The basic skeleton and zombie can be altered in a variety of ways. The most common are to infuse them with elemental power, often cold, or to turn them into a lieutenant. Both create a more powerful undead though it also raises the cost of their creation. An elemental variant will release a faint aura of their element and their attacks are laced with it. High quality elemental undead may also heal from exposure to their element. Lieutenants are granted inteligence to be used as commanders of other minions. - Common Monsters

Adrian

Talia and K are lying one of the healing circles Bryan must have put down. K’s injury won’t kill her so I more to look at Talia’s more closely. There is only the one hole, the bullet is still within the wound.

I look at Lysan, “did you try to heal her?”

She nods, then the wound has closed up some.

“Did you remove anything from the wound?”

She did not, shit. There is a bullet that has flesh closed around it. I open my sense of reality and draw on Life. I need to find where that bullet ended up. The wound has some dirt and other things that are not Talia in her. I need to look deeper, then I find a lump of something. Metal, probably lead.

The bullet hole was partially closed by Lysan but now that healing is holding the bullet in. Cut it out or is there a better option? Using Translocation Grasp would pull it out, but leave a small vacuum inside her. I can’t imagine that would be good.

Talia is in pain. I don’t know how to do anything for that.

“I’m sorry but I have to remove something.”

I pull out a bottle of wine and have her drink some. No time to have her drink into a stupor though, I also pass a knife through a conjured flame.

“Hold your sister, this will hurt.”

Lysan does so and I cut into Talia. I know where the bullet is but I am sure that I caused more damage to open a path to it. A combat knife is defiantly not meant for this. As soon as the blade is close to the bullet I pull it, the bullet, out.

I hold the knife where it is until the hole where the bullet was will no longer be a hole. Talia looks pale, but now the wound should heal properly. I remove the knife and clean the wound before continuing to force her body to heal faster.

There is a small scar left once the wound closes. I don’t know how to remove those, maybe Lysan’s magic can. I look up to Lysan, “get her to eat something. I’ll treat Kythia.”

Lysan nods, and I move over to K. She must have been paying attention to my treatment of Talia as she answers the questions I was about to ask.

“No healing, it’s still in there.”

I nod and pass her the now half bottle of wine before repeating most of what I had to do to Talia. Though I didn’t have to reinjure her to make sure the wound would close correctly. She handles it better than Talia did. That could have been since it wasn’t a bullet in the gut.

Bryan comes down at this point. “I think we are in the clear.”

I nod, and he moves to the door before heading out. I assume he is going to check for things we can use. I’m skeptical on how much they will actually have. There were only three rounds in that first rifle that I used from them.

I check K and Talia for any more injuries but find none. We will have to rest here for a bit, how I healed them made them tired. I head outside, Abagail is in the window. I aid Bryan in searching through these men, they do not have much though.

A few rifles, spare but empty magazines, no food, no water, no handguns, and only a few knives. There was a rifle with a different caliber than what we had, the .308 bullets. Unfortunately, the person who was holding it was one of those that I shot with the shotgun. I am not sure if it will work, if it does it will defiantly need cleaned up first.

It is a bit after high noon when Bryan and I reentered the building to find that girls started eating while we were outside. Abagail passes Bryan a sandwich, I don’t know where the bread came from. She asks a question once we are inside.

“When are we going to head out?”

“Soon, we are too close to the gangs, and some of them are hostile” I respond.

K and Talia look a better, able to travel at least. Talia speaks up at this point.

“I can travel, we need to move anyways.”

I help her to her feet, we need to get moving before someone decides to go find out what the gunfire was. I’m surprised no one came by already. K asks me for some meat and I pull some from the Void Cache for her. Jerky and a bottle of water since we need to get moving.

After a few hours, I hear a high-pitched screech. Something is flying above us, humanoid but the arms are wings. The feet look wrong. A bird man of some sort, at least there is only the one. The twins draw their bows as it dives at me.

Two arrows land on the creature’s body and its talon feet claw at me. The leather armor is damaged but there are plenty more to use to patch it. The arrows didn’t kill it but a near point blank round from the rifle Abagail is holding does. There is a large chunk of the creature now missing and I need a bath.

Maybe she shouldn’t be holding a rifle that shoots .45-70? Or it shouldn’t be the only one. I think the creature had hollow bones like a bird, it did not handle that bullet well. At least I don’t have to see the ugly creature anymore. It was female but there is no way I would have ever wanted to see something that looks as it does up close.

