>>5517743>16Between your divination-triggered athletic leap and the Bugbear Boss’ aid, you are recalled behind your shield-wall before the assailants can injure you. Your shield-wall moves into place, driving back the undead. However, these two bugbears are not alone. Behind them, you see dwarves, kobolds, elves, a few other humanoids…
And Reptilians. Not rotting corpses or shambling skeletons, as you have fought under necromantic or psionic control before, but… Spectres. Translucent, visible only faintly to your physical eyes but in vivid and horrifying detail to your mystical ones. These are souls, or shades of souls, bound to their dark master’s will.
And there, behind this mass of physical and ephemeral undeath, is the ‘master’ in question: Hapo the traitor, Hapo Scroll-thief, Hapo the Necromancer! He is clad in a grey robe, thin with malnourishment beneath it, and his eyes are bugged out and tongue lolling with a sort of madness, but you recognize him even so. He is perches, birdlike, over a sarcophagus which two more bugbear zombies are dragging the lid away from… To expose, you know already, a female’s skeletonized remains, hands cupped to her breast, a scale clasped in her hands.
You are uninjured, only lightly tired, and have roughly two-thirds of your total mana reserve—enough to activate even your most powerful magical abilities, such as your <Radiant Aura> or <Dragonshape>. You have with you a host of slaves and miners, plus the Hunter, Pit-Guard and Apprentice, the Novice Fleshweaver and Junior Novice (though he is recently and hastily modified and his combat ability may have been hampered OR bolstered), and Azonia the Duelist. You also have the Lightning Elemental at your command, and an Ice Elemental’s power upon one of your fingers.
What will you do?
>Write-in—you know your abilities, and your allies, or can refer back to the character sheet and the above, and I trust your judgement[Feel free to make further guesses at the identity of the female, and the purpose to which the Necromancer plans to use the scale. This update contains further clues (though they may still be a bit oblique). If you guess right, I will lower your next roll’s DC. There is no penalty for guessing wrong, or not bothering to guess.]
