Nation of the Dead: House of a Thousand Corpses

[Zincorium]

"Er, was there every any doubt I was coming? Unlike those two living mercenaries, I am always in the service of our liege."

[purepolarpanzer]

Suck up.
Razor turns to the vampire.
We're in, but I can't promise you all of our "team mates" will make it back. Slaughterknife has his urges. Sometimes they're inconvenient, but he's just so darn cute you have to forgive him for them.

[The Demented One]

"Excellent." the vampire says, with only the slightest hint of sarcasm. "The property we're looking for is a female undead, very small, like a child or a halfling. Looks like a zombie, but much smarter, and much faster. What I've been told is that it's not going to be a threat to you, but fighting it isn't the goal here; destroying the property would be very inconvenient. We've seen her going into the slums, and those are a big place, so I think it's best if we split up to search for her. I'll take my spawn with me." The vampire looks at Moldberin, saying "I'm leaving them in your hands, deadman. Sweep the streets, find either the property or any trace of it."

[Ellas Aramond]

Moss turns to stare at Moldberin. Its impossible to tell just what is going through the insane aberration's mind, for not a sound can be heard from him; mental, or audible.

[The Demented One]

"Alright then, you all look so...eager. We'll take Hillside Road down to where it crosses the Thicket Boulevard, and split up there. We've heard word from our irregulars that the property is in one of the tenements there. It's bad soil, but you look like you can take care of yourself." the vampire says, before heading down the road with his spawn.

[Krimm_Blackleaf]

Slaughterknife follows the vampire with his imp companion on his spiked shoulder. He makes sure to follow down to where the road splits and takes the path that the vampire and his spawn do not, keeping his hand on his sword the whole while.

OOC: Hillside and Thicket, yes.

[The Demented One]

With Slaughterknife and the imp on his shoulder leading the way, the group comes to Thicket Boulevard, the outdrifts of the Ar Ghul slums. They turn right, while the vampire and his crew turn left. The street is lined with what look to be ruined, dilapidated mansions, hideouts for undead criminals and lairs for the more abominable monstrosities that roam the city, as well as the slum tenements, jail-like buildings packed with the lesser undead. Narrow allies branch off from the main road, with promises of illicit goods and danger. As the two groups part, the captain calls out "She should be somewhere near here, so just search through any hiding place you could think of. If you find her, return to the fountain."

[Ghal Marak]

Janar gave a cursory glance around the area, then turned to the others. "Where would we even start? It is a sizeable area we must cover for a being the size of a child."

[Krimm_Blackleaf]

Slaughterknife looks at Janar as he speaks, and when he's done he goes over to a pile of debris next to a decrepit house and just begins swinging his sword at if to move it out of his way. A low metallic rumble issues from him as if he enjoys the mindless destruction.
He continues to do this all up and down the street in any place he might consider a hiding spot.

Spoiler

Show

I don't actually have my sheet, but I'm fairly certain I had no ranks in search and an Int modifier of +0, so I'm rolling with that.
Search: (1d20)[13]

[The Demented One]

Slaughterknife's rummaging produces nothing like the property they're looking for. A handful of rotted meat, marred by ghoulish bite marks, a few grubby silver coins, and a freshly fallen bone, but no female undead.

[Ellas Aramond]

Moss smirks at Slaughterknife's mindless destruction; knowing full well that all the rageforged was doing was turning the city into more of a mess.

Closing his eyes and tapping into the subtle psionic energies of his soul, the Seer's mind calls out to the undead girl, hoping to find out where she was hiding.

Spoiler

Show

Moss attempts to become psionically focused. Concentration: [roll]1d20+11[/roll]
Trying again if it doesn't work the first time. [roll]1d20+11[/roll]

He then manifests Remote Viewing, trying to find the undead girl. DC 20

[Ellas Aramond]

Spoiler

Show

Here are the concentration rolls.
(1d20+11)[29]
(1d20+11)[16]

[Ghal Marak]

Janar looked around again, and began searching earnest. Though, not quite as vigorous as the warforged.

