Briggs was on the prow of one of the Eismark airships, Venture, overlooking the gray cloud that was hanging over Twinlakes Vale. The thing was pure poison, already dotted around its edges by thousands of birds who had flown into it and promptly perished, plummeting to the ground all about it and littering the ground with a blighted black ring, their bodies too poisoned for anything to eat.
Vivus sprayed into the cloud would consume the poison, a testament to its otherworldly origins, but such things were merely temporary as the cloud billowed back into any cleared areas, clearly magical in origin.
It was very attention-getting, definitely a danger to the wildlife, and the cloud effectively blocked the sun, meaning undead in particular could wander about underneath it without any trouble… and potentially any Fiends, too, suppressing their planar rejection completely.
The thing radiated massive Evil, and it had already been proven a simple Protection against Evil could hold it at bay indefinitely… which didn’t much help the civilian population of the place.
Magical Scrying and communication would not pass the cloud, either, and it scrambled Dimensional magic passing through, so Teleporting in and out, or using Portals, was not possible.
All in all, a very high-level magical effect.
Line-of-sight radio relays, however, worked just fine.
His eyes wandered over to where Brucall’s Druidic advisor, Tarna Elmbright, was leading a force of volunteers and Druidic aspirants in purging the poison from the dead wildlife, using Final Rest Weapons with Vivus to set the blighted areas alight and restore the poisoned soil. Equally good for final disposal of corpses, or Burning poisoned wildlife away and restoring the earth.
The Druidic order didn’t have such things themselves, but Eismoor had been happy to loan some out to them, as well as scaring up some volunteers with Vivic on their own Weapons to help with the purification.
It turned out that zealous hatred of negative energy, death magic, and undead was something they shared with the Druids. Strange, that. Did wonders for the diplomatic situation with them, which had been incredibly tense for some time now. Druids just did not like civilized expansion and a managed wilderness policy…
The misty areas and swinging Weapons trailing unwhite flames were attention-getting, spreading across the miles as they were, Hounds sniffing out the slain and guiding the purifiers to them.
There would be more inside the place to be cleansed, of course, over a hundred square miles of territory to be gone through, although a Commune with Nature could accelerate matters remarkably, once the suppressing Death magic was lifted.
Probably make the Druid who Cast it puke, too.
“Go ahead and breach, Grimbol,” he said grimly, standing there and watching his dwarven student of smithing and hammer-work coming up on the baronial castle.
The gates were open, the portcullis and bridge were down, nobody was on the walls. The team had fought four different bands of undead things, starting with wolves, then a herd of cattle and their ranchers, then a doomed patrol of rotting, black-eyed poisoned undead soldiers on decaying skeletal steeds, and finally a dead manticore, likely fallen through the cloud and reanimated by something, tossing poisoned spikes their way as it dipped in and out of the cloud cover forty feet above the ground.
Undead versus Priests was not a fair fight, however, and the undead had been quickly eliminated by the dwarf-priests and Clerics following the experienced warrior.
Grimbol was a wise hand, and let his juniors do most of the fighting, laying out the plan of attack, sticking to the reserve role as the divine Casters and Artificers did their things.
When the corpses of slain soldiers transformed into writhing bags of tentacled goop squirming to attack them at very unrealistic speeds, they had surprised everyone. The horrifying fact those tentacles drained life had certainly spelled doom for the unprepared soldiers they’d faced without a doubt, and their ability to shapechange allowed them to get close and charge to the attack with unnatural speed.
Against a prepped team with Oathrings and Death Ward, not so dangerous.
Radiant energy, Holy fire, and vivus did the job in a hackfest of Reserve Spells and chopping Weapons. The things Burned down quickly, extremely unnatural, kicked and heaped into piles that fell into white ash quickly.
-Never seen these things afore, Briggs,- Grimbol /murmured on the Marklink as his team broke into the central hall, where what looked like an interrupted feast was laid out, the corpses of sprawled humans still seated at the table.
“They’re all undead!” Toskmer, a Cleric of the Morning, called out, raising his Moon-Axe and Shield in readiness, matched by everyone about them.
The creatures were intelligent, recognizing the warning, and Briggs watched as flesh, clothing, and armor from the exacting replicas of the dead blurred into squirming gray flesh that writhed and wriggled with improbable speed for the group.
-Death Leeches. Haven’t seen any in a good fifty years, since we took out a temple to Nyx half the world south of here,- Briggs /informed the dwarf. -Negative energy beings, sort of anti-life. I was told they exist only on worlds in the Sphere of Death, a collection of realms under Entropy that cater to negative energy life and undead of all kinds.- While incredibly dangerous on the attack to living beings, the team was handling them with relative ease, backing one another up, hacking off their tentacles to deny them multiple attacks, and ripping through their jiggling flesh with energy and enthusiasm.
It seemed a Turning attempt could hold them at bay, but they didn’t flee like undead might. Still a useful tactic for breaking their charges, if nothing else.
-The Mother of All Undead bin getting in on this?- Grimbol /asked warily, pacing the younger humans and dwarves as they swept the room aggressively. The group split in two to search the smaller rooms in the place, looking for survivors, although that was unlikely.
