Readying 15, 591

Before sunrise, Indranil and his team make their way back into the ruined city. Rope is strung across the street south of the wight-infested building. Indranil, Rain, Drago, and Newt move off the street and take positions among the fallen vine covered marble blocks strewn about. Lorindel stealthily approaches the building and then sees, just within the main entrance, the red glimmer of the eyes of one of the wights. He backs off across the street and fires towards the glimmer. The arrow strikes true and the wight howls and leaps out of the door towards Lorindel. The second wight also comes rushing out of the building, Lorindel turns to run but is not quite fast enough. He feels the claws of the first tearing into his back and sucking away his life force. Fortunately he is able to pull away from it and sprint down the street, but the two wights are right on his heels. As fast as they are, Lorindel is faster and he soon opens a distance between himself and the ravenous undead. He leaps over the rope, but unfortunately the wights leap in time as well. As they do, Indranil and the others fire upon them. Rain misses her first shot, but Indranil and Newt’s arrows both hit the foremost wight. It doesn’t seem to bother it much. Drago shouts “Disrompu nemortajhon!” as Aramek taught him and a thin ray of light shoots forth from his extended claw but misses.

The wights stop and turn to the ambushers, they leap onto the rubble and begin scrambling up towards their attackers. Indranil fires again and though his second arrow also hits the first wight in the chest it doesn’t bother the creature at all. Rain’s second shot hits the other wight, but it doesn’t slow it down a bit, though it does hiss in anger as it plucks the shaft out and throws it aside. Newt scrambles back away from them and fires again, hitting the same one that she hit before and that indranil has already hit twice, but even this fourth arrow doesn’t seem to do anything more than anger it. Lorindel, seeing that the wights have stopped their pursuit, turns back and fires at the first. To his dimay, the arrow sails past harmlessly.

Rain drops her bow and tries to roll past the second wight as it reaches out towards Drago, but the wight reaches out and rips into her with its bony claws, and like Lorindel before her she feels a portion of her life force sucked away by the undead abomination. She does at least get on the other side of it, and as it turns to fend off Drago she draws her sword and pierces it through the back of the skull. It falls, destroyed at last. Drago stumbles back and fires his magical ray a third ti me at the wight that is now menaching Indranil, and for a third time misses. Indranil, however, has already dropped his bow and drawn his sword. He hacks at the monstrosity in front of him and drives it down the mound of rubble. The wight hisses is frustration and tires to run, but Newt is ready for it. She fires her shortbow and her shaft pierces it in the head and it’s negative life force is extinguished at last.

“Next time we go against life force draining undead, I recommend using someone other than the person currently suffering from a drained life force as bait. Sound reasonable?” complains Lorindel through teeth clenched in pain.

Indranil replies, “Yes, brother, but you were the most qualified for the task. You are the fastest and you knew what to look for.”

Lorindel approaches the bodies of the wights drawing his axe. He proceeds to chop off the heads of both of them. Looking back at the others he says, “Hey, you never know. I want these things to stay dead.”

Indranil is breathing heavily at the end of the battle and as he surveys the scene seeing two dead wights and his friends all alive he begins to shake as the battle fever leaves his body. Then he gasps with shock upon seeing both his brother and Rain drawn and pale gray, bleeding from wounds inflicted by the wights. He mutters an oath under his breath, “bloody hell,” and walks over to his brother and lays his hand on his shoulder, “You are most brave brother leading them to us at great risk and you took another grievous wound. We shall pray all night for the gods favor for a full recovery.”

Turning to his friends he says, “You all fought well! We have beaten four massive adult alligators and now two undead wights. Our little band is mighty in deed. It could have gone much worse for us. Everyone did their part perfectly. I am proud of you all.”

“The good news is I think we might have found a safe house we can use. I suspect these two have lived here preying on the unsuspecting for some time and the other denizens of this city know about this house and avoid it. No one will come inside for fear of the wights and we will be undisturbed.”

“Let us carry their bodies back into the building they have been occupying and bury their carcass to maintain the illusion they still prey upon the area. Then let us fully search it. I understand wights like to collect treasure so we may find things worth keeping. This afternoon we will return to our forward base camp and carry our gear and provisions back here and make a new forward base camp inside the wight house.”

“Rain! Are you alright?” Newt knows this is a stupid question, but has to show concern anyway. “That was a frightful attack you finished it with! Now, how can I help you? You’ll forgive me if I say you look terrible.” Turning to the others, “Does anyone have anything which will improve their chances of recovery? A potion, or perhaps a spell?”

