Private Tales What do you do with a drunken Nordenfiir?

Petrus had, thankfully, readied his free hand to stop Nerren's physical blows, and he had the added experience of having his nose broken in a similar fashion before, so when he saw the brief backward tilt of Nerren's head he knew what was coming. His free hand would lash forward like a viper and her forehead would find no nose, but her throat would find a hand gripping it like an iron vice. Choking her without any reservation.

As the walking dead drew closer and the quicksand began to take effect Petrus sunk Nerren down to her knees before using one of the sand tendrils to twist her arm off his blade, his own arm wielding it, fingers smarting immensely from the struggle, couldn't mount any sort of offensive with it. Instead Petrus would leap backwards, releasing her throat, and simply move away from her. Putting Nerren's partially submerged body between himself and the living dead as he panted softly.

He still said nothing, no curse, no insult, but would meet Nerren's eyes as he pointedly turned and walked away from where the half-dozen rotting, water-choked corpses began to bare down on her. Wet, gurgling, lifeless groans heralding raised, rotted, squishy arms intent on snuffing out the Iron Bitch.

Nerren Harclaw​

To her credit Nerren was being exceptionally difficult. He did not need his hand to gesticulate for his spells, though it did certainly make them easier. With his grasp on her and their fighting over the sword Nerren lifting her leg gave Petrus the advantage in leverage he needed to interrupt her knee to the groin with a simple shove toward the undead. Electing to disengage from her and, as the zombies flung themselves at Nerren, he decided to pursue his original goal and simply left. Sheathing his rapier he would walk away, venturing deeper into the reef.

The zombies, on the other hand, were intimately focused on Nerren. Rotting, bloated fingers would claw at her as she darted another direction. Thankfully the dead were slow, clumsy things. She was easily well faster than them and though their atrophied legs carried them without rest or need for respite Nerren now had some reasonable distance between herself and them.

The shipwrecked beach behind her and the zombies between where Petrus had vanished.

Nerren Harclaw​

Petrus would move from the water-choked beach that had formed around the reef into an artificial cavern born of the brine-soaked reef slowly thickening and calcifying over time. Unnaturally twisted and hardened to be closer to stone Petrus would conjure a tiny flame in his hand, at least enough to see by as he ventured deeper into the labyrinthine depths.

Pools of shallow water clogged with refuse from various shipwrecks littered this place even in the more open caverns deeper within. Only when he found a suitably isolated alcove did he choose to sit and rest, breathing slightly heavily and gathering together what scraps of magical energy he could he began to center himself. The magic here was deeply corrupted. The very air was tinged with necromantic energy and Petrus had to focus to draw natural energy from the twisted reef.

Meanwhile......

Nerren would find scattered driftwood and other flotsam as she trudged along the beach. Her personal weapons were nowhere to be found though there was the novelty of a zombie, from her own crew, impaled on the yard mast as it flailed and squirmed to try and attack her despite being helplessly suspended several feet off the ground above even Nerren's head.

While further down the beach there was a somewhat intact smaller boat, pulled into the beach with such force it was half-submerged in the sand. Numerous corpses littered around it's broken hull, seemingly torn in half to the last.

Nerren Harclaw​

After taking enough time to heal his injuries, gathering enough energy to himself to overcome his exhaustion, and working his way to his feet Petrus would conjure a small light and begin to skulk more deeply into the labyrinthine reef. A long zombie, clad in a sailor's outfit, would fall to a swift, piercing stab through it's rotted face and Petrus would flick the rapier clean before wiping it on the zombie's soaked, moldering clothes.

Moving onward Petrus's breathe would shorten as a particularly potent wave of undeath would chill him down to his bones. The source, the center, of this mess was close. Close enough to take affront to his living flesh's approach and for him to take affront to this artifact thinking it could quell him.....

Meanwhile......

Nerren would approach the boat surrounded by bisected corpses. Every corpse down to a one torn in half, limbs missing, and soon enough Nerren would understand why. The 'submerged' boat would suddenly shudder, the sand shifting into a shifting pit as a giant, undead crab tore it's way free of the sand. It's soaked, sand-coated claws lunging up and out through the sand to add Nerren to the field of bisected corpses by snipping her quite efficiently in half.

The selfsame boat Nerren had been eyeing up to escape this place serving not as a source of salvation but instead as the makeshift 'shell' of this rotting leviathan.

Nerren Harclaw​

Petrus would round corner after corner, slinking into deeper and darker depths with every steps, that foul chill battering at the heat of his soul like a cold iron gauntlet attempting to crush the life from a defiantly blazing torch. Nature, Arethil itself, sustained him. Even this twisted and malformed reef was still a thing of nature, could still be drawn upon, and thus when Petrus walked across the surface of a deep pool, a sinkhole leading down into fathomless depths, to come into a great, open chamber wherein dwelt the center of this catastrophe, he grit his teeth as nature's magic pulsed through him.


Atop a pirate king's ransom on a makeshift island in the center of this room, surrounding by swirling necromantic energy sat a crown. Coin and corpses woven together acted it's throne and the grasping, hateful motion of the corpses told Petrus they were far from there for show.

Petrus had only barely cast a glance around the room when that deep set obsidian would emanate a deep, green pallor darker than the most shadowed forest floors. A screech of energy much like the wail of the banshees they had encountered prior, though less potent, would herald the lance of pure, eroding energy that arced toward Petrus with deadly intent.

