Zoom 2021-10-12

Zoom session 12th October - in which the party begin to look suspiciously like they might know what they're doing.  (It won't last.)

Anyway, the party puts it's plan into action: Twoo is healed to full hit points, manifests Tooit (and puts him safely in his pocket) and then drinks the Potion of Spirits. He then looks around nonchalantly, and sees that the two areas of darkness just contain a couple of zombies each. So the party put the second part of the plan into action: ie  draw out the big baddie by disrupting the zombies in the street.

Wun, Bazin and Riff-Raff start turning the zombies from the rooftop - along with Brokev who uses the remains of the mithril Wyldwood 'manifest' symbol. Wun turns some zombies to dust - as does Brokev. Bazin and Riff Raff have mixed success in simply 'turning' some zombies. Even so, 15 zombies are dusted and 7 turned in the first round.

There is an immediate reaction from the zombies (or rather, from their controller, wherever he may be.) The zombies in the street stop their attempts to bash down doors, while the zombies that were heading towards the wall stop, and start coming back - and new patches of darkness start appearing.

The clerics and Brokev continue turning/dusting the zombies in the street below. The God of Universal must have a sideline of being the God of Jokers as well, as there are whole streaks of failed attempts to turn in among a few more successful spurts.

However, that isn't really important as the controller continues reacting by making more patches of darkness, and even makes some of the zombies start to form a pyramid so that they can reach the roof. (Yes, circus zombies!) And then Twoo spots him appearing in the centre of one of the patches of darkness - information which is quickly conveyed to Quercuis and Garaf. Before the controller can do anything more, he is hit by a lighting bolt from Q and and a fireball by G - and that's the end of him.

The patches of darkness dissipate with the death of controller, and the zombies loose any sense of cohesion that they might have had, and are easily dispatched/dusted by the party - who return to street level. Brokev's mithril symbol is beginning to get a bit hot - so he thinks it might be a good idea to stop using it and put it away for now.

Off in the direction of the city wall there is a bloody big boom and a nice light show - it appears that someone detonated a MOAF (Mother of all Fireballs). Garaf looks on enviously.

The party goes to where the remains of the big baddie are - and there is a really bad smell of rotting coming from the area. Although the body is obviously dead, burnt and electrocuted, we decide to play safe and decapitate it anyway - and pour some Holy Water on it. The Holy Water starts sizzling when it hits the body - so we pour on more Holy Water until it stops. The bad smell goes away. We recover the broken remains of a staff, and a magical potion that somehow survived. We also put the head into the Box of Holding - someone may be interested in it later.

Meanwhile, there is the sound of cheering coming from the wall. As zombies are not known for spontaneous displays of exuberance, we take this as a good sign.

The party decides to continue up the road toward the docks - expecting to find another checkpoint a couple of blocks ahead. We do indeed find the checkpoint, but unfortunately it appears be 'manned' by about 20 seemingly uncontrolled zombies. As we approach, we are also aware of another nasty, rotting smell. Getting to within a block of the zombified checkpoint, the zombies suddenly start acting purposefully, and the party experiences a slights sense of déjà vu, as undead start raining down on us again from the windows of the warehouse on our left. The only difference is that this time they are ghouls - one lands neatly on Brokev's well-placed spear, and the other lands near Riff-Raff and Wun. Another person experiencing déjà vu is the DM, as Garaf casts his web spell which catches all the other ghouls that follow.

Although Quercuis' trigger-finger is twitching, she holds off her lightning bolt for now as the zombies ahead charge towards the party and Wun and Riff-Raff deal with the lone standing ghoul. The God of Universal is up to his tricks again as He perpetuates the correlation between Riff-Raff hitting an undead creature with his mace, and it disintegrating. Anyway, whether it was due to Wun's turning, or Riff-Raff's mace, the ghoul is turned to dust. Then a patch of darkness appears and Twoo confirms that there is a person - probably the controller - in it. So Quercuis lets rip with her lightning bolt - and that's the end of him too.

Meanwhile, Francis has been breaking into the warehouse where the ghouls came from. There are no creatures left on either the ground or upper floors (since all the ghouls had self-defenestrated). However, Francis did find a corpse on the upper floor that had obviously been reanimated as a ghast, and then subsequently de-animated by a pair of SARN crossbow bolts. Perhaps some of the SARN converts had decided that teaming up with Dekatur wasn't such a bright idea after all.

With the controller dead, all the remaining undead loose cohesion, and the webbed ghouls and remaining zombies are rapidly dispatched. We recover a magical silver pendant from the body of the controller - which the DM assures us is not a Dekatur symbol. (The Dekatur symbol is a black sphere - normally a globe of onyx embedded in silver.)

The party congratulates itself on a job well done, and presumably (ie the session ended before we had the opportunity) decapitates the body of the controller, and sprinkles it with Holy Water just to make sure. We then prepare to head off - all too well aware that there are probably some SARN supporters still out to get us.