[Week 1 observations: Learning, 65+26+10(Windsage)=101]
As Roswita rides out to personally settle some dispute about the recent sale of parts of the Hunter's Hills, your parallel journey upon your Shadowsteed leads you to exactly what you're looking for. You hone in on the foul smell/feel/taste of necromancy just as it begins to gather, and watch from a safe distance as what appears to be no more than a smear of foul magic floating in midair expands into the silhouette of what looks like a withered corpse dressed in the puffy trousers and waistcoat that would have been fashionable for an Altdorf noble in the Time of the Three Emperors. The ability to transform into mist is one that the less reliable books ascribed to Vampires, and you'd assumed it was a misunderstanding of the ones that wield Ulgu rather than the necromancy they were known for, but it seems there's more to it. You stalk the silhouette as it beelines through the scrub, passing unimpeded through thorned bushes and leaving a trail of wilting branches and dead leaves.
Your Aethyric Armour renders you as immune to the thorns as the silhouette's incorporeality does, and you leave your Shadowsteed behind as you follow the trail into the cave that the bushes concealed, taking a moment to wrap yourself in Substance of Shadow as you leave the sunlight. And just in time too, as the first alarmed bat flies through your incorporeal form and out into the sunlight, panicked by the intruder. You do your best to ignore the stream of other bats doing the same as you push through the cave until it opens up into an open chamber, and the cause of the bats' alarm is clear as the silhouette moves with clearly unnatural speed, flitting around the chamber and jabbing fingers of Dhar into the largest specimens.
[-snip-]
[Week 2 observations: Learning, 97+26+10(Windsage)+10(previous crit)=143]
A second attempt unfolds as Roswita rides to Siegfriedhof, and once more you're able to witness the entire process from start to finish. Though it is obligingly shrouded in shadows, Hunger Wood is not home to any wholesome wildlife, and instead a lurking pack of ghouls are slain one by one by the apparition, and once more the twisted lesson unfolds. With their twisted forms already home to Dhar, ghouls are both more receptive to necromancy but also less predictable in their responses to it. As you watch the beasts rise back to their feet and have their muscles begin to bulge with unnatural energies, you frown to yourself in thought. The bats were barely a threat, but ghouls were nasty enemies even without the benefit of necromantic empowerment, their teeth and claws practically guaranteeing infection from the slightest wound. You resolve to intervene, and watch closely until the most precarious moment and then interrupt with the slightest jolt of Ulgu, which disperses within moments of its work being done.
"Doina," the voice scolds as the ghoul that was rising to its feet shudders as Dhar runs rampant through it. "I know you know better than that. What just happened?" Whatever answer the apparition gets, it doesn't satisfy it, and it reaches out and squeezes the unlife from one of the previously-raised ghouls in frustration. "Just put a rag over it until it stops bleeding! Next up, let's go." Another well-timed nudge, another spell tears itself free of its owner's control. "Ionuţ! Someone check the chart, I'm sure he's on his last chance." One of the ghouls crumples, presumably as its controller abandons it to consult said chart. "That's what I thought. Hold him down- I said hold him! If I have to come over there myself-" The rest of the reanimated ghouls crumple and the silhouette shrinks back in on itself, and as soon as it is reduced to the size of a fist, it shoots off into the sky, heading east.
[Week 3 observations: Learning, 50+26+10(Windsage)+50(previous crits)=136]
Perhaps he'd grown suspicious, perhaps he was merely fortunate, but the third manifestation of Alkharad was shrouded in the lingering energies of a recent battlefield. But knowing exactly what to look for means that even if you didn't catch it at first, by the time the stag had been reanimated and the group had moved on to the other deer, you were watching. The apparition is carefully watching each corpse as it reanimates, but a handful of deer don't merit you risking your observations, so you let the lesson unfold without any interruptions, confirming the mental notes you'd previously taken and pay closer attentions to the process of empowerment that the creatures undergo. Part of you winces at the thought of adding another paper to the to-do list, but as far as you know these capabilities are unknown to the Empire.
