Session Log 2024-01-26
As the soldiers roused, slowly recovering from Urtholon's draining breath weapon, Robin had them gather the other three unconscious party members. She heard a commotion coming from in the city, towards Lord's Town, but had higher priorities upon which to act. Seizing the opportunity, she doodled colorful flames on Ignis's face and a cartoonish angry expression on Klaitos's. As she prodded the group awake, none of them snitched on the others' graffiti.
Ignis and Ekkels took swigs of Ignis's healing liquor as Robin and Klaitos turned to the unmoving, twice-impaled body of the Prince. Klaitos's Lantern Eye revealed bright spots beneath the part-dragon's dented ornate armor. With that pried open, they discovered some dozen of the man's black scales to be faintly and densely inscribed. Klaitos set about brutally, and suprisingly bloodlessly, yanking them free from the body. Robin dug through her pack and brought out some charcoal and paper for careful etchings. The weight of the scales shifted oddly as she held them, but her meticulous copying was undeterred.
Ignis, took a walk to the northern wall-lift. He rode it the height of the wall and hailed Angitt, his face still covered in Robin's decorative flames. She made no mention of it, and declined his offer to join the victorious in the plaza below - despite the looming Umbra, she felt safer atop the wall with a weapon, since her ballista was broken. She also wanted to keep an eye on the lizardman teammate she had been carrying around, as he recovered away from the crowd. The teammate stirred, and found himself face-to-face with Ignis - the last person he had seen before falling in their battle. Angitt waved Ignis off so he could be brought up to speed in peace.
A cheer went up as the first ship flew safely from the Hangar, bound for brighter skies. The cheers died quickly, as the crowd of former mutineers came to a collective realization: the finite supply of working ships in the Hangar represented a narrow window of escape, only open to the first to claim each. Klaitos, who had just finished ripping scales out of the Prince's speared corpse, realized that this meant that Golarth airspace was no longer a deathtrap, and used the Keep's messenger scroll to update the fleet outside the city.
The awakened plaza crowd was beginning to mob the hangar. A crash sounded from beyond the wall, and was reported to be an ill-fated evacuee who had comandeered an air-unworthy craft in their desperate haste. Ekkels, alarmed, tried to overtake the mob and urge their caution. However, his diminutive stature and insistent whistling did little to divert their attention, and they shoved past him to claim their escape.
Robin finished her charcoal rubbings, and considered whether or not they should dispose of the scales - artifacts of unclear, but presumably necromantic, magic power. Klaitos noticed the scales' previous owner beginning to twitch with undeath, and he tossed it into the pyre of Urtholon's burning corpse. As they awaited the Keep fleet, a Torch soldier raced out of the shadowy main road. As he struggled to catch his breath, he claimed that the militia headquarters had fallen - the Masked Vanguard mercenaries, stationed in Lord's Town, had led an army of the undead to overrun them.
Klaitos, and some of the non-fleeing militia, gathered wagon-parts and shipping pallets to build a barricade in the main road. They lit it ablaze with a torch. Ignis, returned from his brief conversation with Angitt, shoved through the mob at the Hangar, and shouted some caution - urging them not to throw away their life after surviving this long.
His encouragement was underlined by the arrival of the Keep fleet. Cheers rose as a dozen Keep ships flew over the wall and landed in the Warehouse Plaza. Heiras leaned out of the Stormjumper's cockpit to shout her appreciation to see the party standing amidst the impressive carnage - the faltering blazes of dragon corpses, blast damage and holes scarring the interior Golarth wall, and a fiery barricade blocking the main road. She noted, with a touch of confusion, that they also bunch of Torch uniforms working for them. Klaitos corrected her - the soldiers were united in cause only, for today, but might someday raise the Keep banner over the city themselves.
Angitt and her lizardman ally returned from the walltop at the sight of the fleet's landing. As the Keep soldiers disembarked, and Klaitos weighed what they had accomplished here, he thought about the long term for this Umbra-smothered region. He noticed the persistent western wind had almost died down, and realized that the Umbra itself may have simply been dragged across the sky by the weather. He resolved to study if the region could be meteorologically reclaimed for the living.
The burning barricade was suddenly blasted back into the plaza. Nearby militia fled the volley of burning firewood. Lord Arva and the gold-masked woman Klaitos had encountered earlier stepped into the plaza, followed by an army of zombies dense enough to fill the main road. Ignis hollered an immature insult at Arva on sight, but the Torch Lord weathered it with only a twitch of his eyelid. He seemed to be in a good mood, unlike any other time the party had ever met, seen, or heard him. Smiling, he addressed the party and the fleet of the mutineer Windwatcher's Keep, and thanked his nemeses for paying his home city a visit. He apologized wryly for his forgotten hospitality, but threatened to properly welcome them all to Golarth at last.