Myth's Tower of Death Preparations

“You know how they’ve been talking about strange migrations in the east?”

“Like how someone was talking about wolf attacks the other day?”

“Yeah, that. Turns out another of those strange towers showed up in, of all places, the Ghostlands.”

Mthandihle was laying on a rooftop, watching the people pass in the street below. This conversation, which had conveniently started right below her (did city people \*never\* look up?), had particularly caught her attention.

“The Ghostlands? Don’t tell me, now there’s undead hordes driving out the animals?”

“Undead hordes fighting each other,” the deeper of the two voices replied. Whoever was speaking, they were standing below the eaves of the roof, so Myth couldn’t actually see them. She’d conjured up an image in her mind of a big, fat innkeeper and a smaller man, but how accurate that was? She knew not.

“Seems that there are undead coming out of the tower fighting the undead in the Ghostlands. Good for us, too, or we’d be getting swarmed by zombies right now instead of having to deal with the occasional frightened animal.”

“So what are they doing about this?”

“Word is there’s some sort of plan to sneak in and seal the tower off. Don’t know for sure how, though.”

Myth had heard enough. Zombies, from what little she knew of them, were not fun at all, so she’d rather not have hordes of them all over. And she was very good at sneaking. She scooted forwards until she could drop her head over the edge of the roof and see the two speakers. She was a bit disappointed to see that the deep-voiced one was just a dwarf, not a fat innkeeper. The other one was a human man of some sort.

They both seemed rather startled to hear a voice from above them. “And where would a girl who wishes to help and is good at sneaking find out more about this plan?” She asked.

“What the blazes are you doing up there?” the dwarf demanded.

Myth smiled back. “Sneaking. See how good I am at it?”

He harrumphed in response, but after a moment said, “I expect there’ll be people at about any tavern you pick recruiting. It’s traditional, you see.”

“Thank you,” Mthandihle replied, before jumping off the roof, landing nimbly, and going on her way, leaving a very confused pair behind her.

\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*

It had taken her most of the day to find someone who could tell her more, but eventually she got the details she needed--where to go, what was to be done, that sort of thing. As she’d expected from the mention of sneaking, it was her sort of plan. Sneaking around and setting interesting magical devices in place? How exciting!

But this wouldn’t be something she could just walk up and do. She’d need to be ready. First of all she should learn something more about undead than that they were dead who were walking. For example, did they notice people more by sight, by scent, or by hearing? That would be important for sneaking. She’d probably want some things for making distractions, too… hmmm…

Oh, and she’d best practice her shapeshifting, too. It was still new to her, after all, and being a cat seemed like it could be useful while sneaking about these Ghostlands. And speaking of the Ghostlands she’d have to get there, which would take some time. Well, first thing was first, time to find out more about zombies.

She spent some time picking out a likely target--a priest of one of those gods that didn’t like undead, she was pretty sure--and listened in on him for a while. Eventually she got annoyed with him not talking about how to handle undead and just asked him. After getting over being startled by her showing up suddenly in front of him, he was happy enough to answer her questions. It turned out that undead were much more complicated than Myth had been anticipating, but she did get some useful information.

The weak ones, at least, saw in the dark but otherwise were normal in how they noticed things. The stronger ones… well, she wouldn’t go too deep in, so she shouldn’t run into any, right? So she’d want some thunderstones and tindertwigs for trickery… and a bit of holy water, just in case. And camping supplies, of course--the undead wouldn’t be good for eating.

Myth made her purchases the next day, then started looking for a group to travel with closer to the gathering place. Well… maybe not so much travel ‘with’ as ‘in parallel to’--once she found such a group, instead of introducing herself and staying with them, she quietly followed them, changing forms and trying to stay unseen. It was good practice for avoiding undead, after all.

Of course, that didn’t make getting shot at any less unpleasant. Still, she managed to emerge unscathed, even if the guards of the group she’d followed had taken a couple of shots at her in cat form. Eventually they reached the gathering place for all of this effort, and Myth finally introduced herself, laughing a bit at the reaction of the guards to the revelation of just who had been making them paranoid the whole way.

That done, she settled in and started getting familiar with the others, with the terrain, and with these ‘Ghostwards’. There was an exciting time ahead, after all.