Chapter 1-4: Inviting Friends to a Humble Fire

I flicked up a Detect Undead, making sure there was nothing hiding out of sight to the sides... or rather, confirming three of them were there, now being held back by burning corpses turning to white dust in front of them.

I poked my arm around the corner, and shot the first one in its jawless head, dropping it with a flaming stump, pulling back from the grabs of two zombies, and as they lunged into the burning corpses and caught on vivic fire, I backed away, shot the first one as it stumbled on the corpses, and let the second one tumble down, start to get up, and vivic fires blew out its empty eye sockets.

It fell back down, and I moved forwards to keep the rest of the zombies in the hallway in range.

I heard a bang, and looked sideways as the door down there slammed wide open, and something with purple skin and nearly two feet of extended tongue leapt out of it, leading a spill of other zombies behind it. It was big and rather bloated, with a bulging gut and unnatural energy about its movements, especially compared to the zombies behind it. I wasn’t going to let it get close enough to smell it, as it was certainly coming this way, hunched over and almost leaping as it bounded at me.

I was pretty sure it was a basic ghast, and I couldn’t risk the paralysis of its touch or the power of its stench. It was halfway to me when all four Shards hit it for 7d6+18, blasting both arms and its extended mouth and head off in bursts of white on black, and putting a big hole in its chest.

The twitching carcass slid to a halt just outside the pile of burning zombies that I was sort of standing on, vivic fire doing no harm to me, and I proceeded to start shooting the dozen others as they came into range.

I couldn’t get them all before they got to the pile, of course, but that wasn’t the idea. The idea was to litter the ground, make them divert, and stay inside the vivic flames if they decided to take a swing at me.

Their moans were pretty hoarse and dry, and they certainly didn’t weigh all that much as they came at me. Happily, they didn’t move fast, and if they didn’t divert around the ones in front of them, they were set on unwhite fire and became quick-burning vivic candles.

I just pulled back inside the door, onto the disintegrating undead there, and if they clambered up at me, the bonfire of burning corpses basically did my work for me in under ten seconds. The irregular ‘ground’ wasn’t kind to things whose nervous systems were necroic wrecks.

Hoping there wasn’t something I had to spend a Valence on, I kept shooting down everything I could see, and they kept dying and burning, setting one another on fire, and clearing the area around me.

---------

It was several minutes before there was nothing moving left. At least fifty zombies were burning and staining the ground white around me.

I couldn’t stay there and let them burn down, because I might need to come back to this spot and use it for cover, as it were, and the first undead had already burned to dust and bone ash. Sighing and wincing, I moved out, using Detect Undead to sense around corners and through the thin walls for anything hiding there.

There were a couple zombies wandering around, or trapped inside closed rooms they hadn’t gotten out of, clearly not the super-muscled kind. Knowing they were there, it was easy enough to just open the door and shoot them, then close it and continue on my way.

There weren’t many signs of fighting, just dust and scuff marks here and there. Of course, it was technically pitch black, so I couldn’t make out blood stains or anything, but there was none of the smashed and broken shit that would have indicated fighting, nor were the zombies mangled, hacked, burned, or anything.

They had died and been Animated pretty intact; they were just weathered with age.

I finally dared to take the time to look at my Assay again.

===

The Traveler, Halvyri/1 (Elf/1)

Classes: Expert/Wizard/Sorcerer/Witch 1/1/1/1

Strength: 8 (7) -1(-2)

Dexterity: 18 (13) +4 (+1)

Constitution: 16 (13) +3 (+1)

Intellect: 22 +6

Wisdom: 14 +2

Charisma: 14 +2

Health: 14 (9)

Soak: 13 (10)

Talent: Naturally Centered

Racial Benefits: Low Light Vision, Keen Senses, 2 Favored Classes (Wizard/Sorc); immune to Sleep Effects; Dual-Minded; Skill Affinity: Wary; Elven Spell Lore; Elven Senses; Quickfoot; Arcane Empowerment

Traits:Experienced Warrior (Racial, Elf); Mark of Doom (Quest); Favored by Faith (Religion); Magical Lineage (Magic); Undead Killer (Combat); Warcaster Tradition (Social)

Karma: Current Two, Reserve Ten (100%)

Base Abilities...

Feats/Class Abilities...

