In reply to Castle Keeper (msg # 216):

OOC: By standard zombie troupes Cole would be endanger of being infected or already infected. However, I read the zombie description in the C&C Monsters and Treasure book and it does not indicate being bitten causes one to be infected — or at least I did not think the paragraph indicated as such.

Zombies are undead humanoids, reanimated corpses that stalk the earth with little purpose or reason. They typically appear as shambling, rotting bodies, complete with ragged clothes and rusted mail. They are unable to use weapons or armor, cast spells, or even communicate. They possess only a vague instinct to gather in groups, find living creatures, and kill them. They are shambling and slow, but have a powerful attack.

Combat: A zombie is mindless, fearless , and only seeks to kill and devour living flesh.

Slow: A zombie never gains initiative and always acts last in any given round.

Because it was unclear to me by the description in the book, I was uncertain as to Cole’s state, which is why I had him do a wisdom check on it. So whatever you say goes, but I am unclear based off of what I read in the book and since I don't know if you are following C&C rules or standard troupes, I wanted to clarify.

Zombies don't infect others in D&D and its direct descendants, something I appreciate. This notion of "Night of the Living Dead"/Walking Dead zombie tropes is found in ghouls in "classic" D&D settings.

In reply to Cole Hiller (msg # 217):

I'm afraid I wasn't clear when I referred to "Dungeon World style".  I wasn't asking you to look up the M&T description for me.  My monsters are not necessarily "by the book".  This is a game of fantasy and adventure, not accounting and rules mastery.  Dungeon World (which we are obviously not playing) uses very, very few setting assumptions and has the GM and players collaboratively develop setting details such as whether zombies are infectious.  If we were playing Dungeon World and you asked about zombie infectiousness, the rules would encourage me to ask the question back to you.  This can be an extremely freeing play style that also encourages player investment in the game.  I will sometimes ask C&C players how they think things work (or what their characters believe is the way things work) and build off of those answers.

So, Cole, ignoring the M&T, do you (or does Cole) think zombie wounds are infectious?  You may or may not be correct, but I want your input.
This message had punctuation tweaked by the GM at 13:26, Thu 29 Dec 2016.

In reply to Castle Keeper (msg # 219):

OOC: If the zombies are re-animated undead, then I would say Cole is not infected as being re-animated implies a magical means to bring back to life and not an infectious disease causing them to be the walking dead. The orcs we defeated in the lodge seemed to display a magical turn to becoming undead as well, so that incident makes me further believe the zombies are magically animated and aren't the byproduct of a disease taking over or a bio-chemical experiment gone haywire. So, based off of that information I would say, other than being a few hit points down, Cole is relatively safe.

Cole if fairly confident his blood stream is not seething with nasty zombie juice.

Hugh passes quickly through the secret door and then takes up a fighting position just to the left of the portal.

Nodding to a nearby companion he hisses, "Somebody take the other side. We must be prepared should they decide to give chase!"

OOC: Readied action to strike the first enemy that pops through the portal.

The zombies turn toward Seline and they each make eye contact with her.  Their eyes momentarily flash blue, then the zombies start moving.  Seline scrambles back to the wall in panic as her probable demise shambles toward her.  Fortunately, she reaches the wall before the zombies reach her and she materializes in the front room of the lodge.

Seline cringes as Hugh almost punches her to death when she appears.  The monk's reflexes kick in and he pulls his punch short.

Nothing else comes up from the dungeon immediately.  There is no sign of Dreya and Elwood, however.

After nearly clocking Seline, Hugh reassesses his companions to determine who made it through. Calling out, "Did everyone make it through?"

He looks to each companion in turn and flatly states, "We must not leave any companion behind to be savaged by filth."

Outside, Dreya's gaze runs over Elwood, noting how his wounds still seem raw, but at least the crimson of life's fluid is no longer seeping as freely.

"Goodberries...I can make some, Sir Elwood." Then cocking her head to the side in that weird manner she has, she says almost as an aside to herself, "Snarg went crazy on them though, perhaps it was an orc thing?"

"Unless..." Dreya turns eyes wide with a tinge of horror at the idea swirling through her head as her gaze alights on the cleric. "Unless you think I have to go back down there and try to get another out? I mean, zombies frighten the juniper out of me, but I would try anyway," the druid babbles out in a rush of words all in one breath.
This message was last edited by the player at 20:44, Fri 30 Dec 2016.

Seline blinks rapidly for a few moments.   Then as she is regaining composure from being caught off guard from Hugh's reaction, she says "I just saw my life flash before my eyes, and it wasn't that exciting.  It looked sort of like a muscle bound fist!"

Walking away from the teleportation wall, Seline settles her back against a wall opposite of the fireplace and starts taking inventory of her surroundings and of her comrades in the room.
This message was last edited by the player at 15:52, Sat 31 Dec 2016.

Still feeling the effects of the battle,  Elwood groggily asks Dreya "Did you drag me all the way here, or did you do that blinky-blink thing?".  Trying to allay Dreya's fears, Elwood calmly speaks "Things were looking pretty dire back there, so it may not be wise to go directly down there.  Our friends have good sense, and may have decided to make a tactical retreat back through that portal, and may be in the lodge as we speak.   We should check that out first."

Elwood hooks his mace to his belt, then he gets out a flask holy water.  "I best keep my distance from any adversaries, but I can still do some damage to any zombies with this.  By the way Dreya, there's no need to address me as 'sir' - I'm happy to simply be called Elwood.  I have no intention in being a knight,  and I'm not one of those stick-up-their-arse followers of Helm.  Besides,  you've more than earned the right to call me anything you want."

