The party says goodbye to Amanti and sets off with Liu to his village. Brooks realizes their destination is uncomfortably familiar, a new adventurer joins the party, and Michael gives everyone a hands-on lesson on fighting Undead.
Characters Interacted With
Donovan: Is quite painful to look at at this point.
Liu: Led the party to his village. Bonded with Brooks over their shared origins.
Michael: Gave the party some tips on fighting Undead, and left them with some items to help.
Healer Danxia: Explained the details about the Undead sightings around the village.
Other Characters Mentioned: Soup, Donovan, Mei, Lauran
Locations
- Eastern Shengdu Temple
- Outskirts of Junyan (South side)
- Junyan
- Healer Danxia’s house
Session Overview
A New Party Member?
The session started off with Donovan still gripping Fanna’s arm. Fanna and the rest of the party were quite uncomfortable, so Guiying came over to separate the two. Donovan became even more agitated, exclaiming how he didn’t understand what was going on and wishing he could perish as the party and Liu left the infirmary.
The party took a long rest and were woken up by Michael bringing everyone breakfast. After they ate, they went out into the rear courtyard, where they said goodbye to Amanti and wished him the best. With the magic charged jade and needle tuned to the western end of Yinlu Province, Michael fast traveled via the elements to their destination. They landed in a mountain valley, one of many. The sloping hills and ground were brown and gray, and at the upper reaches of the taller mountains, snow was present. As it was Autumn, the air was starting to become quite chilly, necessitating cold weather clothes. Much to Brooks’ horror, the area was startingly familiar—They were close to his home town.
Michael started lecturing the party and Liu on how to best handle Undead. He explained how Undead had a number of features and traits to look out for, such as powers like fright, aging, life-draining, max HP draining, regeneration, and an Undead Fortitude that created extra requirements before they stayed down for good. Peach wood and mirrors could be effective deterrents for some of them. In addition, they were often weak to fire damage, but not always, and radiant damage was especially effective against them. They were also often immune to specific conditions, such as Charmed, Poisoned, Paralyzed, Frightened, Exhausted, or Stunned.
As Michael talked, Brooks saw a distant humanoid figure walking towards the group. They greeted the group, and Michael also gave his salutations. The figure introduced herself as Nyssa, a Tiefling Fighter who was the former head of the Shuangfeng Temple in Beidao Province. Her temple sadly was abandoned and its adherents split off, so she now wanders Lingguo. Interested in what Michael, the party, and Liu were doing, she decided to stick around.
A Training Exercise
Michael pulled out some wooden fashion mannequins, and explained how he thought to give the party a training exercise against Undead. Everyone rolled initiative, including newcomer Nyssa. The first wave was of three lesser Undead. Their melee attacks had the ability to reduce Max HP, but the party’s Constitutions were all solid enough that combined with Bachariel’s Aid spell, these Undead did not inflict much damage. Nyssa too was able to show off her martial prowess, using traits such as her weapon mastery and speediness to overcome her foes. Bachariel, deciding to play around, also Vortex Warped one of the Undead up to the rock that Michael and Liu were observing from.
The next round Michael used his powers to significantly weaken the first wave of Undead, confident that the party wouldn’t lose against them and wanting to speed things up. Sure enough, the party dealt enough damage to these Undead that they reverted back to their wooden mannequin forms. Michael brought out two more mannequins, who became the second wave of Undead. These one’s had a paralysis inducing vengeful glare, and regeneration that made it so they would regain HP at the start of their turns unless fire or radiant damage was inflicted to them previously. Luckily for the party, Fanna decided to use their Fireball this round, toasting these Undead and making them unable to automatically regenerate their wounds. Nyssa was prepared to jump from her position on the boulder onto one of the Undead to ensure their death, but Michael explained how this wasn’t necessary thanks to the Fireball, pointing at one of the Undead as they finally stopped struggling and reverted to a mannequin once more.
Once the second wave of Undead was cleared, Michael brought out the final mannequin, and subsequent Undead. This was a Jiangshi, wearing the tattered robes of a court official and with its arms stuck straight out in front of it. Its Consume Energy attack was able to draw from Fanna’s energy to fuel their own, but a Slow spell from Bachariel and heavy damage from Brooks meant that it too did not last long. The training exercise complete, Michael applauded the party, and complimented newcomer Nyssa’s skills.
Michael gave the party 3x Holy Water flasks and 3x Undead Repelling Talismans. He also gave Fanna a Sending Stone and explained that he’d keep in touch to schedule their meetings where Michael could examine Fanna’s dual-Soul makeup. Before making his leave, Michael reminded the party that if they couldn’t make any breakthroughs in helping Donovan and Mei to not beat themselves up over it. One lesson that was difficult to learn was you couldn’t save everyone, and some people did not want to be saved. This was interrupted by Bachariel exclaiming how he lived long enough that already knew that, and Michael matched him by saying he was explaining this to the members here who were under a century old. Before Michael left, Fanna asked if they could give him a hug. Michael made a comment about Fanna not receiving a lot of attention from Lauran, before leaving Fanna, and the rest of the group, hugless.
Arriving At Junyan
Nyssa decided to stick with the party, who delegated Brooks and Liu to scout ahead. While the two flew ahead, Brooks asked Liu what the name of his home village was. Liu answered that it was Junyan (june-ian), confirming Brooks’ suspicions. He admitted to Liu that he was from there too, but left ages ago. Liu themself only left a few years ago. Liu expressed regret that the two couldn’t have met earlier, but was happy to be able to relate to Brooks so strongly. Having told Liu what he wanted, Brooks and them flew back to the party.
