a fire. Eventually he gives up and instead assists with keeping pressure on Pencil's wound so as to minimize blood loss.
Romans, Andres, Hawkhelp with setting up the camp and perimeter
Andres helps set up camp
Help Andres with setting up camp.
Romans, watching Crazyabe's attempts with some amusement, pulls out her flint and steel. With some assistance from Andres and hawk gathering tinder and wood, the three manage to get a fire going in short order. Having not expressed any preference otherwise, you set up camp around the fire in the middle of the road.
Andres, Crazyabeoffload the zombie bits on the fireplace
set the dammed Corpses on fire
Handling the still moving zombie parts carefully, you toss them into the fire. The smell, surprisingly, is not entirely unpleasant. Reminds you vaguely of pig.
Dustan, Romansstart using twine to set up some tripwires around the camp. He didn't have anything to use as an alarm, but a human alarm works just as well as any bell.
While he was at it, he'd also try and set up some snare traps for animals, baiting them with whatever plant matter he could find that might be deemed edible to some other creature.
help with setting up the camp and perimeter
Dustan, meanwhile, heads off into the brush to set up some snares, while Romans ponders how to set up a perimeter.
Setting up tripwires around the camp proves difficult, as you've set up in the middle of the road. With the nearest tree about 50 feet away and only 100 feet of twine, there isn't much to secure a tripwire to. You try pushing twigs into the ground, but the dirt of the road is hard-packed and it's difficult to make this work. And it's unlikely to be sturdy enough to trip anything. if you'd decided to set up camp in a more defensible position, this might have worked. But having nonchalantly set up with no particular planning, tripwires aren't going to happen. On the bright side, having set up on the road does give you a full field of view with no obstructions for attackers to hide behind. The person on watch havidn clear view of any attackers from a hundred feet away might be of more benefit than camping between trees and only having enough twine to set up tripwires around a small portion of your camp. Or perhaps not.
But either way, perhaps more precise planning would help in the future.
DigialDemon, Romans and AndresSet up some tripwires away from camp, to potentially halt the zombies, and then attempt to find and shoot a bird. If successful, begin plucking it and attempt to cook it. Use the feathers to fill a sack, and sleep on it.
Boil the water we got from the lake using one of the helmets we have from Hawk or Andre, and use some of it to clean Pencils wound and then heal it to the best of my abilities.
Lend Romans my helmet.
With a healthy fire going, Andres donates his helmet, and you set up some sticks to use it as a cooking pot to boil the unpurified lakewater from Romans' and Pencil's skins. They've both glad to finally be doing this, as they've been drinking water all day on the road that tastes a bit off and smells strongly of algae. When finishing boiling the water, you return it to the skins, hoping that the heat from the water is sufficient to sterilize the inside of the skins themselves. When Andres gets his helmet back it's black and covered with soot. He's able to rub most of it off, but it looks like it will take some time with a cloth to clean it completely.
Romans, ,CrazyabeClean and attend to pencils wound as best as possible
Tie up wounds
Allowing the water to cool so as to avoid cooking him, you pour hot water onto Pencil's wound and clean it as best as you can, then bandage it tightly. Blood immediately begins seeping through the bandage, and you apply a second one on top of the first and apply more pressure to it.
Romans heal, target 70, roll 92+10 SuccessWhile there's nothing you can do about the chunk of flesh missing from his arm, you're confident that your ministrations will prevent the wound from becoming infected.
First watch - KashyykI'll take first watch, I'd appreciate some company though
Kashyyk offers to take first watch, and asks for company. Nobody volunteers. Shrugging, he resigns himself to be the lone guardian while the rest of you try to find the sweet spot between too near and too far from the fire. Mere minutes into his watch, before anyone has even managed to fall asleep, he notices that one of the zombie parts, an arm you think, seems to have somehow fallen off of the burning pile and lays perhaps a foot from the fire....
and is still moving.
Alerting everyone to the possible danger, Kashyyk uses a stick to push it back in. And watches as a few other body parts very obviously begin to slowly crawl their way out of the fire. Inspecting a charred, bony hand closely, to your great horror you see that it is
crawling across the dirt despite being no more than a pile of bones from which the flesh has been completely burned away.
Suppressing your horror, and realizing that you can't go to sleep with a dozen various still-functioning zombie parts a short crawl away, you eventually settle on attempting to bury them. The road is too hard-packed to dig without tools, so Kashyyk and DigitalDemon go to find a spot to dig a hole away from the camp while the rest of you slowly and carefully carry the various charred bones to their chosen spot.
First removing the topsoil, DigitalDemon stabs his knife into the ground to loosen it and dig a hole. It's difficult work, but after 10-15 minutes you have a hole large enough to toss the collection of still-moving blackened bones into, then cover it back up with dirt and stomp it to pack it tight. Trusting that this will be sufficient, you each return to camp and Kashyyk resumes his watch.
The rest of first watch is uneventful.
Second watch - RomansI'll take 2nd shift watch.
Waking her for her watch, Romans notes that she feels ill and that her stomach hurts, but she's confidant she's well enough to perform her watch as planned. After a few hours, there's a snapping noise followed by the crinkly whooshing sound of leaves rustling through air. Instantly on her feet she yells everyone awake. You each leap up and prepare for combat.
But nothing comes.
Cautiously, you bunch together and investigate the sound. It turns out to be one of Dustan's snares. It's caught a squirrel. Annoyed by the false alarm you return to camp and toss more wood onto the fire while Dustan retrieves the squirrel from his snare, cuts its head off and hangs it, then goes back to sleep.
Third watch - nobodyShortly before dawn Andres is awakened by something on top of him. He screams, causing the est of you to bolt awake yet again to see a zombie attempting to maul his through his chainmail. To your great fortune, the zombie is unable to bite through steel, and apart from breaking off several of its teeth, its attack is ineffective. Andres rolls it off of him and the rest of you dispatch it in short order.
You got lucky.
It takes half an hour to hack up the body and bury it like the other two. By this time the sun is peeking over the mountains, bringing the day. You're all tired and miserable from the lack of sleep and terrifying interruptions. Romans and Pencil both complain of aching stomachs. Pencil's arm aches and he has both pain and difficulty moving his wrist.
But you're all still alive.
You take your time to rouse yourselves and stretch, while discussing the night's revelations and debating what to do next. As you do, you spy a traveler on the road coming from south. Instantly suspicious, you draw your weapons, and he stops to call out a greeting. Perhaps not a zombie after all? Beckoning him forward you see that he is a tall, swarthy man with a well trimmed beard, carrying a bronze-tipped staff and wearing dark blue robes and strangely a lot of jewelry.
IronyOwnl joins the party(
GM comment: Rather than track partial days, I'm going to track food/water supplies on full-days only, during turns that include morning. )
* DigitalDemon, 2 days food & water
* Dustan, 2 days food & water, plus a raw dead squirrel on a string
* Hawk, 2 days food & water
* Kashyyk, 2 days food & water
* Romans, 2 days food, 6 days boiled lakewater
* Pencil, 1 day food, 5 days boiled lakewater
* Crazyabe, 2 days food & water
* Andres, 2 days food & water
* IronyOwl, 3 days food & water
Next time, food/water changes will be listed in the summary spoiler.
Pencil's arm is now bandaged. One day's worth of water used cleaning his wound.
Romans -2 bandages, +1 healing skill
Romans and Pencil have stomach aches and feel ill
Dustan, +1 trapping skill, 3 sets of 10 feet of twine cut from his spool, one of which has a dead squirrel dangling from it
Everybody -1 food and water