Snagging last spot. Will write a char in a bit.

One small problem; your phylactery. The power of it is fine, completely so, but putting it as your two handed sword is problematic because of getting new gear. What about a gemstone put into the sword?


Perfect!

Updated to be a gem, since I like that idea.

Noted and changed. I agree that it would fit in more into the medieval setting of the story.

Name: Luther
Appearance: Sharp hawkish features that are somehow still able to produce a charming smile and tall, the kind of nobleman who thinks the sword to be beneath him.
Backstory: A third son to an influential family, Luther was raised to be the Castellan to some small and in his opinion insignificant keep. Considering direct combat and it's inherent risks beneath him, he became a master of siege warfare and political intrigues. Any battle could be won by morale, be it with an arrow in the right back or by attrition. Any battle except his last, surrounded and horribly outnumbered the only option left was retreat. Expecting to be executed should the enemy find out who he was he fled dressed as a commoner among the cooks and maidens. Never expecting to die like so many of his own victims: with an arrow in his back.
Character Type: Vampire, crossbow
Phylactery: Active: A teardrop shaped vial of his own blood.

I had hoped HK would be done, but no matter! We're good to go, since this is just the start and everyone's situation will be more or less the same. Consider this the setup role, where I sort out your character sheets and make everything ready for the start of our adventure. Note that the mechanics are still under development in some areas - some abilities might be tweaked and various items have their values altered, but nothing that should drastically alter your role. For example, Assassinate has been buffed to allow for crossbow attacks to give the Vampire more versatility, and both the Lich's and Vampire's clothing have been given a modest 1 defensive die each to help prevent them from getting one shot should enemies get into melee range.



Deep underneath the ground of what had once been the city of the world's desire, in tombs long forgotten, cold and damp air which had stood lifeless for centuries begins to stir with energy once more. A low hum echoes through the dark and empty halls, at at once the braziers rekindle with new, scarlet flames, driving away the darkness...and for but the briefest of moments...the champions become truly aware of death's embrace on their being, the suffocating caress that holds their bodies and tries so hard to stop them from rising, to keep them dead. But as quickly as they felt its presence they feel a light driving it away as sensation returns with a deafening clarity.

You feel cold.

Weary lids flutter open as the world begins to melt into focus, and with the cracking of joints the first of the champion's moves are made : the lids of their sarcophagi, sealed years ago as one last gift from the realm they had failed to save. Raising them up just enough to give them the room to slip a limb past to push them to the side, they land on the masonry with a bang made all the more thunderous by the echoey chambers...and one by one, the champions rose to live once more, and took a look around the room that had been their prison and their home for so long.

Six sarcophagi, hewn from hard and unyielding granite, stand in the middle of the room, with the likeness of the champion who had been entombed inside sculpted into the face of each lid. At each corner stands a stone sentinel, each a towering knight made to watch over them as the heroes slept, between each of which are a dozen sepulchers carved into the walls and sealed just as the champion's own crypts were, filled with heroes who had perished both before and after the six that rose.

Buried wearing what little equipment and clothing they had left after their deaths, there are neither chests nor coffers nearby, but attention is instead drawn to the great doorless archway in the front centre of the room, where the brazier's light turns a cold blue, as if to deliberately draw attention.

Then, a voice echoes into the minds of the six champions at once, coming from everywhere at once and yet nowhere. It is a soothing voice, familiar, and one that fills the champions with a renewed sense of duty: it is the voice of a leader they once served.

You have awoken at last, my champions. I hope that you might remember me merely by the sound of my voice...if not...I am King Arslan Randeere, the third to carry the name, and I am dead, just like you. Please, come to me, come to the atrium where the Soulstone stands, we have much to discuss and all the time in the world to do so.

The voice's attention seems to shift to that of the brazier, as if gesturing in that direction.

