Session Log 2024-03-22

The crystal-eyed woman, unmasked but unimpaired, tore free from Ignis's grapple with ease. She turned and smiled menacingly, offering to improve upon his ally's tactic from the opening of the battle. As Robin and Klaitos had earlier pretended, she cast an arm skyward and uttered a strange spell. A column of writhing Umbra descended to swallow her, Ignis, and the ship atop which they were battling.

Nearby, the zombie embedded with the Onyx scales tugged at the dragon-rider's heavily-burnt corpse, trying to pull it down from the smoldering remains of Urtholon's pyre. As soon as Ekkels flew the Stormjumper into range, Angitt shot down the zombie, pinning it to the burning heap. The scales wriggled free, messily, and hovered north towards the Umbral pillar. Angitt's lizardman ally gave chase, bellowing bright lightning at the swarm, but the palm-sized scales were too small a target for his wildly-aimed attack.

To the south, in the clearing in the midst of the zombie army, Klaitos defended himself from the Steel-masked figure. He defended himself from the worst of the quadruple-axe onslaught, but the frenzy scored some shallow blows, letting yet more blood into the muddy road.

Ekkels examined the Umbral column. To his magic-attuned senses and arcanic expertise, the unnatural clouds were filled with potent, deathly magical force. He tried to warn Angitt, but her attention was elsewhere - divided between the swarming scales she had crossed the battlefield to pursue and the innumerable zombies surging from the south. He decided to chase the former, which he knew to be vulnerable to his chaos magic, rather than dwell on the looming pillar. He clambered down the side of the Stormjumper, leaving it in Angitt's hands, and raced off after the lizardman and swarm.

Robin scanned the battlefield for opportunities. She noticed that the Steel-masked figure's full-plate armor seemed to be ill-fitted, with gaps where the panels or joints should meet, but wasn't sure that she could aim her crossbow through them. Instead, she unspooled some rope to tangle his legs. Klaitos manuevered around the battlefield to help position the armored figure, and kicked mud into his steel mask to further impede his relentless attack. Robin darted between them, looping the rope around the figure's armored ankles. He glanced over at her, but she quickly hid the necklace with Arva's rings from his mud-obscured scan.

Klaitos hauled on the other end of the rope. The steel-masked figure strained against his strength, and remained standing. However, his exertion revealed his secret - Robin saw a body made of muscular corpse pieces, fastened together by metal staple-like rings, through the openings in his armor. As his legs flexed against the tightening rope, she saw the rings pop free and the limbs loosen.

Within the Umbra, Ignis tried to escape the crystal-eyed woman. He clambered down from the top of the ship in the darkness, fumbling for handholds. His haste and impaired visibility caused him to fall into a chute, tumbling down into the ship's engine room. Though the interior was likewise suffused with obscuring Umbra, earlier damage had cracked the ship's aether core. Its silvery glow still illuminated the room, but a steady stream of aether leaked from its damaged side to be continually swallowed by the deathly atmosphere.

The lizardman turned his head and Ekkels catching up in pursuit of the scale-swarm, and behind him the zombie hordes approaching the Stormjumper. Despite his earlier animosity, or perhaps having forgotten it, he gave the chaos mage a quick affirmation before leaving the former quarry to him. He turned and raced back to help defend the ship. Angitt, meanwhile, took the steerage and readied for an emergency takeoff.

In the clearing, the steel-masked man axed himself free of the rope that circled his legs. Limping slightly, he pressed the assault once more. Klaitos defended himself, scrambling, desperate to both survive and keep the figure focused on him - he didn't want Robin to getting killed for trying to help.

Ignis could hear the crystal-eyed woman land on and begin pacing across the deck, above. She called out to him, claiming to have recalled him to be of the Fireheart bloodline, and inquired aloud how his father might react to being sent one of his hands. He laughed off the threat, but realized she had positioned herself right before the exit from belowdecks - between him and getting off the Umbra-smothered ship.

The swarm of black scales flew towards the Umbral mass. Before it could vanish into the deathly clouds, Ekkels channeled his chaos magic into crackling energy, and launched a volley of vivid bolts from his fingertips at the mysterious scales. The chaos lanced through the swarm, and it clattered to the ground in a smoking pile.

However, the hasty channeling surged with more power than intended, and Ekkels' bolts of chaos struck the Umbra beyond. It roiled and exploded outwards, enveloping Ekkels and the surrounding plaza. Unharmed but worried to be surrounded by so much death magic, Ekkels sat and began drawing a runic ward against such on a spare patch of canvas.

Ignis prized the leaking aether core from the ship's engine, and felt its unstable energies rippling against his magic. He shouted an ultimatum to the crystal-eyed woman, declaring himself ready to blow both of them up with the ship. She replied that he would only be squandering his use as a captive, and that she could escape unharmed.

Robin brought the illusory gold-masked woman over to the steel-masked man and had her directly submit for execution, as he had earlier demanded. With his attention and axe-attacks split between Klaitos and this new target, Robin snuck up to him and stabbed her knife into a gap in his ill-fitting armor. She tore more of the metal stitching free, then ducked away from his suddenly-hindered retaliation.

Klaitos took advantage of the steel-masked man's debilitation by pressing a risky offense. He used his superior reach to grab and grapple the four-armed figure. He then leveraged his hold to stretch the man's stitched-together limbs backwards, ripping them even looser than before.