Session Log 2024-04-01

The steel-masked man broke free of the grapple, and turned to face Klaitos and Robin. He swung his axes for Klaitos's neck, but stumbled on now-ungainly legs. Around them, the undead army poured through the road and burning debris to charge into the plaza. Further ahead, the Torch and Keep forces were struggling to defend the ship's landing and warehouses against the unending, growing horde.

The crystal-eyed woman, finished trading threats with Ignis, quietly walked across the deck. From the Umbral dark of the engine room, Ignis thought he heard her drop off the side. He snuck into the ship, wary for ambush or trap, and made his way to the deck. At the last turn, the Umbra coiled and coalesced around him into a lattice of interlocking bone forearms. He found himself trapped, still clutching the leaking aether core.

Ekkels finished drawing a slapdash death ward on the canvas scrap. He noticed no adverse effect from having been sitting in the Umbra, without the ward, and tuned into his arcanic senses to try to figure it out while he was still immersed. He found that the darkness was charged with a vast amount of death magic; the gold-masked woman was somehow tied into it, allowing her to wield it and use it to fuel her own spellworks. As he studied the effect, Angitt and the lizardman mercenary flew the Stormjumper through the darkness to rescue him.

Robin snuck behind the battered steel-masked man as he battled Klaitos, and readied a strike where his armor no longer covered his neck. Her knife lashed out and tore a dozen metal rings free. The steel-helmed head tottered and tore, rolling into the mud. Klaitos noticed it was still moving, and promptly knocked it face-down in the mud, as the four-armed body flailed wildly and blindly.

Arva's mangled body began twitching back to life, and the zombies began to close in on Klaitos and Robin, heedless of whatever force had made them march around the area before. Robin got a boost from Klaitos, and leapt to the rope she had tied earlier. As she clambered over the zombie army to a relatively-safe rooftop, Klaitos heard the blood-soaked, deathly-looking Torrix suddenly snore at his feet.

Unwilling to leave him to die - and come back as a zombie - Klaitos hefted the dwarf under his arm and charged at the oncoming zombies. Klaitos punched through with his free fist, but for every one he struck down, more leapt right over it. He was torn by nail and bite from all angles, and emerged from the crowd into an alley tattered and bleeding. He scrambled, Torrix in tow, to climb a ladder to the rooftop besides Robin.

Savoring their momentary refuge, they noticed the undead surrounding and filling the building they were resting upon. Robin created a vast illusory arrow pointing down at them to facilitate a hoped-for rescue by air. They watched the zombie army overwhelm the Keep and Torch forces in the plaza, forcing them to retreat to the ships.

Ignis, trapped belowdecks in the bone lattice, felt the enervating gaze of the crystal-eyed woman upon him from an unseen vantage. Despite his stubborn will, his life was drained, and he found himself too weak to fight free from his bonds. He realized he was out of options - any magic would cause the aether core to erupt, and if it broke in his hands he would be at the center of a dangerous arcanic blast. He decided to escape at any cost, and so wrenched his body backwards and detonated the core in a fiery burst. The explosion rocketed him up and out of the ship and the Umbral pillar. He landed painfully on the plaza beyond, near a Torch platoon retreating from the zombies, and fell unconscious.

Angitt flew Ekkels to his allies under the illusory arrow. Looking across the increasingly undead battlefield, she surmised the fight was lost, and that they should regroup and retreat. As Klaitos and Robin boarded, the team agreed to escape with their lives, once they found Ignis, joined by whichever ships in the fleet were able to lift off. As flew back towards the battlefield to look for him, the lizardman awkwardly introduced himself as Oze-Oze.

Ekkels flew the Stormjumper low across the plaza, scanning for Ignis while ramming as many undead as he could safely. As they neared the twin pillars of Umbra, he decided not to risk flying through them, and tried to speedily bank around the first one. Suddenly, from out of the dark column, the Gold-masked woman leapt at the vessel. Angitt's paranoid reflexes were fast enough to fire off a crossbow bolt, but the woman twisted in midair and landed on the deck without injury.