248 - At the Edge
“C’mon!” yelled Funshine. “C’MON! Keep it going, Fe-, Garden! You can do this!”
“It’s not like she can hear you,” muttered Slip ‘n’ Slide, turning his ears down so as not to be deafened by his brother’s bellowing. “Sonata said that this spell would hide us from the ghouls, remember? So if they can’t hear us, then-”
“Let him cheer,” interrupted Granola Bar without taking her eyes off of their friend, watching as Garden Gate tore another ghoul apart, but not before it knocked away one of those jewels that Lex had somehow made fly around her head. “It’s all we can do right now.”
“She’ll win!” Hopscotch tried to make her voice confident, as though she couldn’t imagine Garden losing, but to her own ears it sounded more like a nervous whimper. “She’s beaten so many of them already, I kn-know she can keep it up!”
Granola Bar put a hoof around the other mare, giving her a reassuring squeeze. It hadn’t taken very long for the four of them to realize that Garden had gone out to fight the ghouls all by herself. The sound of her enraged cries, unreasonably demanding the return of everything she’d lost, had made her location all too clear. Fortunately, Granola Bar had been close enough to the front of the crowd that she’d overheard a nearby pony – a redheaded mare with a compass cutie mark – explaining to a friend of hers why they couldn’t go out there and help her. The explanation had been an enlightening one, and had been all that kept Granola Bar from leaping out there herself. She had relayed it in turn to Funshine, Slip ‘n’ Slide, and Hopscotch when they’d arrived at the front of the crowd less than a minute later, each one of them intent on rushing to Garden Gate’s side. Even then, it hadn’t been easy to convince them to stay put. Only the fact that their leader was, impossibly, winning the fight had kept them from rushing to join h-
“Wait, something’s wrong!” yelped Hopscotch, her voice shrill with alarm.
“What?!” Slip ‘n’ Slide practically jumped out of his skin at that, head turning every which way in a panic. “What’s wrong?!”
“GARDEN!” Hopscotch pointed at where the aforementioned mare – now having lost a second gem – took a bite to the flank, going rigid.
“NO!” roared Funshine, already throwing himself forward. Far from trying to stop him, Slip ‘n’ Slide looked like he was about to do the same thing. It was enough to make Granola Bar freeze, torn wanting to go with them and knowing that she had to stop them.
Fortunately, her mind was made up for her an instant later as a pegasus stallion suddenly crashed into Funshine from the side, knocking him into Slip ‘n’ Slide and causing all three to go tumbling to the ground. “Get off me!” snarled Funshine, swinging his hooves at the stallion on top of him. “Garden needs help!”
“You can’t go!” growled the other stallion, and it took a moment for Granola Bar to recognize him as the pegasus that redhead with the compass cutie mark had been talking down a few minutes ago, Ocean Spray. “You’ll get us all killed!”
“If we don’t help her right now she’ll be killed!” snapped Slip ‘n’ Slide, trying to dig himself out from under his brother. “MOVE!”
“I won’t let you!” Despite being outnumbered and outweighed by the two earth ponies, Ocean Spray didn't let up, doing everything he could do keep the pair from getting their hooves under them. “Everypony has to stay here, no matter wha-”
“Look!” yelled Hopscotch again, causing all three to turn their heads instinctively.
They were just in time to see Garden Gate dodge what should have been a death blow, her paralysis feigned, and send the ghoul stumbling away with a blow to the head. The sight caused everypony to sigh in relief, and a moment later Ocean Spray disentangled himself from the other two. Funshine immediately leapt to his hooves, stepping toward the pegasus pony angrilly. “If you ever do that again…” he spat, leaning forward until his nose was pressed against the smaller stallion’s.
But Ocean Spray refused to be intimidated. “You think you’re the only one who wants to run out there?! Well you’re not!” He flared his wings, staring the other stallion down. “Right now your friend is fighting to avenge the people she lost, and it’s killing me that I can’t go out there and do the same, because if I did then I’d put more people at risk!” He grit his teeth then, his inner turmoil showing through. “I want to go kill those things, but not if it means losing someone else that I care about!”
“I’m trying to go out there because I don’t want to lose someone else I care about!” shot back Funshine. “You don’t-”
“Both of you, stop it!” yelled the redhead firmly, stepping forward from behind Ocean Spray and giving the two of them a hard look. “This isn’t helping anypony.”
