"You're damned right you are." Shovash looked more than pleased, but the time for celebrating was already spent. She waved them toward the rest of the tribe as she turned back. "I'll be here for several days yet, to smooth the transition. And I'll make the announcement before heading into the catacombs. I'll be counting on you. Don't make me have to burn the world down.

  "Ragnar! Aiva! Take That One with you, and I'll meet you there. Don't mistake the leechers for real undead, if any were fortunate enough to survive. I was trying to cultivate that family." After an exceptionally dark look directed at no one, her attention settled on her newest adoptee, with a mix of proud and predatory in the way she leered at him. "Come, Arkr. You will be my emissary to this tribe, soon enough. You should be seen with me when I deliver instructions."

Ragnar and Aiva go to the entrance of the Cenotaph, Aiva conversing quite fluently That One in Draconic as she walks. Arkr falls in behind Shovash at a distance suited to a respectful bodyguard, and growls at anyone who gives either of them a sidelong look.

There is, predictably, a discipline issue almost immediately with one of the orcs getting upset at the less-than-clear chain of command. Less predictably, it's the woman (who has introduced herself as Karask) who responds. She walks straight up to him, punches him in the face with an impressive degree of power if not technique, and glares at him. "Complain later. Work now." She nods to him, as though that has quite settled it, and moves on. Remarkably, he complies.

At the Cenotaph, the door gapes open like the maw of a great beast. That One stares at the entrance, and hisses. "This one can smell the dead within. Dead that should remain dead. They are waiting in the walls. The floor. They will fall upon us when we go below, and cut off the exit. It would work against the tribe here, but not against you or this one."

Ragnar merely flips open the top of his bottomless quiver, notching the first bolt of many into Greta's waiting chamber.

"And dead they shall become once again, honored wyrm. This entire structure is a affront to the proper order of things; let them come and spend themselves against us, it shall only save us the time required to hunt them down instead."

Greta, silent as usual in the presence of strangers, vibrates slightly in emphatic agreement. There's been too much talking today already, it's time for them to start shooting things.
This message was last edited by the player at 04:44, Wed 11 Mar 2020.

  It was a few minutes later when Shovash and Arkr caught up with them, he loping along at clearly magical speed and she gliding somewhat lazily above.  She at least had the courtesy to not kick up much of a dust cloud when she landed, this time.

  "Things seem stable at camp.  They'll be rebuilding and rearming themselves for some time.  Are all of you ready?"

"Always," Aiva replied with an eager smile. She stretched out a hand and her great crimson blade appeared in it, the edge gleaming with an inner light. "Let's get this party started."

She lopes off into the interior.

What follows is not a fight. Not really. A fight implies two parties of equal or near-equal threat. This is a slaughter. That One's breath alone is enough to send most of the wights, specters, and hordes of skeletons and zombies on to judgment. Ragnar and Aiva clean up anything that manages to survive the crypt dragon's work, and Shovash heals any small wounds they sustain.

The group presses downward, following the same path as before, until finally they reach the level where Uran held court. The graveknight stands alone before them in her adamantine plate, and nods politely as they walk in. "Well played," she says softly. She smiles, heavy and tusky. "Better that I fall to another of the people, I suppose, than some human paladin."

  Shovash steps forward without a word; the sneering look around the damaged court says enough. This is not a meeting of peers. That opportunity was squandered. She strikes the ground hard with the butt of her staff, like planting a flag, and the other one stretches backward, palm gaping with the same mouth that she disgorged a lash from on her last visit.

  "'The People? No, you defiled those and lost your right to that name. They are My People now, and I cast you out. Here. Now. In what was the seat of your power, once. You are not an orc." She pauses there and spares a glance over each shoulder at the assembled hunting party. Her nostrils flare when she turns back to Uran. "Will you be going on to the Boneyard quietly now? Or will we have to tear you apart and scatter your dust to the winds?"

Uran visibly flinches as Shovash repudiates her and casts her out. She recovers after a moment, and those tusks, the only visible part of her face, tweak into a smile. Even without seeing the rest of her face, it seems somehow off - wry, fey, sad, bittersweet, all at once.

