Death and Harvest

On By ravonlockeIn Journal, TristiaLeave a comment

The castle begins shifting back almost as soon as Lord Tepish and Stephen leave. Several of the group go on a mad dash to see what can be salvaged before it all disappears. They return with weapons, armor, money, and a couple floating stones. This seems wrong, I wonder if the castle will reappear whever he’s going without these things. I wonder if he will be upset with us. Perhaps I won’t ask for my boon right away.

We all take a well-earned rest and in the morning, we begin to plan the recovery of mine and town. Dalish thinks he knows what Stephen was on to with Great Grandpa Skull. Klyce plots up ways to cover the hole I apparently made in the mine roof. And the rest of us head into town.

I help with setting up for the Harvest Festival, especially making the Green Witch for this year. Making a quick stop by the seamstress to pay her more for her trouble, and ask she make me matching masks and a black velvet one to cover my hideous face. Nat goes to the grieving families and recruits the dead, or performs the funeral for them. Remy helps with organizing and rebuilding destroyed homes and buildings. Gerhardt stays up at the castle, working to refine mana through his alchemy.

Three days before Harvest Eve, townsfolk find Nat and bring her to the Green Witch. Someone has stuffed a dead body inside with a dagger in her chest! There’s a note on it, that Nat sends HeyHey to go look at for her. “Break the Bones” Nat tries to calm the crowd, assuring them we’ll find who did this and bring them to justice. Some of the crowd wonder about cancelling the festival, but We Can’t Do That!

Offerings to the Green Witch cannot be removed. I offer to stay with the body and the Green Witch until the festival, to keep anyone from adding more. Nat casts a gentle repose on the girl, and Klyce stays nearby, guarding as well. I sit and pray, first to the Dawnmother, but only recieve a sense of anticipation in response. The Green Witch is even less responsive to my pleas.

The all return to the Green Witch with no good information. No one saw anything except a woman in a cloak moving around at night. The girl simply got out of bed, got dressed and walked out. Nat offers to try asking the gods more forcefully than I can, and goes into a trance. When she awakens, she says they were vague as always.

They told her Natalie Rathbone is responsible, could it be an ancestor? Conflice when we go below to Old Town is inevitable, but victory is not. It is not how we can survive, but whether we will. It may or may not be connected to the ritual we intend to perform. And the safety of her people is uncertain.

The group heads up to the castle to rest, drink orange juice, and divy up what is left of our mana. Klyce and I continue standing guard through the night, but it’s no use. The next morning, three more dead bodies are found, not in the Green Witch, but around town. There is even bloody graffiti saying Break the Bones. People are even more upset, convinced the festival is cursed. I try to convince them that the Green Witch will bless them if they just carry on. The festival is not cursed, and we will prove it, if they just wait a little longer.

Nat and Remy come back from the three murder scenes and fill us all in. One looks like a ghost did him in, white hair and terrified expression. One had his throat ripped or blasted out in the street. Another is just dead, not a mark, except for lingering necromancy, on him. Nat also tells us she had a dream of her and Stephen at the Festival, and then him stuffing her into the Green Witch as it was set ablaze. We’re fairly sure, now, that the one behind all this is the one burned all those years ago, come back for revenge.

Klyce and I take a daytime nap while the rest of the group researches the Rathbone family line. They don’t manage to find many records of that time, even ripped out pages in the family library. In the early evening, we go with Nat into town to talk to her people, encourage them, and let them know we are going to help. We break up into groups to patrol the town. Klyce and I stay up all night while the others take shifts. Dalish stays by the Green Witch since he still cannot walk.

In the night, I come across a young man wandering in a daze. I wake him up and help him back home, after taking a knife from his hands. Not long after, HeyHey comes flying up and I follow him off to find Mummy Dalish, Nat and a badly bleeding child. The boy has apparently bitten his own thumb off when MD took away his bucket of paint. I heal his thumb back on, but it looks a little funny, and Nat takes him home.

Come morning, we all have breakfast and a short rest before gathering up everything we need, and heading down to Old Town. Klyce makes quick work of the blockage he had put in place, and quickly morphs into a giant scorpian once we get inside. The boys throw up light and we walk into a darkness even more opressive than last time.

