The party reassemble outside the church keeping close enough to stay in the zone where the zombies fear to tread. Its presence continues to upsets Simone so they make a quick decision to continue following Zdradnik and the girl. Invisible, Marcel follows the old man across the square, passed a very odd clock, around the corner, down a street to an apartment block. All the buildings encountered so far, other than the theatre and the church, have been either façades or empty shells, but the apartment building is fully detailed. Moving around in the lobby area are normal people but as they exit they seem to turn to mist and blow away. From the mist others coalesce and walk into the lobby. Zdradnik and the girl cross the lobby, get into a lift, which then takes them to the top floor. Marcel checks things out for a short while before entering. The 'people' don't react, in fact they don't even seem to notice his existence. He attempts to spacial warp to the top floor. He finds he cannot. He has to warp to the penultimate floor and then takes a lift to the top floor where he hides and waits.
Meanwhile the rest of the party leave the church and follow, crossing the square as quickly as they can to avoid the zombies wandering around. They stop at the odd clock that Marcel had noticed. Having been to the real Prague he informs them over the walkie talkie that it is called the Orloj. This is one of the buildings that Chuck detected had some form of mechanical or electrical power and is clearly the source of the odd, faint background ticking sound the party first heard as they first went into the open air from the theatre and have been hearing ever since.
Chuck is most interested in it. The party inspect it closely and see that the time part of the mechanism is passing very quickly indeed, the lower face, showing the months is moving visibly. Hours pass in minutes and on each hour doors open at the top and through them can be seen what the party diagnose as the 12 apostles, except they are not looking very holy. Their faces are weeping, racked with anguish and pain and a couple have their faces in their hands. Their bodies are distorted, bent and their metal halos twisted and blackened. This they decide is probably not a good thing. They also notice that on the constellation ring, one of the symbols is missing. A merry half hour is spent working out which one it is, finally coming to the conclusion that it is Virgo. The link is then made with the girl with Zdradnik. Is she the/a virgin? He said she was the portal keeper.
The team decide to split up and check out the buildings that Chuck thought were active. As Samson and Simone head to one they are once again afflicted with pain. The zombiefication process has kicked in again. For Samson he finds that in addition to the yellow/orange mucus problem and the a slight weakening of his Absorption power
- He now finds he can understand what the zombies are saying
- One of his eyes has gone black and the other red
- His tongue is long and black
- In a moment of madness, finding his clothes strangely restrictive and choking, he rips most of them to tatters.
- He also feels the nature of his voice changing a bit and the urge to howl and scream like a banshee presses on his mind. He fights it off and keeps his mouth shut, which also helps to stop him from biting his long tongue.
Simone is having it worse. Having fought off the effects of the translocation to this dimension so well her system suddenly collapses in the face of the zombiefication process. The issue of not being able to go too close to holy sites pales before the total loss of all her powers. In addition:
- Idly playing with her hair as she normally does, she finds it now falling out in clumps and her skin has become blotchy and rather soft and fragile in a necrotic sort of way.
- Her tongue feels funny and flicking it up in front of her eyes she sees that a) she can flick it up in front of her eyes, b) that it is now quite a dark red, c) it seems quite prehensile.
- As she moves she leaves a fine cloud of black particles behind her.
- She to has the urge to make odd noises, a low groan that Samson says he find a bit unnerving. OK, a lot unnerving. It makes him want to scream. He chokes it back. He also tells her that as she groans her eyes go jet blank, no pupils. Simone grunts that this is fine coming from him, pointing out his own eye colouring.
- Like Samson she also tears her clothes to shreds. It just feels right.
- Her mouth feels odd but Samson tells her he can't see any change, but that could just be the mucus in his eyes. He does point out however that she doesn't seem to be casting a shadow any more either.
- Instinctively she knows there are other changes too. When some zombies appear she can understand their very basic language. Angry, she tells them to get lost, and surprises herself as she does so in the same guttural language. She steps towards them and they flinch back, now more intrigued and humbled than hostile.
The pair hear a cry, like a child's cry and head towards it into a basic building. Crouched on the floor on her own is a woman, clearly zombiefied.
“Go away,” says Simone.
“Fuck off bitch,” the zombie hisses to Samson and Simone's great surprise. “Hmmm, who's that with you? Nice.”
She stands up. She's painfully thin with black claws instead of fingers
“Fresh meat.”
She rushes at Samson at tremendous speed and screams in his face, a high pitch scream that passes up beyond a normal person's hearing. Both Samson and Simone can hear it climb and climb and it chills them to their core. Samson's bottle goes and he turns and flees in terror. Unfortunately for him the zombie is faster and she leaps onto his back, bearing him to the ground where she starts tearing at him with her claws as he screams in terror.
Simone leaps to his defence, grabbing the woman and trying to get her off Samson.
Simone isn't strong enough, the woman is incredibly strong, so Simone changes tactics and sinks her teeth into the woman's neck, the paralysing bite takes hold and Samson is able to snap out of his terror and throw her off. They run off, the woman's eyes following them as she twitches on the floor. Back out on the street they come to a library. Avoiding the ghosts walking about, they search the place. Most of the books are false, either just rows of spines or empty books. However they come to a section, titles on the occult, where the books are real. Some are obviously quite old, some modern. A few have the name Milan Zdradnik marked on the inside. Most are in Czech but a few are in English. Simone browses quickly through them and something catches her eye, a diagram of a pentagram with five bowls, one on each point. Meanwhile, not particularly attracted by books, Samson has also come across something interesting, a large iron bowl, just like the one in the theatre. It too has dried blood in the bottom of it. It is very heavy but Samson can lift it.