These tunnels are a labyrinth one could spend a thousand years lost in, and I am but a shadow of my former power, but I yet know how to control them so as to guide you. Simply follow the blue flames, they shall show you the way, but stay vigilant for traps. They were the last line of protection should the catacombs have ever been breached, and are rather...dangerous.

Characters

Seraphimo/Chas Delaney
[-]



CaveCricket/Chaikin
[-]



CrazyMLC/Bodnakin
[-]



TheKebbit/Tsunnarad
[-]


Maart3n/Luther
[-]



TorrentHKU/???
[-]




And that's that done. I'll try to roll every Sunday, but they may occur more often if the time pops up in the week for me to do so.

Arise and be disgusted by the state of my clothes.
Follow the torches, carefully.

Two smoke and one poison potion please!

Name: Captain Brynhildr Kindaustein
Appearance: A tall nordic woman with a hard edged face. Steely blue-grey eyes with a piercing stare, and long golden-brown hair tied into a hair braid down to her waist, secured with a thick round silver hair clip near the end.
Backstory: Raised without a mother due to an accident involving a pack of wolves, Brynhildr was worked hard and raised strong. When combat broke out nearby, she quickly joined in the defense, rapidly making a name for herself with her no-nonsense fighting style and brutal efficiency in battle, in one fight cutting down half of a dozen men by her lonesome and scaring the rest into fleeing. Her rise through the ranks was meteoric when leadership was so rapidly lost to battle, though her end was just as climactic; felled not by an enemy blade, but by a large boulder fired from a siege engine.
Character Type: Death Knight, Sword and Shield
Phylactery: Angered - The silver hair clip on her braid, adorned with a glittering amethyst stone. With it present, her shield almost seems to seek out enemy blows on its own, keeping the owner safe even in the thickest of battles.

> Look around, secure my shield, check my sword, and follow the blue flames.

Rolling!

EDIT : And rolled! I spent so long doing my action for Risen Champions that it ate into this a little, but don't worry, everything should be fine! From this part on game events will occur at the bottom of each roll and act as a sort of summery for everything that happened in it, except for major events like when the party arrives at a new and important destination. All rolls will use Random.org, since I seem to have misplaced my physical die


Seraphimo/Chas Delaney
[2] Having heard the voice of your sovereign and king, you tentatively take your first step in unlife, slow and anxious, but you find that you feel little different than you did in life - your clothes, or rather the illusion of them, weigh nothing, true, and you lack all sensation of warmth or cold, but you still feel like you, even if you can barely remember but a few flashes of the life that came before. Taking a breath only to find that nothing moved when you did, you continue with the others into the hallway, following the blue braziers wherever they burn with the rest of the group falling in behind you

Taking a breath only to find that they air stayed still when you did, you continue with the others into the hallway, following the blue braziers wherever they burn with the rest of the group falling in behind you. Countless statues and burial chambers pass you by, their doors still closed and their lights unlit, and you pay them little attention, but soon enough the monotony of the long walk is broken up as you and your fellow champions come upon a large square chamber, the entry hall to the tombs that you have just emerged from, where a large dais of white stone has been raised up off of the ground, and atop of it is what seems to be an altar, with clay bowls placed atop filled with the dust of what had once been offerings, and as you look towards the marble altar you hear your king's voice once more, saddened.

It has always been in the nature of our people to look not to lofty "gods" for guidance and reason, but to the past, to our heroes of flesh and blood who we know walked upon the earth just as we do. They were our gods...if only we could remember their names...

You step forth, curious, almost floating atop the ground between the tunnelway and the dais - had you and your comrades been worshipped, once?

Then you hear an agonizing click come from the stones beneath one of your fellow champions, the burnt lich, who had thought to follow you up onto the dais.



