Cold Iron, Empty Throne

You sigh, realizing you're going to have to break in before these two hurt each other. "Hold on," you start. Both Dawn and Samir give you a look and a moment to speak. "It's important that we figure out what happened." You gesture at the angel again. "But that's not going to change where we are now. Let's figure out what to do next, and then we can figure out why. If we're not going to die today, then we should figure out dinner by this evening. I didn't bring any food. Did you?"

It's a silly question. None of you brought food, for the extremely simple reason that you weren't going to be alive to eat it. "All right," Dawn agrees, looking somewhat abashed. "But... I do want to bury him properly." You know this is about where Dawn will draw a line. The angel is going to be buried before you can get her away from here.

You take your first look around your immediate surroundings as anything more than a combat arena. The field of battle is a relatively narrow gulley, perhaps twenty meters across, with sloping side filled with rocky debris. You consider the challenge of digging deep into a tough, rocky ground with no real shovels and doing enough of it to bury someone half again a human size. "How about a cairn?" you suggest. The other three look at you. "We can knock down some of the rocks above. A cairn is probably the best we're going to be able to manage here."

Dawn visibly relaxes. This may be hard work, but at least she has a plan she can follow, now.

Samir, by far the most energetic of your crew, dances up to you while you're figuring out the details of the rockfall you'll use to make the cairn. "Y'know, boss, that angel has some magic items he's not using," he says, quietly. "It'd be a real waste to leave 'em here, don't you think?" He gives you an impish grin, hoping you'll be willing to do this. If you're going to make the effort, surely it only makes sense to profit from it? Dawn wouldn't agree, of course, but how much do you agree with her? On the other hand, how worth it is it for you to take powerful items if you don't know what they'll do? Or what about the danger of leaving them?

[] Take something (pick all that apply)
-[] Gleaming sword. Huge and lengthy, this impossibly massive weapon is not something you could imagine using as a weapon, but you could cart it around as a trophy.
-[] Cracked crown. Enscribed with magical signs of protection and resilience, this would be a powerful defense if it weren't broken. You don't know why it's broken, but you have an optimistic thought it might be fixable.
-[] Irregular pendant. This stone on a thread around the angel's neck is definitely magic, but you have no idea what it's for. It's not even particularly shiny. At least it's easily portable.
[] Leave it all
(Voting for majority take something vs take nothing; if 'take something' wins, what you take is the most popular plan for items.)

Even as you apply yourself to burying the angel, you find yourself thinking ahead a bit. It's not just dinner. You've been given a lease on life that you've literally never had before. Ever since your father sent you off to the temple, you've never had a real future. Your father stressed just how great an honor this was before you were sent away, the priests never gave you any other options, and... now your life's ahead of you again. Unless, of course, when you return to civilization you find that Tal-Roshath's priests put you up against another angel and pretend this fight never happened.

That said, there's only one place to go, really. This island, Millow, isn't much of a place to be. There's a few small, mostly subsistence farms and fishing enclaves, the sort of light habitation that's everywhere across the Shallow Ocean. The only location of note, with the only deep-water harbor, and thus the only place to do anything more than just barely eke out a living, is the town unimaginatively named Millowburg. Its big claim to fame is that it has some good ropewalks, where the local agriculture is turned into lines and rigging for larger ships. On your last trip through, when you were being taken to the angel's battlefield, it seemed at least as boring as that all sounds.

Nonetheless, you're going to have to go back through Millowburg if you're not going to spend the rest of your life here, meaning that you need to figure out what approach is right for the four of you to use when you re-enter town, where you can expect to run into the same priests who brought you here. You have roughly three general options you can think of for how to re-enter town.

[] You could stride back in, declaring victory in battle, and attract as much attention as possible to your glorious feat. This would be the most dramatic possible entry, attracting attention in the hopes that more positive than negative comes from the spotlight.
[] You could just walk back in and pretend everything is normal and you just have legitimate business here. You'd hope to find information and opportunities without drawing attention to yourself
[] You could wait. You might have a hungry day or so, but most likely someone, like the priests, will come by and check on you. You can decide what to do then. If no one comes, you can find your own way out after the priests should have all gone back to the capital city.

(independent from the other vote)

You leave the angel with his sword clasped in his hands. It seems appropriate, and Dawn seems relatively satisfied that the angel's dignity was maintained. The rest of its goods, you strip. It might come in handy later, after all. The inexplicable stone pendant is something you can slip into a pocket. The cracked crown is a little harder of a challenge, since it is also built to the angel's more-than-mortal scale. Trying to wear it would have it fall straight past your head and rest on both shoulders. In the end, you end up wrapping it in the shreds of your ruined burgundy tunic, to at least hide it from sight, and have Kalju add it to his pack.

