15006/Comes the Necromancer - the Cullings of Kulan Gath

Comes the Necromancer - the Cullings of Kulan Gath
Date of Scene:	01 June 2023
Location:	Anonymous Graveyard - New York City
Synopsis:	Kulan Gath goes to awaken from his long slumber - but is defeated by two, one as old as he. But, destroying the body of a necromancer is little more than a short term setback, so of course he'll be back...
Cast of Characters:	Mary Jane Watson, Phoebe Beacon, Sprite

---

Mary Jane Watson has posed:
There were always places where the unknown, the unwanted, and the abandoned were buried. Where graveyards for those that had no names, no identities, and those that no one particularly cared to know about were little more than dumped. This was one of those places. In one of the poorer districts of the city, a small plot of land with barely any plaques to mark what it was - just a rusted gate with a sign hanging on by a single bolt noting a Cemetery. And ordinarily it wasn't the type of place that people congregated.

Tonight.. Well, tonight is decidedly different. There are a dozen or so individuals - wearing dark robes over their bodies, thier hands up in the air, weaving magic in tongues forgotten by man.

Phoebe Beacon has posed:
    Potters Fields. Phoebe helped volunteer to tend one in Gotham City while she was in highschool, and still visited to help clean gravestones every so often. BUt this? This was bad. This was Bad News. And she would have thought others would have picked up on it in New York.

    Her cellphone wasn't sending any signal out; energies here were too thick. Instead, she was wearing a dark gray hood, a cover over her mouth and a mask over her face. She could feel the air tingling with Darkness that ground right up against the Light inside of her, held tightly clamped down by the circle at her wrist, glowing dully in the night.

    Tonight Balm, Supernatural Vigilante, is hiding in the shadows as she watches the weaving in an unfamiliar tongue.

Mary Jane Watson has posed:
There's chanting in languages long forgotten by most men. Even in this age, only those likely that had experienced them would be cognizant of what they were. However, recognition was not needed - the intent was clear. Calling for misery from those abandoned - names forgotten, never bothered to be recalled, too poor and decripit.. Decades if not centuries of suffering is recalled by these beings casting magics.
    They dig forth deep into the bodies, the cores of those left entombed. And they go to uplift thier loathing, their misery.. And their anguish most of all as it starts to collect up into the air, a glowing ball of hate infused upon decades and decades.. Those murdered, left in alleys. Abandoned by tehir families. Decript and destitute.
    All the energy collects, glowing brighter and brighter to those that can see it.

Sprite has posed:
    Sprite, herself, is only tangentally connected with the mystical world, despite having been a goddess, or mistaken for a goddess on several occasions. She's more cosmic than mystic. But, she's also ludicrously old...and some of this feels familiar to her. So, the redhaired youth finds her way making it to the old cemetery. Nothing good ever happens in cemeteries, really. And as someone untouched by death, it's not like she has any place here. But she can see the robed figures up ahead. In contrast to Balm, she doesn't bother hiding at all. She walks right out in the open, approaching the group she can see up ahead, and the glowing ball. "Guys, really, you couldn't even use one of the new, trendy cemetaries? This is a little bit ghetto, even for cultists." She says, voice dripping with snark and sarcasm.

Phoebe Beacon has posed:
    One can almost feel the :| in Balm's voice as she pipes up with "Not to mention trying to raise all the misery? Didn't that go out in the early zips?" she questions, hopping down to the ground, and then she moves in to speedily attack -- this stuff can't mean anything good!

    The younger magician slings a couple of smokebombs into the mudst of the cultists, and extending her physical staff she immediately starts going for knees and kneecaps!

    "They've gathered a bunch of energy in the center!" she calls out "Don't suppose you know how to interrupt it?"

Mary Jane Watson has posed:
Two of the cultists turn over to face Sprite as the Eternal goes to make her appearance. Their bodies don't look like corpses.
    They look like something far, far worse. Dozens and dozens of pieces of human'ish skin and bones that had been stitched together on them to make a jigsaw puzzle of a series of Frankenstein's Monster style bodies threaded in a patchwork.