===

It had taken my Feat and auto-purchased two more Traits. I focused on them, and they opened up.

Undead Killer (Combat): You have a massive amount of training and experience fighting the undead.You gain a +1 Trait Bonus To Hit and damage the undead, and to the Potency of any spells against them. If you have Undead as a Favored Enemy, these bonuses are +2.

Ah, right!

I went looking at Feats, and it better have awarded it...

“Yes!” I muttered quickly, seeing Foe Hunter/Undead had popped up in my Feat List. It was a Quest Feat that kicked in when you killed twenty of a Favored Enemy category, basically jumping your Favored Enemy/Slayer Morale bonus right to +2 to hit and damage that foe, as well as a +2 Morale Bonus to Will saves against them. It required wearing a trophy of fighting them, i.e. loot, as an emblem of victory over them.

It also applied against evil Clerics, Necromancers, and Warlocks with a Death bias, among other things.

There were similar Foe Hunter Achievement Feats for most Favored Enemies, making a lot of people into trophy-wearers. The main difference between it and true Favored Enemy bonuses was +2 was the limit, and you could only benefit from one, or your Foe Hunter Mastery Tier, in trophies at one time. I flicked the new ivory earring in my ear, having been marvelously unsurprised to find they were pierced, which was serving as the focus for the Feat.

+2 damage was small, but it was an independent damage effect, so it worked for Cantrips, unlike my Warcaster’s Razor. Anything to raise the average damage of minor spells was appreciated... and it dovetailed with this Trait...

Warcaster Tradition (Social): You have been trained in a long and proven methodology of combat magic.-1 to the total Metamagic Costs of Weirding a chosen battle magic spell (Shards).

I blinked. Blinked again.

Okay, this was definitely triggered by my complete reliance on Shard-style spells for offense, my Warcaster Tradition... right, and the fact I’d just butchered a bunch of undead, and had come from someone whose Karmic accumulations from killing undead had reached completely unreasonable levels.

So, they were appropriate... and impressive? I now had +4/+4 to hit and damage undead, +2 to the saves they’d have to make (even though there was none of that going on right now) and -3 to total Meta costs!

-3 Weirding... that was unreal. So unreal I couldn’t even take advantage of it at the moment!

But... it was past Renewal. I could still take a Mastery, and a Level... in Human, which came with a Bonus Feat! My eyes glittered as I tapped over the Karmic Lever.

Ding! Ding!

The fuck, it did it again?!

I glared at my Assay as Human/1 popped up. Taking it literally got me nothing BUT that Feat... but I wanted that Feat! I flicked down, peeled back to the Feat page...

Pure Soul (Starter Feat):You are immune to Taint. If you are resistant to Fear, you are also resistant to Horror. Although you are not immune to Corruption, you immediately know if you are afflicted with it.

Nobody sane wanted to read that...

Taint and Corruption were the two main contributors to insanity in horror-style campaign gameworlds. Taint was physical corruption of the body, gradually turning you into something inhuman. Corruption was the moral and spiritual degradation of sanity that kept happening with exposure to unreal or supernatural elements.

It generally indicated the presence of Mythos entities, too... although undead, Curses, Fiends, and the like probably sufficed...

Could only be taken at Level One, too. Damn. If I hadn’t gone sidewise for Human/1, I wouldn’t have gotten it. Yay forced campaign choices?...

That only left me a Mastery to work with. I had two realistic choices, and went with the first one.

Shardcaster/1!

I shouldn’t have been able to grab this until Five, but I checked my Skill Ranks, and yeah, it was auto-filling them, too. The two points from this Witch Level I’d been flatly forced to take were allocated to Spellcraft. I should have gotten two spells for taking a Level, but I didn’t have a...

A...

My eyes flashed down to my finger, and my Ring Einz there. Back to that Assay, focusing on Witch and opening it up.

Ringbound Jinx Witch. Are you bound to the Shroud, or the Curse of the Shroud?

I looked up at the sky.

The Curse of the Shroud was the massive power that the Cancer of Death operated under, the thing that created the Shroud. I most definitely did not want to be drawing on that power directly.

The Shroud was its creation, the thing that trapped the souls of the dead, kept away the gods, shielded them from the sun... to some extent.

“The Shroud,” I stated. Because that would mean I was tapping into the things within the Shroud... the souls waiting to be freed...