Raven begins sorting what gear he can find in the pile while chatting up the zombie freshly excavated from the pile of rotting corpses. “So how did you end up in this horror show, same as me and dumb enough to explore?” Jake chuckles “nah not that, I fought a lich a few years ago and it cursed me, I'm an adventurer and I was in the depths of the mountain with a group of friends clearing out a monsters den when I walked by a hole in the wall and the kraken pulled me through, there must be tons of tunnels under the water was it felt like I was under water being dragged for a while before I drowned.”
“Sounds like you had as rough time as I’ve had. This damn thing was the death gods chosen that's two creatures I’ve had to fight that have been corrupted by him.” Jakes jaw drops “how do you know it was one of his? And you said its the second you fought? Just how strong are you?” Raven laughs “oh I’m weak as hell, I just get lucky and am willing to suffer massive amounts of pain to win. And yes it was the second one the first was a T-Rex. I dealt with that in a round about way, as for how I know it was one of the death gods chosen is I happen to be one of Rolland's chosen, granted he doesn’t seem to be as invested in things as the other gods.”
Jakes jaw continues to hang, is that due to being undead or shock Raven wonders. “You… your a chosen…? Really?” Raven laughs “ I know right? Would never know. I’m… new?” Jake slowly nods his head “it shows…. Uh… no offense.” Raven nods “oh I know. And I’ve heard it all before.” Raven finishes freeing a backpack from a body and heaves the goblins body off the pile into the water with a loud splash. Jake looks at Raven judgingly Raven answers the look with a shrug “I need supplies and this is a treasure trove.”
As Raven searches through bags and gear he hears scratching coming from above, As they both look up a Kobald comes flying through the hole in the roof plopping down in front of Jake and Raven. The lesser Kobald looks up stupidly at the two of them and Raven notices there is a rope tied around it. Raven unties the rope tying himself into a harness and gives the rope a good pull. A few seconds go by and some one starts to pull the rope and raise him from the room.
Once Raven frees himself of the area he crawls out of the tunnel back into the goblin camp looking around he finds Keel and 9 lesser Kobalds he hadn’t seen before in a line to haul the rope. Raven informs Keel of the gear and zombie and tells him to get the Kobalds to work hauling it all up. Keel barks some orders the the Kobalds get to puling everything up. Once Jake surfaces Raven waves for him to follow and begins walking back to his settlement with orders to the others to carry the supplies back to the settlement when they are done.
Once Raven reaches his settlement he gives Jake the grand tour “here's where I sleep” Pointing to a grass bed in the first room next to the small pond. “Down there is our mine and dungeon and garbage disposal. Up there is our moss room full of crabs and more water… and that's it…” Jake looks down the tunnel then up the other. “Not doing so well hu, that crystal is interesting though haven’t seen one of those in a while. Generally those get protected and are not in the first room…” “yeah well I didn’t know any better when I placed it… kinda new to this whole… world…” Jakes eye brow shoots up “to the world? How so?” Raven responds with a shrug “yeah apparently all the chosen are from my world we die and are brought back to life here. Didn’t have a choice in it, didn’t get an explanation of how things work here, hell my world didn’t even have magic so that was a fun surprise.”
Jake laughs “what do you mean no magic, surely that's impossible how does anything function, how did the system work then?” Raven shakes his head “no my world had no magic no system no monsters just humans and animals. Rather boring really, I ended up dying from something running me over but before that I was going to die of cancer anyways.” Jake tilts his head to the side “ Cancer, what's that?” Raven shrugs “its a horrible illness where your body starts to grow growths within the body that start to slowly kill you, and the treatment for it is almost as bad as the illness. The truck running me over may have been painful but it was a mercy in the long run.”
Jake sighs “well I get dying, mine wasn’t so bad drowning sucked sure but sounds like yours was by far worse. So if there were no magic around how did your world do anything?” Raven chuckles “well with technology and numbers, by the time I died the earth was closing in on 8 billion humans, and our tech level was ever rising fusion reactors were just being made across the world that would generate enough power to power the world and would use the power of the sun to do it or something along those lines…”
As Raven and Jake talk Raven starts to think about the new recruits “hm I just thought of something… with the new recruits we are not going to have enough room in the cave anymore, we are going to have to start building outside. And with all the gear they are going to bring back we are going to have some serious problems with storage space. Care to help me build some buildings, we really need a furnace, storage building, long house, and kitchen.” Jake nods “sure I can help I guess, not like I got anywhere else to go now that I’m undead the human settlements will attack me on sight. Some undead are tolerated but they are not treated great and zombies are never accepted. A fear of the spread of death from zombies so we tend to get put down.”
