#One has a bat one has a hammer. Glasses. Dead friend(s). | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

lostinfic · 5 years

Text

The Raven and the Goldfinch | 1

Part 1 of 3 | Ao3

Summary: In turn-of-the-century London, the famous illusionist, Peter Vincent, must use his skills to reclaim the love of his life, a woman he thought was lost to him. Now that he’s given a second chance, he won’t lose her again, not even when supernatural forces get in the way.

Genre: childhood friends to lovers, forbidden love, Victorian Era AU, movie AU (The Illusionist), supernatural elements

Rating: mature

Word count: 5k

Ship: Peter Vincent (Fright Night) x Jenny (Spirit Trap).

Why this pairing? Peter Vincent witnessed his parents get killed by a vampire, but lived in denial of this until reality caught up with him in the movie. Jenny’s mother was a medium, but Jenny refused to believe it (just like her father, who left because of it) until she experienced her own encounter with ghosts in the movie. I think this similarity between their personal stories is interesting and a good starting point for a ship. And that’s all you need to know about these characters.

A/N: @ktrosesworld prompted: !!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Hrmm Vamp!Rose with a HEA ... umm umm ... is that a stake in your pants or are you just pleased to see me ;) ... or wherever you muse decides to take you with smutty Peter Vincent.

So many things about that prompt were out of my comfort zone, but I really wanted to write it for KT who is always so lovely and supportive. So, I stretched that prompt as far as it would go, but I promise there shall be smut, a HEA, and that quote, but I tried writing it with Rose, and it wasn’t working.

≒

The Sunday Herald, 31 October 1895

A NIGHT OF MYSTERY.

Some Curious Facts Concerning All Hallow Eve.

The Night When Maidens Try to Find Out Who Will Wed Them— A Curious Circumstance— Tricks Played.

From its first origination, Hallow eve has been invested with a peculiarly mystic character. It is an almost universal superstition that supernatural influences then have unusual power— that devils, witches and fairies are abroad, that all spirits are free to roam through space, and that the spiritual element in all living humanity can be detached from corporeal restraint and made to road its own future or to reveal to others what fate may have in store for them.

As there is nothing in the Church celebration of the ensuing day of All Saint's to justify these singular ideas and customs associated with Hallow eve, and none of them are of a religious character, we may justly regard them as relics of pagan times.

In all ages and countries, Hallow eve has been deemed, as it still is, the occasion par excellence for devilling the answer to that momentous question which absorbs so large a share of the thoughts of romantic young men and maidens, "who is to marry whom?" The means employed to gain this much desired information are as quaint and curious as they are numerous and varied.

Water, nuts and apples bear a prominent port in the spells and charms of Hallow eve. A quaint old book of charms, published in Edinburgh in 1070, entitled: "Old Father Time's Bundle of Faggots Newly Bound Up," declares that an infallible means of getting a view of your future husband or wife is to go to bed on Hallow eve with a glass of water, in which a small sliver of wood has been placed, standing on a table by your bedside. In the night you will dream of falling from a bridge into a river and of being rescued by your future wife or husband, whom you will see as distinctly as though viewed with waking eyes.

≑

Jennie hated All Hallow eve, but she loved a good party.

She crossed the reception room to refill her glass of wine. Her black silk cape, shaped like bat wings, floated behind her. She pulled the hood over her blond curls, hoping to escape Lady Rothermere’s attention. But no such luck.

“Iphigenia, dear, I believe it’s your turn to play.”

Thankfully, no one at this gathering, in London, knew of Jennie’s mother’s reputation or else they might have asked her to perform the same divination. Tonight, the guests’ interest in the permeability between worlds resided in predicting one’s luck in love rather than honoring Pagan gods of old.

Still Jennie could not entirely enjoy the festivities for it reminded her too much of her mother’s lunacy. A terrible illness of the mind had afflicted the poor baroness until her death, she would hear voices and see strange things to which she lent some mystic signification. The superstitions surrounding October 31st used to worsen her symptoms, and those who believed she had a supernatural power would flock to Featherstone Hall. They only increased her suffering, and caused Jennie to flee her own home for the night.

Jennie’s plan for Lady Rothermere’s party was simple: avoid anything to do with spirits except the alcoholic kind. But peer pressure threw a wrench in that plan.

Jennie’s friends thrust an apple and a knife in her hands with excited giggles. The game involved going alone in a dark room in which there was only a mirror and a candle, then trying to peel an apple all in one piece. If successful, one’s true love’s face would appear in the mirror.

“Why does she have to go? She’s already betrothed,” a girl pointed out, but the other ones were already pushing Jennie towards the door.

Her friends shut the door behind her. Despite the candle flame, it took a moment for her eyes to adjust to darkness. She sat on the floor in front of the small mirror propped against the wall, and started peeling the apple. The peel curled around her hand like a scarlet ribbon. Although, she didn’t believe in these silly games, she still applied herself to the task.