Roslayn heads back to theatre to check on the others whilst Chuck and Eldnah head back across the square, avoiding the zombies and come to an apartment block. Again, it seems to be populated by ghosts and as per Marcel's building, Chuck finds that he cannot teleport to the top floor and neither can Eldnah space warp. They take the lift to the top. Hunting around they find the only door that opens and it gives on to a large corner suite. A quick look around and it is clear from the few personal objects that this room is where the young girl is staying. It too has a large iron bowl in it which also has dried blood at the bottom.
Marcel calls in shortly afterwards. Zdradnik and the girl are leaving. They turn left out of the building and up the road, approaching the library but pass it by. Samson and Simone give a sign or relief. They then turn right and approach the north end of the square. They look to be heading for the girl's apartment building, where Chuck, Rosalyn and Eldnah are. They leave the floor in a hurry, down the stairs to a lower floor where they wait.
Samson, carrying the iron bowl and Simone carrying some books, leave the library. The theatre is not far away so they head there. Simone wants to try the bowl on the pentagram and check on the state of the other Supers. The other 5 Supers: Leonid, Leonardo, Poncio, Michael Anthony, a.k.a. Bowling Ball and his friend Bernie Mays, a.k.a. Cuttleman, are at least conscious when they pair arrive but not feeling at all well. They are all a bit confused and wondering what the hell was going on back at the barracks, where the hell they are now, when can they go home please and who is the zombie babe with the skin as pure as driven pus?
So how is everyone looking?
Eldnah
Already suffering from the foul, black ichor he's constantly drooling, another burst of zombiefication means that he now also has the following:
- Immune to Fear attacks and loves attacking things without regard to his own safety
- He tears all his clothes to shreds. It feels real good.
- He notices a small extra head growing out of his shoulder. It argues with him and tries to make him do things. (1 on a D20 and the DM decides what you are going that round).
Leonid
Leonid seems to have suffered no ill effects what so ever. He's really tired but OK. Looking around him he realises that people are missing and that his friends are not looking so great.
Unfortunately his strong constitution doesn't shake off the on-going zombification process a second time.
- He finds his time control power is lessened (by 2 ranks) and that his strike power is also lessened (by 1 rank).
- He casts no shadow.
- His left eye has a horrible habit of falling out if he does anything too physical, but he finds he can still see with it when it isn't connected to his body.
- His fingernails are amazingly claw like, doing +1 damage in melee attacks.
- He has an odd feeling. He finds he wants to lick a party member when ever he can take the opportunity. They just smell and taste yummy. In fact he wonders if he could get away with just taking a little nibble.....
- Like Simone, he'll find that he prefers to shun sacred or blessed religious sites. They make him very uncomfortable – Sickened condition.
Leopoldo
The Argentinian is suffering. His initial recovery from the transportation is slow. He comes to eventually but he's slowed, stunned and bruised. It could have been worse.
- He finds all his powers are not operating as well (-1 rank on Mystic Darkness array, teleportation and ESP.
- His tongue is long, red and prehensile.
- He can understand the talk of the undead, which he realises when he finds he can understand what Poncio is saying to him. See Poncio's results below
- Flies, which seem to appear out of nowhere, find him irresistible. Luckily for him he finds they make a yummy and nutritious snack and that he can catch them with his new tongue.
- He finds, or at least everyone else finds that he can spit acid (Level 2 blast/acid attack). This is not helped by the fact that his long tongue and love of flies means he's always flicking spit everywhere
- He finds that a random limb, including his head, drops off with any strenuous activity, including teleportation. In one attempt to traverse the theatre he left his head behind. It takes a round to reattach it.
- In a similar situation he actually finds he can pull his hand off and send it off on its own
- Some time later he feels the zombiefication process kick in again but he shakes it off, causing his left leg to drop off.
Poncio
Poncio has it bad, real bad. He's totally zombified.
- He comes to and finds he has no powers at all
- He feels very, very, very hungry all the time and must eat every 10 minutes or so or suffer a slowed condition.
- He acquires the Improved Grab feat
- He doesn't know it yet, but he's totally resistant to paralysing effects.
- His hair is very sparse and thin and his skin blotchy.
- Sloping around the theatre he finds some chains that are used to raise the curtain and scenery. He finds he really likes chains. Pulling them down he starts clanking them around. It feels nice and he goes off to find the others to show them how lovely his chains are.
- He gains the Improved Grapple feat
- He too can speak with the undead.
- In addition to the chains he finds he loves to groan a lot. It scares and unnerves people which he rather enjoys. (Rank 2 Emotion Control – fear attack). He quite noisy really.
- Unwittingly finds he can drain 1 point of Con from any party member by touch in order to gain an additional saving throw or healing check. The party member recovers the drained Con after 1 minute.
- Following on immediately from the Drain above on Leonid and the abuse he gets from Leonid for doing it, he finds he can make people forget the last 5 minutes of time. (Emotion Control with Mind Blank)
- He finds he can levitate himself twice a day
- He smells really, really rank.
Rosalyn
Rosalyn is looking fine and dandy. She feels the zombification process continue in her body so now...
- In addition to her existing extra large pointy canines, which she's growing rather fond of, she also notices that a clear liquid can be ejected from them. Looking around she wonders who she can bite to see what it does. (DM's notes: It's poison. Rosalyn? Poison? Don't you just love dice rolls sometimes!)
- Her Mind Shield power has dropped by 1 rank
- Her eyes go completely red when she uses a power, including her zombie powers
Meanwhile the two Supers who were at the barracks
Bowling Ball
Michael Anthony initially looks fine. After a time however...
- His skin goes blotchy and necrotic
- He too leaves a cloud of fine black particles wherever he goes.
Cuttleman
Bernie Mays meanwhile stays unconscious. He looks very zombified and it clearly isn't suiting his system at all.
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