Age of Ice and Blood: A Pathfinder System Heroic Fantasy Quest

Third Day of Elnu-Hamba (Elnu Descendent), 1349 A. L. (After Landfall)

Antonio Giustiniani had never been a man of battle, oh he had learned how to guard himself, to watch for his ship and crew, as must all those who would said to far off ports, but his greatest weapon had ever been his tongue, that some called silver and he called cork, for silver was a heavy thing hat to be weighed down by in times of peril. Hard to think of any time that was more perilous than this one. The last dead man he'd had to kill had taken half the ships and a trap to kill and this one looked more ready for battle than the last. He might have cursed his luck, but he knew well enough that luck would not be swayed by either bitter words or sweet. A man would have to make his own. "And who are you to make such demands? Another servant of the Anjo-oru who plague this land with all manner of foulness?"

"I am king in these lands, the rightful king, called forth in its hour of need to restore it to what it once was, to what it must be if we are to weather the storm as more than savages trembling in caves in fear of the dark," the lord of the dead replied, raising his black fist , as though to challenge the very sky beyond the mantle of mist. "Elnu it was said made kings in his image, to be wise and know they are but one spoke of the great wheel... No spoke came after me, thus if was foretold, thus I was accursed, thus I made my own way forward as the arrow flies though the air as the axe falls. Join me and your head shall not be on the block as was the one of the Hollow and the Maggot."

"Hollow and Maggot? Pray Great King, tell me what you have done in these lands that I may know you..." You might not be able to flatter luck Antonio my lad, but any man who would call himself a king is as sweet to flattery as a cat to cream, especially if they are the sort to demand fealty in the middle of battle.

"Obari was the name of the Hollow before it was lost and the name of the Maggot I shall not speak for it does not deserve to be uttered on the tongues of men. It is fallen and those whom it has touched, aye even those who had taken lesser maggots in themselves. They are but the smoke that comes before the fire and so they come now to me for I am of the Land and I alone can keep them here and away from the hand of their masters in the south." A gleam shone in the 'king's' eye that Antonio could not read and then he asked a question that made even less sense than anything he had said before, yet still had the power to send a chill down his spine. "Are those enough answers from you Man from Nowhere? Will you kneel or will you die?"

No, he realized, not down his spine, up, it was as though some strange knowing was going up from the soles of his feet up to the very top of his head. He meant it, not as a ploy, not as some trap of the devils that plagued this land, the man before him believed with all his heart that he had mastered the things which had chased them away from Korman in the spring and who had summoned here an army such as the Sunset Islands had not seen in an age. Such as they had not seen since he was king, the thought came unbidden, a reminder of a tale he had heard in a tavern.

In that moment it seemed as though the very air had been pulled from his lips and it was all Antonio could to to keep his feet and not fall perhaps to his knees before this man, this would be king. So he did the only reasonable thing that came to mind, he set his crossbow steady, bold already coked and shot.

The string twanged the bolt flew bright in the torchlight, alas that it did not fly true, but smashed instead instead against the chest plate of the foe as he leapt though the air as though the weight of it was nothing and he was on the deck of the Marcella. Though strands of white spun from the hands of the girl to snare him they did not catch him...

Alone a bolt of blue flame found its mark, the face of the one who called himself Unke the Red, leaving upon his face a streak of reddened flesh and scorched hair that seemed them to drive him into a rage: "Kill them! Kill them all!" the shout went up and the dead men charged in his wake... or tried to at least for in that moment the Horn of Olweje called as well, like thunder in the belly of the earth and arrows flew one and all from the bows of the ship's crew who had been prepared.

The first of the dead men fall lost what foul semblance of life they had under that barrage and others were pushed bodily into the sea by the warriors of the Anwa that had been inching closer to the edge as Antonio had been speaking, but till they came, fearless as they were foul and such was their savagery in battle that they could not be mistaken for living men under sun or moon, ripping the head off one warrior and tearing the limbs off other pulling at them with unholy might, but as the bear of Olweje now stood against the man who had called himself a warrior king a vial splashed at the foot of the latter and held him fast with ropes of fire.

"Bah!" spat the Redman. "You do not even fight your own battles!" So saying he tore himself free and with his iron gauntlets he struck the deck of the ship as the blacksmith's hammer strikes the anvil, tearing a hole in it. Such was his might that the bear fell though while the warrior nimbly jumped aside and he laughed then with such malice that men fled at the sight of him and even Antonio quailed as he shot his second bolt.

In that battle of the living against the dead the Anwa warriors fell more than they accounted to of the foe and Antonio was sore worried, but that was as nothing beside the carnage that was being done upon the crew of the ship. The dead men knew the danger of fighting under sight of archers and so they butchered sailor after sailor with blades of dread.

Burned and wounded the would be king should have seemed less than what he had been but instead it seemed almost as though the very pain gave him strength.

Again an arrow and two bolts flew but they did not seem to have any power over him, only the arrow from the sorceress' staff finding its mark and so his eye was on her as he leapt towards her, slaying a petty lord of the Anwa in his charge with an almost careless blow of his gauntlet.

Yet even as the would be king came near the sorceress who had now turned and started to flee by more than mortal grace there was a roar across the deck, one that Antonio felt more than he heard and from the gaping hole in the deck there came something that was no bear of Olweje, gnashing teeth and fleshy tendrils each with an eye that burned like red flame atop it and limbs that seemed to be made of teeth and great eyes that floated like lanterns and other shapes that defied the mind of man to look upon rose from the hole... the wound in the heart of the ship.

"gET OUt!" The words were not wrathful, they were wrath, the very substance of them writ in pain and blood of the murdered sailors

It was Antonio alone who could see what happened then for he would later find that all others, be they however wise or learned in sorcery, had averted their eyes at the sight. The old king withdrew to his ship amid a shroud of tattered mist and called out at the last a challenge: "I shall see you and yours on the land Man of Nowhere where your Beast cannot save you."

• Lost 8 sailors
• 5 ships sunk or foundering
• Marcella suffered light damage

When he looked back to it the hole in the ship was just a hole... mostly at least. He tried not to look too closely at the faintly discolored edges where it seemed almost fleshy and dripping something that was probably not sea water.

What do you focus on in the aftermath of the battles?

[] Try to repair the Marcella

[] Let the ship heal on its own, use the chance to collect the strange substances

[] Write in

OOC: I thought about including more of the post-battle stuff into this, but this is already a huge update and I did not want to leave you guys waiting anymore for it. Incidentally this was the roll for the Marcella.