It would be a relief to see Richard’s face in the mirror, so that, despite her doubts and reluctance, she would know accepting his proposal would end happily. He was a decent man, willing to overlook shameful things about her family to acquire her father’s lands. And his fortune wasn’t uninteresting.

But in her heart of heart, she knew whose face she wished to see, a face she had not gazed upon in twelve years.

Moving to the underside of the apple was the most treacherous part, especially in the dark. Almost there. She cut off the last inch of the peel with too much pressure, and the blade hit the pad of her thumb. It sliced through her skin. A crimson drop rose to the surface.

The mirror shimmered.

Jennie held her breath and looked closer. It was only fog on the glass. She wiped it with her sleeve, but it stayed there. The fog moved, like smoke from a pipe, it unfurled along the edges of the mirror in a rough oval shape. Then it started to clear from two points in the center, leaving two holes in the fog, like hollowed out eyes. Blood drained from her face as the smoke gathered in an increasingly precise shape. The shape of a skull.

≑

The master of ceremonies introduced Peter Vincent to the crowd gather in the Sofia Theater, in the Bulgarian capital. The illusionist waited for a few seconds, letting the anticipation rise in the public. Once the chatter died down, he walked swiftly through the curtains. Fog rolled under his leather frock coat as he crossed to the stage apron in long strides. He wore a pair of black gloves which he removed and tossed into the air above the spectators, where they turned into a pair of ravens.

He bowed dramatically to the applause, then addressed the crowd in Bulgarian (a local friend had translated his text, though Peter was familiar enough with Slavic languages to understand most of the words).

“I thought we might begin this evening with a discussion of the Great Beyond. All of the greatest religions speak of the soul's endurance beyond the end of life. So, what then does it mean... to die? Tonight is a special night. A night when the veil between the worlds of the living and the dead is lifted. Let us see, if we can cross this barrier between realms and call forth some spirits.”

An assistant rolled a small table onto the stage. A paisley cloth covered it, and a crystal ball sat upon it, larger than normal to allow the audience a better view.

Peter stretched his long hands above the sphere, with each flourish of fingers, mist rose inside the crystal. The spectators had yet to be impressed, most squinted at the ball and exchanged comments, but Peter’s focus didn’t waver. The mist inside became more opaque, then turned from white to gray, to lilac and deepened to purple. Suddenly, the crystal cracked, a sharp pop of glass followed by gasps. The glass was cleaved and the fissure grew in a fractal pattern with that slow, spine-chilling creak. Pressure grew inside the ball, the smoke pressed against the edges. Everyone held their breaths, bodies tense, anticipating the explosion. The crystal ball shattered, and all the fog rushed out of it taking on ghostly forms that grew high above the stage. Three pairs of red eyes appeared, and then Peter was knocked off the stage.

He fell.

And he fell.

A never-ending descent. He landed under a bed, years earlier, knees to his chest, hands clapped over his mouth to keep his breathing and sobs silent. He heard his parents’ screams and that horrible gurgling noise. Hot tears ran down his cheeks.

Then it stopped. They stopped kicking and screaming. His mother’s arm fell limply off the bed. The murderer stopped drinking and smacked his lips.

The boy cracked open an eye. Blood dripped along the bedframe, thick and scarlet. Drip. Drip. A drop morphed into a raven and it perched on the headboard. The black bird turned to the child and spoke in a young girl’s voice. “Make us disappear.”

Peter woke up with a gasp.

“Are you quite all right, old sport?” asked his manager, Ingwer, sat next to him.

“Yes. Of course,” Peter replied though his heart still hammered in his chest. “That lass after the show tired me out, that’s all.”

He winked at Ingwer, who didn’t seem convinced, he twirled the end of his sandy mustache, looking Peter over. Peter turned away from his manager and towards the train window. It was night so it only returned his own reflection, blurry and immaterial, gossamer.

It wasn’t uncommon for Peter to dream about a performance going wrong: a defective prop, a mocking audience or being stark naked on stage (though that often turned into a wonderful dream). But it had never morphed into a flashback to the night his parents died.

Peter reached inside his jacket for his good luck charm, a raven carved out of ebony, flat like a coin and not much thicker. Absentmindedly, he manipulated the object. He turned it between his knuckles, from thumb to pinkie and back, then made it disappear in one hand and reappear in the other. The wood was smooth from years of use, the varnish long gone. It soothed him.

Not long after his parents’ death, a travelling showman had stopped in his hometown in Northern England. He’d performed a few magic tricks in exchange for a hot meat and ale, and like any eight year-old boy, Peter had been fascinated. The old magician had pulled a wooden raven from behind Peter’s ears. He’d hidden it between his palms, said a phrase in latin then blown on his hands, and a bird had flown out.