[Krimm_Blackleaf]

Slaughterknife rumbles a bit more, spending more time to cut through the crap of the houses. He goes up and down the street swinging his blade at anything he sees.

Spoiler

Show

Taking 20 this time, making the search check... 20.

[The Demented One]

Slaughterknife's search is again futile, but Moss's clairsentient scrying proves to be of use. His quasi-real view manifests within what appears to be a vast, spacious room, filled with a shambles of splintered furniture, torn portraits, and tarnished jewelry. Great arcing windows show the streets below, and the intersection of Hillside Road and Thicket Boulevard, where the party now stands, can be seen in the distance. Moss can see the target of pursuit, a female undead that looks like a prepubescent human child, or a adult halfling. He can't make out the exact features of her face through the blurry quasi-viewpoint, but he can sense her fear just from her body language. She seems to be cowering from something else in the room, hovering outside the range of sight of Moss's remote viewing.

[purepolarpanzer]

Razor appears to be lounging on Slaughter Knife's shoulder. In all actuallity, he is searching the area with an intense gaze.
Where are you...

Spoiler

Show

Search (1d20+15)[32]

[The Demented One]

Razor Bite and Janar notices a faint trail of spilled ichor, leading down the boulevard. He notices a few hand and foot-prints around the trail, but cannot track whatever made them.

[Ghal Marak]

((Sorry, forgot the roll. (1d20+7)[13]))

[Krimm_Blackleaf]

Spoiler

Show

I'm emoting a bit for Razor Bite just a little to keep it moving.

Slaughterknife turns his head when Razor Bite taps between his plates to his livewood core and points at the ichor trail. He lets out what can only be described as an unnatural bark and trots toward it and taking a hint, begins to follow the black goo.

[The Demented One]

The trail of gore goes on for a few hundred yards, a faint but unbroken line of ichor. It seems to come to an abrupt stop as it reaches one of the once-grand, dilapidated mansions of Ar Ghul. It was once a clearly opulent mansion, but now seems badly-aged and ruined, the architecture looking as if it is sinking in on itself. The paint is all but gone, the bare bricks staring out side by side with dusty or shattered arch windows. A loosely held-together chimney juts out from the roof, doubtlessly full of cobwebs from the apparent years of disuse. The front door sags outwards slightly on its hinges, a few stones falling through the crack.

OOC: Anyone wanting more info on the mansion should make a Knowledge (Local) or (History) check. Anyone wanting to try to pick the trail back up should make a Search check.

[Ellas Aramond]

Muttering quietly to himself, Moss comes out of his scrying, and follows after the hulking rageforged. But not because he believes that Slaughterknife has found something out. It is simply because they both heading along the same road to the mansion.

[Zincorium]

Drifting along slowly searching the rubble in a way that betrays his lack of skill, Moldebrin grows gradually more and more frustrated at the lack of anything worth looking at in his section.

Hearing the rageforged bark, a sound unlikely to come from any of the dead, Moldebrin begins moving as fast as he can towards the source of the noise, hoping that another of the party has had more luck.

[Ghal Marak]

Janar sighed as he stepped back from the pile of refuse he was searching through. He wasn't cut out for this grunt work. He turned to speak to Moldebrin only to find him running off. "Have we already found it? Wait for me!" Janar sets off after Moldebrin in a more dignified fast walk.

[Krimm_Blackleaf]

He walks over to the door, taking the door by the knob and pretty much tearing it off of it's broken hinges, and looking at the rocks in the way. He realizes he probably can't get through them and walks back about 30 feet and turns and runs at the house, finding the closest window and jumping right through it.

Spoiler

Show

Jump: (1d20+13)[30]

[Zincorium]

"Yes, it appears that someone found something. Or that someone decided to go on a spree of destruction completely unrelated to the task at hand but somehow entertaining in it's randomness and absurdity. Your thoughts, Moss and Janar?"

Moldebrin casts detect magic to see if any of the local surroundings comes off as anything other than the general miasma of indestinct necromancy.