"I will die on my feet," she says. "It is not fit for one of the people, even one so defiled as I have become, to meet the Lady of Graves lying down." She draws her adamantine blade and strides forward slowly. Her tone, her bearing, are utterly fatalistic, and there's no doubt that she thinks this is a fight she will lose, despite all the power of long ages basking in the heart of the Cenotaph.

  Shovash just rolls her eyes at the display. "You're an idiot. You attacked my children while I was here to make peace. I'm not about to give you a death you'll feel good about. Ragnar? Aiva? She has made my condition irrelevant. Let us waste no more time; she's all yours." And then Shovash turns her back on Uran to walk back to the others.

In reply to Shovash Godsbane (msg # 39):

Ragnar steps forward slightly, flickering irregularly as he readies to call upon his curse more deeply.

"I have two questions. First, who were you before you became this? And second, did you choose to become what you are, or was it thrust upon you?"

The graveknight raises her head, a touch of pride or defiance entering her tone. "I was Uran Black-Blade, a half-orc warrior who fought for the Shattered Stone tribe of Belkzen. I earned much glory, and came to the Cenotaph to drive out the undead before I was killed and remade by them. This was all...so many long years ago, now."

Ragnar nods solemnly, and the bite of phantom thorns chews along the inside of his skin as he fades from view, his voice disembodied and directionless. "Then be at peace, Uran Black-Blade. All souls have a road to walk, even if might they stumble upon it and fall. By my hand you are risen back to your feet, ready to resume your journey into eternity."

Without further word, he sends a flurry of bolts into Uran, punching through the center of her plate in a tight cluster.

THe bolts slam home, and Uran slumps to the ground, the armor clattering on the floor of the chamber. It doesn't seem that there's an actual body inside of it. That One snorts, letting out a puff of steam, and turns its attention to Shovash. "Well done. This one thanks you for your work here today. Do you have additional need of this one currently?"

  "No, not with me.  There will be new threats below, but the most treacherous is gone now.  Rest, pray, do what keeps you most ready.  There will be further to go tonight."

  Shovash eyes the damaged armor with a sullen expression; her tail flicks about aimlessly with her irritation and reflexively scrabbles at anything the talons collide with.  A faint squeaking comes from her left hand, where the jaws she brought forth are grinding their teeth, but none of her mouths speak for the moment.

  Eventually, she spits on one of the greaves and walks past the whole pile toward the throne at the end of the hall.  There are broken bits, and gouges taken out of the stone that suggest weapons, not tools, but it's largely intact, anyway.  That doesn't last long.  As Shovash approaches, she raises her free hand toward the stone chair on the stone dais in the stone room and makes a tight fist.  "ጥፋት!"  Her hand jerks open, and the throne splits down the center in a jagged, gaping line.

In reply to Shovash Godsbane (msg # 44):

Ragnar gathers up the armor, hefting its weight experimentally before setting it back down on the ground with apparent displeasure.

"Shovash, how long do you think it will take us to fully cleanse the Cenotaph and return to the surface?"

  "Weeks, I suspect, and that's assuming the lower levels aren't warded tightly against planar travel."  She pulled her wings in tightly and turned away from the throne, back to the others.  For someone who presumed to judge who could call themselves an orc, she looked an awful lot like a demon in the dim lighting.  Her voice was tense with anger, but her posture was more like sorrow, with low shoulders and heavy steps.  "The lower floors are certain to be more dangerous, and no one truly knows the full extent of the catacombs."

In reply to Shovash Godsbane (msg # 46):

"Then let us accomplish as much as we can before turning back - the next primordial will arise in roughly five days from now."
This message was last edited by the player at 17:21, Tue 31 Mar 2020.

  She nods, and her gaze drifts out the door into the larger chambers beyond.  "With some form of advance warning of troop movements below, I could make this more of a hobby.  The enemy cannot replenish as we can, if it is rebuffed when it attempts to raid the living.  Every foray we make is a permanent loss for them.  Let's make this one profound."  Shovash approaches the empty suit of plate and begins taking it apart, pocketing the pieces one at a time as she separates them.  She doesn't move as fast as she could, especially when she pauses to consider each of them.  Her lips move silently.

