Editing Britbongsteros (section)

===The Beginning===
It may be best to begin with character creation.

As we know, the party consisted of five people:
:Angus: An orc
:The bard: A human
:The wizard: A wizard (no shit)
:The Navvie: A large angry human
:Aldous: A dwarven knight, also me.

I will describe in a little bit of detail how each of us started out. As a reminder there would be five of us (there were eventually six players) during these adventures as the other player hadn't joined yet, though she did usually sit and drink wine on the sofa and listen (which is how she decided to start playing. There were a couple of her interjections which are worthy of note, so her player will show up every so often.

By the way, the DM is a dick. That's all you need to know about him.

Angus:
:"I want to be an orc."
:"Ok you're an orc. Good for you. What else?
:"Well Orcs in this setting live in Dundee right?"
:"Yes...?"
:"Nothing exciting has ever come out of Dundee right? So I should be boring, I should be something like... like a... greengrocer."
:"You're a green-greengrocer?"
:"YES!"
:"Ok, what would you bring to the party?"
:"Well I should be inventive maybe, bring some technical skills, I can maybe do some social things right?"
:"Sure let's go for it."

The Bard:

Japan does not exist in this setting. Godzilla does. He will kill and eat anything even vaguely weeaboo. This was made extremely clear to the Bard's player in advance (he likes to be an edgemaster katana wielding trench coated sunglasses wearing faggot).
:"I want to be a Samurai!"
:"Japan doesn't exist. No."
:"Well ok, I'm just the one samurai who was sent away to regain my honnah..."
:"No."
:"Shipwreck samurai!"
:"No."
:"Magic samurai!"
:"No."
:DM: "Look, fuck it. Japan was destroyed totally. No survivors. The end."
:"Oh ok, how about I roll a bard?"

The Wizard:

The DM and Wizard's player had already had an extensive chat about the mechanics of wizardry in the setting, as Anon may already be aware, the wizard wasn't magic in the sense of your average time traveling D&D magic bastard. The idea being that he could only control metal, he could do whatever he liked with the stuff, but it would take time and there'd be DM fiat on his powers. He would receive a bonus to controlling anything iron based as that was his clan.

So essentially that was the Wizard. (They'd spent rather a while working it all out together).

The Navvie:

The Navvie's player is a simple chap who takes a simple approach to life.
:"Ok. What do you fancy being?"
:"I will have a hammer. I will hit things with it. We're done."

Aldous:
:"Well, firearms are a thing... so I'd like to play as a specialist with ranged weapons, maybe a brace of pistols..."
:"You're not playing that fucking elf again."
:"I'll be a dwarf, an angry one, a Dwarven Noble, bitter and twisted, someone who has suffered a great deal, and seeks for new meaning in life or a means to end it."
:"Hmm... ok I like that, we're good."
It's worth mentioning we did work out little backstories for ourselves so we all had origins and backgrounds, but that's essentially it.

:''>How it all began...''

The story begins when a god falls out of the sky. He hits the marketplace in Dundee. We all have our reasons to be there be it working, shopping, drinking or traveling through.

There's a light in the sky, people are looking up, it looks like a comet, but it's low, it's coming down, it's coming down towards the marketplace.

It's coming down fast, running isn't going to help, nor is cover.

The comet isn't just coming down, it's screaming, actually screaming.

We can each make it out now, the shape of a man, wreathed in flame.

He hits the ground hard, thunderously so, People are knocked flat by the shockwave, people start to run, five people advance on the crater.

You five.

The five us look over the edge of steaming, smoking crater. The man isn't jam as you might expect. He also has a pretty large pair of antlers growing out of his head.

He opens his eyes and looks at the five of us. He speaks in a language none of us understand. Gesturing at himself he says what we can only assume is his name. Belatucadros. At least that's we think it might be.

The five of us look at each other. There's quite a large crowd gathered behind us.

There are shouts of "What's going on? What's in there?" We decide to perhaps maybe talk to him. To try and do something a bit more positive than gawp.

We descend into the crater. On closer inspection, his legs are broken. He's rather a lot bigger than an ordinary man, bigger than the Navvie, at the very least twelve feet tall.

From behind us, the crowd are making different noises, screams, there comes a gun-shot, then more.

