You look through the barn to find some kind of temporary weapon, but you come up short. The only thing around here is a rusty pitchfork, too blunt to do anything but pick hay, and a scythe. It's a very well-cared for scythe, admittedly. The edge has been kept very sharp, and the wood looks to be from the jungle trees. That makes for flexible wood, and it has an auburn color to it. The metal is fairly high-quality as well.
Of course, that doesn't make it a good weapon in the slightest. It's a scythe! Unless you mean to menace grass, you're not really going to kill too many things with it! Still, it's better than the pitchfork, most likely, so you just take that. If nothing else, you look pretty cool. You move on to phase two of your master plan. You open up the cells of all the cattle, and most of them obediently follow the rest to an open field. The fence is closed, of course, so after a while they just start to wander. The bull is still rather riled up at you, but considering you're on the ceiling when you open his cage (using the long scythe to open the latch. It has SOME uses) it quickly has to give up on goring you.
After the cows spread out a little bit, you go to the crops. Most of them seem a bit early to harvest, but you take whatever your remaining spiders can carry, more to deprive the vampire of food than to actually take it for yourself. Of course, what the spiders can take is actually kind of limited, so you barely even make a dent. This is more to feel good about yourself than it is to make a real war effort.
By now, enough was enough. The smoke is almost certainly attracting others, so you better get moving. The farmhouse itself is collapsing, the support beams must have finally collapsed. Soon, all that will be left is some stones and ashes. You hope the owner won't mind too much, unless that owner is evil or something. Forget him, in that case.
The journey back is fortunately uneventful. You pass the make-shift barricade you erected with the rest of the group. The original idea was to use the undead, but they're just not intelligent enough to make a proper barricade. At best, they pooped out a little webbing. Because they're undead, they can't even make a lot of webbing anymore. It's their current amount of webbing, and nothing else. They don't produce anything else. Considering how you make your webbing essentially on the fly, that doesn't leave a whole lot available from these things. You are starting to wonder why you even bothered getting these things with how often they proved useless.
You think you see the "weird" building in the distance, too. Whether it's a ruin or just an old house wasn't sure, but it had an old wrought iron fence around it and a sign or two with "stay out". The signs were old, however, so it must have been a while since anybody bothered to come near.
Naturally, the adventurers were happy to stick their noses in there.
Back at "base", or whatever you call the small grove you decided to home, you see that your party has already returned from their sabotage mission. They look tired, but nobody seems overly injured. Yunikki is in her underwear again, doing her best to fix her armor. She's using a small smithing hammer to get the dents out. The holes, almost certainly from the crossbow bolts, are tougher to fix, of course. She doesn't have any wounds on her, so you guess that it didn't get worse than a hole in her armor. Still, it must have been touch and go quite a few times. With the help of Sucy, she can close up the holes a bit using some kind of hardening goop. You don't know the details, but it leaves an ugly white mark where the hole used to be. Better than nothing, but maybe a patch of leather or cloth may serve as a better way to reinforce it a bit. That's just your opinion, though, and you're fairly firm in your use of lighter armors. Your story about Hellborn certainly interested most people, but the most important thing is that the vampire is bringing in all sorts of people to help in this "game". Meandra guesses that the fiery maniac must be related to the furred lady that wanders around the castle. Which brings you back to the berserker's brew you asked Sucy to look into. Unfortunately, it's a rather difficult thing to make with the resources at hand. If there was a properly stocked alchemist's storage, you'd be able to make one, but your group only has a fairly boring forest and spiders available.
She did make large jars filled with spiders, though. She stole a lot of vases and other containers from the outpost, and promptly filled them up with spiders. When asked as to WHY she filled pots up to the brim with all sorts of spiders, she admits she only did it because it was funny.
Just what is up with this girl?
A long while later, you see the adventurer party. They look... shaken. For the first time, there's no boasts, jokes, stories or snide remarks. They just enter and sit down, clearly exhausted from something. They don't seem willing to answer any question about the weird house, but the kobolt rogue eventually talks. Apparently, the house is filled to the brim with ghosts. And not the fighting kind, either, they just talk. And worse, they make you experience their deaths and tragedies. When they possess you, you just get to experience the worst and/or last moments of their former lives. The party continued on for a while, and found a strange door into the cellar, but that was the point all the ghosts told them to turn back. After they had all experienced death at least a dozen times, they were inclined to follow that order. Physically, they're fine, but emotionally they're just exhausted. Maybe a good night's sleep will help them out. It's getting a little late, anyhow. Setting up a proper base took up the rest of the day, anyhow.
The party goes to sleep, and you pretend to do the same. Of course, you haven't had a proper night's sleep for a few years, at this point. You make do with very little, and you suspect your faint headaches at the end of the day probably have something to do with that. Still, that night, you get a visit from one of the adventurers. You hadn't noticed him before, he was the sword-and-boarder without a journal. He was quite a bit taller than his stouter counterpart, with a very strong chin. That's about the end of his defining features, however.