CaveCricket/Chaikin
[3] Standing tall and waking from your long slumber, you shake off the little dust there is and begin examining your armor - the years have not been kind to it, certainly not, and years without even a minute of maintenance have worn down the metal and allowed rust to work its way into the scratches, further eroding the quality of its fitting. Your sword and shield are little better, the former being chipped and the latter worn and rotted...but there is still strength in them, as there is in the armor, as there is in you, and with a sigh you return the sword to its sheath and the shield to your back before leaving, letting the spectre take the lead.

Everywhere you turn your gaze, there is a sign of death; a bone, a skull, another burial chamber or another urn, but it does not make you anxious or uncomfortable, no, these are the tombs of heroes beyond counting, their trusted companions and their stalwart allies. The thought that they are watching over you still, even in their deaths and in yours, is a soothing one, not a disconcerting one.

After a long walk through the dark tunnels, your path lit only by the blue flames of the king's braziers, your colleagues come upon an open chamber, the entryway to this part of the catacombs where people once brought offerings to their honored dead. Whereas the spectre heads towards the altar, curious, your eyes linger upon a nearby statue of a tall, broad shouldered warrior, who stands vigil besides the entry way wielding a great maul in his left hand and a thick shield in the other, a griffin chiseled into its surface.

At the base lies an inscription, barely illuminated by the turquoise glow.

Death cannot keep Sir Ryner Baelsin, Knight-Commander of the Order of the Sons of Aran, from standing his vigil. The traitors of cold Orthandra may have broken his body, but never his spirit.

Orthandra.

The word seems to linger in the air like the stench of a festering wound, even the taste of it on your tongue is the foulest of poisons, and yet you cannot fathom why that is so, only that something they did could only ever be described as a heart wrenching atrocity and even then never fully. You reach into the murk of old memories, searching for an answer...only to hear a click as the burnt lich steps upon something.



CrazyMLC/Bodnakin
[3] Climbing from your tomb, the first thing you see in life is the smoothness of the stones around you, their dull reflection of the blue light....and despite the cold air, despite the distant shocks of your death echoing through the back of your mind, you know all is well. It is a place you have seen before, or at the very least one like it, and the blocks of masonry are as familiar to you as old friends; have you been here before? Before your death? Perhaps, perhaps not, but your shattered memories make it difficult to tell, to truly know or to even know at all, but at the least it is clear that the passage of time might be able mend what death had broken and that not everything that you once were has been lost, a small comfort, but one worth keeping.

Your armor had been put onto you, and your sword was already in your hands, and all t6hat meant that the only thing to do was to follow your fellow champions and do as the king commanded, even still, you take a place in the rear of the group, walking more slowly as you look around the tunnel, searching for anything that looks even remotely familiar...but you see nothing, nothing you remembered in the way that you remembered the tomb, and you look to the ground, downhearted and keeping your eyes open for the telltale signs of a trap.

Time passes and the bricks become a grey blur, seeming to mingle together into a single, unending block that stretches on for an eternity, but you are roused from your trancelike state by the change from tunnel to room as you enter a large chamber. In the centre of the room stands a lone, marble altar, placed atop a high dais, its sides hewn with flowing patterns and its surface covered in bowls and candles long burnt. One of the others finds a statue standing guard near the entryway to the tunnel, and on the other side you find the empty place where its companion would have been placed, had it ever been finished.

Turning to look at the statue, you stop dead in your tracks as you see the Lich step onto a block, both of you freezing still as you hear it click as it sinks into the ground by not even half an inch.



TheKebbit/Tsunnarad
[1] With the cracking of long unused joints you rise back to unlife, the first of the champions to have fallen in defense of the realm and the first to have risen to serve it anew, and immediately one of your oldest memories flares into existence only to fade away as quickly as it came, but it's imprint remains. Staff. Immediately you search for that which makes a wizard into a wizard, the means by which they ply their trade whether in peace or war, and you find it in your tomb, having rolled to the side at some point over the last century. With practiced ease you put your hand forth and watch as the gnarled thing floats into your grasp, leaning on it as you rise to your full height - no longer do you look like a decrepit ghoul, but as a true and dangerous lich armed with spell and sorcery.