The bard (remember none of have actually met one another at this point) looks over the top of the crater.
:"Fuck this, I'm off."
The Navvie and I look at one another, Angus looks out as well.
:"UNDEAD!"
The crowd are fleeing, there are undead making there way through, slaughtering as they go.

We are unarmed, The Navvie and I can't carry what must be 800lbs of god. We can't just leave the fucker, Angus offers to help. The three of us do our best to pick him up, to drag him from the crater. We are surprised when he becomes lighter, the fourth, so far silent, person in the crater still hasn't touched the thing, but an iron bar supports the gods lower body, enough that we can carry him. Enough that we can run.

So we pick up Belatucadros (who I'm now going to call Baz for short) and book it in the direction Angus points.

As we run, we push past large numbers of terrified people, on the other side of the square we can see organized ranks of skeletons advancing line abreast. These skellies aren't your common or garden variety ones, they're clad in armour, they look like roman legionnaires more than anything.

We get into what must be Angus's shop. The Navvie suggests locking the door, which Angus does. The windows are small and easily boarded up. The shop is semi-detached, next to it is the inn where the rest of us happen to be staying. The skeletons we can see are advancing on the crater.

Baz is asleep.

Clearly they want Baz.

We know that necromancery has been an ongoing problem for a while as general knowledge and they're probably evil for that reason.

We start talking to each other as we board the place up.

Introductions are made.

There's movement from behind the counter. We improvise weapons (a tack-hammer, my pen-knife, the Navvie's fists, and a couple of hovering chainsaws), the bard sheepishly pops his head over the counter. As does a tiny animated haggis.
:"Eep" said the Haggis.
:"Hi... guys" said the bard.

Realizing the bard probably isn't a threat, I mention that my weapons and armour are next door, as are the Navvies' things, and it turns out, the Bards pipes too.

Angus is already rummaging to try to find something to improvise as a weapon, remember he is a greengrocer, and therefore does not sell much in the way of threatening items.

Across the square, the undead are beginning to break into buildings and clear them, obviously looking for Baz.
:"How are we going to get our stuff?"
The Navvie solves the problem by making a Navvie sized hole in the shelf, wall, and a couple of tables on the other side of the wall.

We recover our accoutrements easily enough. The Inn is deserted, now armed and amoured, we see each other for the first time as potential warriors and allies rather than men caught in events we don't understand. Also the Bard is there and his familiar: "Haggis." (yes it was called Haggis).

Angus's shop is not as defensible as we'd like and peeking between the boards on the windows we can see that the undead are starting to turn our way.

The most defensible location nearby is the Steeple Church, the (amazingly enough) Steeple of which is practically a tower, perhaps we can hold out there with Baz until the soldiers from Oliver Barracks or Marines from any of the RN vessels in the harbour can try to retake the town.

We decide to leave, Angus empties the register, leaving a "back soon" note on the counter, and guides us to the back door, which he makes a show of locking behind us (the hole in the wall he appears to have neglected). He is carrying a large sack of what we can't really identify as anything other than "bitz". We also think grabbing some food and beer might be a good idea.

We slink through the backstreets toward the Kirk, we can already smell smoke and there is still the occasional scream, we can hear the Undead smashing down doors. It can't be long before we're spotted, so we move as quickly as a group of men carrying 800lbs of unconscious god can, Angus directs us and we can already see the Steeple above the houses, but we can also hear the crackle of gunfire from up ahead.

Just before we enter the square we decide to ditch Baz for a minute. Apparently the Haggis will keep an eye on him (ok Bard...).

We round a corner and see a detachment of Royal marines unloading into a Testudo of skellies. The Skellies are not going down easy and are slowly, surely, advancing on them. The Skellies have their backs to us, we could break their formation.

It's here we have our first defining moment as a party.
:"Are we going to help them?"
There's four fuck yeahs and a "sure whatever..." the "sure whatever" earns the bard a stare from the rest of us.
:"Fine you can stay here and watch..."
This is also the first interjection from the sofa of
:"Hah, faggot."
:"Ok, I'm in!"
At this stage we are all very very basic, some of us have fought before, others have literally no idea what they're doing.