“Well we welcome everyone here, as long as they don’t cause trouble.” Replies Raven. Jake puts up his hands defensively “ I don’t plan on doing any harm to anyone, I don’t really have plans for anything really.” Raven shrugs “ well like I said your welcome to stay but if your staying we could really use the help in building, I haven’t a clue how to do anything really.” Jake laughs and nods “of course ill see what I can do, I was an adventurer though not a carpenter but I can always follow the leader.”
Raven starts working on hauling what stones they have mined up to the surface and ordering some of the Kobalds to start packing mud from the lake up to the entrance, looking through the stone Raven finds a small stack of limestone, moving the stone to its own pile and building a large stockpile of wood around it he starts a nice bonfire around the stone. Raven then sends some Kobalds to collect long grass branches logs and some sand from the mine.
It takes several days and some hard work in the mine and outside when the other group finally comes back with sleds full of gear being dragged by what looks like two bison. “We had to find some beasts of burden to help transport all this gear. It took a long while to um… pour… out the gear. We didn’t have time to clean anything but at least we got everything. That pit was truly awful that's going to attract something seriously awful eventually. We did what we could to seal it but it was a weak attempt.” Keel informs Raven as they approach.
Raven looks at the gore stained gear and gags slightly thinking of what they had to deal with. “Any chance there is magical gear in there?” Keel nods “yes there Is absolutely magical gear in the pile, lots of minor magics some decent magics and one that I couldn’t really get a read on.” Raven smiles “oh? That a good or bad thing that you couldn’t get a read on it?” Keel shrugs “could be good could be bad could just be an item with a protection on it, hard to say but usually when this happens it tends to be something powerful.”
Raven lets Keel get to his works and gets to his own work, with the extra work force they start erecting small wood and mud huts around the entrance to the tunnel. Basic shelters are quick to build and will help a little for now but something a bit better will be needed and soon. Going to the heaping pile of gear of armor weapons and back packs Raven starts to sort the gear.
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Three battle axes, two war hammers, ten long swords, thirty daggers, five short swords, three cross bows, hundreds of arrow heads but the arrow shafts are rotten away, ten back packs full of supplies some usable some not, ten length of one hundred foot hemp rope, four books two that are spell books, one set of plate, four sets of scale mail, four sets of chain mail, and some odds and ends of rotten leather and tainted cloth.
Raven looks the gear over for magical items and finds that one of the battle axes has a simple enchantment on it of sharpness, allowing the blade to stay shard forever. All ten of the long swords have shock enchantments adding three electrical damage and a ten percent chance to stun, ten short swords have enchantments of bleed, one Cross bow that Raven cant seem to identify, two spell books one of light, another of feather fall and one set of scale mail with a damage reduction enchantment reducing incoming damage by 5. Equipping the enchanted scale mail, Raven orders the gear brought into the tunnels and cleaned as they are truly foul with rotten bits of flesh in the joints. Taking the ten daggers and ten enchanted long swords to the crystal to sacrifice to recharge the crystal. Sacrificing them all fully recharges the crystal.
Raven sits down and reads the two spell books adding Feather fall and light to his list of known spells, Feather fall: ten mana per minute slow fall enough to take no damage. Light: spend one mana per minute to produce a light either from the hand or from a orb. After learning the spells Raven gets to work building. Using the burned limestone ash and sand with water Raven stacks some stone together making a make shift furnace in hopes of melting iron. After a few hours and a couple failures Raven steps back and smiles at his lop sided furnace. “Looks like crap but It’ll work, reminds me of myself.”
Raven gets to work making a crucible out of clay to start using his fire bolt spell to cure it as strong as possible after its cured Raven finally starts the smelting process but sadly without high quality coal smelting will require magic which means only Raven and Keel can currently work iron which just won’t do. “Keel what are the chances we can train some of the half whit's to cast fire magic?” Keel shrugs “it is possible to teach basic fire magic to them but other than create flame they will not really be able to learn much more till they evolve.” “Hm, how do they evolve? Is it a time thing or level thing?” Raven asks. Keel shrugs “I think its a little of both it only really happens in the bigger tribes, the shamans can some times cause an evolution with spells but I’m not familiar with it, I was more research and development.” Raven asks Keel to train the lesser Kobalds with what magic they can learn anything is better than nothing.
