Session Log 2024-02-18

With the barricade scattered across the plaza, Robin decided to put some improvised cover between the party and Lord Arva's undead forces. She called out to Klaitos, who was still holding the collection of inscribed scales, and told him to wield the Umbra. He glanced down at the insriptions and found them utterly inscrutable. Unsure of what he was supposed to even pretend to do, he simply watched Robin keep going: using her illusion magic, she wrought a hand of the dark cloud and slammed it down into a smokescreen before the army.

Ignis took command of the nearest platoon, bidding them to hold a line beyond the smokescreen. He spoke to them with the voice of the Torch commander he had been raised to become, and inspired them with the heroism of their desperate stand. He punctuated this by reaching out with his fire magic and exploding a roadside blaze, igniting the zombie army. Arva's longcloak and the foremarching undead were silhouetted against the illusory cloud.

Ekkels, still injured from the battle against the prince and the dragons, scurried away from the battlefront to help with the Keep fleet. The ships' crews were reboarding, but wrestling with panicked mutineers. Klaitos, alone, noticed the scales in his arms quiver, and immediately tossed them to the ground. They clattered on the plaza stone, then one by one lurched into the air. Klaitos turned his Lantern Eye on the wobbly swarm, and saw a vague figure formed by glowing whorls of magic between the scales.

Angitt and her lizardman ally darted for the northern warehouses, far from Ignis's line against the zombie army. Arva growled at Ignis to move out of his way, and brought forth a violent gale to roar down the main road. The flames of the zombies caught by Ignis's earlier explosion surged forth through the ranks, and a storm of flame, debris, burning corpse parts, and searing winds fell down upon the defenders. Ignis ordered them low to the ground, with shields up, but Lord Arva's attack wiped out the entire platoon. Those that had been nearest the shieldless Ignis fell at his feet, having used their bodies as a last line of defense for their commander.

Robin saw something shoot out of the cloudy smokescreen: the gold-masked woman, making a superhuman leap through the air to land on the Stormjumper at the front of the Keep Fleet and confront its Gale Knight guard. Heiras, its pilot, froze midway up the rigging. Above her, the knight collapsed from some unseen blow. Cursing, she dropped and ran to Ekkels's side for mutual protection. She shouted orders over the din to try and hurry the Fleet's return to the air.

The army of undead soldiers, still ablaze, marched through the smokescreen into the plaza, surging over the fallen defensive line towards the east and west warehouses. At the fore of the east forces stood the reanimated corpse of the last commander of Golarth's forces (and Klaitos's brief ally), the giant Captain Caergon. A brutish, incoherent yell announced the return of the dwarven mutineer officer, Torrix, covered head to toe in grime and gore. Still yelling, he charged and tackled the giant zombie, falling upon its burning bulk with a heedless pummeling.

Klaitos, wary of the independently-animating necromancy of the inscribed scales, backed away and ran off to find Ekkels. He reasoned that a jolt of chaos magic would do more to disrupt any hostile effect than his fists or his storm. The scale-swarm followed after him, but its flight was too clumsy to gain any ground.

Ignis, unwilling to stick around in Lord Arva's line of indiscriminate fire, raced to the Stormjumper's rigging and climbed after the gold-masked woman. Robin, of similar motivation, condensed her cloudy smokescreen into a blinding mask around Arva's head. She then followed after Klaitos, though she had to dodge as a few onyx scales jabbed at her out of the swarm.

Ekkels saw Klaitos approaching and the swarm behind him. He channeled his chaos magic into a crackling between his fingers, and let that arc forth to strike through the heart of the swarm. Its component scales shook violently at the spell's effect, and fell back from their chase, scattered. The gold-masked woman, watching from atop the Stormjumper's prow, laughed coldly. In a regal voice, she dryly lamented the "ignoble fate of young Ziron".