In the center of town, we toss up more light and spread out to allow Dalish to work. He has to repair the ritual circle before we can do anything else. Klyce’s scorpian body is helpful in clearing the space. Nat and Gerhardt help him redraw damaged sections. Remy and I offer magical guidance in making the necessary alterations. It takes some hours, but the circle is ready in plenty of time.

As it grows darker, and dusk settles outside, the time has come. Dalish and Nat will perform the ritual while the rest of us must protect them at all costs. Angry, restless voices whisper all around us. Nat appears to be arguing with herself, but I’m too far away to hear what is going on. Then a ghostly outline dives into Nat’s body, and a smoky blackness coalesces into an inky, large humanoid form.

Death, Sacrifice, and Family

On By ravonlockeIn Journal, TristiaLeave a comment

We have a short discussion about our next path. Klyce is worried that the locked door to the throne room is too obvious, and we should check the basement first. Having no better arguments, we all agree and head downstairs to an even worse dungeon than the attic. This one has clearly been used, if not for some time. There are no bodies here, and no creatures attacking us. So, we investigate and Nat finds on Iron Maiden that will not open.

Nat tries a few times, but just cannot get it open. Dalish casts Knock on it, make a very loud noise, and still doesn’t open it. It does, however, catch the attention of something. There are suddenly winds in the room, and a growing moaning noise. Just as I’m about to take control of the winds, five ghostly shapes enter the room, the moaning crescendos, and there is only blackness.

When I wake up again, Natty is leaning over me, with blackened, smoking eyes. Oh no! Oh Dawnmother! Natty what happened? What have you done?

She made a deal, she says, to get us back from the Dancer. Gerhardt limps in from the hallway then, naked, and with a deformed leg and shriveled arm. He tells Dalish that his master sucks and gave him this body. He says my body didn’t work, thank the Dawnmother, and Dalish’s hadn’t had time to regrow yet. We gather up Gerhardt’s original body, and some woman in rags they found in the Iron Maiden and head back upstairs.

Klyce and Nat decide to minimize the risk and take all two keys each, and turn them all at once. There is a click and the keys dissolve. Smoke pour out of the door and becomes a giant figure of Death. It stares down at us for a moment before shrinking down to a more human size.

He asks if we seek audience. Yes. We have proved ourselves worthy, but there is one final test. “Face me, Face Death, Or Take the Hand that Fate Deals You.”

We have lots of questions, that he mostly won’t answer. He says we have to draw a full hand, but it doesn’t matter who draws what. Remy tries to step forward, but Klyce stops him so we can decide what to do. He has to stop Nat from jumping forward, too. We decide that we’ll draw the hand, we have faced too much death already in the last day. I think we should each draw one card, but Marybeth and some of the others want to protect those of us that just came back from death.

Remy steps forward first, and says he will draw three cards. He drew the Star, Euryale, and Ruin. I didn’t seem much on the first two cards he drew, but on the last, his clothing got shabbier? Nat stepped up next and drew two cards – Talon and Gem. On the first one, her dagger disintegrated, and on the second, a huge pile of gems appeared at her feet. This deck is Crazy! Marybeth stepped forward next. She also got Ruin and her clothes got ragged, and a look of fear overtook her. Klyce stepped up next and drew Vizier. Nothing much happened to him, either, though he looked very thoughtful.

With one card per person drawn, though not by every person, Death declared our hand drawn. He bowed and the doors opened to the throne room. We head forward, and I put my arm around Marybeth. I don’t know what happened, but those cards were very strange.

Lord Tepish sits in a throne at the end of a long plush carpet. He wants to know what we’re doing. You took over Nat’s castle. He asks after Stephen. We don’t know, you were the one looking for him. He says he’s been preoccupied with Van Helsing. Who then crashes through a window, Tepish waves and he falls through a hole in the air. He says he’s sent him to the Shadow Realm, but he’ll be back. He keeps coming back, faster and faster for the last 200 years, on an oath of vengeance.