-The Deathcloud might be an experiment, a way to create undead in large numbers that is being tested out. The center of the effect is still a few miles south and east of you, right out in the middle of the eastern lake if the maps are correct.-
-We’ll bin on it soon’s the keep is cleared of these things. Note we haven’t seen any corpses or soldiers here, including the Baron,- he /pointed out.
-Animated by whoever is pulling this stunt off and sent off to cause havoc.-
“Sir, we’ve got a radar contact ten miles north-northeast!” the Artificer at the sensor station called out behind Briggs. “Solid contact, surrounded by multiple bogies at an elevation of five thousand feet!”
Briggs turned his head that way, calculating distances and times. “It’s out away from the Deathcloud here and up in the real clouds, concealing its presence. My guess is it is outside the Interdiction area of the Deathcloud so it can Teleport things in and out to resupply and restock.” He pointed. “Helm, Interdiction area up and hunt me that damn Castle!” he ordered promptly.
“Aye, aye, sir!” the helmsman called back eagerly, turning the gear that would rotate the massive iron spheres with Reverse Gravity on them, counteracting the weight of the ship and more, sending it ‘falling’ up into the sky as the net weight became negative.
The propellers that had been circling lazily in the breeze began their buzzing drone, clawing at the air and pulling the ship forward. It was nothing compared to the speed of the Gunwings, six of which were held in the aft hangar for deployment as needed, but then it didn’t need to be. This was an airship, and if it could only do 150 mph overland, that was still thrice as fast as any Siricilan or Delphan craft could achieve.
That flying castle wasn’t going to get anywhere before they caught it.
There was one survivor of the attack on Twinlakes’ baronial castle. The Captain of the Guard, one Cilea Bladeworn, had used a Mirror of Escape to vanish into and preserve herself after managing to survive and flee the deadly assault. A careful Dispel Magic to eject her from the safety of the glass, and she was out and extremely willing to relate what had happened, not that she knew much.
The attack had come incredibly swiftly. She assumed the outer guards had been put to sleep or poisoned, because no alarm had sounded before the death leeches burst into the evening meal and started slaughtering everyone. She had witnessed most of her men perish to the horrible life-sucking attacks, and the Baron himself fall to four of the creatures ganging up on him.
She had barely managed to escape back to her room and utter the word to enter her Mirror, set discreetly off to the side and basically leaving naught but an empty room to the foul things that had followed her in. They had left before too long, and she had spent a timeless period within it before seeing the Eismoor team come in and quickly discover the magical Mirror and unlock what it did.
The team promptly speed-looted the castle and its armory of anything useful, so quickly and efficiently Captain Cilia was most impressed, heaping what could be stolen by others on Disks and heading out and down the road toward the nearest town of Fenroot to see what was going on.
The Venture broke through the clouds less than a mile away from the floating castle, churning forward with speed and purpose.
It looked like a skull-shaped keep at the base of a brooding, rather crude tower, all of it positioned upon a bulbous rock of indeterminate size and absolutely no artistic endeavor, at least as deep as the tower was high.
Around the castle a couple dozen flying figures were flying lazily, which changed quickly when they spotted the white and gold airship come surging out of the clouds on a direct collision course.
“Pegataurs,” Briggs murmured, putting down the glasses that let him identify the flying creatures, no, troops, at that distance. Basically elven upper bodies and pegasus-lower bodies, a ‘superior’ type of centaur, with elven intelligence and magical talents. “Why would pegataurs be serving those working with Death?”
He didn’t like his answers to himself. “Wings one and two, Interdictions up and launch! Aim for height, stay above it, but whatever is inside there is not getting away!”
Combat warnings were quietly ringing out for the crew, everyone to battle stations now. There was a small shudder in the hull as the two Gunwings were launched from the hangar, props buzzing to life as they left the hangar, and serene gliding became powered flight. They rapidly outraced the Venture, speeding forward and gaining speed even as they rose in altitude at a speed the pegataurs couldn’t possibly match.
That didn’t mean spells couldn’t reach them, but the pilots were well-trained and simply came in from high enough that they didn’t have to worry about such things for the moment. The area of the Interdiction ranged out for a thousand feet from them, and Wing One took up position over top of the castle, props bending to hover in place, while Two circled around him upside down, watching the pegataurs below, who were clearly debating on whether or not they should come up to pick a fight, worried about the speed of the two aircraft. The two dwarven pilots held their positions firmly, and the pegataurs didn’t look to have Protection from Normal Missiles up to deny the autofire that could certainly tear them apart if the dwarves went on a strafing run.
But there would be no need for that.
“Bring her alongside to three hundred paces and prepare to fire on command!” he ordered.
More pegataurs were responding to alarm horns, spilling out of the base of the tower and the wide landing there. It was a pretty large company of the winged horse-elves, the result of a mad Delphan wizard’s experiments that had managed to actually survive and reproduce.
Generally good folk, too, from what he knew of them, if haughty, proud, arrogant, and with a chip on their shoulder because of their origins.
Well, easy enough to deal with…