The Dead of Sleepy Hollow

Act 7 Part 4

The act so long it has taken 4 parts (I hope, this might go overlong) and 2 game sessions to resolve. If you missed a part… ONE TWO THREE. To sum up, the Manhattan knights have made alliance with the White-Tail Tribe of Edeinos in the old Taconic Valley of New York. While there they found out about a “Spot of Darkness” growing in the old town of Mount Pleasant. Our heroes have taken a jeep and driven through the jungles and entered what was once the village of Sleepy Hollow, and after fighting a Dullahan, aka a headless horseman they are now bracing for several undead dinosaurs and patchwork edeinos to attack them.

The Pyramid of Junk

Having just dispatched a ghoulasaur, Carlisle wishes to lunge forward into the town toward the patchwork edeinos that are slowly closing the distance toward them. Sleepy Hollow has been changed by the invading Cosm to only be a single main street winding through houses that seem to be from various eras, most of them look like old colonials but those further back from the road have changed to mud and waddle huts. At the end of the main street is a large bonfire and what looks like a junk pile.

But Carlisle had used his rifle scope to make out better details and the whole there were heaps of junk the main, pyramidal structure seemed to be a massive tent held up with junk and debris. It was ringed with bodies impaled on iron spikes.

Carlisle raises his rifle over his head and screams at the oncoming Edeinos and is ready to step forward when Kimiko places a hand on his shoulder. The patchwork men are moving incredibly slowly and they are far enough away that the Knights could easily jump in the jeep and head into the town.

 Carlisle deflates slightly but falls back to the jeep and the knights gas the engine and barrel past the lumbering undead and down the main street. After a few hundred feet Carlisle asks her to stop the jeep and the trio step out, living the catgirl in charge of the jeep.

Village under Siege

Driving past the houses Carlisle’s sharp eyes had noticed that many of the windows were covered in boards, from the inside. He slowly approaches a well-made brick house with a heavy front door… a front door covered in scratches and bloody splotches. He holds his rifle close and reaches out with his senses. The house looks like a fortress and perhaps it is. Behind many of the building the shadows move and shift, making him think that beyond the street, the houses, and their backyards if nothing but shadows and undead.

He can smell death, rotting flesh, burning metal, and oily smoke drifting from the center of town. And also from the wandering patrols of stitched together corpses. His ears detect the faint rattle of chains from the house next door, the creak of a wooden door or sign moving on the wind. Moans and groans of the wandering undead whisper along that same wind.

Kimiko breaks his moment and Carlisle shivers. She reaches out with her psionic powers and reaches out to find minds within 50 meters of her. Within the house are three terrified humans and all around them in the yards and the houses next door are another dozen cold minds that hunger for warmth and flesh. The hungry dead.

Sasha moves to form a triangle with the other two knights and they ready for the undead.

The Hungry Dead

The creatures that lumber out from the backyard and the neighboring houses are strange even to them. These are humans who have mostly mummified and who were killed in violent fashions. But they are wearing clothes and armor that don’t correspond to either Core Earth or the Living Lands, or even Tharkold. These men are in tunics and rent chainmail and some of them even have broken swords or pitchforks in their hands. Also these creatures are far less fleshy than the patchwork zombies and are little more than sinew stretched over bones.

Sasha lights a torch and screams at a trio of the undead, trying to intimidate the creatures, but these things are far more mindless than the patchwork edeinos and they continue to stagger forward.

Carlisle shakes his head and informs her that undead are immune to fear and trickery. HE shoulders his rifle and explodes the skull of the one of the creatures. It drops to the ground and he moves the barrel toward the next target, working the bolt. He fires a second shot, dropping another skeleton, and a chastened Sasha rises all of their awareness, amping their reflexes and defenses.

Round 2

The catgirl stands in the back of the jeep and starts slinging stones at the creatures, to little effect and Kimiko growls as she moves into the trio that Sasha tried to intimidate and cuts them all down with a single stroke of her electric katana.