One goes to speak over, "And what sort of a little one comes to interrupt us on this unfair night?" Musing over and going to advance towards Sprite.

The other goes to advance towards Balm. The smoke bombs going off don't phase it or slow it - apparently the whole 'being dead' thing meant that one didn't have issues with being blinded.

Sprite has posed:
    Sprite looks over at the glowing ball in the center. "Good question! Let's find out!" She's not a practitioner, but she's seen A LOT of rituals over forever. Two good ways to deal with magic...you either deal with the caster, or you deal with the spell. She raises a palm, and fires out a beam of energy from it towards the center of the sphere. "An easily entertained one." She says, looking at the one who's approaching her. "So what's the magic? Cursing someone? Are we calling Cthulhu? Virgin sacrifice! I love a good virgin sacrifice..."

Phoebe Beacon has posed:
    "Oh my god -- you guys look awful! Have you been doing Gwenyth Paltrow's 'GOOP' thing? 'Cause that totally screws the pH balance of your --"

    ka-WACK! Kneecaps snappin', feet tappin', bad guy whackin', she's a maaagic girl.

    "-- Ugh. No this doesn't look like a normal curse. And I think you need Old Atlantean for the Big C."

    Pause as she upper-cuts one of the cultists, trying to see if they can operate without their head.

    "Let's hope it's not a virgin sacrifice." she states in a very flat tone.

Mary Jane Watson has posed:
One of them goes to chortle over at Sprite, "We do not seek to awaken the priest of the Old Ones." In mention of Cthulhu. Wait, priest? "And if we were, little one, then you would be among those put up." The banter goes back and forth with Sprite. The ball goes to take the bolt over, sizzling as the energy fired from the Eternal turns it from red to green.
    The cultist goes to take a step over towards Sprite, hand upraised over as from it's body hundreds upon hundreds and thousands upon thousands of insects start to pour out towards the ancient, yet childlike eternal.
    The Cultist that Balm goes to charge has his head snapped off! He responds by having one arm catch the head, attempting to slam it up over inot her gut while the other hand tries to cuff her on the back of the head!
    The remaining ones continue with the chanting, seemingly having no problems with the interruption - or the sudden shift in energy from the bolt that Sprite had shot.

Sprite has posed:
    "Atlantean isn't a bad choice. I'd normally think Aklo..." Sprite banters with Balm. She almost...ALMOST...adds an "Ia! Ia! Cthulhu fthagn!". But honestly, when a ritual with built up magic is going on, do not poke the bear. She REALLY doesn't want to fight Cthulhu. She looks over as the thousands of insects begin to pour out at her, and takes a step back. Then there's two of her. Both take a step back. Four. Then eight. Sixteen. They look back at him and they begin to scatter through the graveyard, running all about...including towards the other cultists. Sixteen very ornate-looking daggers are drawn.

Phoebe Beacon has posed:
    Atlantean just sounds prett--" Balm was happily bantering back, but then she gets struck upside the head with... a hand! And a head to the gut!

    She goes tumbling forward, rolling on one shoulder and landing in a slight skid in the too-long grass.

    "Okay, that's bad." she wheezes out, and then she grips her left hand.

    "Exolvo mi, da mihi lumen!" she casts, and the white band on her left hand flashes brighter, rose-gold tracing her veins from her left wrist and visible beneath even the sleeve of her jacket as her magic is released.

    Suddenly, she should very much seem like a problem. Phoebe may not be an Eternal, but she has the blood of gods in her body, and the magic of the Shard is potent.

    And she happens to be very good at wrecking the day of the undead. She spins her staff again, and then surges forward, magic trailing along the extending staff in pink glowing lines as she leaps up to bring it smashing down on the cultist sans head!