The bard is extremely helpful in that the first thing he does, is start to play (this was our first experience of the Bard's music). The DM must have queued this up on his laptop, because as soon as the Bard says
:"I am gonna play an inspiring song."
the DM slaps the space spar and [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CdqoNKCCt7A Simple Minds - Don't You (Forget About Me)] - which was then followed by several already slightly drunk players singing along.

Of course what the DM didn't remind him was that we are the better part of fifty feet from the Skeletons, roman skeletons with perfect drill, the rear rank does a 180 towards us.
:"Well shit."
Once we got over the idea that the bard playing music meant that we actually got music, we are staring down a rank of 15 odd skellies with very big shields, which we are a tiny bit unsure about how to kill them.

The wizard goes first.
:"Guyz, I have a plan..."
He summons a 10lb iron ball. It hovers in mid air, it starts to rotate in place, gradually gaining speed, meanwhile the Navvie and I start to jog toward the enemy. Angus at this point, as a self declared party face, isn't really sure what he's gonna do, but he definitely has a sack of stuff, which he plops down and reaches into.
:OOC: "Angus, what are you doing?"
:"I'm a social character, I dunno I could..."
:"ANGUS YOU HAVE NO SOCIAL SKILLS AND THIS IS NOT THE TIME."
:"I pick up a brick and follow the other two!"

At 25 feet or so I stop and open fire on them. The rounds from my revolvers punch through the shields just fine, but what they're doing to the Skellies behind is kinda hard to tell. One falls and a couple are looking quite shaky. I keep firing, stopping to reload and then emptying the cylinder again.

Angus jogs past me after the Navvie. He stops, reaches into the bag (still holding the brick) and goes for a bottle, which he somehow fashions into a rudimentary molotov cocktail. It sails through the air. It shatters on a shield. Then the one who it hit is shattered into bits. Angus celebrates what he sees as his victory (he never seemed to realize it was the redneck-cannonball that did it, but we didn't have the heart to tell him either) as the Wizard summons some rotary saws, the redneck cannonball does however zip into the main body of skellies, momentarily breaking their formation and buying the marines some time.

The Navvie is starting to realize that even with me firing at Skellies, Angus prepping another molotov and the Wizard keeping his flanks clear, him and his hammer are still running straight at ten or so skeletons. He decides, rather than run away, to take the innovative decision of running at them faster.

The reasoning is easy enough to follow, they're in a single line, one skelly deep, if he can break their formation and keep going, they can't surround him. He smashes one to the ground and gets a glancing blow on a second and keeps going. Skellies may be tough but they are not bright, with some turning to follow him and others advancing on us, they are easy enough to mop up.

We have our first victory! Go us! We are heroes! Except there's still the least 75 more skellies.
:"Ah."
The marines are doing a fairly good job keeping them back. Another wizard-cannonball (turns out it's rather effective if your enemies are man sized, don't have guns, and just happen to be lined up) helps break the formation as we hit the Skellies in the rear.

The rest of the combat sees skeletons pinned between us and marines. When the dust settles there's us and about fifteen marines left.

We retrieve Baz and head into the church. We also retrieved the haggis. By the time we get back, the marines are starting to dig in, ripping up pews and smashing windows to make firing ports.

The rest of the city is burning, there are a fair number of huddled civilians within the church as well. The marines are lead by a sergeant with a very impressive tache. They are short on ammunition and are happy to have us with them.

Outside there do not appear to be many skellies about, yet.

Given the way the rest of the city is suffering and how quiet it seems here, we maybe sometime before we are relieved.

Baz semi wakes up. He doesn't look terribly well. Indeed he looks a bit worse than when we found him. He sits up, looks around, vomits into the font and collapses on the floor.

Meanwhile our attention is drawn to the skellies beginning to file into the square.

We pool our knowledge, the marines seem happy to keep doing marine things and leave us to it. We decide to get away from the smell of Baz vomit and head up into the steeple.

On getting the height advantage we realize several things:
:1. Yup this city is fucked.
:2. That's a lot of Roman skeletons.
:Why are they Romans? Well necromancers like bodies/skellies that in life were trained (it sort of helps with drilling the skellies), and the Romans did actually do quite a lot of stuff around this area. Don't put it past an intrepid go-getting necromancer to have gone to Mons Graupius and raised the Roman dead, for example, then to have continued the theme with any other corpses.