There is no response from anyone.

Unable to help Rain any more than helping her find a decent seat (useless, since Rain can do that for herself), Newt does a slow walk around the immediate area, scanning for any minds that may be watching, and again using any birds or beasts she detects to extend her own perception.

Newt looks inside the building the wights used as a home. As she approaches the door the odor hits her and she closes her nostrils to keep the vile scent out. Peeking inside she sees the filth the wights have created. “Indranil, are you sure we won’t catch our deaths of disease living in there? We’ve no cleric to cure us any time soon, and our injured may not heal well within this…” she pauses, at a loss for the right word, then ends with “…grave.”

Rain is pale and shaking, beads of sweat beginning to drip down her face. Though staunched for the most part, blood oozes from rips in her pants at the thigh from the grazing wound. Yet she returns a small smile to Newt “Ill be fine Newt, thanks.”

She walks over to Lorindel, placing her hand briefly on his shoulder “Nice pull of the wights Lorindel. Just as planned.”

As Newt approaches the wight’s previous lair she says harshly “Newt, step away from there! We don’t know for sure it is safe yet.”

Turning to Indranil she says “What next Indranil, we clear the house?”

“Aye, we need to clean up the street fast and get out of sight before we are seen. The sounds are surely to have drawn unwanted attention.”

Indranil quickly coils the two trip ropes, places one in his pack and hands the other to Lorindel. Then he takes a fallen branch and scrubs out the signs if battle.

When done he says, “Drago and Newt grab that wight. Lorindel and Rain grab that one.” Indranil picks up the two heads and walks toward the east entrance of the wight house, “follow me he says softly over his shoulder.”

He cautiously stops at the threshold to look inside. It is two stories (24′) tall and the entrances might once have been wooden doors but these have long since disintegrated from the hinges. Lorindel moves around the perimeter before taking a peek inside. There is nothing around the perimeter, no tracks or any other signs of habitation. The only other things around it are more ruins. The building looks as though it were set on fire ages ago. Peeking in through the entrances Lorindel sees that the interior is completely empty except for the bones and ash strewn all over the floor. If there was a second floor it also burned away in the fire.

Following Indranil inside where he drops the heads on the ground, Newt also drops the wight she is carrying roughly to the ground and Drago kicks its head around. Lorindel and Rain carry the second body.

Indranil and Lorindel find two tree branches to use as poles about 6′ in length and drive them in the ground just inside the open doorways in the shadows, impaling the wights bodies and heads upon them, like a scarecrow, so anyone passing by will think the wight still stand guard.

“Oh, that’s just gross!” thinks Newt as the “scarecrows” are erected. Aloud she says “Nice camouflage, Indranil.” Then adds in a mumble to herself, “Home sweet home,” as she settles in.

Rain takes a look at the dwarven corpse for anything distinguishable. “Hmmm… Indranil, I wonder if this guy came with the other dwarves you mentioned in the quarry. I agree, I would like to see if we can make our way down there to investigate. Looks like maybe these guys all came here together for some purpose I would like to discover.”

Drago follows Rain over to the dead dwarf and incants, “Magio rivelighu!” to see if any magic can be detected. First he scans the dwarf. Once finished there, he continues to methodically inspect the entire building with the spell for anything they might have missed.

There is nothing of any value or magic in this building.

Rain then looks around the building, seeing if any part of the upper structure can be accessed by climbing and be usable as a lookout with relative cover.

Indranil then speaks. “Friends, we have an interesting riddle to solve here. This a dwarf corpse is only a few weeks old. I saw three dwarven corpses down on a ledge in the quarry that were much older. Dwarves are known for their mining skills and have a nose for valuable ore and gems. It appears they have made regular trips into Thracia, not always to their benefit,” Indranil nudges the corpse with his toe. I would like to rope down to the quarry’s ledge and investigate those corpses for further clues to theri intentions. Lorindel are you up for belaying me on the climb? Rain, Drago and Newt you would be our guard.

“Rain any luck finding an easy path or climb to the roof? It would be nice to have a high point of vantage to survey the rest of the SW quadrant.”

After Rain’s evaluation she says “Indranil, I can make my way up to the roof and set a knotted rope for us. That would be a good lookout spot.”

The only clearing out they do is the semi-protected NW corner where they make camp. They collect enough debris to make a defensible berm around the corner and screens them from sight of the doorways. They leave the rest as-is so as not to disturb the look of the wight house to any passing observers.

They collect their gear and provisions to make a new camp in the wight house.