I turn to the others, “where there is one monster there will be more. We should keep moving.”

After a moment of walking I move next to Abagail, “please don’t shoot things in melee with me.”

“I thought it was going to claw you, or start carrying you off" she responds in an excuse.

“I understand but please don’t now I have to walk around covered in guts until we find a place to stop for the night.”

“Sorry.”

“At least you were worried.”

With that we are relatively uninterrupted for another few hours, occasionally a shadow of a bird would pass overhead. Once dusk begins to approach we find ourselves near a burnt-out building. Cawing of what I assume a large bird can be heard from within it.

We all look at each other, there are a lot of something in there. But it is not currently our problem, though there are some large shadows flying into the building. Whatever is in there it is not nocturnal.

“They seem to be going to sleep.”

Bryan’s guess is echoed by my own. Should we fight them tonight? I would rather not, an airborne enemy has a great advantage.

“They are not attacking us, so lets just find a place to stay the night" I respond.

“Will it be safe to just leave them” asks Abagail.

“They seem to be going to sleep, so I don’t think that we will need to worry about them tonight.”

Abagail nods and starts to look at the nearby buildings, we are in a downtown commercial area. Places that were for eating with friends and government buildings are nearby. I wonder if anything is still good in the nearby shops.

“These buildings aren’t very defensible, maybe that stone one could be used” Talia says while pointing at a courthouse.

It has fewer windows than the other buildings, but it will lack anything to salvage. We don’t really need to find more food at the moment but you should always get what you can.

“Lets use it for the night, scavenge the stores nearby in the morning and deal with the birds if we have to. Any other ideas?”

No one speaks up to what I said, so we walk over to the courthouse. The oversized birds leave us alone, they are just moving into that burnt-out building. Bryan reached the front of the courthouse first and found the door locked.

“It’s locked.”

It would be loud and take a while to break the door in. We would have probably just used a different building but I can see that some of the first story windows were already broken.

“There are broken windows, any volunteers to climb through them?”

If no one does the I will just climb through myself.

Abagail

I look around at the others, they are all better in a fight than me. I don’t know if those bird things down the street will attack or not while we are here.

“I’ll do it.”

Adrian nods to me and begins to look at the darkening sky, probably looking for threats. I am the shortest one here anyways, it is easiest for me to get in. Not sure how elves are taller than me but they are. I climb up into the window, there is some broken glass but the pieces of leather I’m wearing keep me from being cut.

I’m in a waiting room, there are some desks that people would be called to for paperwork. The room is covered in scattered papers and broken objects, not sure what is what. In front of me is a door that looks like something similar to a bank vault, and to my right is the door into the hallway. That is where I need to go.

I can see at least in here and the hall from the light coming in from the exterior windows, but not enough to get the finer details of my surroundings. Some parts of the wall look darker than others, and some of the doorways were broken as I walk to the front entrance. At least I did not run into anything.

Then I trip over something, it’s too dark to see whatever I tripped over. The sound of something hard scattering across the floor sounds in my ears. I feel around my feet, and find something. I hold it up into a less dark part of the hall. It’s hard and white. It’s a bone.

I scream and run to the front door.

Adrain

I hear a scream and not a minute later Abagail bursts through the locked door. She runs over and seems to be hiding behind Bryan. I guess that is where she feels safe. I move to catch the door, no point in allowing her actions to be fruitless.

Looking into the hall I don’t notice anything, there is stuff scattered around but not anything that should scare someone. Maybe I need to be closer to see whatever it was?

“What was it” Bryan asks Abagail.

“Bones, I tripped on bones.”

Alright, so Bryan will have to check for undead. I create a light and enter; followed by the trio. I suppose Bryan is letting Abagail calm down for a moment. I turn to the trio.

“Do any of you know how to detect negative energy?”

They all shake their heads, Bryan’s detect undead will have to be used then. Does he even have it? An Undead Hunter gives up detect evil for it; so I think he should. You never do know with the Grey Dream though.

Lacking a supernatural method of finding undead we simply look around, there are several skeletons lying around. That must have been what startled Abagail, I try to sense any death in the area but only feel a faint amount from the broken skeletons. I think the trace amounts are normal, but I never tried to sense the death in an undead so I don’t know how much would be there if they were undead.

Once I see that Bryan has entered I ask him if there are any undead nearby. He walks around for a bit and then shakes his head. The building should be safe enough for the night. We clear out two interior rooms to set up sleeping arrangements and set up a table to eat at. We need to plan what to do about the birds, and that can be done over a meal.