"Oh!  Of course, sir El...ack!  I mean...Simply...Elwood."  Nervously, she tugs the hood of her cloak that always covers her head further around her face.  "I...Uh...I think...your...god...must have...saved us."  At that thought, she visibly brightens. "Yes, Flapsman saved us."

Glancing about the ground around them, she finds her bow  and retrieves it, slinging it over her shoulder.  Trying to shoot in the confines of the cabin would probably not end well.  Rising to her feet, she removes one of her daggers from a sheath on her thigh, gripping it with both hands as she nods up at the cleric. "Come, Simply Elwood.  Let us go see if our friends have followed."

With that, Dreya readies herself to approach the cabin with the cleric.

The rage those undead creatures had stirred within Cole was abating - something a little distance and time always did. Now that he was a bit more collected, Cole's gaze darted about the room, doing a mental calculation of his comrades and their current state of health.  Suddenly, his heart seemed to drop like a lead weight.  Two of his companions were missing. The cleric and Dreya were nowhere to be seen. He knew they both had been down there with everyone, but he did not recall seeing anyone besides Seline still amongst the monsters when he had made his own escape.  Could he have missed them in the confusion? No! He was quite certain there had been no one but himself and Seline when he had made his mad dash to the teleport wall, and Seline was sitting here amongst eveyone, quite alive and well.  Perhaps Dreya had... With that thought, Cole jolted from his place without a word and dashed to the cabin door, flinging it wide open.
This message was last edited by the player at 04:04, Sun 01 Jan 2017.

Anthony springs to his feet, his mind racing. "We need to find Elwood. He was in danger."

He springs around the building, looking for Elwood, and then peers out the windows after that hoping to find the wounded man.

After some frantic looking around, the adventurers inside the lodge spot Dreya and Elwood in the clearing outside the lodge.  The fireplace is still swung up, but nothing is coming up from the dungeon.

Seline points at the fireplace. "Hey guys, does someone want to close the fireplace? I'd prefer to not let those things come up and finish what we started."

Getting back up, Seline walks outside, looking around. Seeing Dreya and Elwood walking back to the cabin, Seline just watches them approach.
This message was last edited by the player at 03:15, Sun 01 Jan 2017.

Relieved to hear that Elwood is found and apparently alive, Anthony moves to the fireplace and quickly closes it. He then joins the others outside.

A wave of relief sweeps through Elwood as he sees the rest of his companions emerge from the lodge.  By the way the approach it is obvious that the orcs and zombies haven't come through the portal after them.  Elwood then kneels, bows his head and recites a prayer of thanks to his deity.

Rising up, Elwood observes Cole's and Hugh's wounds [OOC - I assume Hugh has joined the others outside the lodge]. "I guess we need to decide what to do next.  We can set up camp nearby and rest until we're all hale,  but that may take a few days.  We can also head back to Rotter for rest and healing, and possibly get more reinforcements."

[OOC:  I don't know if hirlings are allowed.  I did mention to the CK that I'm friends with one of the temple guards]

As more faces of her traveling companions begin to show through the cabin doorway, a sudden idea alights in her mind.  As she is rushing past the cleric, she hurriedly exclaims, "We should burn it to the ground! Destroy this place so they can never use it!"

Dropping to her knees beside the outside wall of the cabin, she begins to gather a pile of dry grass, twigs, and other wood to start a fire near the cabin wall.

Hugh nods in agreement to Dreya's suggestion and assists her in the task of gathering firewood and kindling. The monk is badly banged up from the short but violent battle, but gets along reasonably well all things considered.

Inspecting the building itself and looking around the inside, Seline makes some "hmmm" noises, occasionally muttering "interesting". Emerging from the building, Seline looks at Dreya and Hugh diligently building up a start to the kindling.

"Might I offer a suggestion?" Not waiting for a response, she leans on the side of the building near Dreya and continues with her thought. "It would probably be more effective and efficient to try to burn the building from the inside out. If I were going to try to start the building on fire, I would build up a wood pile in the fire place first, smash crates and furniture all around and put that near the fire place, dump out the oil from a latern onto the wood pile, and start that on fire. But that is just me."

With that, Seline, using her shoulder, gently pushes herself off the side of the building and begins to walk away towards the front of the building and the rest of the group. After taking two steps though, she stops and looks over her shoulder to Dreya.  With a smirk just barely showing on her lips, she says in a voice loud enough for only Dreya to hear, "you two do look like you would make a cute a couple." She watches Dreya just long enough to judge her reaction before continuing to the main group to see if they are consenting to the burning of the cabin.
This message was last edited by the player at 00:02, Tue 03 Jan 2017.

Dreya does a doubletake toward Seline. "Going back in there?" She shakes her head frantically in negation before digging one of her flask of oil from her backpack. "Sir Hugh, I have oil we can splash on the wall. It...might...help?"

Elwood digs through his backpack and brings out 2 flasks of oil,  flint & steel, 4 torches, and a hatchet.  Holding the hatchet,  he says "I'll go in and start chopping up the crates and the bunks.  Be sure that in my current condition I'll make a hasty retreat outside if that blasted fireplace flips up."
This message was last edited by the player at 01:15, Tue 03 Jan 2017.

[OOC:  Cole and Anthony, the fire hasn't been lit yet,  so please let us know your thoughts on this whole Burning Down the House strategy]

"Yes. That may help...but, maybe we can direct the fire into the hole and smoke them out?"