In the Bradford Mausoleum, the lair of Bernie von Glautzenheiser...The mausoleum seems especially damp this year, Bernie thinks as he sits in one of the chairs in his lab. He's had a lot of good times in this festering tomb, as has his sister. All those long nights spent looking at corpses, slicing corpses, moving corpses, putting corpses in funny positions for laughs, throwing parties for his favorite corpses and their corpse-friends. He gets a bit teary-eyed just thinking about what he's about to do next.
He sighs disappointedly. He had felt four of his minions escape his soul binding the past few days. Sending those idiots to Lake Victory was a terrible idea from the very start, he realizes. Besides, there was no real guarantee that his ritual would have worked, anyway. Oh well. Time for plan B.
He snaps his fingers and finds himself in the familiar locale of Great Hope Graveyard. Hopefully there'll be more unfortunate schmucks around here to exploit and abuse for his own ends. Seems like that's all his minions are good for anymore. Too bad that fellow with the axe went missing. He was the only competent one of the lot besides maybe the freak. Hopefully this batch will turn out better.
End of Chapter 3!Congratulations! Two minions,
Timothy and
Vincent have successfully survived Chapter 3 and, as such, get to choose between three marvelous perks each!
Vincent:
Proper Adventurer,
True Survivor,
Artifact Expert.
Timothy:
Flight of the Banshee,
Heroic Soul,
Power Familiarity.
Chapter 4In With The Right CrowdAs Bernie wanders through the rows of graves and mass-graves in the Great Hope Graveyard, he observes that there seem to be absolutely zero undead around.Blasted things seem to have wandered off somewhere. It's really getting irritating now.
Having very little other choice, Bernie takes out a dangerous-looking whistle from his pocket. After glancing around a few times, he blows the thing, and the sound that comes out is nothing short of utterly terrifying, seemingly spreading for miles before finally dissipating. If anybody was still around, they probably heard it.
Luckily for Bernie, there are indeed people still around! One such person is
Luke Arnold, layabout extraordinaire. It disrupts his carefully plotted, though utterly pointless routine of listless wandering around an empty clearing of the woods, which Luke finds to be quite a worrisome disturbance. He perks up as much as he is able, which isn't a whole lot, considering that he's a zombie, and begins to shamble over to the source of the hellish tonal atrocity that he just heard!
However, poor old Luke is not the only one who heard the horrid call echo through the nearby woods. A certain fellow going by the name of
Darren Derrious also heard the fateful sound, and he is no less intrigued. Maybe that guy who picks people up is back. That would be great. They're mostly stuck here killing adventurers that try to eliminate the undead infestation, anyway, so it's not like they have anything better to do. He floats over in the direction of the sound to take a quick look.
Equally sick of all the adventurers is the unfortunate
Tom, though he has very little to say about his predicament that has not already been phrased better by less-skeletonized people. All he knows is that hellish sounds might be, contrary to all conventional intuition, a good sign, considering that he seems to be part of the forces of darkness now whether he likes it or not. Oh well, what are you gonna do? Forces of darkness and hellish sounds it is. Tom quickens his pace and tries to avoid making too much of a commotion, lest a rampaging undead-slayer spot him.
Strangest of all, however, are the happenings in a nearby bog. It happens occasionally that people underestimate the power of mass-raising spells. You see, while they do indeed expect the dead to rise from their graves, they sometimes have a very narrow definition of what a grave might truly be. In
Yorinnsud Molocksson's case, a grave can be anywhere, really. Even a bog.
Especially a bog, in fact. You see, where most bodies rot away, lose their bones and eventually turn to dust, Yorinnsud has managed to keep his stunning good looks and has obtained a dark brown tan to boot, and it's all thanks to a fine fellow that chose to stab him in the back and let him fall right into a veritable soup of ingredients that turned out to be
just right to preserve him in a sleep of a thousand years! In fact, there are only two downsides to this. Firstly, he's been dead for over a thousand years. Secondly, he didn't so much rise from the grave more than a week ago as he just began furiously rolling around.
What he found out was that peat was much more resilient that he had ever given it credit for. It has taken him the better part of a week to actually loosen the layer of earth above him sufficiently to get out, and he has been questioning his sanity for the most of it, but he is confident that in only a few hours he'll-DEAR GODS, WHAT IS THAT SOUND?
Yorinnsud bursts from the ground with a mighty push that could only have come from an incredibly startled mummified zombie! His emaciated form bursts from the ground, rusted piece of crap greatsword in hand! He stands around for a moment and considers his surroundings. Upon finding them to be totally unfamiliar, he leaves to find the source of that helpful noise that helped guide him to freedom!
Meanwhile, a former and formerly dead mercenary by the name of
Mark MeatWagon of the Yelmondshire MeatWagons is wandering and pondering his questionable lifestyle choices. Like the pineapple thing.
Especially the pineapple thing. What was he thinking, really? Difficult to say. However, it is definitely one of the things he'd rather forget, though images like that tend to prove persistent even in death. He would know, after all.
Fortunately, his vile thoughts are interrupted by the sound of what is probably the whistle of the Demon of Pain himself, and if it isn't, it probably should be. Thankful to his lucky stars, he seeks out the source of the noise, having little else to do with his unlife right now! As he reaches the center of the graveyard, he spots the necromancer standing around with four other undead around him. How strange! He should probably investigate. No way this could be dangerous, right?
As he approaches, the necromancer turns and looks at him!
"Hm, another one. Well, I suppose you'll do. Need all the help I can get and all.""Uh, help for what?""You'll see."He looks at each of the undead intently, then at Mark! He then says a few words, which feel like a red-hot steel cage closing around his mind! Something tells Mark this probably isn't a good sign.
"Okay, you're now soulbound, so you're obligated to serve me and protect me. If anybody has a problem with that, raise your hands and I'll do my very best to address your complaint."He smiles warmly at his new minions, which doesn't really work too well due to his natural levels of facial creepiness and unpleasant complexion. His teeth also seem somewhat poorly cared for, being rather yellowish and crooked.
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Topic: Life Begins At Death - Epilogue: We Live And Live Again (Read 542584 times)