Into Vlad’s Domain

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Back to the castle, to find it even more changed than when we left. Even the tapestries have changed! That poor old hunchback is still lying, shot full of bolts, by the door. Remy pulls them out, and they guy wakes up! What?? We just left him there for days, unconscious!

He starts asking for his Master, then notices the curse has taken root and asks how long it’s been. We tell him a few days, and that his master and the crazy man (he says Van Helsing), are still running around the place. He says Van Helsing has a vendetta against his master, then starts listing off a bunch of weird names for him. Including Vlad the Impaler! What Is this guy? He also calls him the Prince of Caprathia or something, and Remy says that was 400 years ago. When we ask if his master is undead, he says ‘beyond death.’ Like that means anything.

Okay, but the castle? Can we fix it? He just laughs, but does agree that if the master leaves, he’ll take his curse with him. Every place he stays becomes his home, he says. Okay, how do we find him? Beyond the throne room, but all his servants will attack us if we haven’t sworn fealty to him. But we can’t swear fealty unless we find him. Oh great! He won’t even help us, says it’s against the rules! Ugh! Stupid adults and their stupid rules!

We leave him behind. Nat says she doesn’t know of any throne room, but maybe she can get us to a library where we can learn something more. She can’t, and we wander for a while, dispensing with various dogs, bats, and zombies in the hallways.

Heading back to the front entrance, we start over, mapping the first floor as best we can. This time we find a giant glass arboritum filled with impossibly green trees and plants. I hesitate at the door. I don’t… last time… there were so many bodies… Philomena calls back to me, taunting me to come in so she can have someone to banter with. Deep breaths, I can do this. It’ll be different this time. If she can do it, so can I. Nevermind that she’s riding atop her fiance turned giant scorpion.

There are eyes on us as we walk, but we can’t see the watchers. Klyce clacks a warning and we proceed carefully. Right into a clearing with an overgrown and blackened fountain. Where we are immediately surrounded by gigantic wolves and werewolves. The leader shouts “All glory to the Master!” as they attack.

The wolves breathe out ice! It nearly takes me down, and as soon as I can, I thunderstep Philomena and myself up into the trees. Gerhardt puts a bubble around the leader and his biggest wolf that lasts most of the fight. I eventually toss a few rocks up at the glass ceiling so I can call some lighting inside to help finish the fight. The werewolves all crumble to dust, leaving only the wolf corpses behind. How odd.

We take a few moments to rest and heal folks up while Nat looks around the fountain. She finds a key with a blue shiny gem in it. Pocketing that for later, we head on.

The trees give way to a manicured garden, full of the pungent smell of flowers and fruit. There’s another fountain here, but this one is fresh. There are frollicking nymps in the water and a demonic woman nestled in the arms of heroic statue. The nymphs dive into the water and disappear as soon as they see us approach.

I ask if she knows where the Master is so we can go swear our fealty to him, hoping to avoid another fight. She suggests we stay with her, to eat, drink, rest and have fun. Oh, um, sure, that sounds nice. I promised the hag that I’d always accept hospitality, so I try to get the rest of the group to agree. They aren’t so happy with the idea. Nat notices that she has a key around her neck and tells her that we need it. She asks what we’re offering for it, and when we waver, asks for a kiss. Nat’s not so keen on that.

She starts looking us over for something else to ask for, but when her eyes fall on Marybeth, she screams. Bloodfeud!!! And starts a fight.

She’s so pretty though, why would I want to hurt her. And her hugs are so nice. Okay, her kisses hurt a lot, but that’s okay. Everyone should just leave us alone. I toss a storm sphere out to keep the rest of the group away. Marybeth is mean to her, so I pull a couple lightning bolt out of the sphere to try and chase her away. Then there’s darkness as Dalish calls out dark words.

When I wake up, I still don’t feel good, and everyone insists we all take a long nap. I wake up from nightmares and remember I was going to ask Hank a question. So, I send to him, asking about the six-armed, green, glowing figure from the mine. Is that what the Green Witch looks like? He says yeah, he felt it happen, but it’s not time yet, and he’ll be in touch. I go back to sleep, but I don’t rest easy here.

When we get up, I feel a whole lot better. On from the greenhouse and find a grand hall with a big locked double door. Nat pulls out the two keys she gathered in the greenhouse, but there are spaces for four keys with different shaped gems. So, she tries to pick the lock on one of the ones she doesn’t have.