“Nothing is what it seems,” he’d said.

And Peter had thought, if one’s senses can be deceived so easily, then perhaps he had not really seen a monster that night, in his parents’ bedroom.

Sensing the child’s sadness, the old magician had patiently taught him a few tricks. And Peter had never stopped after that.

“We’ll be crossing into Serbia soon,” Ingwer said.

“That’s two nights in Belgrade, then Sarajevo?”

“Yes. Then Sarajevo, Budapest, Vienna, Innsbruck, Venice, Berne and Paris.”

“I want to go to London.”

Though he’d uttered the words casually, like a mere technicality, his manager’s pale eyebrows rose.

“Erm, well, I have some contacts there, maybe we can arrange something for December or January…”

“No, I want to go now.”

“You haven’t set foot there in over ten years. Always refused offers. Why the sudden urge?”

“I’m homesick,” he lied.

≑

London Daily News, 20 November 1895

PETER VINCENT’S FRIGHTFUL ENTERTAINMENTS

Egyptian Hall, London.

Saturday and Monday evenings. Doors open at 7:30; commences at 8 o’clock. Carriages at 10.

For the first time in England: Peter Vincent in his Extraordinary Sorcelleries or Creatures of the Night.

Peter Vincent’s astounding feats in natural magic are based on principles not within the power of any other Artist in the World, and declared by the Press to be of so singular a nature as to be past all human conception, and that in an age and country less enlightened, they would inevitably have appeared supernatural. Mr. Vincent who, alone, unaided by confederates, and without all ordinary apparatus, deceives the eye, amazes, bewilders, and baffles the keenest observers, will display his truly miraculous acquirements in Prestidigitation, which surpass everything hitherto presented to the Public, in fact exhibiting powers that seem impossible to be achieved by human agency.

With regard to the moral bearing of the performance, it is only necessary to intimate that the Very Rev. Dean Stanley, in his sermon preached the act as it demonstrates the power of our Lord over Evil.

The Proprietor feels justified in calling attention to the fact that no expense has been spared in this production. Endorsed by the entire Press as being most mystical, mirthful and marvelous.

≑

“And for my last feat, I need a volunteer,” Peter declared.

Spectators avoided eye-contact with him and shook their heads until a young man raised his hand. He walked from his seat to the stage with a smirk. A little shit who thought it was all a trick; Peter loved to scare them.

The illusionist uncovered a tall mirror and placed the young man in front of it.

“What is your name, Sir?”

“Walter Gardiner.”

“Mr. Gardiner, if you would be so kind as to inspect this mirror and assure our dear spectators tonight that it is not tricked.”

Walter walked around the mirror, inspecting its gilded frame and knocking on the back.

“Now, do you see your reflection in this mirror, Mr. Gardiner?” Peter asked.

“Yes.” He waved at himself.

“And do you also see our esteemed audience behind you?”

“Yes.”

“And now you see me too in the mirror?” Peter placed himself behind the young man.

“Indeed, I do.”

With the help of an assistant, Peter turned the mirror around as well as Walter so that he had his back to the stage curtains, with the mirror between him and the crowd.

“Keep your eyes on the mirror, Mr. Gardiner, and let me know if anything in the reflection changes.”

“Righty-o.”

Peter pulled on heavy silken ropes, and the green velvet curtains behind Walter parted.

Loud gasps rippled through the theater. In the third row, a woman fainted.

Walter laughed uneasily. “I don’t see the curtains anymore,” he said.

“Anything else?”

“No.”

“Behind you!” shouted someone from the balcony.

On the stage, three young women, all dark hair and pale blue skin, wearing only nightgowns had been revealed. They snarled at Walter, displaying long canines. Their shackles clanked as they lunged forward.

Mr. Gardiner scurried off the stage, and nearly broke his neck in the stairs.

"Back, spawn of Satan!" Peter shouted, brandishing a crucifix.

The three vampires retreated with loud hisses.

“Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you my vampiresses!”

The audience applauded with some restraint.

“It is well-known by the Slavs that certain dead persons possess the power of returning by night to molest the living, to suck their blood, and by such refreshment to continue their own terrestrial existence, at the expense of their victims. These creatures do not have a reflection in a mirror.

But the worst part remains to be told: this faculty proves contagious; and those who have been sucked by a vampire, feel themselves condemned to become vampires, in their turn.

I saved these poor girls from the power of their sire in a remote corner of Transylvania. Animal blood furnishes them with the means of subsistence.”

Spectators flinched and covered their mouths.

“Thanks to my powers, and the power of the Christ, I can control these creatures of the night and make an example out of them. A cautionary tale. So you might recognize them and not fall prey yourselves.”

Peter stretched his arms and hands towards the three wild women, his face scrunched up with effort.

“Thou shall rise from the dead.”