This does mean you're shirtless, but this part of the Shallow Ocean is downright tropical. By itself, it won't turn any heads to have another shirtless man on the street. When combined with Kalju's modifications to his own tunic, it doesn't look like the four of you are in a uniform, just that you have a color scheme you all like.

It's that element that convinces you that you should just walk back to town. You don't know where you're going to go yet, but it does have to go through the harbor there. You don't have much money on you, but you do have enough for at least a couple days' food and shelter, if the four of you are okay sleeping in a common area. Mentally, you begin tallying what everyone's things are worth, in case it comes to selling it off. Hopefully, it won't come to that. Even a trip as common hands aboard a merchant ship would be preferable.

The battlefield, now the angel's grave, was up in the higher, central part of the island. The little-used footpath shows your footprints and the footprints of the priests as the only recent additions. It's a walk of several miles to get back to the sparse agriculture, and longer yet to get to town. A thin, warm rain drizzles all over you starting early afternoon, and it's closer to evening by the time you get to Millowburg.

No one really pays you much mind. If they're out in the rain, it's because they have business. IF they have business to attend to, bothering armed strangers in the rain is not something they want to do instead. Gradually thickening clusters of buildings tell you when you're in town, and the mingled foul smell of harbors and the salt scene of the open ocean tell you that you've arrived, but the actual waterfront and the thicket of masts in the harbor are hidden by poor visibility.

You find an inn to spend the night in before it gets too dark. As expected, the only place with any artificial light is the common room. People, some local and some sailors, find friends to laugh and game with or find a quieter corner to take their cheap food and alcohol. It's not until you find all four of you squeezed along a little bench with some bland soup that you realize who else is in the room, part of the largest knot of people.

"You ass. Demanding a magic trick? Why the hell would I do that? I'm not a performing monkey." The speaker is a short, loud woman dressed as a priestess of Tal-Roshath, complete with his holy symbol around her neck. The frowning man she's shouting at looks to be one of the locals, who's probably a little worse for his alcohol.

You glance up at Kalju. He nods affirmatively, knowing that for all your head for numbers and goods, you don't have his memory for faces, especially pretty faces. "She was with us on the trip out," he says, quietly, without the theatrical whisper that could attract attention. "Said she was a new priestess. She seemed proud of her contract with Tal-Roshath. I didn't catch her name."

The frowning man considers her response. "But... aren't you supposed to use your magic to recruit more people for your god? Isn't showing that going to help? I just wanna see some magic."

"And then what, you ass? I snap my fingers, I blow something in here up, you owe me for the spellcasting and owe the owner for destroying his property! Should I?" She waves a threateningly poised-to-snap finger under his nose. "I serve a war god! You'd be lucky if it didn't kill someone!"

You begin to consider if you should duck out before she potentially recognizes you, assuming she knows your faces. Before you can finish weighing up if you should, the door slams open. By itself, that isn't enough to disrupt the room, but a bleeding, staggering man screaming as he half-falls in is. "Zombie!"

The room falls quiet over the course of a couple seconds as he continues. "There's a zombie out there!" The newcomer is cradling one arm with the other, and the injured arm looks badly broken. "I thought it was just a drunk guy, but it's a zombie in the street!"

From where you sit, you have a coincidentally decent view through the one window in the inn. The street is too dark with the full fall of night to see much. There could be a hundred zombies hidden in the dark. The rest of the inn patrons don't sit around. A few kind souls move to help the injured man. The others cluster around the priestess and push her towards the door, with encouragement. "There's your target, miss!" "C'mon, go beat it." "A zombie? You gotta protect us."

They push her out the door and slam it behind her. They crowd the window, so you can't see as well, but they do quiet down, waiting for the show.

You make her out straightening herself up, and taking a bold stance as she looks into the deep dark. A new figure lurches up to her, one you cannot see much of at all. She holds out her hand to it. "Stop! In the name of Tal-Roshath, flee, you foul thing!" It continues to come at her. "Tal-Roshath!" There's an undeniable edge of panic in her tone. "Heed me!" For a long breath, nothing happens. "Well, crap," she continues in a more normal tone, before she suddenly bolts.

She just... runs off. The zombie shambles after her with a surprising turn of speed, following her down the street.

You had been planning not to draw attention to yourself. Should that change? You know Samir, Dawn, and Kalju will follow your lead, and one zombie shouldn't be a problem against four or five fighters.

[] No. This is not my problem. Someone else can fight a zombie tonight.
[] Yes. If someone is in trouble, you want to help them.
[] The zombie needs to be dealt with, but the priestess isn't your concern.