It was about here that Angus decided he wanted to call them Zombans. We told him if he tried we would throw him from the tower.

The bad thing in particular about it being Romans is Romans are rather good at military engineering. We have a feeling if this turns into a siege, we aren't going to have a chance to starve to death.

We can also see larger shapes on the skyline, undead giants we think. The ships in port are streaming out to sea while the RN vessels fire on the giants.

It's beginning to get dark. The skellies have surrounded the church but aren't doing anything else. Baz pukes again and we attempt further communication.

There's a lot of grunting, and some sign language. In the end, Baz makes writing motions, Angus dips into his sack and comes out with a stick of charcoal. He then ignores everyone else while tinkering with some bits.

Baz draws a picture on a flagstone. It's him and he has some other (what we assume are Gods) around him, surrounding them are lots and lots of little floaty things. He then scrubs out the floaty things, drawing them instead around a second picture, a skull. He then pointedly draws a line through one God after another, until only Baz is left.

What the wizard and I construe from this (the Navvie deciding that alcohol is dangerous in a situation like this and is plugging down all the beer we brought to protect others from inebriation) is that all of the souls that were keeping Baz and his God friends going (I.e. folk who died in their territory) have been hoovered up by the necromancers.

Baz and co. are not likely to have had a great many living believers and now he finds himself the only one left.

Baz then promptly passes out again. Angus is still tinkering. People are starting to get hungry (not a good time to be a haggis). The undead aren't coming because (we assume) church, but we are stuck in here without the forces to get out, we assume they are trying to keep us here until they can bring up something that will let them in. Be it siege engine or magic or something.

We are starting to ponder.
:"Why not give them Baz?"
We decide against it because giving them an actual God seems unwise.

It looks like stalemate for now. 

Having decided not to hand over Baz, we consider our options again, sadly our options appear to amount to die, or wait for them to break down the walls, and then die. Attempts at finding catacombs or tunnels under the altar or other standard church type things prove fruitless. It looks like we are here for the duration.

There is movement outside.

It looks like whatever they are waiting for has arrived. A patch of darkness coalesces into a vaguely humanoid shape. If we had to guess, it's probably not a good sign at all.

The Necromancer (who, to differentiate him from later appearances, we will call "Frank") hisses and clacks his teeth together a bit before remembering how to speak.
:"You have something we want..."
Deciding we aren't going to lose anything by responding we ask
:"What's that exactly?"
:"You have my sacrifice. Give him to me and I will let you leave unharmed."
At this point we owe nothing to the country, we have no royal charter, and we have no purple penguin. This does not however mean that we believe him.
:"Why don't you come and get him!?"
The necromancer doesn't seem terribly amused. He makes no reply but there is an almighty thump from the doors as a battering ram is deployed.

We manage to get a look outside. We expected your common or garden variety battering ram, what we did not expect was (one lore check later) the iron man of gorbals (esoteric, but it is on Google) to be clubbing at our door.

We have another problem. There is a commotion among the civilians. We decide the doors are our biggest threat and with the marines firing onto the skellies below as they try to get ladders against the windows, we decide this place may not be as sanctified as we hoped.

The iron man is... well basically a big iron and flesh construct. The wizard is definitely going to be able to do things to it, but he's going to need time. We smash out the stained glass windows and do our best, he seems resistant to shot, hammer, and... Angus? Where are you?

Angus joins us with a large bucket of something flammable, from the smell it's whale oil (rather common as a means of providing illumination), he douses the iron man who although going up like a torch, otherwise isn't terribly bothered.

There's screaming from behind us now

The iron man judders and stumbles, it seems the wizard is doing something... he collapses against the door. A large, flaming object, against the wooden door.

Arse.

It's a strong oak door, toughened by the years, but if it fails we are beyond fucked. The iron man is still banging weakly at it.

The wizard does his best to shore up the door and simultaneously encourage bits of the iron man away from it, reasoning it is Angus's problem, the Navvie and I leave him and the bard to try and put the issue out while we see what is up with the civvies.