Hearing and heeding the command of your king, you accompany the other champions into the hallway, you glance at the blue braziers with a contained, slight, curiosity. Much of your magical prowess has been drowned by the oceans of a century within the void, but what was once learnt can be learnt once again, and who knows what manner of new magics might have been uncovered over the years? And who knows how they might interact with your half-remembered powers, or your unique powers as an undead magus?

Indeed, you already find bits and pieces of your memory stirring, however so slightly; a mere moment's inspection of the braziers that the king ignites reveals that they are enchanted, lacking only the means to control the flames and the power needed to make them come to life, whilst the coals themselves are entirely ordinary in nature, without so much as a speck of sorcery in them. You contemplate the matter whilst walking alongside the others, feeling as if the knowledge of it is so close...and yet, blocked from you somehow, but when you reach an open room, something catches your eye.

Whereas all the others see only an altar covered only in rot, dust and old bowls, you see a book.

It floats in the air, turning and churning and turning itself inside out, pages fluttering, and the mere sight of it captivates you in a way no normal book should. The tome turns and spins, but you see upon its cover for but a moment two words.

Magical Light.

The spectre walks past you towards the alter, all whilst the book trembles, calling to you with whispered words of half-forgotten knowledge. You anxiously put a foot forward, only to hear the voice of your king.

Be careful, there are traps here, and many of them.

Watching the path the spectre takes and seeing him travel through the room unharmed, you copy his footsteps, trying to reach the book, trying to reach your lost memory.

Wait! Not -

Then you hear a click and the book weeps.



Maart3n/Luther
[3] With an annoyed sigh you examine your clothing, remembering how fine it had once been all those years ago, a brightly colored array of velvets with a satin cloak fastened around your shoulders by two golden clasps and with no little amount of jewelry...but now, you look more like a beggar than not, or as if you have been lost in the wilds for who knows how many years. Still, you try to make the best of it, brushing the dust from your doublet as best as you can before removing your cloak and shaking the worst of the detritus off of its surface.

Looking a little more suitable for a royal audience, you accompany all the other champions out of the burial chamber and into the tunnels of Aranda's old catacombs, armed with the knowledge that - despite your lacklustre garb - you are still the best dressed for miles around. The tunnels are deep and dark, stretching on and on for a great distance, but you find yourself retreating away from the light of the braziers in a way you a certain you never did in life - the very touch of their light when you stand besides them feels like the sharp edge of a dagger being rolled across your skin, lacking the pressure to bite but unpleasant nevertheless.

Staying a little further away from them keeps you comfortable, but even that little extra darkness can't fill the cold emptiness you feel inside of you, the thirst for something...alive. Like a drunkard's thirst for wine, you find yourself craving blood, the rawest and most pure form of lifeforce, but it is certainly something you can control without much difficulty, at least as long as it stays merely a craving and not a command. Bringing yourself back to the present,

Bringing your attentions back to the present, you notice as, at last, the party enters a large room where an altar sits atop a dais, still covered in the last offerings that had ever been placed upon its surface, and -

You suddenly feel a drop of cold wetness running down your cheek, and you put your hand to it only to take it back and see only water on your fingertips. Looking to the ceiling in search of the source, you find a place amongst the cracked painting where the years of neglect has left the stones weak, giving the moisture of the world above a chance to get into the darkness below.

This bodes ill. If these very tunnels have started to be damaged by the passage of time, there is no telling what has befallen our fair city. Who knows how much of it remains, now, if any of it?

You snap from your upwards gaze as the burnt lich steps upon a block that sinks with a click, and you know in your core that blood - or what passes for it - is about to flow.