Raven stretches out and looks around, ten small stick and mud teepees stand in a small area around the tunnel entrance a furnace next to the tunnel and a small storage shed being built. With a smile Raven goes to find Jake, walking into the mine he finds Jake standing and looking at the dungeon door. “What's up Jake?” “its rare to find a dungeon and even more rare for it to be this low level, its a lucky find.” Jake says admiring the door. “How can you tell what level it is?” Jake shrugs “just the magic energy coming off the door I can tell it’s not overly strong yet shouldn’t be a problem for you or myself.” Raven smiles “well maybe we should run it some time together, it did just level up though and the boss is nasty but the rewards are fairly good.” Jake smiles and nods “sounds like fun but for now we should focus on getting everything fixed and set up, looks like you had quite the battle in here and then there's those women… I hope you haven’t been taking advantage of them in their state, they look zoned out unaware of the world.” Raven shakes his head “no no no we saved them from a goblin tribe, sadly we didn’t get there in time and they had been… assaulted.” Jakes smile fades and he nods gravely “I’ve heard stories of what they do to their prisoners. You might do them a favor ending their lives…” Raven shakes his head “I thought about it, but if there's a chance of them bouncing back then I’ll give them that chance, if not then I will end their life then.”
Headed back to the settlement on the surface Raven looks to the sky and notices the sky getting darker by the second, the clouds even start to change color. “What's going on…?” Raven mumbles to himself and Keel responds “its a ritual spell being cast a fairly sizable one by the looks of it.” Raven continues to look at the sky “this is going to be a problem for us isn’t it…” Keel nods his head “oh probably, not much we can do about it though, depending on the spell it could be minor but judging by the effect on the world its having its going to be a major one. Some of these spells can take dozens of casters weeks to build up the mana needed, but the effects we are seeing usually are at the tail end of the spell. I can’t sense what type of mana it is from this range if I were closer maybe, but that means its a fair distance away so hopefully it wont effect us.”
Raven goes about his business moving ore to the forge and collecting roots berries and small game from around the camp, six hours go by in the dark when there is a purple flash in the sky in the east and the sky slowly starts to get light out again. “Warning a seal to the death god has been broken, five seals remain. The death gods power grows” Raven pauses in his work and curses “who the fuck is stupid enough to break a seal, Keel said it takes multiple casters weeks to do a ritual why the hell would they put so much effort into it… the guy is a dick how the hell does he have so many followers.”
Raven gets back to his base and talks with Keel again. “Did you see the notification about the death god? We are going to have to do something about his followers they are going to free him if they are not stopped.” Keel nods “its worse than you think, now with the notification I can tell you It was death magic that was used, which means there's going to be a lot of undead coming from the east we should prepare for a horde.” Raven sighs “yeah that's probably for the best lets get everyone equipped in gear and get to practicing.”
Raven asks that some wooden shields be made but without skill they will be rough makes, enough to block a few hits though so Raven gets them to be built along with spears. Low wood walls are erected around the settlement and braced, a guard tower is even built and an arrow stockpile laid at the top. A simple ditch is dug in front of the wall and wooden spears added to the ditch. Some dried brush is also added to the ditch and covered in animal fats. With the ropes Raven decides its time to build some offensive defenses with some effort Raven orders the construction of a three catapults and has rock debris brought over to be used as scatter shot ammo.
Raven then fires arrows and varying angles from his defensive line then moves to where the arrows land and paints the rocks in a ring around his area using charcoal, blood and and body parts to mark the area. Building a palisade gate to enter the tunnel and replacing what traps he can and building a few new ones. Each barricade inside is low stocked with arrows shields and spears. Raven then starts running drills with his Kobalds doing shield walls and using spears to stab forwards then doing multi line shield walls and defending from arrows with the extra lines. Soon his people were a horribly oiled semi equipped war machine.
Raven goes and talks with Jake “so being undead do you know anything that is effective vs undead?” Jake chuckles and replies “well fire, most undead are slow so setting them on fire is effective. Holy magic obviously but I haven’t seen anyone using that yet. Piercing weapons are not overly effective blunt damage is where its at. Most undead in mass spells are dumb and easy to trick or trap. But if a high level dead was caught in the spell it could be trouble, they tend to be damn near unkillable… rekillable?… *he shrugs* without a priest so if we run into one we could be in trouble. Lets hope its just zombies. But hey who knows maybe they will miss us right…?” Raven shakes his head “yeah not that lucky, not to mention we are sitting on a seal for the death god, wouldn’t be surprised if they are coming straight here.” Jakes eye brow raises “you have a seal here?” Raven nods “oh yeah sorry did I not mention that… yeah wasn’t something I wanted just kind of happened… but yeah they are coming and we should prepare…”