Black smoke pours out of this lock and forms into a hooded figure with a scythe. “Die, Interloper!” It shouts as it attacks her. Remy tries to help, but his shots just cause another one to form and attack him. “Do not interfere!” So, the rest of us sit back while these spectral figures carve up our friends, until they put them both down. Gerhardt patches them up after the fight, and we head on towards the kitchens.

Green Goddess

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I don’t even know what’s happening anymore. My ears are buzzing as the guys talk about what to do with the body. I can’t look at any of them. There’s shouting for a moment about the body rising, but a few bursts of magic and it is down again. Dalish animates it, to keep the shadow from doing it again. I can’t look at any of them. What are we doing?

A couple of them start talking to the air, and Klyce materializes out of the mists. The others explain what has been happening, and we move on. The haze is thickening as we go down. Too much for a normal mana mine. It feels weird, like static in the air. The shadowman follows us, ranting. Easier to focus on his madness instead of my own.

He caught them scheming against the king, but he wasn’t fast enough. They enfeebled him and send him down to the mines. Him, Arnis Lysander. It took him months to regain his mind, but the mana degrades and warps. It erased his ability to cast spells. He lost track of time between escape attempts. They took bits of him every time, until his mind was gone. Then She came. She restored his mind and his magic. She promised to restore his body. If only he would break the Bones. He will gladly repay her, gladly kill a thousand people. One small family means nothing to him. He wants to finish this.

We arrive in a chamber, much like the one that led us to the gods the first time we were ever here. This one, however, has four of the mutant prisoners and one horribly distended, bloated, purple body. They posture at each other, and bring up Rictus one last time. He laughs about Rictus’ clone factory, and says that should we find Rictus’ own clone, only then would we have a chance of ever defeating him. He says that those clones won’t work for us, we’re blocked down here, from that magic. Too much mana, too much static down here.

The fight begins and Klyce, in scorpian body, starts attacking Nat. Klyce gets controlled too easily, I levitate him up to the ceiling until he calms down, edging my way into the room. When I let him down again, he starts attacking me, until Gerhardt dispells the mind control. Lysander put up a barrier to block our spells, so they group focuses on the mutants, while I work my way around the room. I got too close though, and everything turn to blackness.

There is darkness. And a green hill. And something Very Important. Nothing. Red smoke. “Revenge is my purview, witch!” Blackness.

I wake up in bed with Marybeth beside me and Nat curled up near our feet. Everything hurts! Remy knocks on the door, but we make him wait a moment. What happened, is he dead? I don’t know if he’s dead. What? It’s too much and we let Remy come in to change my bandages.

They tell me that I died. But then a glowing green figure with six arms rose in my place with a blinding flash. They say this figure called down lightning right through the earth, ripping the mine wide open. They say that when Lysander tried to get away, the figured ripped open a five hundred foot crevice through the mine to get at him and destroy him. They say it called such a horrible storm down. But then it was suddenly gone, and they found me, badly burned where it had been.

We gather up with all the others, and I tell them about the red smoke and what it said. Afraid for a moment that it was Lysander, but the others remind me he was black shadow, and Nat assures me he is gone. The others think maybe it was the Wandering Vengeance. Klyce admits that he sees red auras around people who hurt him when he fights, and tells us about how his father died. Maybe he opened the door in his anger to this god.

We take stock. Nat’s dad is still unconscious. The town seems safe, the prisoners are no longer running amok. There are, however, strange things still happening in the castle. We have to find Vlad Tepish and the other invader and stop them. First, though, we get all the townspeople safely back out of the castle and to their homes.

Darkness in the Mines

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I swear it was dawn, but as we headed back up to the castle, it grew dark once more. There is chaos in the courtyard. The prisoners that didn’t go to town came here, and took a dozen more down into the mines. Nat takes charge and sets an elder of the town to manage the citizenry. She gets the men to building tents in the continued storm and the women and children inside to the banquet hall for shelter. After checking to be sure Nat’s family is alright, we all try to get a little rest. We have to go to the mines, but not in the exhausted state we’re currently in.

After our rest, and a bit of orange juice (Remy is still obsessed with the juice’s existence), we talk about what to do. It’s decided that we’ll go to the mines through a secret entrance from the castle, instead of the front gate. We head down carefully, because the crazed crossbolter has set bear traps all down the path. Fortunately, we don’t run into him or the strange bat-man. We find a phantom hound, like Dalish’s upstairs. Gerhardt dispells it so we can get by.

We get down to the mine level, but the chamber between us and it is full of the inactive undead, stacked like cordwood. Remy starts freaking out again. You’d think he’d seen enough undead by now, but I guess some people just can’t handle the creep factor after they’ve tried to kill you repeatedly. Remy starts flying and the rest of us start climbing our way through. One twitches, Remy shoots, and then all heck breaks loose.

