Session Log 2023-11-14

Klaitos and Ekkels were awakened from their short rest in the hangar by the arrival of the Torch militia and the crude hot air balloons. Klaitos helped set the balloons up in the warehouse plaza, but realized the persistent westerly wind would drag them - and their explosive payloads - directly into the wall of the hangar. As he contemplated this issue, he named the two hot air balloons - the Hitchit and the Ignis - after two of the most casually destructive individuals he knew.

Ekkels, for his part, went looking for Ignis and Robin, the former of whom he hadn't seen since he took a nap. He noticed signs of revelry - and varyingly conscious, alcohol-poisoned mutineer revelers - leading back towards the warehouse used for the party. He followed the train and encountered Robin and Ignis dragging a bandaged, unconscious lizardman.

Ekkels accepted this sight without question. The three of them dropped the lizardman off in the same warehouse as the drugged Angitt, and rejoined with Klaitos. The militia engineers were ready to start launching the makeshift ballooncraft, but nobody knew when the wind would die down enough to light the braziers. Klaitos, not wanting to waste any more time under the sky of tortured faces, took command and issued a battleplan to engage the dragons.

Angitt was awakened by Robin and Ignis. She was suprised at the sight of the lizardman assailant, incapacitated at their hands on the warehouse floor, but realized that he had come to free her from what must have looked like an abduction or arrest. Robin, still annoyed at the inexplicable violence of strangers, asked how she knew him. She identified him as her former second-in-command from the recently-slaughtered Crimson Arrow mercenary guild.

Ignis healed the unconscious lizardman, but his magic liquor dribbled out of his maw, and his worst injuries remained. Robin convinced Angitt to use one of the wall-mounted ballista, joining a team of similarly-placed militia sharpshooters, readying a burning bolt to shoot the hot-air balloon's oildrum. She took with her the unconscious lizardman. Ignis followed, to take position nearby on the battle-scarred hangar roof amidst obliterated aethercraft.

For her own position, Robin borrowed the woman's personal ballista, and had it mounted on a warehouse nearby as a second line of offense in case the fray descended from the skies. Other militia and mutineers positioned themselves around the plaza. Ekkels and Klaitos worked with the engineers in the center to start inflating the Hitchit.

As the balloon slowly swelled, the craft began dragging towards the Hangar wall. Ekkels borrowed Klaitos's storm magic, and the two of them attempted to divert the oncoming wind. They found it to be a massive force, and were unable to exert nearly enough power to stop very much of it. However, their spellwork was able to open a pocket of calm air around the Hitchit, extending part of the height of the wall. Dust and pebbles clattered on the ground at the stirring edge of their spell.

The balloon lifted off and began to rise, a few spans closer to the Hangar wall but otherwise unimpeded. Robin, Ignis, Angitt, and every soldier present scanned the skies for any sign of the ship-hunting zombie dragons. Klaitos left the wind spell in Ekkels's hands and raced into the Hangar building, vaulting up the stairs just inside the wall.

The Hitchit soon reached the ceiling of Ekkels' wind envelope. Klaitos, hearing the crowd panic, punched through the stone wall, taking out a significant chunk and damaging the stairwell beneath him. Backing up to the wall opposite the hole, with stabler footing, he saw the balloon careening towards him. He invoked his storm magic again to generate a second envelope of calm air in its path. The Hitchit's flight stabilized, and it climbed upward a few yards from the Hangar wall.

As the balloon crested the wall, it was Angitt's eye that caught the dragon first. The smaller zombie - the corpse of Byrix of the Emerald - dove out of the clouds directly at the Hitchit, floating only a few yards away from her. At close range, she was able to make a well-timed shot, detonating the oildrum in a fiery blast just as it reached the balloon. Burning rain splattered the dragon, Angitt, and the Hangar rooftop near Ignis. Wall rubble and burning oildrops pelted the engineers and Ekkels in the plaza below.

The dragon, struck by the fireball and partially ignited, landed violently at the edge of the wall. It flailed recklessly, tearing further stone chunks down past Klaitos and onto the plaza, and burned with a horrible smell. Ignis heard Angitt cry out, but to reach her would require he get past the thrashing zombie dragon. Opting to press his advantage instead, he tossed a jar of flammable grease at the dragon, fully igniting its wings. He called down to the plaza, telling them to send would-be dragonslayers to the walltop with all haste.

Robin scanned the skies still, ignoring the flailing and burning zombie on the wall to watch out for the other, larger zombie not yet sighted. Her pessimism was validated - she saw the huge form of Urtholon of the Emerald emerging from the clouds north of the Hangar, and shouted out the alarm - but this zombie seemed to be approaching much slower than its counterpart.

Klaitos, hearing the other target was coming into range, called down to Ekkels and the engineers to launch the Ignis. However, the dragon's approach, though slower than an arrow, was still faster than the brazier could raise the craft. Ekkels tapped into Klaitos's storm magic again, and created winds to stir the braziers to fill the balloon directly. This dramatically accelerated the inflation but kicked up some worrisome sparks and cinders around the oil barrel.

Robin, still perched on a warehouse above, tried to distract the inbound dragon with an illusion of a ship fleeing the Hangar. It breathed an almost-lazy blast of black ash at the ship, and Robin noticed it didn't disrupt her spell in the way that the undead Byrix had. She had the vessel feign damage, though, but continue flying like a gnat around the dragon.

Klaitos, in the wall of the Hangar, moved to perch in the hole he had created so that he could still see the battlefield if his footing crumbled. He watched the inflation of the Ignis, preparing to create another mid-air envelope to guide its flight to the larger zombie dragon.

Ignis heard Angitt shout for assistance beyond the burning zombie as it, uncaring of its injuries, climbed fully onto the walltop. She yelled at Ignis specifically, claiming that he had promised her survival in all of this, and that he needed to make good on that now. Ignis channeled his fire magic and used it to buffet the dragon as he maneuvered past it. He got in front of the beast before getting knocked to the ground and coated with its breath of bright-white ash, smothering his magic.

Ignis rolled to safety before the zombie could stomp him with a burning forelimb, and found Angitt beyond. She was crouched by the mount of the explosion-damaged ballista, struggling to drag her former second-in-command to safety with burned hands and arms.

Ekkels and the engineers, below, were able to launch the Ignis far faster than the Hitchit. The craft began to rise, and Ekkels switched his efforts from stirring the brazier's heat to enveloping the balloon against the unrelenting wind. The dragon descended slowly, emerging fully from the clouds above the warehouse plaza.

Robin continued to circle the illusory ship around the dragon, but found it to be entirely uninterested in the vessel after its first attack. Disturbed by the thought of a zombie able to figure out her illusion, Robin squinted at Urtholon's corpse, and realized that it had a rider, too far away to discern in the darkness.