Hello, drider... I noticed you're sleeping as well as I am?I get bad dreams. I think. I don't even remember what it is that keeps me from sleeping, but I have a pretty good idea. I've... seen some things. You can't repress a shudder as you remember the tearing of flesh and splitting of bone.
Hm. I'm still haunted by the things those ghosts had shown us. That house has had an evil history, and it would only get worse as you went deeper... I drowned twice, today. People I didn't see. A brother that stabbed me... And four times that a husband would beat me to death. I don't know if it was a big messed up family history or just a curse that lies on the location itself. Hardly matters, I suppose....How is it? Death, I mean....Cold. You feel the pain dulling, the panic fall away, and then you're left with nothing but a cold, dark feeling. You lose your senses, one by one. Sight is first.
Then touch. You feel like you're just in a black sea. Then you lose the ability to taste or smell. Finally, the last thing to go is the hearing. The worst part is how... after you lose your sight, you feel so relaxed and... done. Like you're at the end of a long day. But the dread behind not getting another is... harrowing. Then the reaper comes. I've met him, you know?You have met death? No wonder you are such a capable necromancer.He likes the company. Truly? Well, do put in a good word for me, then? I'd like to post-pone his services as long as possible, I'm afraid. He doesn't care if you escape him, you know. Everyone dies eventually, even the so-called "immortals". It doesn't concern him when he needs to do his job.
What does he look like?What you expect. And I mean that literally. He takes on the form and attitude that is what the client expected. On his off hours, he's just a skeleton with a bit of a soft voice. And a quality to it that I can't quite describe...Makes sense. Tell me, what keeps you up.I don't want to talk about it. At all.That bad?I'll admit I wished a few times that I died there. I hated feeling so helpless, and still feeling helpless about remembering it. I'm... partly over it now, of course. I had four years to take a chill pill. But the insomnia remained... Speaking of which, I'm going to check if I can fight it off. Good night, don't let the bed bugs bite.
No really, I think one of the spider jars tipped over. Get some plans ready for tomorrow. And find some way to get a proper weapon, the scythe will not work out.Map
Basic Stats
Level: 9
HP: 20/25
Mana: 48/48
Stress: 10/75
Thirst: Sated
Items and equipment
Equipment:
Carapaced leather armor
Scythe
Gardener's Shield
Bolas(x4)
Handmade Bola
Items:
Spare Clothing (x4)
Blood Vials (x8)
Poisonbox
Journal
Spellbook
Cookbook
Stashed away:
Spare clothing (x10)
Fancy clothing
Skills and spells
Magic:
Resurrect vermin: Allows you to resurrect very small creatures such as rats(invests 2 of your max mana) (no mana cost)
Resurrect average beast: Allows you to resurrect creatures such as dogs, cats and other similar-sized creatures.(invests 7 mana) (no mana cost)
Resurrect Humanoid: Allows you to resurrect humanoid creatures. (Invests 10 mana) (Costs 15 mana)
Reshape minion plus!: Allows you to majorly change the appearance of your resurrected minions.
Minion Vision: Allows you to see what a minion sees. The minion must have eyes.
Animate Piece: Allows you to animate just a piece of dead tissue. It requires your constant attention, and cannot act independently. (Drains 1 mana per three seconds)
Graft: Allows you to use dead tissue as a replacement limb. Requires a lot of mana. (2 per second) (average limb takes around 20 seconds to properly graft)
Gather Soul: Allows you to make a soul visible. You could try putting it in a flame of some sort to keep it around. (10 mana)
Soul battery: Allows you to use a soul-infused flame as a small mana-boost. This snuffs it out, however
Undead flashbang: Allows you to blow up a minion for a flash-bang effect. (10 mana)
Stitch: allows you to close a wound and stop bleeding as fast as you can stitch. Costs very little mana, but requires something to stitch with.
Siphoning Cloud: Breathe out a cloud that drains the life from victims and gives it to you. Adds a LOT to intimidation (5 mana)
Smoke Cloud: Breathe out harmless but thick smoke. (2 mana)
Deathbolt: A bolt that hurts the body's connection with it's soul. Causes minor wounds to appear over the body as it attempts to compensate (2 mana)
Doombolt: A more powerful version of the above (5 Mana)
Familiar
Tiny Skeletal Dragon (a little toasted)
Skills:
Poison Stinger (Stings a bit)
Oral Fixation: Can cast spells spells from the mouth.
Draining Limbs: Can drain blood using pedipalps.
Major experience in blocking and swords.
Climber
Crafty: Bolas
Cooking skill: Excellent
Corpse Cutting: Quite Decent.
Animal handling: inexperienced.
Necromantic knowledge
Soul Sniffer