I grab Marybeth beside me and dimesion door us out of the room to the far side. Dalish and Gerhardt join us after only a moment. There’s a huge explosion on the other side of the door, and Remy yells at us to get Nat. It takes some doing to get the door open after he exploded all the zombies in front of it, but we managed to pull her out and get her healed back to consciousness. Just in time for Remy to get himself out before we slam the door back shut.

Back awake now, and with all of us gasping for breath, wondering what we’re doing down here, Nat shares a vision from the night before. The guy we’re after is deep in the earth. He’s been here a long time and to stop the current disaster we have to break his body. But to finish him, we have to break his mind. Oh good, riddles to go with the creepy shadow monster.

The group has a bit of a fluff up with Remy about zombies again, until said creepy shadow calls out to him, saying it can work with a fear of zombies. We call out to it in turn, asking why it’s doing this. It says it got a gift and now must destroy the Bones, as they kept him trapped here. We try to figure out who he is and how he got free, but it’s no use.

We head on, and come across a group of people, beaten and tied. We call out to them quietly, and they say that the miners check on them every half hour or so. Deciding to set a trap, we cut their ropes and send them back to wait outside the zombie room. Marybeth and I sit where they were while everyone else hides. They show up on schedule, and though the fight is rough, we put them down.

The shadow starts talking again. He asks about the mage revolution, and we tell him the mages won. He was put down here before it started. When we mention Rictus, he seems interested. We try to make a deal, don’t go after the Bones and we’ll help him get Rictus. He won’t be disuaded, though.

We head onward, freeing captives as we go, sending them back along the paths we’ve cleared , and hoping for the best. Then we come across a group of miners that are still working. Some are badly mutated, but some are only slightly affected. Nat recognizes one as Philomena’s butler, Ulysses. She approaches him carefully.

Asking what happened, he slowly, painfully replies punishment. Then asks after the family. She assures him they are safe. She asks what happpened. Bad things go bad, but not him. Remy steps up to take a look at him. The mana exposure has caused severe damage. It seems the mana has weakened them, made them easier to control for the shadow. Nat delves a little into his mind, with his permission, to try and understand. The shadow takes the weak, but he doesn’t know where they go. He keeps working so he can keep control. He says he’s been here in this mine for a year now.

We try to get him to stop working and go wait with the others, but he won’t. He doesn’t want his family to know what became of him, begs us not to tell Philomena. Remy thinks maybe Triplehorn or Klyce can figure out a way to fix the damage. Nat says it’s too late, he wants it to end. While the boys argue, Nat steps forward, and stabs him through the heart.

I… I can’t look. I… we knew him. He was innocent… Not a monster… not bad. He… I… what… No…

Prison Break

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Nat tells the strange man that there are no Tepish folk here. He insists his son is Stephen Tepish. Oh… oh dear. But Nat persists in saying that no such person exists. The man asks for the real masters of the house, and cows a servant into going to get them. I send to Stephen telling him that someone has arrived looking for him.

Then the window above the door shatters and a wild man carrying crossbows jumps through, shooting Lord Tepish repeatedly in the chest. He shouts You’ll die tonight, Demon! Lord Tepish disintigrates into a cloud of bats, most of which take off into the keep. Oh dear! We shout at the man, but he just kills Tepish’s servant dead and runs off after the bats.

Marybeth and Gerhardt give chase to the intruders. There’s noise outside, and when Klyce looks, he sees prisoners streaming out of the mines. Nat hears something upstairs and tears off to check on her family, with Dalish and Remy in tow. Klyce and I take off outside, to head off the mob from reaching the town.

The prisoners are strangely deformed. Large limbs or strange faces. Klyce rushes to the front, dodging lightning strikes from the storm. When I get close, I try controling the winds to slow them down. Forgetting, that this ends my fly spell. Dropping down among them, I go unnoticed at first. When they do see me, they swarm and attack. I managed to get to Klyce’s side as he turns into a giant screaming ape. Unfortunately, neither of us can deter many of them from the village, and there’s a mage in the crowd. He orders them to attack Klyce and they knock him unconscious. I dimension door us back towards the keep, keeping him alive, though barely. We hide for a time, until I can get us the rest of the way back.

When we get back, everyone is gathering up in Nat’s parents’ room. Some of the prisoners had snuck in and attacked Nat’s family in their bedrooms. Her father does not look well at all. Dalish puts up a protective barrier and summons a watchdog while we wait for Marybeth and Gerhardt to get back.

