Well, they were zombies, not ghouls. But, fast zombies, not lumbering zombies. They were dumb and mindless, and couldn't hit me unless they got lucky, but when you're dealing with so many of them, getting lucky isn't all that hard, and will happen eventually.
It was fine. This time, we mixed it up, hacking our way through the night outside, ghouls, zombies, and skeletons rising from under the flowerbeds as animate plants peppered the area with thorns and vine-tendrils, great shadows swooped overhead and dread wraiths moaned and tried to threaten us. The statues animated, the toad came out, and the roots of the hangmen trees to the sides tried to strangle me.
And then we went back inside, finished up the Fey and devils and whatnot encounters that seemed a little frustrated, and did our normal clearing of the mansion, making sure to take the raw comps from the lab and kill the bubbling alchemical golem there before it could burn the place up.
Then it was back outside, tearing up the horses and the knights, and the front yard all restored and this time the big walnut tree getting in on the action for the second time today.
Hellpuppies, rocs, statues. Swarms of…dragonflies, not poisoned things this time, damn Curse. And then the sailors all over the place, down to the shore.
Noted this time that the ship was called the Beatrice, and decided not to take issue with the owner's naming sense. This time, as I approached the pier, a sudden fog billowed up out of nowhere, and it got darker remarkably quickly, although not night-time yet.
Perfect for aquatic undead to come shambling up from every direction, however. Giant Brine zombies ambling about with great shark maws and incredibly strong punches, zeroing in on living blood in the fog, which was restricted to me… and okay with me, as it meant I didn't have to run around so much to fight them.
Tremble watched the necroic fog burning at the touch of vivus as we cut into the massive zombies flailing at us. "This is a new trick!"
"Like visibility has ever been our problem." I chopped off a water-logged claw in a spiral of wrathflame, jumping up high enough to disembowel the swollen gut and send a bonfire up into its abdominal cavity as a stinking cascade of liquified organs fell out and contributed to the current soup that called itself air.
"It is so nice that you can jump and don't have to keep hamstringing them," Tremble noticed.
"Boooooring," I agreed, sliding aside from a massive foot coming down, and reflexively doing just that. The brine lurched, and I sent a long cut up along its spine as it fell over, setting the pillar of life on fire.
"How many of them are there? I count twenty-six so far…"
"Brines are restricted to night or inside the fog. Note the fog is being burned away with them, and the big crab and lobster haven't even shown yet. So, they'll stop coming when the fog is burned away with enough vivus." Another absurdly strong, too-large shark-toothed horror came stumbling out of the fog, and I slid over to engage.
"So many damn types of undead," groused Tremble.
"I know, right? Still, just a stronger, meaner zombie, in the end." I chopped through its right knee, and it stumbled and fell down, leading to a quick Orf Wid Der Head, crabs and fish flopping out of the neck stump with the burning oily reek of necrotic gore and strange freshness of vivic flames going to work. "Oh, hey, there's a Lurker below the pier again. Don't think it's from Outside."
"Curse lacks originality," sniffed Tremble. "But no crab helping us out today."
"It's not like I was taking it seriously yesterday." I slid past the swipe of a crouching Giant Brine, jumped open and opened its throat since it was so gracious to present it to me, and then disemboweled it for good measure. Vivic flames took off, bleeding it of necroic energy, and I suddenly spun low, jumped high, and three spearing tentacles went flopping across the stone of the pier.
I sent a Banestar into its feederstalk to let it know I approved of its actions, and tentacles started coming in from other directions, soon flopping all over the ground, writhing and burning. It started muttering things at me in Aklo, and Tremble started singing about Cerulean Seals, the hunger of Creation, and things from the dark stupidly leaving their holes for the light, and it got real pissed.
Alas, intelligent, but it was programmed to kill me, not for self-preservation. It came to the attack, and the ten tentacles got shaved down to only a few yards, its feeder-stalk went spiraling down into the water, and then it was just a case of hacking apart the squicky tubes that made up its body.
The crab did try to ambush me, but was just a few inches too high on its snip, and I put Tremble into the joint of its big pincer and snipped the tendon there, too bad so sad. No pulling taut now. Two crippled legs and some precision cuts along its segmented underbelly, and it was falling down with a clatter.
Big lobster…with an escort of Deep Ones! How amusing. Spears, tridents, and nets a-flying, supplemented by the smell of rotting fish for that proper seashore invasion experience. Then the dragon turtle wanted a snack, followed by the lunging jaws of a sea serpent that really shouldn't have been in a river. Scylla attack, my, what might be coming next?
I went off on the nuckalevee. I didn't care how horrid and unnatural they looked, didn't care about the tentacle arms and the 'rider' second head with its spear. This batch of bastards had killed me once, and now I was Courtier of Death'ing all over their ass. Black blood sprayed, semi-transparent flesh parted, and Tremble sang to them of pure Fey essence returning to the Land and the river as vivus ate them up.
Then the Curse decided it was night time again, and the undead really began to rise up.
All the giants I had killed came back, despite the fact that vivus had eaten away all of them and turned them into nutrient-rich Karma for me.
I had nearly two hundred Giant Zombies to kill to reach the morning… or whatever else might be coming tonight.
