Morning of the Living Dead.

Curley Greenleaf, a young, rather nondescript man, stepped out of
his house early one foggy morning. Breathing in the chill morning air, he
made his way down the Casbah, towards the New Thalos marketplace. On the
way there, he fancied he saw a figure stumbling towards him through the fog.
Drunkard, he thought. He cut through an alley to avoid conflict.
Upon exiting the alleyway, he figured he'd visit some of his guard
friends at the north gate. As the gate came into view, he noticed some 
commotion going on. He hastened his step to see what the hoopla was.

It was the guards. It was hard to see in the fog, but Curley could
see that they were doing battle with a bunch of twisted, humanoid figures.
As Curley watched, one of the guards slashed a figure across the chest. A
large, roundish object slid out of the now-gaping hole and landed on the
guard's sandaled toe. The figure folded like an old coat, but the guard was
not so lucky. He grabbed his wounded toe with a yelp and began hopping
around. The twisted things were on him in an instant. 
Another guard ran one of the humanoids through, then turned to
Curley. "Go to the other gates, and the Sultan's guards! There's a ton of 
these things, trying to get in! Tell them to--"

Something flashed through the guard's neck. The guard, who apparently
hadn't noticed, was still giving Curley instructions in complete silence. 
Then one of the humanoid forms tackled the guard. Curley watched in horror
as the guard's head fell off and rolled to his feet, still mouthing words.


The twisted form rose up from the dead guard's body and began shambling
towards Curley. As it got closer, Curley could see its features clearly 
through the fog. Its skin had rotted off in some places, exposing bone and
tendon. One eye hung down from its socket by a thread. Its shambling walk--
and the fact that it stank to high heaven--left no doubt.

Zombies!        

Curley turned around to run, but a tall, dark-haired man in 
Waterdhavian armor blocked his path. Curley noted, with some dismay, that
the man's face also had purple patches of creeping decay upon it. The man 
smiled a wild, rictus grin, exposing all sorts of parts of the skull that
Curley didn't need to see.

'Howdy,' the man said.

dark-haired man (who chuckled to himself, watching Curley run), sped to his 
house, slammed the door behind him, locked it, and sat in a corner. He then
jumped up, closed all of the shutters in his home, locked those too, then
sat in a corner. Cursing, he jumped up again, gathered some spare wood, and
boarded up all of the doors and windows. He then sat in a corner, with a 
book he'd been meaning to read, trying to pretend that nothing was going on
outside.

  *            *            *

The adventurers of Kemo had found out what was happening to New 
Thalos via the elvish goddess Celestine. As usual, it was expected of 
them to save the town. Celestine (kindly goddess that she is) promised a
bounty for whoever could kill the most zombies.

So, off the adventurers went. The cleric Onichan, the assassin
Fred, and warriors Galrendor, Blood, Tyresian, Rayden, and Dyran rushed to
New Thalos, ready to destroy the undead plague. When they arrived, however,
they got a little more than was expected.


New Thalos was in shambles. People ran to and fro, trying to 
fight or avoid the undead. The marketplace was a mess as people threw
fruit and vegetables at the zombies. Guards and soldiers were all around,
trying to fight zombies or getting eaten. Bodies of dead New Thalosians were
all around, some struggling to get up. 
One of the sultan's guards pulled her sword from a zombie's body.
'Why are you just standing there?! Help us out!' she shouted. 
No sooner said than done, the heroes got to work.
Tyresian and Onichan headed towards the docks, while Rayden (who
has some kind of god complex) floated down the street, slaying zombies as
he went. Dyran headed off towards the marketplace. Blood went to secure the
gates. Fred and Galrendor simply went hunting for every zombie they could
find.

When Blood reached the gates, he found them deserted. There were
no gateguards, as there should have been, or zombies at all. The gates just
swung freely in the wind. He closed the east, south, and west gates, but
heard whimpering by the north one. Curious, he headed towards a boarded
house that the whimpering seemed to be coming from.
Knocking down the boards, he found Curley Greenleaf in the corner,

looking up at him with wild-eyed fright.
'The stones!!!' Curley shouted. 'The stones are the key! They'll
keep getting up otherwise! Get the stones! And the dark-souled man! Go! Get!' 
Blood understood, or thought he did. He hurried off to tell the
others, and heard banging behind him. Curley was reboarding his house.

Rayden spotted the dark haired man first. He was sitting on a 
barrel, apparently filing his fingernails with a dagger. The zombies did 
not bother him.

'Sir!' Rayden shouted to the man. He did not look up. Rayden quickly
disposed of all of the zombies, then hurried to the man. He was wearing all
sorts of snazzy but rusted Waterdhavian battle armor, and looked like a 
warrior of some sort. Rayden disregarded the purple blooms on the side
of his face as dirt or something. 