“That’s easy for you to say,” huffed Slip ‘n’ Slide, keeping one eye on Garden’s fight as he looked at the newcomer. “It’s not your friend that’s out there.”
“She’s right, Slip.” Granola Bar stepped forward then, before things had a chance to escalate. Putting a hoof on his shoulder, she gave him a sympathetic look. “Garden isn’t fighting so that we can get into a brawl like this.” She didn’t show it, but she was relieved when all he did was give her a miserable look in response instead of arguing. Glancing over at where the redheaded mare was speaking softly to Ocean Spray, she caught her eye, and the two exchanged a brief nod.
Managing a group when your leader wasn’t there was an exhausting task sometimes.
“Um, you guys…!”
Hopscotch’s worried voice turned everyone’s eyes back toward Garden, gasps escaping them as they saw her final gem knocked away even as more ghouls came at her, forcing her to retreat. Granola Bar tensed, moving toward Funshine and Slip ‘n’ Slide just a little. Although her stomach was tightening into knots, she swore she wouldn’t hesitate this time; if the two of them tried to run out there again, she’d tackle them herself, no matter what happened. Garden, this is what you’d want me to do, right?
Biting her lip, Granola Bar watched as Garden retreated, waving her knife in a futile gesture to try and keep the ghouls from simply overwhelming her in a wave. She was almost to Lex and Sonata now, and it was obvious that once she reached them the ghouls would turn their attention to the other two. When that happene-
Then a fireball rained down from the sky.
Aria’s spell was enough to turn the tide of the battle.
Momentarily.
With the space in front of her suddenly clear of foes Garden Gate had a moment to catch her breath, panting as she rubbed a hoof across her brow, the telekinetic aura around her knife flickering dangerously. Even so, she brought it back into a ready position, sparing a moment to glance upward at her benefactor, watching with a neutral expression as Aria floated down beside Lex and Sonata. But then the break was over, as another ghoul got by Severance, smacking its lips as it ran for her. Giving a snort, she moved forward to meet it.
Behind her, Lex was already cursing the missed opportunity. Even if she was exhausted, and the reprieve had only been a few seconds, she should have tried to look for the gemstones! Finding even one of them would have increased her combat prowess substantially! But there was nothing that could be done about it now, and he turned his attention back to Sonata’s sister, who had landed a few feet from them both.
As soon as Aria reached the ground, Sonata flung herself at her, forelegs curling around her neck in a hug. “Aria! Oh my gosh! That was, like, super awesome! You totes nailed the whole ‘last-minute rescue’ thing!” She let her go then, almost prancing with delight. “Now, say something kinda mean so you can do the whole ‘I was worried about you, but can’t admit it’ bit!”
The look Aria gave Sonata in response was one of pure loathing. “I wasn’t worried about you, you idiot!” she whispered harshly. “I only came back here to prove that I’m better than you!”
“Perfect!” grinned Sonata, clapping her hooves. “Wow, you’re great at this!”
Aria glared at her sister in pure frustration, feeling ready to explode at Sonata’s dopey smile, and finally couldn’t stand to look at her anymore. Turning to Lex, she pointed at the ghouls. “What’s going on here?! Why are those things all here and not in the city? And where’s everyone else? How come that girl with the knife-”
“There’s no time to explain,” panted Lex, barely having gotten enough breath back to speak in complete sentences again. “Right now you need to back her up with everyone you’ve got. Use enhancement magic on her, and be ready to cast more fireballs if there are more of them than she can handle.”
“Yeah, no,” snorted Aria. “That’s not going to happen.”
“I wasn’t asking!”
“Yeah? Well I wasn’t saying I wouldn’t,” replied Aria with a glare. “I was saying I can’t use that spell again, thanks to someone making me use so much magic earlier today when we went into Vanhoover!”
“You can’t be serious!” snarled Lex.
Behind him, Sonata gave Aria a solemn nod. “I know, right? You cast those spells a couple of times, and then…” She blew a raspberry. “Nothing. Kaput. It’s, like, sooo frustrating!”
“Don’t compare me to you!” Aria’s whisper was so harsh it was barely intelligible. “I’ve still got enough magic to cast a spell that will end this in one shot! Then you’ll have to tell everyone who the better sister is!”
“What spell?” asked Lex, his eyes narrowed in suspicion. He’d fought Aria before, and she’d never shown any magical aptitude sufficient to deal with hundreds, potentially thousands, of enemies at once.