We are just in time to see a marine get his throat ripped out by a granny. She screams unlike anything we have heard before, a banshee wail. It appears the undead may not be inclined to come in without a necromancer like Frank to strengthen their animus, if you're in the church and happen to expire, as granny appears to have done, you're fair game.

Some of the civilian corpses behind her are starting to rise.

The marines at the windows are tied up keeping the rest of the undead out, it looks like this is our problem. The problem is that this is becoming an exponential issue as dying civilians rise and kill others, who themselves also rise. We get stuck in as best we can, but it's not long before the Navvie and I are surrounded, fighting back to back, thinning down what is slowly becoming a horde. At least we have their attention... or do we... It seems like some are making for Baz.

When some of the nearby bodies ignite, we at least know help is on the way. Joined by the others, we fight our way to Baz, just as a patch of darkness begins to form above where he lays.
:N.b. a recently reanimated corpse in Britbongsteros is not a zombie, it retains all of the thoughts, feelings and emotions it did when living, but the will of the corpse can be subjugated, otherwise they just gradually go feral as the brain dies off.
:The undead came in three (for want of a better term) tiers:
:1. Zombies: the recently reanimated, still bearing the memories of life, uncoordinated, crap in combat, but excellent as a horde. If reanimated but not subjugated they would go feral as the brain decayed, eventually becoming...
:Tier 2: Skellies. Tough, violent and able to be perfectly coordinated by a necromancer, as there is nothing left to contest the body.
:Tier 3: if you had sufficient angriness or something left to do, you could end up as a wight or revenant. Also falling into this category are banshees, who are tough, but the banshee "spirit" can possess a corpse where it knows there is likely to be a lot more death to follow (I.e. it is going to be able to do some wailing).
:Tier 3.5 is ghosts which I will have to remember to tell you about later.

Cù Sìth is what we would identify the thing as once it appears over Baz, but we settled on Giant Fucking Murder Dog.

We stand together, there's a giant fucking dog thing (it's alive/demonic/who fucking knows, but it's in here and it's the size of a bull) and it's standing over Baz. It lowers it's shoulders and growls.

We look at each other, we look at it, it's do or fucking die now. Five men, one haggis. Let's do this.

The bard plays for us [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_2D8Eo15wE Ram Jam - Black Betty 1977] while the undead smash into the Kirk through the windows, marines retreating behind us, trying to keep our backs clear as the beast lopes toward us.

We can see light beginning to come in through the windows behind it, but it's by no means sun up yet.

We run to meet it, pistols and molotov taking it at close range, the harpoon now sticking out of its side impedes it. As it gets in close, the Navvie's smacking it in the face as it goes to bite down on the noisiest target: The bard.

It gets a mouthful of Haggis instead.
:(DM: "That thing was retarded you can either lose that or lose a leg.")

Bereft of the daftest member of our party, we club the thing to death.

The sun is definitely rising, but it's by no means light enough to give us hope, we turn and stand with the marines, of whom there are not very many left, the couple of surviving civilians do their best with candlesticks. It's about now that Baz wakes up.

We know Baz as an 800lb lump of useless, smelly, vomiting rubbish, what we do not know him as, is as a god, and he gracefully, slowly, pushes through our lines. The predatory bulk of him slamming into skeletons. As impressive as it is, there's only one of him, and an awful lot of them. Also there's a Frank.

His skellies have opened the door, and as Frank drifts in, Baz is swamped and pulled down like a stag by hounds.

Frank wouldn't be any kind of evil necromancer if he didn't gloat a little, but he's also eminently sensible about it. As Skellies bind him and lift Baz out, he gives us an oddly cheerful wave.
:"Goodness that was a lot of effort wasn't it? Why bother? You could have avoided this and all of these people wouldn't have had to..."
The pistol bullet takes his jaw off. The Navvie speaks for all of us.
:"We didn't ask to be here, but you know what, fuck you."

Frank beats a retreat with Baz in tow, the rest of the Skellies push toward us, we retreat to the altar, using the stairs to hold them off as best we can.

The sun is up now, and in the distance we can hear the guns on the ships. The shell that takes out the other half of the church makes life somewhat easier.

Eventually we collapse, weary, tired, and grumpy in the light of the early dawn.