Seeing all the sailors and their officers stumbling jerkily down the hill towards me, I sighed.
"No imagination," Tremble sighed with me.
"But effective," I mumbled. With no continuous way to regain Health or Soak, Battle Vigor only being intermittent, just throwing numbers at me would net an eventual win, as long as the chaff was strong enough to actually hurt me. Right now, that meant strong enough to pass DR 8/-. "Shall we go be bored together?"
"Let's shall!" I charged the nearest sailor, who happened to be a bosun's mate, sealed my Vajra against the smell rising again, and went to join everyone's favorite zombie apocalypse nightmare.
No imagination…
=======
I opened my eyes, grabbed Tremble as I sighed.
"So… they kept the teamwork Feats?" he asked, sounding a little miffed.
"Bastiches," I sniffed. "They had a hordemind. No way they could have coordinated that well without it. Probably centered on the officers and nobles. Totally unfair."
"Well, that follows." I threw an eyeball his way, and he snickered. "And it requires no imagination."
"That it doesn't." I sat up with a sigh. "I abso-smurfly refuse to butt heads with two hundred giant zombies for the next few months." I narrowed my eyes, chewing on angles of attack. "This is a pure damage grind. The idea is to maximize damage and kill them before they can throw out enough attacks to bring us down. You noticed they were clumsier with individual attacks, right? Their MAB dropped by four or so. They were making it up with improved coordination via their hordemind."
"What's smurfly mean?" Tremble asked innocently.
"Whatever you smurfly want it to mean," I replied kindly.
"Really?"
"Smurfy."
"I can see where that might get really irritating."
"Abso-smurfly, and that's all I'll say on that…"
"I smurf ya." I quirked a smile at him. "So, what's the difference between a swarm and a horde?"
"Size of the participants."
His lack of a jaw worked a few times audibly. "So… Swarmbane?"
"Stacks."
"Ohhhh…" And we were on our way. Between Swarmbane and the Swarmbane Clasp we'd be wasting absolutely no damage. "So that should replace Enmity. What else?"
"Zombifying a Huge Creature grants it an additional four Hit Dice, +4 nat AC, +2 Strength, -2 Dex, and as you saw, a powerful slam attack. They lost their skill, but gained more power. A hordemind of 20 Hit Dice creatures is, wow."
"Legendary?"
"Got it in one."
"And it stacks?"
"Bane of Legends is pretty sweet that way."
"So… swap out Greater Soulbound?"
"Notice they had thicker hides, but lost their DR?"
"Hmmm… yeah, that overwhelming strength was absent. They had the undead toughness, but lacked the… primal force?"
"Exactly. Also, they weren't using weapons, and had torn off any armor. We need you in Acidphasing, with Blessed and Undead Bane up."
"No Courageous?" He was unhappy, but we could only blame it on the limited Slots. "Is that some sort of combination?"
"Yeah. It's called Holy Water. Changes the acidic damage to holy water damage."
"That sounds impressive…"
"Doubles the acidic damage against creatures vulnerable to holy water. Of course, it deals no damage against creatures that aren't…"
"Ah. So that's why we haven't been using it." Normally, the giants had armor, and we might get attacked by other stuff. Like grimm, animated plants, and constructs. The other enemies were all at three-hit range, and we weren't worried about their offense.
"It gets better. We're going to go with an Enlarge strategy with them."
"Oh! Oh, ho! Increase the base damage…"
"Increase reach and attacks of opportunity…"
He hissed in expectation. "Do you have the comps?"
"Yes. I hadn't made any because I hadn't really seen the need yet. We'll make four today."
"And they take effect at the Level of the Girdle, and are doubled otherwise…"
"We'll have ten minutes of slaughter out of one Potion, and we'll be wardancing the whole time, too."
A holo went up, numbers flitted across, attack areas, Attacks of Opportunity, Cleaves, Hews, Finishes, Whirlwinds, crits…
"What if we used Vivic instead of Acidphasing?" he asked.
"We've done similar things. I wished it would transmute to holy flame and do additional damage, but no. Just works with Acid, for some reason."
"What about Corrosive instead of Acidphasing? I mean, it's only +d6, but won't all the Bane damage and stuff be working off that d6?"
I considered his point. We'd be doing +6d6 of Bane damage, and another d6 rendering it all holy damage. +8d6 damage from a hit, going off with the acid… which would be Holy Water'd.
An additional +8d6 was more damage then my Sword would be doing. Neither would multiply on a crit, which was a damn shame. Slots, need more Slots... No room for Acidic Burst. One more Slot and we'd be doing another +4d10 on a Crit, with Swarmbane doubling that to 8d10.
It would be raining holy water. So sad. But this configuration would be resulting in an additional +16d6 per blow to the undead, which would then be doubled by Swarmbane, and all excess damage spill over to the other giants.
No wasted damage.
Spring a Hordemind of Giant Zombies on me, eh? Watch and see what I do to it!, I thought grimly.
I clicked over Binder/1, now on my required list since I qualified for it, and dedicated the Skill points to Profession (sailor) since I had all the other Skills required to function in the class – Spellcraft, Runesmithing, Knowledge (Arcane), and Tattoo Artist.
Now I just had to have a useful real Soulborn, and not the fake ones created by the Curse, show up and give me something useful...