The question was enough to make the corners of Aria’s mouth turn up. “Just watch.” She turned to glance over at where Garden was fighting, now quite clearly hard-pressed just to deal with the two ghouls that were snapping at her. “Call knife-girl back, and then I’ll-”
“What spell?” Lex asked the question slower, making it clear that an answer was expected.
“Actually,” interjected Sonata, raising a hoof as though she were in a classroom, “I kinda wanna be surprised.”
That was all it took to get Aria talking. “I can raise a curtain of fire around us. It only radiates heat on one side, so if I make it a circle with us on the inside and have the heat going outward, we’ll be safe and those things will be char-broiled if they try to get through it.”
“That’s a terrible plan,” replied Lex without hesitation.
“What are you talking about?! It’s perfect!” Aria couldn’t help but slam her tail against the ground angrily before point at Sonata. “It’s better than whatever magic she’s using!”
“It will drive the remaining ghouls away before we can kill them!” Lex kept his eyes on Garden Gate as he castigated Aria, despite knowing that there was nothing he could do about them. “They might be so mad with hunger that they’re throwing themselves against Severance, but they aren’t utter fools. If all they see is a big hole in the ground and a ring of fire they can’t make it through, there’ll eventually decide to go look elsewhere for food, and put every village in the region at risk!”
Aria’s brow furrowed at that, digesting what she’d just been told. “So you’re saying that you don’t want me to use my fire-wall spell because you need to act as bait?!” She shook her head. “That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard in my life.”
“I don’t believe it,” muttered Lex.
“No, it really might be,” sneered Aria. “And I say that having spent almost all of my life with Sonata.”
“Hey! I know I told you to say mean stuff, but that’s going too far!”
Aria was about to respond with an even more cutting remark, but Lex jumped in before she could. “The ghouls!”
“What about them?” asked Aria, looking back at the horde of undead ponies in confusion. They looked the same to her, so what was he getting so worked up over?
“They’re running out!”
“Huh?” Sonata blinked, tilting her head. “They’re running out of what?”
“Of themselves!” The excitement in Lex’s voice was undeniable, his breath coming quicker in the face of renewed hope. “There aren’t that many of them left!”
That was enough to make both sisters look at the tide of undead ponies ahead of Severance. There were still ghouls rushing out of the darkness, but with Lex’s proclamation, they could see that the gaps between individual ghouls were starting to grow. Dozens rather than scores were advancing toward Severance – though the scythe simply continued to swing itself at whatever came closest to it, making it unable to help let but more slip by it – and the wild shrieks and screeching from the undead ponies sounded less overwhelming now.
The end was finally in sight.
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if it is the end of the Curve, you can feel gravity pulling down on you as your moments of evens out. The promise of danger is still closed at hand.
Either a significant portion of Vanhoover's populace had fled Vanhoover prior to the ghoul epidemic, or, if your discussion with howard035 is anything to go by, not all of the ghouls' victims turned into ghouls themselves either because of sufficient mutilation or had been consumed in their entirety like Cloudbank and the others were. I doubt the ghouls wanted anymore competition for sustenance.
Well that, or Severance had been building up quite the kill count in the background while we've been focusing on Lex and Fencer. While it's attacks aren't as precise and efficient as Lex was when he wielded it, Severance is still powerful on its own.
Still, it's still too early to celebrate yet as any number of things could still go wrong such as Garden's suicidal charge for example but at least Lex doesn't have to worry about anyone running out trying to be heroes, especially if Granola Bar and C.Shell's crew have anything to say about it.
Just as long as noon pulls out a candy bar, they might have a half reasonable chance of most of them even surviving the rest of the ghouls?
Hello Vahoover, Mars calling.
8996586 They can definitely see a light at the end of the tunnel, but is it the way out, or an oncoming train?
8996929 Candy bar? Mars? Mars bars?
8996633 There's also the possibility that there are more survivors hiding in the city itself. Lex never came close to exploring the entire city, and if there were some survivors squirreled away in an apartment somewhere, there can be others as well. There's no real way of knowing at this point, though it seems certain that the number of escapees must be not-insignificant, and the number of dead likely catastrophic in number. Presuming that Lex and co. survive and eventually get a roster of the ponies who were living in, and visiting, Vanhoover when the disaster struck, there's likely to be a large number of names listed as "missing, presumed dead."