Mary Jane Watson has posed:
The Eternal going to rapidly appear throughout the graveyard has the Cultists actually reacting in surprise. It interrupts their ritual enough that the flickering ball goes from blue to green and then to purple. Even as the blast of light energy from Phoebe adds a streak of white to it. The colors would whirl and churn together, as more things flow up to it as the white blasts up. It starts to darken.
    Phoebe's opponent knows how to get ahead with their job! Even as it goes to try and handle her and give her some pretty serious head.. Her attacker is then flung away over as the blood of gods goes to hit the Cultist over! IT disintegrates. So do the next three nearest around it. Now there are two or even three Sprites to each cultist..

Sprite has posed:
    Sprite frowns as she perceives some of what's going on. Not all of it, but enough to know something is going on. She mutters something under her breath to her dagger...it's actually ancient Mesopotamian for "Be ready". Of course, that's because her dagger is actually a Mother Box, and a Mother Box is a capacitor for cosmic energy...if this thing goes nuclear, she wants to be ready to try and soak up any excess energy. The Sprites begin their own little dance of violence; daggers cutting here, cutting there. Only one Sprite and one dagger is "real"...but when all your senses are telling you that what you're seeing and feeling is real, it should still be enough to mess with concentration. She hopes.

Phoebe Beacon has posed:
    Her staff spins again, and Balm goes after the next group of Cultists.

    "Keep trying to interrupt it! I'll take care of the ghouls!" she calls to Sprite, making her way around the graveyard to pinkoplate and otherwise dismiss the undead.

    "Whatever it's for, it's absorbing magic in the area. Everything in the area! All energies! It's like... a full-spectrum magic hoover!" she winces.

    "Kinda tingles-- that can't be good!"

Mary Jane Watson has posed:
The ball goes to start turning white. The darkness fading away now as all of the divergent magical energies start to crystalize together, making a convergence over as the differences of energy go to smooth over and gestalt. Normally undead weren't particularly known for having more than one type of thing thrown together in a sacrifice..
    Balm goes to slash over through the cultists and they drop down - their part in things has been done, after all. The slashing of Sprite only adds to the mix of chaos as all the bodies start to lsump forwards, whether slashed, stabbed, or however they had been taken down.
    And then there's the sense of.. A deep, deep breath. A set of lungs that had not taken in air for a long time. A wheezing cough turning over to shriveled laughter.
    A very, very old laugh. That to Sprite.. Is familiar.
    Even with the glowing white energy ball having everything being dumped inot it cut off and just hanging there.

Sprite has posed:
    Crap. Crap crap crap. Sprite's duplicates all vanish, as does her dagger. The last thing she needs is to be putting out any additional cosmic energy if the sphere is absorbing it. She clamps down on her own power emissions, and frowns as she hears the old, wheezing laugh.

    That's one good thing about being not just /a/ storyteller, but /the/ original storyteller; you get a really good memory for the details. Sprite fluently flips to ancient Stygian, and says "You again? Really, wasn't the original show enough?" This does not mark the first time one of the Eternals and Kulan Gath have had a run-in.

Phoebe Beacon has posed:
    Phoebe skids to a stop, the laughter making the hair on the back of her neck stand up as she looks to Sprite, and then to the orb of malicious intent.

    ". . . I get the sense I'm missing context." she whispers, mostly to herself, but she clasps her right hand over her left and also tamps down on her own power, taking a moment to catch her breath.

Mary Jane Watson has posed:
The ground peels away as if bubbles of an ancient swamp were slowly rippling to the surface, slowly bursting with the gasses they had collected for countless ages. From it is an old man - or what would at one point have been an old man.
    "And you haven't changed a day, Little Eternal." The figure would mvoe unnaturally - like a mannequin shifting about, a puppeteer trying out something for the first time. "But that seems to be the point, isn't it?" Another wheeze, ancient l ungs heaving with air - but yet the shambling corpse didn't need to breathe. The taunt is exchanged in Cimmerian.