'Sir, it's dangerous here. Let's go.' Rayden tugged on the man's
arm, which came off. The man looked up angrily.

'Now look what you've done!' the dark-haired man snapped, and 
snatched the arm from a dumbfounded Rayden. 'People are always doing that,'

the man fumed as he placed the arm back in its socket. He grinned 
cruelly at Rayden. Rayden's face went white as he realized who the man 
was.

'Darksol!' Rayden gasped.

Darksol bowed deeply.

'You're dead.' Rayden shook his head in disbelief.

'And so are you, I'm afraid.' Darksol raised his arms high over
his head, muttering some strange incantation. Suddenly, all of the bodies
Rayden had left strewn about rose up to meet him. It was all Rayden could
do to keep them off of him, but Darksol drew his long sword and rushed 
Rayden as well. It wasn't long before Rayden was limping away, bitten and
bleeding from more wounds than he cared to count. The zombies staggered 
after him, but Darksol merely watched him go. Wiping his blade, chuckling
to himself, he headed for the docks.

Tyresian and Onichan were having a hell of a time killing zombies
at the docks, while the dockworkers cheered them on. They had received 
Blood's message, and occasionally stooped to retrieve the stones from the
zombies they killed. When the stones were removed from the zombies' chest
cavities, they crumpled into dust.
Suddenly, a dockworker cried out. Ty and Onichan looked up to see
a flaming worker jump into the River Ishtar. Everybody turned towards a 
dark-haired man that was leaning upon a wall.

'Don't mind me,' the man said with a dismissive wave.

Tyresian approached the man. Besides the antique Waterdhavian armor,
there was something maddeningly familiar about him....

Stopping in front of the man, whose eyes were on the ground, Ty
studied him carefully. Why did he seem so familiar? It looked as if the man
had a sickness of some sort. Ty stepped back a couple of steps, not wanting 
to catch the plague or some other noxious disease.

The man looked up. 'May I help you?' he asked.


Ty realized that if the man had more skin on his face, he'd look 
exactly like..

'Darksol! What are you doing here?'

'Enjoying life,' Darksol replied. 'Hahaha. Seriously, though, I'm
helping a forgotten civilization get revenge on thier ancestors.'
Tyresian didn't understand. 'Revenge? On who? What's with the 
zombies?'

Darksol sighed, suddenly exasperated. 'New Thalos, of course. New
Thalos never really talked about Old Thalos in thier history. They forgot
where they came from, and the people that stayed in Old Thalos, fighting the
Underdark races to the end, so that Abib Amon-Ahsen and his ilk could get 
away. So, the Old Thalosians' --Darksol gestured at the dust blowing in 
the breeze-- 'are here to jog thier memory. You shouldn't have come here. 
None of you.'

Onichan had approached Ty and Darksol while they had been talking.

'We can't let them destroy New Thalos,' she said.


Darksol spat over his right shoulder. 'I can't let you stop me,' he
growled. In one smooth motion he drew his sword and slashed at Onichan, who
barely dodged in time. The same slash bit deep into Tyresian's arm, who 
staggered back in order to ready his own weapon. Before long, a fierce melee
had broken out between the three. The dockworkers cheered and began placing
wagers on who would win.


      *           *            *


'Waaauughhahahahaa!' Galrendor watched helplessly as Fred ran by, sidekick-
ing a zombie way down the street. Galrendor sighed, and glanced at his
sundial. The zombies had fled into one of the many New Thalosian guilds.
Enchantments had been placed on this particular guild to make it a non-
violent place. Angrily he cursed his luck. All of the damn guilds in New
Thalos, and the zombies had to flee into this one. Leaning on his sword, he
idly counted the stones in his possession. 37. 
A zombie staggered up the street towards him. He looked around. Fred was
having the time of his life, performing magic tricks for the zombies before
slaying them. Dyran was at the other end of the street, but Galrendor 
could not see him for all of the dust that was blowing from that way. So
where had this zombie come from? He got up and threw one of his stones
at it.

The stone hit the zombie right between the eyes, taking its head off. It 
collapsed, and Galrendor plucked the stone from its body. He couldn't
help but wonder where this one had come from, though.



Suddenly, he heard a yell from up the street. It was Dyran. Galrendor 
hurried towards him, and stopped, balking. Zombies erupted from the ground
below Dyran, dragging him under. Befotre he could take two steps, hands
reached from the dusty street and grabbed Galrendor, too. Hacking away at
the hands, he stepped away from the churning ground. Another zombie was
clawing its way up from below.

