Weakness of the Flesh
25st of July 2006 A.D.
Sight beyond sight is burned into your brain, the shape of the base, the passages the enemy could yet take. Even as the sword slams into the chin of the frogman, perfectly positioned to slay the next one you know this is not battle, it is a distraction,
meat to the grinding. Baleful runes burn as easily in water as in air, the rubble of the broken base drawn forth into an armor of ruin sending the enemy recoiling beyond even the compulsions they had been implanted with....
There are more monsters than the enemy here, you look to the leader of the vampires, contempt twisting your mouth as you find him too busy feasting upon the flesh of his would be assassin to command the host that is descending without purpose without clear direction upon the base.
Out of that rage speaks the voice of your servant, your assistant, your darker self
"You can give it to them My Princess."
For just a moment, passing so swiftly even your many eyes can hardly follow it, your soul burns with primeval green flame without shadow, inhuman hearts laid bear before your all-piercing gaze.
Lost 2 Essence -> now at 5/12
Eighteen is three sixes and six is two bands of three, bound by fear, by oaths or by love and each of those you mark and make use of. A shouted command sends one of the trios racing the side of the worm with their claws, even as they pour their noxious spit into its wounds, seeming to confuse the beast at least while among the flurry of parries and slashes you bait the frogmen in striking you all across the chest and arms where your armor guards you before....
It is not even a spoken command this time, just a short sharp whistle you somehow
know is a hunting call they'll answer. One of the frogmen gets his throat torn out and he might be the lucky one. Another gets ripped in two like a wishbone and the third is blinded by a claw strike.
The vampires actually seem to move swifter and strike with greater savagery as they feed, but in the water
something whispers,, not against the feasting, that would be as attempting to drive back the tides with a leaking bucket, not even to drive them into a rage again.
What use rage when there is all this blood to be had? No this was a subtler and more pernicious sin, gluttony.
Feed and grow fat, trouble us no more, the waters spoke with the will of some distant sorcerer.
Alas for him most of the vampires were still in the thrall of your words. Only two of them stop to... play with their food and drink while the rest, including a now recovered Don Phillipe are prepared when something far more foul than any frogman rises from the ruined sphere.
At first glance the thing might almost be confused with a jellyfish, if one the size of a horse, but looking closer one sees that the tendrils now upholding themselves behind the thing are made of human vertebra tipped with shards of blackened bone. Alas the 'head' isn't an empty cartilaginous ball of mesoglea. As the liquid momentarily clears gray, human-sized fetus suspended within, lacking a nose or mouth peers out at the world with eyes black as the deepest ocean trench.
"TrAitOrs! TRAitorS and UsuRPeRS!"
The words are a scream, not in any human language yet understood by all. One of the tendrils lashes out to strike a distracted vampires, seemingly wracking it with unspeakable pain... but whatever the thing is planning it isn't happening fast enough because it also strikes a pair of the remaining fomori slaves.
You really
wish you still did not know what it was planning. Even as you and the vampires who sill have their wits close on the thing its hapless victims bloom into masses of tumorous flesh, gaping mouths, misshapen limbs and worst of all staring eyes filled with agony before exploding outwards into a shrapnel of human misery.
"The pieces are also infectious," Usum helpfully informs you. If the vampires had all been clumped together feeding, or if they had all been fighting one another as the initial spell had meant them to the attack would have been devastating, perhaps even fatal. As it is only four vampires are struck, all in possession of their faculties and all able to resist the twisting o their flesh.
Regain 2 Essence -> Now at 7/12
Seeing this and bearing witness to the death of the worm-creature a moment later the... Fomori, for you do not think this thing had ever been a human cultist spews out a cloud of squid--like ink in which.. other things are swimming.
You should not have been able to see them as you do not see their master in the cloud, but when one of the second echelon of the enemy tries to take you by surprise you see it through eyes of fire. It, or he maybe, looks like a perfectly formed male human save for the fact that he has no head, only smooth skin between the shoulders where the neck aught to be and in the center of his stomach a circular maw that can extend outwards like a proboscis made of glistening human guts.
Easy enough to parry it but your flaming eyes can only catch glimpses of the enemies that attack you and the grey thing is...
That is when you hear the sound of tearing flesh and ripping bone, the vampires apparently have a lot less trouble navigating in the murk than you do.
Suddenly your radio comes alive: "We have reached the base!" you hear your dad shouting into the radio. "Do you need back up or should we press on?"
Tactical situation
- Worm: dead
- Frogmen: dead or scattered
- The Grey One: wounded and engaged with the vampires
- 5 vampires incapacitated with pain (though none of them exploded into cancerous bombs)
- 2 vampires distracted feeding
- Indeterminate number of Gut-Mouths attacking inside the cloud
- Yellow Submarine: At the base
What do you do?
[] Tell dad and Lydia to press on ahead while you clean up here
[] Ask dad and Lydia to hold their ground inside the base while you finish up
[] Leave the vampires to deal with the flesh-shaper, you have to secure that base fast
[] Write in
OOC: The leadership roll was over 10 successes which is gave a significant bonus to the vampire will saves as well as making their attacks more spread out and efficient instead of just going where the blood was. Not going to post the rest of the rolls because it's combat and there were en enormous number of them even with me doing he vampires in batches.