We are taken aboard the HMS Victory, this by no means feels like victory, it feels like a beginning, after our story is confirmed by the surviving marines and civilians, we meet Dan Defoe, agent of the privy council. He's quite a guy.
:"Well you didn't quite do a perfect job lads, but we think we know where Frank went, it's not a job for conventional forces, and I have a royal charter here that offers you some excellent benefits to signing up."
:"What benefits are these?"
:"Revenge, money, arms, women, and being alive to enjoy it."
Angus looks troubled.
:"What about my shop?"
:"Destroyed in the shelling, or if it wasn't I'll arrange it."
:"My... my... my family?"
:"See above, you signing or not me ol' green matey?"
Five signatures are added below the extremely impressive signature of "Queenie - Love and Hugs. P.s. I'll chop off your balls."

We sign the charter, accepting the Queen's shilling and agreeing to finish what we started. Well that's not quite right. We didn't start anything. Some giant bastard with antlers fell out of the sky on us. We are not best pleased, but given the choice of fighting further or being disposed of in some unpleasant manner, there isn't really a choice at all.

Dan Defoe (quite a nice bloke really) continues, giving us the best intelligence the crown has on what Frank (our local neighbourhood necromancer) is likely to do next. 
:"The short answer lads, we have no fucking idea."
Well cheers for that Dan.
:"But we do know he (Frank) has a fondness for Romans. It's likely he may be camped somewhere near Battledykes (yes that's a real place).

The party, and we are starting to think of ourselves as a party now, are at this point still aboard HMS Victory while Dundee slowly burns. Battledykes is about twenty miles north of the city. If that is where Frank (not actually called Frank but it's easier than typing "the necromancer") has gone, then it's likely this is also where they have taken Baz.
:"Hey Dan, if we are servants of the crown does that mean we can get stuff?"
The DM makes a fatal decision here.
:"Well I'm sure the ships stores can be made available to you within reason."
:>Roll some dice 
:>Angus beams
:"I wonder if anyone will miss this flamethrower..."
We also make off with a quantity of explosives (dynamite) and ammunition.

One of the ship's boats drops us ashore at Invergowrie (Down the coast a bit). 

So our merry little band set off on our first adventure, we have a necromancer to slay and a quest. We feel like proper adventurers!
:>It starts to rain. Heavily. 
:>It's also cold as fuck. 
We try to push on, on foot, along a road rapidly turning to mud, downtrodden refugees heading in the opposite direction look more than worse for wear, they at least can take shelter in wagons. The bard begins to shiver. 

We are barely two miles inland and soaked to the skin. Frozen, we start thinking of looking for a barn or similar to wait out the storm. We find a small cottage, there is smoke coming from the chimney and it looks warm and cozy.

We knock on the door hopefully. Starting to feel rather sorry for ourselves in this weather, yes we have some gear with us, but it's bitterly wet and cold, and we were up all night fighting the undead (if you can't tell we are being punished for our own stupidly here).

The tiny old woman that answers the door tells us that we can bugger off.

The offer of money gets us permission to stay in the barn and the offer of soup.

Feeling a bit happier (Angus seems to have a sniffle) we decide, given we set off late, that maybe we should settle down here for the night, warm up, and generally be of some use tomorrow. 

The rain beats down hard on the roof, despite the well maintained farm there are no animals. We should perhaps find this odd but maybe they're all out to pasture. It also seems to be just the old woman.

After the soup we feel drowsy. Very drowsy indeed.

We do our best to stay awake, deciding one of us should perhaps remain on watch, I try to stay awake with my pipe. I'm replaced by the bard, then the wizard, the wizard wakes the rest of us just after midnight.

There is something coming up the road. It's still raining too hard to tell what, but we strain our eyes in the darkness. 

There are a number of them. A small force even. We can't make out much, they look from a distance like sturdy, wizened old men, each is wearing what (as the old woman opens the door to the cottage, we seen in the light to be) a bright red cap.

A little lore checking denotes the strong possibility that these might be [http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redcap Powries].

A Powrie, or red cap as Anon will see from the link is a sort of species of dwarf, well armed and bloodthirsty, the titular hats are dyed red with blood and they must re-dye them regularly.