Nat presses on Stephen’s parentage. Lord Tepish says he is his father, he slept with his mother (and father) on their honeymoon in his country all those years ago. They stayed with him for three weeks. We talk about Stephen not turning until he died, and the boys go on bout the seed of evil. We talk about the curse and the meaning of evil. Klyce tries to redirect the converstion to getting us a map of the castle so we can go find Stephen for him.

Then Van Helsing reappears, and stabs Lord Tepish. This time, the fight lasts a lot longer. I’m very annoyed by Van Helsing, this is all his fault, making this last so long because he won’t let Lord Tepish finish his business and be gone. He’s put us all in danger, and some of us have Died! So, I toss some spells at him as the fight goes on. Marybeth tries distracting him, and Dalish sends spells at him, too. The rest of the group just watches and stays out of it. Part way through, Nat says Van Helsing has Dawnmother symols on him, and I slow my attacks a little, but I don’t see them, he’s jumping around so fast. Lord Tepish turns into a huge firey bat monster, and I back the rest of the way off. Dalish is still throwing spells, but at his possessions now, and Marybeth’s distractions are less effective. Eventually, Van Helsing is killed once more.

Lord Tepish says that Van Helsing will be gone for a couple years now, and we can get back to our business. He can grant us full access to the castle, and stave off some of the confusion it causes, so we can find Stephen and bring him to talk. But Remy has some questions, since we just helped him. Lord Tepish is distracted by the help we offered and doesn’t answer Remy right away. Instead, he offers Boons to the three of us who helped. Dalish asks for help on his quest, with getting the things he needs to finish his process. Marybeth asks for protection for her family from Van Helsing. Both of these things are granted. I don’t know what to ask for, I have a lot of things on my mind. He says that’s alright, he owes me a boon, and I can ask whenever I decide.

Remy starts in again. About giving more than taking and doing more good than bad. Lord Tepish says he tries to minimize the harm his curse causes, but Remy thinks he ought to do more. I tell him to knock it off, as he has absolutely no idea what Lord Tepish does with his life and his time. Lord Tepish then asks Remy what is the worth of a man. Remy says it is the hearts he fills, the hope he gives, and the lives he saves. Before I can reflect on the arrogance of that answer, Lord Tepish asks another question. What is the worth of a man who lives forever, who is cursed to live off others, to have ruin in his wake. Ruin that is outside his control? He then offers that time will likely see Remy wrong that his actions do more good than harm. I’m furious with Remy, but there’s no time, and he’s let it drop.

We head off to find Stephen, and the castle is much easier to navigate, the monsters don’t attack us, either. After a few hours, we do find Stephen in his lab, locked and staked through the heart in a chest. Remy removes the stake from him, just like we did with the servant in the entry, and he, too, wakes up. Klyce tells him that his dad wants to meet him, but Stephen misunderstands that his father has asked for him. Dalish, Nat, and Klyce explain what has been going on. I ask if he’ll just go meet the guy so he’ll leave. Nat further explains the mine fiasco and the shadowman. We really just need this all to finish so we can deal with things.

Stephen says he wants to talk to their parents first, so I send to Lord Tepish and he agrees. He head into town and find the family at the inn we left them at. Nat spars with her older brother and then we get into the room. Stephen demands an explanation, and his mother is uncomfortable with us all there, so we leave the family to their business.

After a while, they all come out, including Nat’s father, dressed and ready to go talk to Lord Tepish. We head back to the castle and lead them into the throne room with no issue. He greets them warmly, and leads the family into a side room to have another private conversation. Nat tries to listen in, but she can’t hear any of the words. Ten minutes later, they come back out.

Stephen says that the timing of his birth indicates he is certainly not Lord Tepish’s son, but they do have similar gifts, and he could learn a lot from him. He’s going to take him up on the offer to go away for a while and learn what he can. Klyce reminds him not to miss the wedding. Nat reminds him to keep in touch. He tells Dalish and Nat that he left notes downstairs that may have cracked the trouble with Grandfather Skull. Lord Tepish hands Dalish a small chest, that he turns into a large chest, with the ingredients he needs to finish his process. He tells me to contact him when I’ve decided on my boon. He will do whatever I ask, within his power. Then, Stephen and Lord Tepish leave the castle.

