008 - The New Pillar
It is a couple days in town to fully heal up from the duel: an axe to the gut is no minor thing. Solana, in time, is restored to good health, and must decide what to do next. Upon emerging from her room, the town’s bustle was distinctly different, and not in a pleasant, productive way. Gossip quickly made clear why: A new pillar of iron was found not too far from town, at a location known to have been where a historic battle against horrors was held, when some of the first settlers to the Ironlands arrived. To make matters worse, the very vegetation around this new pillar seems to be withering by the hour.
That’s odd. Pillars are as odd as they are uncommon, and while everybody has opinions or beliefs about them, they don’t just appear, and they definitely don’t do things, either. The pillar is clearly visible from the town’s entry, although it is a decent chunk of the day to reach it.
While the rest of the town has, perhaps wisely, decided to stay clear of it. Solana finds a man, raving and rambling, at the base of the pillar. “I have seen it’s power!” he shouts repeatedly. “I have seen it! We have been misled!”
Solana tries to get through to him. What are you talking about?
“This offers us new life! It has done so to me!”
What, the pillar? It looks more like it’s draining life, you’re not making any se-
Before things can go any further, the man’s skin is taken by the wind. Not as sheets of flesh, but particle by particle, a creation of dust or sand that simply blows off. Down each layer, to the bone, a gust of grit and mist of blood. There is a horrified shriek, although from who is unclear. This is a Bonewalker, charging at Solana with eyes bright enough to blind!
In her panic, Solana runs back, which is enough evasion to see the ambush strike unharmed. How does one fight what amounts to a skeleton? Solana hastily throws a high kick, hoping to make any sort of connection. As one leg lifts, however, the ground rumbles, sending the other, and her, off-balance to the ground. What was that?
The bonewalker, unrelenting, reaches down as though to strangle Solana, who grabs each hand with her own. Her eyes make contact with the lights deep inside its skull’s sockets. This time, her kick lands true, and is much more of a surprise.
The ground rumbles harder. The land visibly shakes. Something is stirring underneath this pillar! Whatever is about to happen here, Solana does not want to be anywhere nearby, nor fighting a Bonewalker when it happens. It was time to make a move: using a slowly-becoming standard grapple attempt, Solana grabs and simply pulls as hard as she can. With a crackling-popping noise, she finds herself thrown backwards from the force… with a now-disconnected arm in her grasp. The walker screams in rage - or is that the ground at this point?
Don’t stop now! Rising back up, Solana throws a strike directly for the skull - those lights might be what’s animating it. It lands true… with no visible effect, and her arm is immediately grabbed. Faster than she expected… and the grip is growing crushingly tight. Just as quickly, she forcefully pulls her arm back in an effort to break free. These fingers are claw-like, and her rescued fist has fine ribbons cut into it. Damn it.
With its one arm swinging wildly, the Bonewalker looks to have lost what little tactics it had left. Focus. Watch its movements. Solana being parrying, taking steps back all the while. There’s a pattern, and it’s… there! With one arm blocking the latest swing, Solana rotates around and uppercuts the damn thing’s skull off. The lights for its eyes die out, the body collapses, and just as soon dissolve into dust. Success!
Solana takes a moment to catch her breath… she has got stop getting into fights even when she’s not looking for one. She turns and looks back at the pillar and the dying, brown grass around it. This is not normal. Someone, something, is causing all this.
There is another, very familiar, shriek.
Two more Bonewalkers emerge from either side of the pillar.
Solana’s eyes go wide and her skin turns pale.
Nuh-uh.
She turns and sprints, as fast as she can, back to Olgar’s Stand.
Mid-Story Commentary
So a pillar shows up out of nowhere, and it's apparently large enough to be visible outside of town, and there's a crazy guy plus Bonewalkers showing up. That sounds bad. I mean, it probably IS bad, but we're only familiar with, like, one Iron Pillar at this point anyway. Solana seems aware that this isn't a thing that happens, though, so clearly something foul is going on with this.
We just had a fight last session and immediately got into a fight on this one. Yeah, I was a little enamored with the combat rules right now. Given how I wrote this out, this must have been one of those fights where the dice disagreed with me. I'll go ahead and warn you now that Solana does a lot of fighting in general. I think eventually I start glossing over it a bit more.
I think the outcome of this fight was a weak hit? She won the battle but not the war, which seems like a weak hit sort of resolution to this. Definitely took some Health damage and, if I recall, I did a Spirit loss too.