The Powries begin to deposit various dead things on the threshold (we note that they never cross it), these include the butchered carcasses of deer, a boar, and three or four concerningly human shaped things. It appears the old woman has been cooking for these things. 

:A note on the powries of Britbongsteros 
:A native tribe or race, local to the Scottish borders, entirely mercenary, they prey on travelers. Each is armed traditionally with a long spear or pike. They are excellent woodsmen and incredibly fast over open ground.
There's also enough of them that we are totally boned if the old woman tells them we are....
:>She points in our general direction.

What exactly do we do? There's not much we can do. We decide to wait until they get closer and see what comes of it.

About half of them walk toward the barn. The other half seem to have flat out vanished. As they get closer we can see the wicked talons on their hands, their fangs and the rain washes the blood dripping from their hats down their cheeks.

They open the barn doors below us. As the others have disappeared, we wait in the hayloft, ready at least to take some with us.  The Powries don't seem to have realized we are there, they are below us, collecting up tools, what looks like farming equipment. Maybe we might get out of this without bloodshed?
:>Probably not.
One of them sniffs the air. We do our best to stay quiet. It shakes its head.

Seems everything turned out better than exp...

The other half of the Powries have been scaling the wall of the barn. 

Everything goes crazy, there are Powries everywhere, there's gun fire and bagpipes, screaming, shouting and by the way. Did you know, using a flame-thrower in a wooden building is actually not wonderfully smart? 

Now the barn is very healthily ablaze and we are nearly surrounded by crazy angry midgets. Taking our inspiration from Ghandhi as to how to deal with this we...

No of course we don't. We shoot them.

Fun powrie fact. Outrunning a Powrie is (according to mythology and therefore our rules) impossible. We need to kill each and every one or we will have mad red hatted tribesmen jumping out of bushes as we stumble around the countryside. The bard, as always, is useless. The wizard summons and chucks sharp implements about. The Navvie (surprise) has taken rather well to combat, and remember this is the first time we are spilling actual blood as opposed to battering skeletons.

Angus is finding the whole situation troubling.

As a reminder, Angus' backstory is he is a shop keeper. That's it. Turning living beings into pillars of fire is a new experience for him, and not one he enjoys. The Navvie reminds him that if they kill us, they will eat us. That seems to help, but what really assists, is Angus getting a pike through the shoulder. He then utters the immortal word of vengeance.
:"Ow"
Reaching into his bag of tricks and coming up Molotov, he has a fistful of each.

Now a little note about our DM, you may sometimes get told if you're doing something stupid. Sometimes.

Angus's attempt at (with some rope) making a flail of molotovs does not work. He sets both of his feet on fire, along with launching flame bottles scattering across the barn. Miraculously none of us are set alight, but it does provide quite the distraction, allowing us to beat down the rest of the Powries.

With the Powries removed, we decide the best thing to do is get out of the barn. It collapses appropriately dramatically as we do so.

We debate having a further chat with the old woman who sold us out. We decide probably best to play it softly as we would quite like to stay in her cottage (it being night and raining torrentially) on the other hand, that fire is going to attract every kind of ne'er do well for miles

We decide it's worth the risk (we don't want the DM to consider giving us pneumonia), the old woman is actually surprisingly grateful that we "got rid of the Powries." We are only going to be nice back if we can check her pantry (The Powries had been bringing her human shaped things). She dislikes this idea.

The wizard is able to sense the magical build up and attempts to shove the Navvie out of the way of unpleasant looking ball of dark energy. Shortly afterwards we add one granny to our kill count. Shortly after that, we are reminded (we love you DM) that we ate her soup, which a check of the pantry confirms was not kosher.

I hope anon never faces this situation. You've got tasty delicious possibly human in your belly.
:>The DM pops his first beer
:"Well chaps, who's going to puke first? As a reminder this was your first hot meal in a while and it was a little time and one combat ago..."
Angus decided that actually he's an orc, so he can really can't be a cannibal anyway. The rest of us take a different approach.
:>laughter occurs from the sofa.