Ragnar watches Shovash with the armor, but makes no move to interfere. "Take care with that armor. Mere prayer will not be sufficient to break the curse it bears, bu I will need time and conversation with our more scholarly allies to determine what will."

  She frowns and looks up at him.  "What, you mean she's still bound to it or something like that?"  Then Shovash waits only until he looks more affirmative than negative before grinning.  She doubles in size on the spot, muscles pouring out of the gaps between muscles and every sharp bit of her growing longer, thicker, more deadly-looking.  In a few seconds, she's on eye level with Ragnar and still crouching, still grinning.  She tucks the breastplate into her cleavage, through a neckline now wide enough to admit it, and it too vanishes without a trace.

  "Oh, then let's don't break the curse yet.  I have a few... finer points of rule to teach her before I let her go.  Don't worry though," she continues, standing and starting for the door back to the main halls.  She's not quite the size of the dragon now.  "I have every intention of ending her unlife, if I have to tear her soul out by hand.  Let us go deeper."

Marching on, there is another stair, and it goes deep. Very deep. Other levels branch off occasionally, stretching out into the dark, but they are mostly empty, with only one containing a legion of skeletons - hundreds, perhaps thousands - standing stock still as though awaiting orders. That One, without prompting, annihilates them with its breath in waves.

Finally, the stair comes to an end. At a guess, you're near the bottom of the canyon now, and it opens onto a lavishly decorated floor - mosaics in the floors, chandeliers of magical lights hanging from the ceiling. Moving forward, you pass through empty chambers until you reach what looks like a ballroom - complete with dancing couples. Each is a skeleton, finely dressed, moving with tireless, mechanical grace to the same music, though you hear nothing. At the far end is a curtained doorway into another room.

"To some extent, but I would not advise carrying it on your person, or in contact with anyone you value. Graveknight armor is not picky about whose flesh it harvests for raw material."

Seeing the tableau ahead, Ragnar eyes it curiously, then fades from view again in preparation for what he expects will be a fight beyond the curtained barrier.

  "No, no, of course not.  Not when I have a perfectly good stone wall to embed it in.  Let's go."  And she went.

---

  As their going revealed more and more empty halls, big enough for giants to pass comfortably, occupied by dust and cobwebs now, Shovash grew only more wary.  She didn't quite jump at shadows—really, it had been two years since she had so much as flinched—but her search of each deeper floor was more obsessively thorough.  She actually looked relieved to round a corner and come face to face with an entire army.

...until they failed to attack.  She snorted in disgust, at that and gave up all her caution for peevish boredom while her dragon companion saved itself weeks of future work in a matter of minutes.  By the time they reached the ball room, she was in no mood to appreciate the artistry.

  "የድንጋይ ወታደር," she barked and laid a hand on Arkr's shoulder, and this time he grew along with her, though he was the only one who hardened into obsidian in the process.  The dim glow in his joints when he moved, like magma shining through, did resemble her tattoos.  Shovash just marched toward the dancers without an explanation and vanished the same way, reappearing at the curtain slightly under a twenty-count later.  "Come on.  I was told that someone drove Uran up from the lower reaches over her failed ambitions.  There had better be a Someone here."  And she went.

"There undoubtedly is. Such a pointlessly maudlin display is the waste of necromantic power only seen in the oldest of abominations. It'll be a pleasure to send them onward to end this tacky piece of performance art alone."

Happy to let Shovash take the lead and draw attention, he slips in after her past the curtain. She is clearly hoping for a fight, Ragnar simply hopes the fight will not take too long. He has set himself a tight deadline to meet with Geb's minion, enough that whatever consequences come from the encounter can be resolved before the next Primordial event.

You move through the curtain, and find a throne room not so unlike Uran's above, but more elaborately decorated, with a mosaic of the night sky in the floor and tapestries on the walls. In the throne lounges a human-sized figure, gaunt and terrible, with ice woven through its flesh like armor. Its eyes burn with pale blue light, and its skin is very pale.

It smiles as you walk in, with teeth that are long and sharp as a shark's. "Hello, hello, what have we here?" it says, standing.