With one more look at the guild hall, Galrendor turned and ran away from
the zombie, towards Dyran, past Dyran, and out the south gate.


*         *         *


Onichan and Tyresian were having a hard time defending against Darksol's
attacks. In fact, they weren't even able to attack, they were having a 
hard enough time trying to defend against his blows. 
Darksol jumped back suddenly, leaving Tyresian and Onichan wondering
whether they should try to attack him or what. 
Darksol peered at the sky, seemingly unconcerned about the two heroes 
before him. 

'Gee, what a nice day out,' Darksol said, grinning.


The clouds began to darken and grow heavy. Rain poured down, drizzling at
first, but quickly became torrential. Tyresian and Onichan looked at each
other, unsure of what to make of this.
The water began to darken. Tyresian noticed an odd tingling feeling and 
glanced at his hands.
They weren't there. In fact, withen seconds, Tyresian had ceased to exist. 
The acid rain had entered the wound Darksol gave him earlier and eaten him
from the inside out.

Onichan noticed that the dockworkers, also, were dropping dead around her.
Casting a spell of healing on herself in order to nullify the rain's 
effects, she looked at Darksol. He was bent over double with crazed giggling.
Running up to him, she raised her sword high over his head, and relieved 
him of it. 


Darksol dropped like a sack of potatoes. Onichan nudged his body with her
foot, then turned away to find more zombies.

A hand fell on her shoulder. Whirling around, she brought her sword up, ready
to strike down another zombie. Instead, there was Darksol, with his head
still attached.


'That was mean,' he said. 

Onichan jerked away, taking Darksol's hand with her. It remained where it 
was, on her shoulder. Darksol gaped in disbelief.

'Hey, give that back! That's the hand of my sword arm!' He pointed a finger
(on his remaining hand) at her. A bolt of electricity shot from it, 
striking her on the chest. 

Onichan quickly healed herself, but was immediately once again put on the
defensive as Darksol came at her with his sword. For all his talk of being
right-handed, he fought just as well with his left. 


Darksol once again jumped away in that misleading way of his, looked up 
at the sky, and said, 'Gee, what a nice---

And received Tyresian's sword in his throat.

Annoyed, Darksol walked the neccasary steps to get off of Tyresian's sword.
Glowering angrily, he hit Tyresian with a lightning bolt as well. Tyresian
was knocked fifteen feet back with the force of the bolt.

'Stay down and let the Old Thalosians do thier work. Even now, a large 
group of them are on thier way.' Darksol ran over to Tyresian and kicked him
as he tried to get up. 'Perhaps what we have here is a failure to 
communicate,' Darksol said quietly. He turned to Onichan, who was sitting
with her back against a wall, smiling at him.

'Find something funny about this?' Darksol growled, all joviality gone.

'I just think it's funny,' Onichan said, 'that the only offensive spell I
have is one that will put you where you belong.'

Darksol stopped, thought about that for a second. Suddenly, his eyes 


widened, and he began to run at Onichan, realizing what she meant. He
covered about 10 feet before the ground opened up beneath him. Darksol 
dived for Onichan, and caught the rim of the pit with his only hand. He
began to climb out, but his arm began to rip at the elbow. Unable to 
find any purchase with the stump of his other arm, he just sort of shrugged.


'Oh, darn,' was the last thing Darksol said before he plummeted deep into
the earth. After swallowing him, the crack closed up, leaving Darksol's
forearm in the middle of the street.

Dyran rushed up, rather belatedly. 'Hey, you two all right?'

		 Epilogue

          *         *         *

The zombies underground were eliminated, unable to respawn without Darksol's
presence and thier life-giving stones. The bodies all disentegrated after
the stones were taken from thier chests, and street cleaners had a field
day sweeping up the dust. Celestine paid the adventurers thier bounties;
Tyresian and Onichan, however occupied they were with Darksol, got the most.
Dyran, who had killed all of those accursed underground zombies, got quite
a few as well. Fred, last but not least, came back to Kemo weighed down
with rocks. 

The stones themselves were taken by the Mage's guild, to be studied and thier
undead-creating secret discovered. They were found to be normal, everyday
rocks. What arcane secret did Darksol use to give the Old Thalosians life?
What part did the rocks play in it? And why was Darksol in Old Thalos, 
anyway? The answers to these questions apparently died with Darksol.


One last thing. When the street cleaners approached the part of the docks
where Darksol had been devoured by the earth, the forearm was gone, as well

as the sword it had held. A lot of people don't think that Darksol is dead;
many think that he is somewhere shooting pool with Jimmy Hoffa or cavorting
about with Bruce Lee. 

Perhaps the latter is not so far from the truth.



--Your friendly neighborhood bard. :)