Jarlsberg (Chapter 3)

The entirety of the this game session was spent in Jarlsberg. The session went mostly according to plan.

One thing that surprised me was how well the party did in the multiple-encounters-without-a-short rest. I expected that after two full fledged encounters with the zombie hordes that they'd be pretty desperate to find a place where they could hole up and take a breather, but they just demolished those zombies without a thought using almost entirely at-will attack powers.

Of the three zombie types that I used, I'd say the most bothersome for the party was the Corruption Corpse ... however Aeldric the Warlord had picked up a suit of Black Iron Scale Armor +1 from the armory in Tidemarch. The 5 necrotic resistance really made him quite tough, and Vipers Strike against a ranged attacker is a pretty effective way of managing them.

The Warlord is shaping up to be able to fill in as a back up defender in this group, which is handy. Also, Ragnar the melee ranger has been doing a fair share of minion control. Dire Wolverine Strike is an awesome response to being mobbed by zombies. I expected that without Lindrin to help manage the minions that they might have issues. I don't see them yet.

After a third encounter without rest, they were starting to feel the pain. I added a nice scary horde of zombies coming up the road to encourage them to head for the defensible Temple of Umos and they obliged.

What followed was their encounter with the three Phantom Warriors. I decided at the last minute to pull a bit of The Sixth Sense and have the Phantom Warriors not realize that they were dead. What followed was a rather starnge encounter wher the ghosts asked about how the battle over Jarlsberg was going. The phantoms pointed the party at the inn, and helped clearing that scary mob of Zombies that had gathered out front of the temple. After seeing the zombies and being confused about not being able to leave the Temple grounds the Phantoms came to the realization that they were dead, showed the PC's their armor and arms and bade them use it to carry on the battle against the Empire.

There was some interest in the ritual site at the center of town, but nobody had time to really stop and take a closer look due to the constant trickle of zombies shuffling after the party.

The inn battle went fairly quickly. The leveled down Ghoul was a decent challenge to the PC's getting off his immobilize power twice and took a nice chunk out of Ragnar, who despite being reduced to 0 hp, managed to survive. We were pressed for time at that point, so I narrated the conclusion of their exploration of Jarlsberg. They find the book, Last King of Prolia and manage to escape from the rest of the Zombies in the city without being overwhelmed.