A quick, rote movement from Petrus drew up seawater-clogged rock to his defense. The very stone, subjected to that malignant rot, crumbled and disintegrated before his very eyes bit by bit. The artifact being, evidently, sentient enough to defend itself from a rival source of magic. Petrus, teeth grit and heart hammering in his ears, was still weary from this entire ordeal. But little did he know the artifact had already made it's next move....

Meanwhile....

The giant enemy crab reeled back as Nerren severed it's smaller claw, letting out a drowned, gurgling series of inhuman noises from its maw not out of pain, for it bore no such emotions, but instead the malignant intelligence that drove it made the crab spew a rotting, sewage-like spray of seawater and corpse-fluid at Nerren while the stump of it's once claw slammed down on Quellon's defeated corpse. The bloated, water choked flesh of her crewmember grafting and melding into the flesh of the crab seamlessly.

But hark, in the distance, at the artifact's behest the choir of banshees would begin to swim through the air toward the reef. Their distant, deathly song drifting closer and closer on the wind by the second.

Nerren Harclaw​

As the piece of earth torn from the reef began to flag, crumble and fail in it's defense Petrus would begin to weave another spell with his free hand. He had felt the crown's next move, a shudder of necromantic energy summoning the swarm of banshees to it's protection, and knew he was on a limited schedule now. His spell weaving complete a roiling mass of wet sand would answer his call to nature, rising like the swell of a wave grasp the remains of the rock and begin to swirl against the beam of foul energy. It's disintegrating power beginning to sputter out as the crown changed tactics.

From the hole where Petrus had drawn his sand barrier corpses began to crawl. Gurgling, moaning, rattling and everything between as they scrambled toward him. Rotting flesh, pallid bones, all scrambling up the shifting sand as fast as their unnaturally animated bodies could propel them. Petrus, amber eyes sweeping the scene, would grit his teeth and, as the crown's direct attack flickered from existence, would sweep his hand and a pulse of magic would leave him. The rising mound of sand would begin to move, stretching unnaturally, one end to Petrus's feet, the other arc out over the water toward the crown's solitary island, making a bridge of wet sand hardened at his will.

The ground was no longer safe, his rapier piercing the skull of the first zombie to reach him attested to that, and Petrus would take a deep breathe.... and then charge. Up the hardened sand, above the swiping claws and sandpit that would surely be his doom if he slipped, and the undead would scramble after him. The crown would let some of it's minions fall, those not swiping at Petrus's heels and chasing him up the sand bridge, and use that excess energy to begin channeling a small beam with which to slay Petrus as he drew closer. Breathe puffed from his chest, eyes intent.

As the crown readied it's riposte Petrus would, with the hand not holding his rapier, draw up a hardened shard of sand, launch it at the crown, and set the artifact spinning as it's lance of pallid energy spiraled wide and, spinning about the chamber, Petrus would dive over the beam of death as it completed it's rotation, free hand lashing out, and snatching the crown as he tucked into a controlled tumble and.... everything began to feel... still. Quiet. Numb, even.

The unexpected happening from the crab near Nerren Harclaw is that it would go utterly still. For unknown to the Nordenfiir Petrus now lay upon the mass of gold and corpses, rapier tumbling from his grasp, teeth set in a pained grimace, as both hands gripped the crown and he fought it. Not with flesh, not with steel, but it attempted to exert control over him. The amber light of his ring glowed potently, Petrus's iron will set against the malignant patchwork of screaming wills and voices that animated the crown.

The crab near to Nerren would suddenly begin flailing and skittering about without control or purpose, no longer attacking her directly but equally maiming it's own mutilated flesh as the remnants of Quellon's corpse clutched at it's head as now two wills battled for control of it.

And, it seemed, slowly..... it gained a new master.

Petris was always a stubborn man, able to cajole, coerce and bring others to heel through his will. This crown, it's animus, was nothing but the cobbled together consciousness of lesser practitioners of necromancy into a potent gestalt. Or, in other terms, it was a crowd to be given a Lord, a kingdom to be given a King, and Petrus set each and every personality within to task as he rose from the island floor and panted deeply. The crab would fall, to it's own decapitating strike, leaving the wreckage of the vessel for Nerren's use, while the banshees went still in the air, before beginning to flow toward the reef and ignore Nerren entirely.

All that was left was for Quellon's mutilated corpse to look up at Nerren from the sand, unlife fading from the hulking crab it was fused to, and gurgle in an unlikely clear voice as it stared into Nerren's eyes.

"Yooouu.... f-faaaaailed.... usssss."​

Despite Petrus taming the crown, bending the myriad of personalities within to his will, he could feel that there was.... more to this artifact than even the power it provided. He could feel the emotions of the churning chorus contained within. Their desperate desire to survive, the insatiable thirst for more necromantic knowledge, and the combination of the two that had lead them all to be bound together to this crown. To live in a sense beyond their bodies mortal collapse.

Petrus took a deep breathe, nostrils flaring, eyes all but amber glints of hardened flint as his will pressed the chorus into submission. As his will plucked and twisted the threads it had formed to each of its creations he had begun to bring them all to him, to gather the mountain of gold here, the corpses, to use the magical mastery he had now over the storm and nature to bring the plunder back to his House, to study the artifact, and to put a sizable bounty on the head of one Nerren Harclaw for her impudence.....​