Sprite has posed:
    Sprite looks over to Phoebe. "Necromancer." she says in English. "Very old. Very powerful." When Sprite calls something old, that means something. "If you can ward yourself against necromantic power, do it."

    She then turns her attention back to Kulan Gath. "That is, sort of, the point." She'll switch over to Cimmerian. She speaks everything. "You're out of time. Not in the threat kind of way...just in the outdated kind of way. This isn't a world of magic anymore." The redhead crosses her arms over her chest. "That, and you know if my family and I have to fight you, you know who's going to win." It's said with bravado that, if not felt, is at least well-performed. "Orrrr you could save yourself the pain and just go back to being dead on your own.

    Of course, while she isn't going to be obvious about it, she IS going to reach out telepathically towards Phoebe, and basically play real-time universal translator unless the other woman blocks her out. Little things like Balm understanding everything while Kulan Gath doesn't think she does could be tactically relevant. And even if it isn't, it's still helpful.

Phoebe Beacon has posed:
    "I gathered -- the whole undead cultist thing *kinda* gave it away." Balm replies in a slightly sarcastic voice, and she brings her arms down a moment, grabbing her earpods from her pack and squeezes them until they break in her hands, uttering a spell to let her understand language. Not often she gets to use it, but with two of them speaking in ancient tongues that she's only catching bits and pieces -- and heck, she's gonna hafta make a report.

Mary Jane Watson has posed:
The thing wheezes again, an goes to laugh. Kulan Gath speaks, the language understandable by Phoebe. "Oh yes, your kind, Eternal. Those which couldn't be deigned to bother with this planet for however long. Can they still be bothered? OR do you just whimsically walk amongst the population of this planet playing gods to them?" A low wheeze laughter that's stronger.
    "And outdated? I come from an era where there were no gods. I became one. Here and now there are many." He would grin. "So I predated them. Little Eternal, all you have is made by something else. All I am is myself."
    He goes to glance over at Phoebe, speaking - fully understanding that she knows what he says. "Do you know your history, Child? For those eons where the gods could not be bothered to care that Earth was doomed and the planet extinct?" He would muse on.

Sprite has posed:
    Sprite is just happy to keep him talking. If he's talking, he's not out there doing anything else, and she's hoping that an ACTUAL sorceress may be able to thwart him in ways she can't. "Oh, that's the other branch of the family. Mine are still here. And we've been gods. It gets boring. You should know that. You can call yourself a god, Gath. That doesn't make it so." She shakes her head. "Do you REALLY want to see how well you hold up to me? If I'm not holding back? Especially when you're freshly reborn?" She re-manifests her dagger, more for threat than anything else.

    Like all Eternals, she CAN put out a ludicrous amount of power. However, she is NOT the warrior of her people. She's the trickster. She'd MUCH rather buy time for other people.

Phoebe Beacon has posed:
    "From my understanding most of the gods don't give two shakes of a fig about the world. However.." Phoebe pauses a moment, and she shifts her weight. Her eyes gain that rosy-gold glow to them as she breathes out, and she feels power flood her flight tattoo. The ghostly, glass-like appearance of wings forming behind her as she tilts her head forward.

    "I do."

    And Balm moves faster than she has any right to, flying scant inches off the ground as she brings her staff up to bear, sailing above Kulan Gath and trying to sweep him from behind!

Mary Jane Watson has posed:
Kulan Gath is talking - he's as full of himself as he was however many thousands of years ago that the Eternals knew him and clashed with him. Still happy to hear the sound of his own voice. "For what? To have you run away with your tail between your legs?" The taunt from Gath going on. He was an old enough being to know better. So he was playing along or waking up had taken mos tof his edge off him. "And if you care to try, little Eternal.."
    The cover works out for Balm going to launch herself over at him, her form flickering with energy as she goes to move with power and grace, a fluttering of wings.. And she goes to stop cold in midair. Frozen over in place. Still able to move and breathe but all of her power suddenly left hanging.
    "Little goddess, since you seem so young to do such a thing, let the Eternal give you a lesson." Kulan Gath would grin.
    Then Balm is flung - rather lightly over towards Sprite. Well enough within the range for Sprite to catch her without issue.