When they arrive, they say they chased the intruders to a dead end. We explain the prison break from the mines. Then, we explain Lord Tepish’s arrival and his pursuer to Nat’s parents. They know Tepish from the old world, but insist he is not Stephen’s father. Nat gets very angry at his mom for withholding information that has now put them all, and their village, in danger. Marybeth tries scrying on Stephen, but sees only darkness. Nat storms off and we all follow. Dalish has to transfer his protection spells to Mummy Dalish before he can leave, but it works.

Klyce convinces Nat that the village is in more danger than Stephen is, and we head down to deal with the mob of prisoners. We explain about the mage, and Nat wonders if it’s the master the prisoners they killed spoke of. Down in the village, it is total chaos. Fire, looting, violence on every corner. We start picking off small groups as we head for the center of town. Klyce deems their deformities as already lost, and therefore killable.

In the center of town, four big mutated men walk out of the townhall as we arrive. We engage, and I start calling down lightning of my own from the storm. A well-aimed firey explosion takes me down. And all the hair I had finally managed to regrow properly!

The group manages to take the four men and the shadowy thing down, or so it seems when they wake me up in the aftermath. We spend the rest of the night clearing the town of mutated prisoners and putting out fires. By dawn, the town is safe again, if ruined. I idly wonder if the seamstress survived as we head back up to the keep.

Harvest Time is Here Again

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I met up with Dalish on my way north. We headed up to Nat’s house together, on a much more peaceful journey that the first time. Dalish, however, is looking like a dead husk, almost as bad as his mummy counterpart. He says he’s nearly finished with his plan. I’m just happy to be out of Atlantic City for a few weeks.

When we arrive, Nat greets us with skull-tattoo-covered arms. She explains that they are for battles she has fought and that she has marks on her back for deaths she has caused by the thousands. She seems both proud and depressed by all of this, and has marked herself in their memory.

We head inside for some dinner, and Dalish strikes up conversation about the mines. They cannot control the undead without Skull Grandpa, so they’ve had to resort to prison labor. Nat’s dad is not happy with this situation, and hopes that between Stephen, Nat, and Dalish, something can be done.

Gerhardt and Klyce arrive the next day. Klyce in the form of an eagle, and in a great big coat when he transforms back. They’ve both seen a lot of battle out west, but Gerhardt seems even more quiet than usual. Remy, Philomena, and Marybeth all ride up together from New Gnosis and they all look quite well. Marybeth has an ease to her that I’ve never seen, and Remy has filled out into his body a bit more naturally.

His eye, however, is glowing a dull orange. He fashioned himself a new eye and wanted to add some magic to it. It seems that some of the power he siphoned of Balor seeped into it. It beats ever so slightly. I warn him against it trying to grow a new god in his head, but he seems unworried.

We all have a conversation about how to keep Rictus from using me, but none of the solutions seem workable. Marybeth wants to put a geas on me, but that doesn’t last long enough, and it’s not my will doing the killing. We have to change the laws to stop him. And that’s going to take a while.

At dinner, conversation returns to the mines and the horrible conditions and resources required to keep prisoners alive an working. Dalish, Stephen, and Nat promise to start work immediately after dinner.

Talk turns to Dalish’s ‘solution’ for his crippling depression, and Remy pleads with him to find another way. Nat and Marybeth chat about Nat’s tattoos and Marybeth’s found peace and happiness. Marybeth found out west that she is fully capable of handling herself and staying alive without others looking after her.

Someone mentions Xin Yue towards the end of the night, and on my way to bed, I send her a message, asking how things are going. She tells me her clan has been destroyed, and there is no stopping the golden horde. This is awful, and lends itself to some pretty horrific nightmares.

The next day, after a morning run with the boys, I fill everyone in on what Xin Yue said. There’s nothing to be done about it from here, but I did offer her a place to stay when our military service is over. Marybeth, Remy, and I go find a seamstress in the village. Marybeth has some beautiful dresses, and I’m still stuck with military wear. With her help, we design a couple new dresses for me to wear to the Harvest Festival.

That night, a storm comes in with dinner. I so badly want to go out and stand in the rain and wind and lightning. The unbridled power of it calls to me. But, I stay at the table and eat and drink with my friends. Until a crash of thunder turns into knocking at the front door. A servant comes to get Nat because her parents have already gone to bed, so she’s in charge.

I follow Nat down to see who it is, and the others trail behind. Two figures are standing in the doorway. A hunched over figure with a hideous face, dripping water all over the floor, and a finely dressed older man who is completely dry.

“Good evening. I am Vlad Tepish, and I am here to see my son.”