Still, for the moment there's hope that they'll eventually reach such a point, as Aria's sudden reappearance has given them some much-needed breathing room. Now that the ghouls finally seem to be exhausting their numbers, it looks like they might manage to come out the other side of this. Presuming nothing else goes wrong, that is.
8997481
Sorry, enjoying The Maretian a bit too much.
8997478 I think the issue is, most 1st level commoners are going to drop to dying after about 2 hits from a ghoul (2d6+2). In order for them to be infected, they have to suffer 1 hit already. So once they're hit, they are effectively in a chase where if the ghoul gets one more hit on them they lose, and thanks to attacks of opportunity those kind of chases heavily favor the pursuer. You're right, they will probably be trying to hide (stealth checks) against ghouls, who have a pretty strong perception. I feel like 1st level NPC classes will almost all fail at this kind of thing.
That said, it sounds like you're saying that after a few days when society broke down and civilian ponies were mostly in hiding, most of the secondary infections occurred when ponies went scavenging inside buildings, found some ghouls hiding from the sun, got bitten, made their save and ran outside into the daylight, and the ghouls were basically willing to let them go rather than follow them because they weren't yet as hungry as they are now.
Careful, many heroes die just when they think victory is in their grasp, because that's when they get cocky.
Lex has to use his monstrous leadership ability, we can't risk losing the Ari-nata goodness!
8997756 It's true that your average 1st-level commoner, who (presuming no Constitution bonus, and with NPC classes apparently not receiving maximum hit points at 1st level) has only 3 hit points on average thanks to their 1d6 Hit Die, will be hard-pressed to remain standing after even one successful hit from a ghoul (thanks to their 1d6+1 damage on attacks). However, some of them will, and that's all that we really need to establish; the issue of "how many would survive, and then become ghouls themselves" isn't, as I noted before, an argument that can be "won" per se, since the lack of salient factors means that - so long as something extreme, such as "they ALL would!" or "NONE of them would!", isn't being argued - there's no real way to make a solid argument for any particular chunk of the population. If you want to say that only 1% of the population would become ghouls, and I say 10%, then there's not going to be much in the way of evidence we can use either way.
The main reason for that is because all we have to go on are the game rules, but even those don't take into account everything that could happen under such a scenario. As an abstraction, we can crunch the numbers, but even those won't represent important factors that could conceivably take place in such a scenario (e.g. a fleeing pony takes an action to knock over a barrel of marbles while fleeing, evading pursuit). Which means that just looking at the issue of AC vs. attack value, and average damage versus average hit points isn't going to be nearly as illuminating as you might think.
This is compounded by the fact that while I normally view the game mechanics as the "physics of the game world," there are a few areas where they're very clearly a construct, which is what turn-based combat structure is where chases are concerned. Under the normal combat rules, chases are a yo-yo wherein one party pulls away, stops, and then the second party catches up to them, and stops. Repeat. That's quite clearly not what's actually happening though; there's a reason why I linked to the chase rules before (to say nothing of why those rules exist in the first place). So you'll likely have a ghoul leaping out and getting that surprise attack on the commoner, who (if they survive) will make a withdraw action to get away as fast as possible without provoking an attack of opportunity, at which point you should probably default to the aforementioned chase rules.
Having said that, I suspect that the ghouls would be - at least initially - less motivated to endure uncomfortable conditions, particularly for any sort of prolonged period, in search of a meal simply because of how plentiful "food" was when Vanhoover first fell apart (i.e. the living population was higher). That's because ghouls are quite clearly ambush predators rather than pursuit predators. They leap out, strike with intent to paralyze, and if that initial paralyzation fails and the prey runs, then their likelihood of "hunting success" drops dramatically, since the ghouls have no particular pursuit-based abilities. It's only when the available amount of food dropped below critical levels that they abandoned their natural hunting tactics in a fit of starvation-based desperation, hence why they're plunging headfirst in the meat-grinder that is Severance now: because they know that a few of them will make it through and have a chance at eating the living ponies just beyond.
8997771 Heh, no comment there. We'll just have to see what's going to happen.
(Fun fact: my outline for things had Aria turning back, but not Cozy and Aisle. I had initially projected them to continue forward without her. Once again, however, the characters surprised me!)
Too many ghouls.
9220972 So long as it's not more than the team can handle, it's not too many. Right?