Kimiko goes into a silent flurry of fury and decapitates four more of the creatures in a blur of motion. Her ally, the tiny catgirl even manages to kill one with a follow up sling shot that takes out an eye. Carlisle puts up his rifle and yells encouragement to Kimiko, it causes the undead to turn toward him, making them even more vulnerable to attack. Sasha joins him in making noise and Kimiko moves to finishes up the creatures.

The last two manage to dodge aside at first, one of them actually lunging into Carlisle and trying to bite him, but a flurry of blows from his rifle and a katana strike from Kimiko finally finishes it all.

Tide of Death

While Carlisle catches his breath, Sasha notices that more creatures are coming out from around the houses further up and down the street. Besides the skeletons and zombies, several are larger creatures. Her psionic powers trigger, something bad is coming and they should not be standing here for much longer. She shares this to her allies.

Carlisle points his thumb over his shoulder at the house behind them; “What about the people inside this house?”

Sasha; “I think they’re safer staying inside for now. We’re bringing all the creatures to us and I doubt they’ll open the door. We need to move the fight away from these people.”

Kimiko; “Yeah we don’t need to cause harm to these people. Let’s lead the creatures away and we can get the humans on our way out.”

The Chase

Putting actions to words, Kimiko gets back into the jeep and revs the engine. Sasha and Carlisle follow suit, and the jeep jumps the curb and heads into the middle of the street. They are shocked to see that the newer creatures are running for them. The skeletons and zombies were lumbering, slow, easy to avoid. But these larger pale creatures are wearing long black robes and they are running. Their eyes glow with intelligence.

Aiming into the middle of the street Kimiko floors the gas and crashes directly into two of the robed figures. Carlisle braces himself for impact and Sasha puts her head between her knees. There is the loud sound of impact and two of the robed figures drop underneath the massive army jeep, body parts going flying in every direction. Whatever these creatures are they are killable. The jeep skews and loses control and Kimiko eases off the gas and pumps the brakes hard bringing the jeep to a halt and then dropping it back into gear with a loud grind.

Living Lands don’t like Sorcery

Two more of the creatures stop their run and howl as they look over the smear of parts on the street that were once their companions. The creatures raise their hands and gesture at the jeep, one of them has an arc of lightning appear between his hands and the bolt almost leaps from his hands toward the jeep before it simply dissipates in the air. The other creature doesn’t even get a spark of static and it howls and tries to gesture with its hands again. But nothing.

Carlisle laughs at the two creatures as they rant and fail, but he is startled out of his mirth as something strikes the driver side windshield, the bulletproof glass webs and Kimiko jerks back. Carlisle is shocked to see one of the creatures at the front quarter of the jeep. He’s even more surprised when a long sword rams through his passenger side door and cuts across the top of his thigh.

The creature’s pale face lunges into the jeep and snaps at Carlisle’s face. Carlisle manages to get his rifle jammed up under the creature’s chin and using his left hand he hits the trigger. The bullet takes out the creature’s throat but its still alive, only staggered back into the street, blood gushing down its robes.

Strange Fight

The jeep is shuddering, Kimiko drops it out of gear, hits the parking brake and leaps out of the driver seat. She cuts the swordsman, on her side of the truck, in half with a single stroke and then starts walking toward the failing sorcerers in the middle of the street. The catgirl climbs up through the roof turret and starts launching her slingshots again. In the back seat, Sasha leans in over the front seats and aiming through the front windshield, the part not cracked by a sword blow, she reaches out with her telekinesis and with a snarl she “grabs” one of the sorcerers. Flexing her mental might she crushes the creature’s ribcage and still beating heart and the sorcerer dies with a gasp.

Carlisle steps out of the passenger seat and switches his grip on his rifle, chambering another round. He shoots, but the creature lunges aside just as the rifle raises and its sword cuts across Carlisle’s bicep. Blood wells from the shallow cut and the monster hunter kicks the swordsman away from him.