Sprite has posed:
    Well...it would be if that was actually Sprite, unfortunately. Balm will have to catch herself. That's because the real Sprite went invisible and has moved around behind Kulan Gath while leaving an illusory double there in front of him, talking to him. As Balm leaps for him, she appears behind him and thrusts out with her Mother Box/Dagger, straight at his back, to slice at his spine. "Sorry. You're the one getting schooled today, Gath." she quips, as she stabs.

Phoebe Beacon has posed:
    Balm is frozen, mid-swing, in a perfect swing - Red Robin would have been so proud -- but then she is LAUNCHED at the illusionary sprite. There is an awkward, pained sound, and Balm twists herself in the air as she's thrown, using those ghostly wings to right herself before she lands on the ground, three-point landing and skids back in the grass.

    That was /uncomfortable/.

    She raises her head and as Sprite uses the dagger, she repostes with fire.

    "Omnia ante me luce ure!" she commands, and a wall of fire springs from her outstretched fingertips, tinged with her own holy and light power, and sails towards the necromancer!

Mary Jane Watson has posed:
The Necromancer is busy paying attention over at Balm, having been expecting the Eternal to be running a distraction for Balm. So when Sprite's double bluff works, it ends with the Necromancer being stabbed over in the proverbial gut iwht the dagger channeling the Force of a Mother Box.
    What happens is /very/ messy, on a magical and technological level - or however they work in this case. The holy light goes to blast over to the Necromancer, containing him and anchoring him in place as his body essenitally /implodes/, turning inwards and being essentially demolecularized over as if it had been chucked into a black hole.

Sprite has posed:
    Sprite yanks the dagger free, and takes a step back with a smirk. She gives an approving nod over towards Balm, smiling. "Nicely done!" She seems pretty pleased to potentially have dealt with this without needing to call in the rest of her family.

Phoebe Beacon has posed:
    Balm gives a huff of breath, and she tilts her head to the side.

    "... it was that easy? What was that guys *deal* anyway?!" she questions as she winces, coming up to a stand, looking to Sprite, and she flicks her hand, the staff shrinking down, and she offers a fist-bump to the Eternal.

Mary Jane Watson has posed:
Gath's body is obliterated - but neither can get the remote sense of energy being /destroyed/. Or even dissipated. Well.. Blasted out of the general area, sure. but no sense at having done anything lasting. A lich will always be able to find another body - even if painfully..
    But, the large ball of energy is gone, all of the magic in the area has gone back to normal.. And.. The cemetery itself is a victim of urban renewal.

Sprite has posed:
    "He's an asshole of a necromancer from the Hyborean age with delusions of grandeur." Sprite says. She actually beams broadly at the offered fistbump, and returns it with a bright, impish smile on her face. "We PROBABLY didn't get rid of him for good; he's undead and he has a lot of ways to come back. But I'm putting the fact that he didn't walk out of here tonight, and neither did any other undead, very much in the win column. NICE job." She sounds quite approving, and manages to keep the unspoken "...for a mortal" from leaking out anywhere but in her thoughts.

Phoebe Beacon has posed:
    "Definitely chalking it to the 'win' for the moment." Phoebe replies back breezily.

    "So. Eternal, huh? I'm hoping you're gonna be on the good side of things, otherwise I'm oging to have my ass kicked. And that's just not a good look for New York City."

Sprite has posed:
    Sprite grins. "Nah. I would never start a fight with anybody who fights with that much style." She winks, then floats up to be about two feet taller before performing an elaborate bow in mid-air.

Phoebe Beacon has posed:
    Phoebe gives a grin, and replies with a curtsey with an imaginary skirt.

    "Well, next time he shows his ugly face again, hope we get a repeat performance. Until then --"

    A portal opens behind her, ringed by the pink magical energy.

    "Farewell!"