[Ghal Marak]

Janar shrugged once he had caught up with the others. "Our metallic companion may very well be onto something. Though, as you have so eloquently said, this could merely be a side tangent." Janar looked around them at the various houses around them. "Shall we wait here then?"

[purepolarpanzer]

It's not him, you fools! It's me! But this IS a HELL OF A RIDE!!
Razor Bite laughs gleefully as the monstrous metal battering ram pursued the direct route.

[The Demented One]

Slaughterknife's leap takes him and Razor Bite directly into the mansion's antechamber, and leaves a convenient warforged-sized hole in the wall of the dilapidated mansion. Inside, they see a large room, filled with rubble, and what looks to be aged, decaying furniture. A large spiral staircase leads up to the second floor, and in front of that is one of the stranger sights to be seen in Arcnus Mortis.

A wobby table has been propped up, and sitting around it are a quartet of undead. Two are large, animated skeletons of some monstrous humanoid, while another is a hulking zombie, perhaps an ogre or an overgrown orc. They wear what would seem to be servant's uniforms, tattered red vests and small red silk caps that are worn down by the assaults of ghoul-moths. The final undead is the strangest of all, looking to be cobbled together from three separate skeletons, its three skulls bickering amongst each other. Only a pair of each of its limbs seem to be functional, the rest flailing uselessly. It wears what seems to be a tuxedo, a black jacket with a cummerbund and a decaying bow tie. From the cards scattered on the table, they seem to have been playing dead man's hand or a similar game, but Slaughterknife's entrance has put them on alert. The skeletal butler yells out, "None enter Longshank Manor, not while the master is busy! YOU'LL HAVE TO GET AN APPOINTMENT!" Seemingly bewildered from what must have been a long exile in the collapsed manor, the three-headed skeleton runs at you, brandishing a long cane looking to be made from the spine of some poor creature, and the undead servants follow it.

One of the hulking skeletons moves towards Slaughterknife, lashing out with a bony claw. The claw rakes through his armored plating, causing a light ooze of oil to flow from the furrow in the slaughterforged's armor. (10 damage)

Initiative
Skeleton Servant #1 (23)
Razor Bite (23)
Skeleton Servant #2 (20)
Skeleton Butler (19)
Zombie Servant (9)
Slaughterknife (3)

Map

Spoiler

Show

RB: Razor Bite
SL: Slaughterknife
B: Skeleton Butler
S1: Skeleton Servant #1
S2: Skeleton Servant #2
Z: Zombie Servant
Grey Circle: Stairs
Brown Circles: Rubble, treated as difficult terrain

OOC: I'll roll initiative for the rest of you once you enter.

Moldebrin's detect magic did not detect any auras.

[purepolarpanzer]

With a flap of his small wings, Razor Bite is off, diving for speed, skimming the floor. Using his momentum, he slices through the air around the skeleton, spinning like a drill to avoid any attacks that come his way. As he passes by, his inky eyes grow large and eager.
Time to die again, my friend!
Cutting around at a breakneck speed, Razor Bite's dagger-sized tail lashes out as he zooms straight up in the air.
My gifted eyes see more than you corpses know. Levakross let me see your secrets. You may not have a throat to slice or a heart to stop, but you do have points where your necromantic energy is stored. Take those out, and your dust.

Spoiler

Show

Tumble Check- (1d20+18)[38]. Moving one square to the up, one diagonal behind skeleton, and then the rest of my move as high up as he can fly or till he hits the ceiling. That's 10 ft up, I believe, and 15 to get behind, at half for tumbling. Go perfect fly speed. Sneak Attack, with Death's Ruin- to hit (+2 for flanking) (1d20+17)[18] to hit and (1d4x2)[6] damage, (2d6)[9] Sneak Attack.

EDIT- Accidentaly did 1d4x2 instead of +2, so damage is 5, not 6.

[Zincorium]

Moldebrin moves to where he can see what's going on through the window, and if he can see that slaughterknife and razorbite are in combat, he begins casting mass lesser Vigor on his teammates.