TorrentHKU/Captain Brynhildr Kindaustein
[3] Almost as quickly as you realize that you are aware, that you are still alive and not a shredded mass of viscera upon some forgotten field, you check for your sword and shield. The former was inside the tomb with you, still sheathed in your hands, whilst the shield was instead lain up against the side, regardless, you take both of them once more, fastening the sword's belt at your waist and the shield by its strap around your shoulders and onto your back. Walking with your swordhand kept upon your pommel, you march through the tunnel with a short and quick stride, watching as one flame behind you extinguishes itself only for another further ahead to be lit, never letting you fall back into the silent darkness.

Though the walk is long, you manage to keep your mind busy wondering about how they managed to reassemble your body - the last thing you remembered before the darkness took you for the first time was a wall of stone hurling through the air before sending you to the next life, alongside many others, but such a wound should have reduced your flesh to paste and your bones to splinters, not left your skeleton and muscle intact enough for you to be able to wander about the moment life returned to you. Indeed, it seems the only wound on your, if you could call it that, is the change in your appearance towards the pale and your hair towards the grey, if only slightly, none of which are a real impediment.

So how did they do it? How did they heal your body?

You have a few blurry memories of clerics who had the power to heal wounds with their magics, an ability that could be used on the dead in order to "clean" their body of wounds and make them a better sight for burial, but it feels as though it could take hours just to heal the cut of a dagger, which meant it must have taken days, if not weeks for your form to have been healed...that is, if that is how they managed to do it. You have never once heard of a way for the dead to come back to life, after all, and yet here you are. Perhaps the king developed an even greater means of healing wounds?

You set such thoughts aside for the time being as you and your companions come to a stop in a large, square chamber, where an altar has been placed atop the dais and left with whatever offerings had been there when the kingdom fell and little else other than a few wax stubs. The spectre goes forth first, walking across the stones without harm, the burnt lich following not long after...

...only for there to be a clicking sound from under his feet.



The click echoes through the entire chamber, everyone stopping still at the sight of Tsunnarad and the sunken pressure plate, the lich staying frozen where he was in the hope that nothing else would happen so long as he did not move.

His hope was incorrect.

With a deafening bang and a blinding flash of light the Lich is blown into the air only to slam into the chamber's ceiling with a loud crunch, his fellow champions feeling an echo of his pain for but a second before the lich dies again, only for his limp body to fall back to the ground in pieces. Bits of flesh and bubbling black ichor rain down from above, followed not long after by the lower half of his body, which hits the masonry in front of the party with a wet slopping sound, every bone broken and the flesh torn to shreds. Then his upper half hits the corner of the altar head first, Tsunnarad's skull exploding like an overripe melon before the remains of his ruined body tumbles off and rolls onto the dais before falling still.

The other champions stare in horrified silence as the lich's hat slowly wafts to the ground, smouldering.

Tsunnarad the Lich, has died in an explosion!

Frozen at the sight of their comrade so utterly destroyed, a minute passes without action...then the black blood of the lich begins to boil as his body starts to burn with a violet flame, every piece setting ablaze at once. The greatest mass of his body, his upper half, is concealed within smoke as the rest disintegrates into ashes, but his cremated remains refuse to stay still, dancing and spiralling within the air being ebbing and flowing towards his upper half, his legs being the first to rejoin the mass.

The smoke rises, growing thicker, darker, and then with a brilliant gout of flame the Lich appears at the dais, his Phylactery burning so brightly that Luther has no choice but to cower beneath his cloak for protection against its light, but the others see and watch as the dust of his flesh reconnects itself to him in seconds till nothing is separate and all is healed.

As the flames die down, the Lich leans down to pick up his hat, donning it once more and utterly unharmed.

Tsunnarad the Lich, has risen once again!

I must admit, that was rather fascinating...still, I would suggest avoiding the traps as much as possible. They were added to the catacombs in case they were ever breached, and each one of them has enough energy to kill three men in plate armor. Whilst it is certainly possible for you to detonate all of them on your way here, it would be best to leave them be; who knows if someone else might manage to find a way into these tombs whilst you are away!