Chapter 1: The Knaves Visit the Spudfields

The hammer slams into the undead knight, crushing metal and bone and driving him into the wall. Ancient straps and buckles finally give way and the foul creature's armor crumbles and falls off him, exposing ribs and black, leathery-looking skin stretched over the thing's broken frame. It staggers back towards the man with its green-lit skull sockets and its maw open wide in a silent scream.

Audree steps lightly over Clomm's fallen form, and her hands find the staff he'd wielded with such effectiveness. And she feels the same power he did. The same strange resonance in that cold metal shaft, the same magic that all but unwound the first of the two horrific brothers. The staff, however, does not feel the same about Watters, and she draws it back to strike, the infact's head atop one end of the thing begins to scream. It's a keening wail, it's terrible and it's terrifying -- ear-splitting and off-putting all at once.

Endrei's hammer slams into the wall beside their still-standing foe, shattering stone and causing mortar and dust to fall from the wall and ceiling before the screeching forces him to wince as well. Somewhere below that awful sound, a large dog is barking, getting closer, but there is little time to wonder what that might mean as the decrepit miscreant bares his teeth and tries to grab for Endrei's arm with a skeletal hand as the man grunts and tries to step back and re-shoulder his weapon...

That desperate, grasping hand cannot find a purchase on Endrei's warm flesh. The man retreats a step or two as the thing's freezing cold, sharp fingerbones claw at his moldering, partly decayed brigandine armor. He can tell in that moment what it wants -- the heat in his body, the life in his blood... the breath from his lungs.