Clones and Creepers

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Needing a couple more keys, we head for the kitchens. Only, we can’t find it. For hours. Marybeth finally finds a torch that tilts at her touch and opens a secret passage in the walls. We seem to have found the servants’ tunnels and are able to follow thme to the kitchen.

The room is full of activity, but no people or other creatures. The pots and pans and knives and trays are all moving of their own accord. This seems safe, totally normal, right guys? Dalish is afraid to eat anything, but I scoop up a loaf of bread and some butter. It’s been ages since we ate anything. The kitchen doesn’t seem to mind. Exept when Remy gets in the way of a knife, but it only stabs him once. Dalish notices the cupboards and larder are all fully stocked. Nat can’t find any traps or secret doors. The food, once done, is all heading out the far end of the kitchen, all on its own. Maybe we should follow.

Just then, a boiling stewpot starts bubbling over. A steaming, sauce-covered creature begins crawling out. It looks like Marybeth! It starts attacking, so we attack right back. Only, when it falls, four more creatures pop up, and they look like Marybeth, Remy, Nat, and me! Every time we kill one, whoever hurt it gets cloned right back up!

Nat investigates the pot and discovers that it is cursed. Dalish tries to dispel the curse, but it doesn’t work. Then I got shot in the face and I don’t remember much for awhile. I get woken up and try to fight some more while the other work on destroying the pot, but a clone of Nat puts me back on the ground again.

I wake up a short time later, with bandages on my face. It hurts so much! Remy says the clone shot my nose off! I can’t process, it all hurts so much. I can’t really see much. Dalish is in worse shape, though. He got shot in the spine and can’t use his legs right now. Klyce has fashioned him a backpack to ride in. They do find the black club key in the leftovers of the pot, though.

We head out, following the food. The path goes upstairs and towards the throne room. But it passes through a black shadowy curtain that Nat says feels like death. We turn back to look for another way upstairs. We have one more key to find.

Using the servant tunnels, we find sumptuously decorated rooms, dozens of them. I want to take a nap in one, but we have to keep moving. Nat finds a tower we haven’t been in, so we head up a set of spiralling stairs. There are exits, but the rooms are all empty and the same, until we reach the top.

A trap door in the ceiling, is, of course, trapped with slicing blades. Nat manages to disable them, and pulls down a dusty ladder for us to climb up. Nat and Heyhey take the lead, with Klyce carrying Dalish right behind them. The rest of us trail up to a very dusty attic full of mannequins and creepy dolls and old torture devices.

Marybeth starts telling us about all the different devices. I contemplate going back down the stairs, but the door pulls closed right beneath my feet. It is very dark up here, and after checking for sources of magic, Remy throws up some lights for us. This only makes the shadowy dolls more creepy.

There’s a strange skittering noise, and Nat spots a huge spider in the rafters. Remy moves his light up there, but it skitters away. Nat tries to detect its thoughts as we call out to it hoping for peace. Then we discover its true form.

An eight-legged mechanical monster, with opera gloves for hands, strange implements for fingers, and an old doll face drops down among us and starts grabbing for each of us. The strings it sends out from who knows where, make casting quite difficult as it tosses us into the various devices around the attic. The iron maiden I get put into is an easy dimension door to solve, and I get way back so it can’t get me anymore. Gerhardt has a harder time with the rack. Dalish dimension doors himself and Klyce up into the rafters with it, so Klyce can get a good grip to pummel it.

Eventually, it collapses under our assault. We take some time to breath and tend our wounds. Dalish finds the golden spade key, and the others spread out and find a sword that he says is a flametongue sword. The others think this is a good, defensible place to rest, so Dalish sets up a dome and a private sanctum.

I don’t like it, but I’m not wandering around here alone. My face still hurts and I don’t have a nose! Oh gods! I’ve got a hole in the center of my face! I hate everything to do with guns! Why do we keep doing this?!?! Remy tries to offer me his disguise hat, as though it’s what I look like that matters! I have a Hole In My Face, Remy! An illusion isn’t going to Change That!

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.