The two informed the party of Junyan’s location. It was in the distance, at a higher elevation and nestled in the side of a mountain where the land temporarily flattened out. Fanna transformed into a Griffon to carry Bachariel and Nyssa, and everyone flew to the village. They landed a distance away so as to not startle the village with the appearance of a massive Griffon approaching them suddenly. The area was one Brooks recognized as well.
Liu went ahead and talked to the guards at the gates of the village. After the guards confirmed their identity, Liu was given the greenlight. The party was temporarily held up, however, by the guards being suspicious of Nyssa’s unusual, Ghoulish looking appearance. Despite the uneasy tension at first, Fanna was able to persuade them to let Nyssa pass, though they still glared at Nyssa with judgment and suspicion.
Inside, the party saw how the village was rather vertical, with houses and walkways being built hanging from the side of the mountainside. As the elevation increased, the houses gradually became more run-down, before being forgone altogether for cave dwellings dug into the stone, reflecting a divide in the society of the village population. Liu led the party to the one who sent them the letter, Healer Danxia, who lived by a large waterfall on the north side of the village. As the party walked, the villagers showed distrust and fear of Nyssa, often walking to the other side of the road or hiding their children from her. She said she was used to this, but this didn’t stop Liu from expressing disapproval of their behavior, listing their closemindedness as one of the reasons they left. The other reason was because of their “shit abusive parents”.
After arriving at Healer Danxia’s house, Liu and the party were let in. She was an older Halfling woman with beige skin with pink undertones. Her hair was done up in a crimson turban, with only a few wisps of brown hair peeking out. She wore plain grey robes with an emerald green wrap jacket. Attached to her belt were many bags and vials for storing ingredients.
Being the village healer, the only places the party were able to sit were at small side tables or a quaint couch. While preparing them tea, Healer Danxia explained the whole story of the rising Undead appearances: They first appeared about six months ago, but even before that there were signs, with hunters finding animals that had been killed by beasts with blunted teeth, not the sharp ones of a predator, pointing to something unnatural happening. At first, there were Undead animals. Then, three months ago, the Undead humanoids started showing up.
Inspecting a Body and Being Given a Quest
Healer Danxia explained that hunting parties managed to bring back a body of one of the Undead humanoids. She led them to her backyard by the waterfall, where she stored ingredients for healing in holes in the rock. In one particularly large hole, akin to a crawlspace, she had hastily moved items out and put the body, wrapped in cloth, within. She took it out and slowly unwrapped it, revealing an Undead adult Human male. Aside from its lower left being blown off due to the explosives the hunters had used to fight it, it was shockingly well-preserved, aside from extremely dry skin, little hair, and an unpleasant odor. Its face was covered with a stone mask, and its skin was covered in tattoos.
Fanna was able to identify the tattoos on its skin as ones they’d seen in past books in the context of Leferinese religion. Healer Danxia also explained how there were bits of metal embedded in its skin, which she had extracted and stored in a bag that she showed to the party. They were small metallic plates, around the same shape and size as metal wrist guards.
Fanna was curious about the mask, and tried prying it off with a dagger. Healer Danxia explained how she hadn’t been able to pry it off, and wasn’t really sure if she wanted to. Fanna asked if it was stuck on with magic, and she explained that when she asked the most educated person in the village on magic to come look, they said it seemed to be attached with magic. Fanna held out their hand and tried channeling a Mending cantrip into the mask, but it did not do anything besides repair some of the cracks in the mask. Nyssa, with her religious background, also tried discerning any details that she’d recognize from the body, but none of them seemed in-line with what she was familiar with at all.
Healer Danxia explained that of the Undead humanoids, about 60% of the Undead seemed to have the same tattoos, 30% of them had the strange metal on them, and they’ve seen about four so far with the masks, including the one she currently has. For the Undead animals, many of them were strangely mismatched, having bodies from one animal, and heads or limbs from another. Healer Danxia then asked the party and Liu if they could bring back another Undead for her to examine. She preferred that it was still “alive”, and with little damage to its body as possible. With this, she hoped to be able to uncover more about what was going on. She gave the party her personal map of the local area, circled where the hunters had encountered the body. The party agreed to her request, and the session ended there.
Key Learnings
- Undead have a variety of traits and features that need to be kept in mind, such as regeneration, immunity to some conditions, HP draining, inflicting fright, weakness to fire and radiant damage, and being repelled with peach wood and mirrors.
- Nyssa joined the party!
- Brooks was also from Liu’s village of Junyan
- Liu had shit parents
- Signs of Undead were first seen around Junyan over half a year ago, with the first official sighting six months ago. First they were Undead animals with chimeric traits, and then there were Undead humanoids. Many of the Undead humanoids had Leferinese tattoos on their bodies. Some had pieces of metal embedded in their skin. Four of them in total had stone masks magically fused to their faces, including one hunters managed to kill and bring back to Healer Danxia to examine.
- Healer Danxia asked the party if they could head out and try to capture another Undead for her to inspect, preferably still “alive” and with as little damage to its body as possible. The party agreed.
Items Of Importance
- 3x Holy Water flasks
- 3x Undead Repelling Talisman
- Michael Sending Stone (3x charges), given to Fanna
- Map of Junyan Outskirts (Borrowed from Healer Danxia)