We bed down, feeling oddly disgusted with our selves and our murderhobo conduct. Consider: we turned up, killed everyone, burnt down the barn, killed an old lady, then were sick in her garden. We're proper adventurers now

Now that that clusterfuck of a random encounter is dealt with, we meet the morning, new and fresh, ready to greet the new day and march onwards to Baz, glory, and not being killed by our own monarch while probably being killed by skeletons.
:>onwards
We don't move as fast as we would like (having about twenty more miles to traverse) but we get through daylight without much issue. Our pace is slow as we start to come into necromancer territory - I.E. nearing Battledykes.

N.b. you can follow along on Google maps when places get mentioned.

What does necromancer territory mean exactly? Well it's not quite as weird as you might expect. The gardens and fields are overgrown, the kirkyards and cemeteries lack occupants. The land itself is still green and verdant, there are no creepy Halloween things, it's just very, very quiet.

Thinking we can't be far from our objective, and that we are not attacking a necromancer, and his minions in the dark, we make the decision to bed down someplace. We decide on a good sized farmhouse near Lunanhead.

I take the first watch.

We do not light any fires because muh stealthy. The moon up and I'm just thinking of waking Angus when I see movement on the road below. Lots and lots of movement. Ranks of skeletons march past, followed by war machines, undead giants (who come from Stirling - that is relevant later), but the skeletons are not the Roman ones we are used to.

I wake the rest of the party. The wizard. Then Angus. The Navvie. Then Angus. Then the bard.

Wait a second....

In the hushed darkness there's definitely me and five other shapes. That is a bad number. I should add, the DM has mentioned the extra human shaped shape to me via note, he's still describing the army marching past to everyone else.

Ok. So, if I give the alarm we could end up summoning the army. We also don't know what the extra body is, or even who it is.

The Navvie is easy, even in the darkness you can just tell it's him. Angus you can tell by smell, I know I'm me, the bard, wizard and... thing(?) on the other hand are all very similar silhouettes.

I can't just say "one of you is an impostor" I also can't start shooting, Angus is quite sharp when he wants to be though. He rolls perception. Then goes full retard.
:"Something doesn't smell right here..."
He grabs the.... The bard.

The shape knows it's been rumbled.

What is the shape? That's a remarkably good question. Our first thought however is not to worry about that. Instead we dog-pile to prevent whatever it is from escaping. 

If anon has ever played any contact sports, you know that if you leap at someone, you're braced for the impact. So it comes as quite a surprise when you miss or meet no resistance at all. Why is that? Because it's a ghost.

This is our first ghost we have had anything to do with. As the shape switches from floaty bard to floaty Angus to floaty wizard, we start to wonder if it might not be harmful.

We lie in a pile on the floor. The ghost is silent. It waves it's arms about. It may in fact be harmless? We aren't sure. It is, at the very least, silent, and we can hear things marching past outside, so we should be relieved by that.

The undead of Britbongsteros I have discussed a few times already, but ghosts occupy a rare and unusual position. Can someone be a zombie and a ghost? No. But if say, for example, as happened to a recently deceased person who was possessed or taken over by (for example) a banshee, then that person has to go someplace. Then we get ghost.

However just because it used to be a person, does not make it smart. However it seems to be waving in the direction of a specific bit of floor

We lift a rather mouldy rug and see a trapdoor. Nifty. Of course common sense prevails eventually. Why is it so keen for us to go down there? None of the characters may have ever seen a horror movie, but we do share at least the one communal brain cell.

The wizard, Angus, and I descend into the darkness of the cellar. The bard and Navvie (not a fan of confined spaces) wait up top. By the light of Angus's pilot light we can see it's a bit more than the standard cellar. There is also a body on the ground, chained out so it's spread-eagled. We think this is what our ghost might have belonged to.

The body is so old you couldn't tell what the ghost was in life, nor do we think it can remember. Which is rather sad when you think about it. We decide the right thing to do is try to put the thing to rest.

Maybe whatever originally possessed it has gone? It's just a husk and therefore... We have no idea. Angus suggests just torching it. The wizard seems to think removing the chains is a good idea. The Navvie (in what is for him a whisper) asks from the top of the stairs what's taking so long? The body's eyes open

We weren't really expecting that, or maybe we should have. It also talks. You'd expect the sibilance of gravedust, instead it's almost cheerful.
:"Greetings."
We definitely don't know whats in there, but as its head turns through 360 degrees, burning the thing seems like an excellent idea.