The Dead Walk Home
You went back to the Toke Inn.
Smoke was rising from the chimney.
Nobody came to the door.
Ubys called for Jorry across the empty yard. Nothing answered. Then three figures came out from behind the inn at a hundred feet.
You knew the first one.
Viggo Ironheart. The sell-sword captain who was always lodging here with his men. He had teeth in him and rot in him and his eyes were wrong.
His two men were behind him. Same teeth. Same rot.
You met them on the path.
Moist's familiar shot first. KeYs closed the distance. The Blighted came on. Ubys reached for Sacred Flame and put it on Viggo's chest.
It took two rounds. Burning Hands across the cone. KeYs and Falkor hammering. Sacred Flame finishing.
Viggo went down without a sound. He hadn't been Viggo for a while.
Ubys called Decompose on the bodies.
The Blight in them resisted. Moist had to burn what wouldn't break down.
Inside the inn, you found more.
A local farmer in the common room.
A body slumped into the well. Ubys gave him expedited rites because there was no time for a proper one.
Then Moist sent his familiar to the rookery, and Ubys put on his slippers and walked up the outside wall.
He heard "Help! Help!" through the shutters.
The rookery was a box of birds — most of them blighted, ruffled and patchy, eyes wrong. The shutters were nailed.
And Jorry was there.
Sick. Failing. Recognized you.
Then Ubys looked down into the yard and saw another twenty zombies coming up the road.
He broke the rookery hatch and dropped down to the second floor and came down the stairs to the first floor and found —
A small, cloaked figure. Four feet tall. In rags. Sitting by the hearth.
Maybe with a snout. Maybe.
Ubys moved to unbar the front door.
The figure said: "No! No!"
KeYs rebarred it the moment you were through.
Moist went back up to Jorry and cast Lesser Restoration. Jorry stabilized. He could speak.
Then Moist wild-shaped into a giant spider and went back outside, herding the twenty zombies into a cluster. He moved like he was sweeping a yard.
KeYs unbarred the door.
Ubys ran out into the middle of them.
He raised his holy symbol and turned them.
Fifteen of them broke. Just unmade themselves and crumbled.
Five were left.
Round 1: Spirit Guardians on, Falkor and KeYs taking the hits, the radiance burning the closest in.
Round 2: Burning Hands across the line. Final hits. The last three stood inside Ubys's aura and the radiance took them. Twelve. Twelve. Six. Done.
The yard was clean again.
You went back inside.
The cloaked figure was stoking the fire.
He turned around.
He asked to see your arms and legs.
You showed him.
He pulled back his hood.
It was Rhovan.
He's a Wererat now.
He was infected sometime since you last saw him. He chose to be.
He told you why.
The Blight and the lycanthropy occupy the same space in a body, and the lycanthropy wins. The curse, bafflingly, counters the disease.
Rhovan passed it to his mother to save her from the Blight.
Jorry was offered the cure.
Jorry said no.
Jorry asked to be locked in the rookery instead.
You went back up there afterward and dispatched the blighted ravens with mercy in the strikes.
Corvin — the senior bird, Jorry's own — was clean.
He survived.
He still flies.
Next session: down. Below the inn. Where the dead came from.