Session Log 2024-03-04

Ekkels felt the "puppeteering" magic wrested back from his brief override. The gold-masked woman got to her feet, seizing him and tearing his grasp from her leg. She noted that he was too interesting a specimen to simply kill, and promptly flung him overboard. He sailed off the ship's deck, and saw a dark shape plummet from the umbra before him. Where it struck the ground, massive skeletal arms erupted, reaching up to the sky to seize him in a bony midair prison. He stared back at the gold-masked woman, and spotted the soldier that he had protected escape down the rigging on the far side of the ship.

The scale-swarm, though clearly reacting to Ignis's petty taunts, seemed to think that attacking him atop the Stormjumper was a fruitless endeavor. They floated off towards the zombie hordes to the south, leaving Ignis and Heiras behind.

Even without Lord Arva's position at their fore, the zombie army continued to flow into the plaza. The burning front lines disintegrated, falling short of overrunning the thinly-guarded western warehouses, and the Torch soldiers moved to secure them. Angitt and her lizardman ally held the eastern warehouses as other militia mobilized behind them.

With Lord Arva's winds no longer in play, Ignis and Heiras kicked the Stormjumper to life. She flew him north towards the rest of the fleet, and he attempted to leap deck to deck to confront the gold-masked woman. Unfortunately, his graceless jump saw him land flat on his face, and he was summarily pinned by the three undead, recovered from Ekkels's disruption. As the gold-masked woman approached, he retaliated with an indiscriminate blast of flame. The zombies were roasted, but the woman evaded, barely singed.

Ekkels saw Heiras fly the Stormjumper over to his skeletal prison. She was at a loss for how to break him free, though. He considered, and realized he could likely manipulate the magic-conjured arms himself. With some hasty runes and a surge of chaos magic, the hand-prison opened, and he was able to hop over to her deck.

Robin wanted to be assured that Lord Arva, and his zeal for vengeance against the Windwatcher's Keep, were concretely put to rest. She snuck past the disorganized undead forces and climbed one of the less-burning buildings nearby the main road. She leapt roof to roof until she had an adequate vantage. From there, she could make out a clearing amidst the hordes, where the zombies were moving around where Arva had landed. She couldn't see him, or his corpse, so she readied a crossbow bolt with sleeping potion for if he suddenly stood up.

Klaitos shared Robin's concerns, but lacked her talent for acrobatics. Instead, he simply bore down and plowed a path through the zombie forces, indiscriminately slamming them out of his way. As he neared the clearing, the enemy forces grew denser-packed, slowing his approach. He had a better view than Robin, though, and could make out Lord Arva and Torrix, unmoving and bleeding into the mud. Above Lord Arva stood a bulky four-armed figure in platemail, with a steel-masked full helm.

He vaulted over the remaining crowd of zombies and landed in the clearing. The steel-masked figure immediately attacked him with a flurry of vicious axeblows, landing a vicious slash on Klaitos's leg. Klaitos squared up against this new opponent, but noticed out of the corner of his eye some movement - some odd, sourceless splashing in the mud near Lord Arva's hands.

Ekkels heard a soft thud behind him, and turned to find Heiras cut down within the steerage compartment, a long gash across her back. He scanned the deck but saw no sign of any attacker. The Stormjumper, now without a pilot, continued to cruise north, away from the battlefield and towards the hangar-side wall.

The gold-masked woman stepped down upon Ignis's back. She didn't seem to be trying to injure him, but he found himself unable to wriggle free from her unexpected physical strength. The woman noted that she recognized him to be of Torch nobility, and a valuable hostage if she could keep him alive. Despite her comment, he felt a strange, enervating force wrack his body. He focused his will on resisting her magic, and was able to weather the mysterious attack, to her annoyance.

The reinforcements at the warehouses held strong against the first surge of non-burning undead. Still, more and more zombies spilled into the plaza from the main road, heedless of minor obstacles like Klaitos. Behind them, Robin leapt to a roadside building with a better view of the clearing. She judged the four-armed, fully-armored figure to be Klaitos's problem - her crossbow alone wouldn't puncture plate - and shot a bolt through the head of the prone, unmoving Lord Arva.

Her mission accomplished, she nearly turned to leave the scene, but her avarice suddenly flared at the prospect of looting a dead Torch noble. She checked her Bracelet of Greed, which tugged at her arm - something of significant value lay there in the mud. She found this curious - Arva had only been wearing a necklace and some rings, before, and neither had seemed particularly ornate - but riches were riches, wherever he had them stashed.

Klaitos, below, was too busy dealing with the hostile steel-masked man, and his four axes, to consider the prospect of loot. He figured the best way to deal with his opponent was to create some distance between them, so he backed up, and began grabbing zombies from the stampeding army to use as impromptu projectiles. The steel-masked man weathered a few such impacts with brutish strength, and the undead bodies broke into pieces on impact with his armor, but was eventually overwhelmed by the barrage and knocked back across the clearing. However, Klaitos soon found himself surrounded by animate corpse parts, scattered by the explosive force of their impacts.

Flying above the other side of the battlefield, Ekkels dashed for the steerage, hoping to evade whomever had attacked Heiras. He was startled as the attacker emerged in front of him - the hunched, silk-masked figure that had stalked Klaitos and him earlier, back at the Plaza of Legends. Undaunted, he used his chaos magic to swap places with the silk-masked figure, leaving them disoriented in the middle of the deck. He swung the steerage around and rerouted the ship back towards the central plaza. Below him, he saw Heiras still breathing, her wound serious but nonfatal.

Ignis, still pinned by the gold-masked woman, decided to keep pressing the fiery attack. He focused his magic, and his guts, and let loose a blast of burning flatulence. The woman's foot lifted as she dodged, again barely singed. He took the opportunity to get back to his feet, and confronted her, grinning at her sudden loss for words in the face of such an unorthodox and uncouth riposte.