Sessions Worlds and Stuff

It was the very earliest hours of morning. There was a heavy fog in the air, rolling in from the seaside, and making everything look eerie. The dimmest glimmers of the sun shone through the haze, not quite enough to warm the chill of the Cold Moon just yet. But for Daxton and Hobbes, the night was still not quite over.

Cape Belmore was designed to ward off common undead. The things that weren't intelligent; zombies and ghouls, common skeletons. The heavy gates warded out most, and the priest usually managed to keep out the rest. But a wraith... it had passed right through the gates, and gone straight for the priest.

It had opened up the town to too much destruction. Without the priest there, even the garden variety undead had descended, overwhelming the gates and wreaking havoc on the town. Taking down the wraith had been a challenge, even with Nietve's help. And dealing with the rest... with the Cold Moon, that had taken hours.

And now, most were dead. Zombies were being piled into carts for burning later, the villagers coming out to help now that the worst was over. It was the ghouls that were still the issue; seeing the rising sun, they'd fled. It was going to take time and energy to track them down, and end them before they could do too much more damage.

Before heading out you take a look around town to try and track down Nietve again. Hoping you might be able to ask him a question before heading out into the woods.

Nietve's voice could be heard over the crackling of a bonfire, the usually soft spoken orc speaking loud and clear to a crowd.

There were guards intermixed with common folk gathered around, all looking weary and easily over half of them injured or bloody in some way. The faces looked grim, even under the rising sun.

Nietve himself looked tired; dark circles were under his eyes, and blood had soaked through his pant leg. Still, he looked far from done; there was too much left to do.

He was organizing parties to hunt for the ghouls; on closer inspection, it looked like the group had already been broken into teams. He was directing them to different areas, pointing to a map so all the areas ghouls were likely to hide got checked.

Seeing Daxton, he made eye contact with him and finished up what he'd been saying, dismissing the group.

"Is it wise, as tired and injured as some of them look, to send them out to hunt the ghouls so soon?"

Daxton inquired of the sheriff, walking over to study the map on the table. His bow slung on his back, his eyes pouring over the descriptions to try and get a better lay of the land

"regardless though, where can I best help?"

"Could you sleep knowing your family's still in danger?" Nietve answered. "If I don't organize them, they'll organize themselves. And well meaning as they are, it wouldn't be so efficient. The sooner this nightmare is over, the sooner we can all get some rest.

The map was upside down to him from this angle, and it was too difficult to interpret it and talk at the same time.

"I'm most concerned about the east side of town, north of where our docks are. The cliffside is riddled with holes and caves; we try and keep them sealed so nothing takes up residence, but they're popular for smuggling and such. Just the other night, I'd gotten word someone had seen a light down there, and I'd hazard a guess that one's been opened up.

"It's the perfect place for the stray undead to hide. If you could make sure it's cleaned out, you'd be doing the town a huge favor."

"Consider it done then"

*With that you immediately depart, making your way to the docks and then north from there to try and find these smugglar caves. Eager to quickly get this over with before the Ghouls could cause much more damage*

*This close to the coast, you doubt you'd find any....but as a way to ease your mind from the previous fight and keep it fresh for the coming one....you keep an eye out for potential new pocket lizards*

You have to go through the docks in order to get to the caves, and as you walk through, you see that it's quiet. This night, the docks weren't hit too heavily, though some pyres are still glowing with embers.

The sound of the ocean meets your ears, rhythmic in comparison to the town down below. Over the horizon, you can see the sun coming up, barely peeking its head over the waves. It's still chillier than this time of year warrants, but slowly, it is warming.

And then you see the caves. True to what Nietve had told you, you see that many of them have been blocked off, whether with large boulders or wooden boards according to size. Salt crystals grow around on the rocks, along with barnacles, and it gives the whole of it a strange look... rounded off where there should be sharp corners and harsh edges, there's a layer of rounded softness.

Also true to what Nietve had said, one of the cave mouths looks opened. There's no light inside now, but the boulder has clearly been rolled aside. The tide is high now, but even so, the water at the mouth of the cave looks shallow. It would be cold, you can tell, but it is possible to wade through it.

For a second, you think you see a lizard... but it turns out to be just a piece of driftwood. Damn.

-You frown at the piece of wood for a moment, before making your way towards the open cave. Crouching low and using stealth tactics as you approach to try and conceal yourself. You doubted anything would be dumb enough to stick close to the entrance, but it never hurt to be cautious-

*You're so focused on the entrance to the cave, you don't notice a crab pretty much right under you. When you crouch, you feel an unpleasant pinching on your leg.

[It's mostly a nuisance, but I'm gonna do a pinching roll. If it rolls high enough, it might do a point or two of damage. Strength roll to remove.]

[If you'd like to know more about what may or may not be going on inside the cave, feel free to do a listening check.]

It is a smol crab, and no match for your heroic, dragonborn strength. It waves its tiny claws at you, but then disappears into the water with a light toss. Enemy Defeated.

With the crab dealt with sucessfully, and with your location hopefully not given away....you pause for a moment once your a bit closer to the mouth of the cave. Peering inside from a distance....watching...listening...looking for any signs of activity.

Now that you're really focusing, you do hear something inside the cave. It sounds like... a woman? An angry woman, and there's definitely something in there she's directing her anger towards.

You know from prior experience what a ghoul sounds like, and while there might be one in there with her, she herself is not a ghoul.

This was...intriguing. After fucking up so badly with the crab incident, you attempt to re-enter stealth and make your way deeper into the cave. Keeping an eye out with your augmented eyes, guard up encase of any surprise attacks

You find it hard to be sneaky while wading through the shallow water; every step you make is making little splashing noises.

As you're walking, the sounds become clearer, and it becomes obvious that this woman is fighting something off. You hear the dull thuds of flesh being struck, and then it finally comes into view.

There's a woman fighting off a ghoul with a piece of driftwood she's found, though she doesn't appear to be making much progress in actually defeating it. The ghoul is focused enough on her that it hasn't noticed you at all; any splashes you're making is easily covered up by her growling annoyed noises.

It doesn't seem like she's noticed you yet, either.

[Please give me a perception check on top of any actions you wanna take.]

Well this seemed pretty straightforward. With it distracted as much as it was, it should be pretty easy to pull off a headshot without risk of hitting the women. Taking a knee, daxton pulls out a crossbow from his spacial armory, takes aim at the head....and fires.

percption) DM

You hear a heavy thud as the bolt hits its mark, the ghoul half twisting around to look at you instead of the woman. You can tell that while it's tough, it's nothing special as ghouls go, and that hit did affect it. It begins to amble towards you, even as the woman cracks her makeshift club down on its head.

Speaking of her, you can see even from where you are that something about her is off. Her shirt is hanging weirdly; almost like she's wearing armor underneath, which is definitely not the standard way of wearing it. Her right arm, also looks strange; oddly angular, and almost shiny. Certainly not like flesh, in any case. Besides that, she looks human.

She's also horribly cold; you see that she's not dressed nearly warm enough for a cold moon, let alone a seaside cave. It's giving her tremors, and her skin is pale from it.