The remaining sorcerer tries another spell, it fizzles or has no visible affect, and the creature roars as it charges toward Kimiko. It pulls a long sword out from beneath its robes and Kimiko just moves her head aside as the sword cuts the air. A lock of her hair and a splash of blood drift on the air, a thin cut across her cheek and ear annoying her.

Finish It

The catgirl slings a stone at swordsman on Carlisle to no affect and Sasha finally climbs out of the back of the jeep, and maintaining her telekinetic “grip” on the sorcerer’s body she throws the dead body into the one fighting against Carlisle. The creature staggers back with a grunt as the dead weight of his companion smashes into him. But it seems to little more than make an opening between Carlisle and itself. But that is exactly what Carlisle needed, he raises his rifle again and shoots, but the swordsman uses the body of his companion to take the bullet and then he lunges back int Carlisle.

Carlisle is shoulder checked back into the jeep, grunting as his ribs crack on the door. ON the other side of the jeep Kimiko cuts the sorcerer down and then turns and jumps, sliding over the hood of the jeep. She cuts down the swordsman on Carlisle and in like that the attackers are all down.

Sasha turns to say something and, in that moment, she disconnects again, her face going dull and confused, but almost instantly she shakes it off and comes back to herself.

What are these?

They take a moment to catch their breath. The other creatures have fallen back up and down the street. Apparently, these robed figures were not liked by the undead, or at least not allied with them. They have a moment to catch their breaths and also to make sure the truck is alright.

Sasha opens the robe and checks over the body and is startled to discover what can only be called an undead elf. Long pointy ears, once pretty face, lean build, only really tall. Well over six feet tall. But otherwise it looks like a classical elf, or at the least a Nordic version of one.

Using her psychometry, she touches the creature and is overwhelmed with scenes of a land that looks a lot like England but is covered with castles and medieval villages. This creature was part of a contingent knights that went into a series of massive caverns and were trying to find a “magical route” to another land. They came from Aysle. [If you want to know more about Aysle I strongly suggest you look back over the Irish Knights story on here. 😊] They got lost in these underways and ended up coming out here, in a jungle with dark demons. The jungle had no magick and without magic their bodies started to wither and die. Then the demon came and made them into its servants. Her vision ends there.

And Now…

Their movements through the village have brought them within 200 feet of the center of the town, the massive bonfire and the junk heaps. From this point they can all see without the aid of scope, or binoculars, the massive tent structure with its rusting sheet metal walls and the heaps of junk.

Both cars and people were equally torn apart and used for whatever. Besides making the tent the parts have to have been used for something? The bond fire is made of wood, bones, and even the core of a car. Tires are burning, black oily smoke swirling into the sky, and despite the fact that it should be barely after noon, the sky has been dark overhead the entire time, its been locked in perpetual twilight, not just from cloud cover, but looking up they can see a starry sky. A starry sky that feel very familiar to Sasha, but they can’t place why.

Standing around the tent is a bunch of the lesser undead creatures; they seem to be waiting for something. Carlsile gets a better look through his scope and as he watches, some of the skeletal men dig through the junk outside and pulling out a bit of this or that they stagger into the tent and return moments later to look for more bits.

Carlisle: “We need more information.”

Kimiko: “Well, we know a house that still has people in it. Lets go back and talk to them.”

They agree and load back into the jeep, that appears to have no damage other than the windshield and the hole in the passenger side door. They drive back to the house and step up to the front door and knock…

Guess Part 5…

This went even longer than I imagined and I really cut down on the combat skipping a few bits, but the final part of this story is pretty big. Besides the talk with these folks in the house the Manhattan Knights decide to get there umbrage up and decide to take the fight directly to the BBEG (Big Bad Evil Guy)… it does NOT go as they expect.

So, please return next week for the Final Part of Act 7… The Demon of Sleepy Hollow.