A vein throbbed on his forehead. As he raised his arms, the three women slowly lifted off the floor and levitated high above the stage.

≑

As soon as he exited the stage, Peter collapsed. He didn’t even have the strength to remove the wig that scratched his scalp.

As usual, Ingwer ran up to him with a flask of whiskey and a cool, damp cloth.

In the theater, spectators were still applauding and talking loudly. Peter let their appreciation wash over him as he recovered from the exhausting performance.

The theater’s director came up to him and announced the Earl of Westmorland was here and wished to speak with him.

“Give me a minute,” Peter said.

“The Earl will not wait that long.”

With Ingwer’s help, Peter rose to his feet. They both knew the approval of the aristocracy could open many doors and make him a rich man.

A group of people awaited him in the salon, the Earl at the center. He held his head high perhaps to compensate for his small stature. Generous sideburns covered part of his cheeks down to his jaw.

“Your lordship, may I introduce Peter Vincent, the Illusionist?”

“Fascinating demonstration,” the Earl said.

“Thank you. It’s not easy keeping these lasses under control.”

The Earl chuckled, but it wasn’t genuine.

“It stimulated a great debate amongst us.” He gestured at his entourage. “Rainier here thinks you have supernatural powers? Do you claim supernatural powers?”

“Well, I can certainly do things on stage that mere mortals can’t.”

“Then you won’t mind a question or two. You needn’t divulge anything I cannot guess.”

“Shoot.”

“Mr. Gardiner was in league with you. Or there were lights in the mirror frame perhaps and angled mirrors.”

“I’m sure there are illusionists who would do it that way.”

“I think I understand it all. Except the gloves turning into ravens at the beginning. Where did they go?”

“Right here.” Peter pulled his gloves out of his pockets, much to the amusement of the Earl’s entourage. “Maybe you will understand it next time. Another viewing?”

“You must come to St. James’s Park. We'll gather our best minds next time. You'll really have a challenge then. What do you think, Iphigenia, dear?”

The Earl turned to a woman sitting a little farther in the room.

When he saw her, Peter forgot to breathe. Those plump, pink cheeks, and that gorgeous mouth, but her golden eyes had lost their mischievous glint.

Jennie.

Peter’s heart swelled with hope.

She was a woman now, and what a woman. The low neck and short sleeves of her elaborate green dress, showed off skin so creamy and fair he wanted to dip a spoon in it-- actually, to hell with a spoon, he would lick it.

He kissed the back of her gloved hand more slowly than decency allowed. He didn’t miss the way her chest rose with a sharp intake of breath.

She narrowed her gaze, and he realized she didn’t recognize him.

The Earl put a proprietary arm around her, and Jennie smiled sweetly at him. Peter’s heart plummeted.

“I shall like to see these creatures of the night for myself,” the Earl said.

“Another time, perhaps. If you will forgive, I must see to it that they cannot escape... And I need to go look for my birds.”

He held Jennie’s gaze for a moment, hoping for some kind of acknowledgment, but her face betrayed nothing. She averted her eyes and clasped her hands.

Peter returned to his hotel. He discarded his wig and fake beard and loosened his neck tie. Only one thing would do to deal with this: la fée verte. He poured an inch of absinthe into a crystal stemmed glass and placed a slotted spoon across the rim with a sugar cube over it. He liked the ritual— at least for the first glass or two, then it was straight from the bottle— like a magic trick, positioning precisely each piece, then as he trickled cold water over the sugar, the liquid turned cloudy unlike his mind. Absinthe produced such a sharp sort of drunkenness, and his memories became that much more vivid: the green, dry scent of sawdust in his father’s workshop, the ribbed smoothness of a grosgrain ribbon between his finger, her laughter in bursts of light.

≑

The first time they met, they were only children. Her straw bonnet hung crookedly over her messy blond curls, and blue ribbons floated beside her cheek. She introduced herself as Jennie, but he knew who she was: Iphigenia Goldfinch, daughter of the Baron. Her father owned most of the hamlet where they lived, a remote corner of Northumberland, between the Scottish border and the North sea. Peter worked for him. He was but a farm boy, having to earn his own living now that he was an orphan. Other children never spoke to him, they thought him a bit odd, and the circumstances of his parents’ death didn’t help.

“What are you doing?” she asked, watching him flip the wooden raven between his fingers.

“I’m looking for my bird,” he replied. “Do you think it’s in the bushes?”

Jennie followed him to the edge of the forest. Peter picked a small purple flower.

“Perhaps it made its nest amongst the petals.”

“What are you talking about?”

He struck a match and lit the flower. With a flourish of his hand, it vanished in a puff of smoke, and was replaced by a black feather. Her hand flew to her chest, followed by delighted laughter. He decided then and there to make her smile and laugh as much as possible.

They became inseparable. Jennie would bring him food and blankets, and whatever material he needed for his latest magic trick. She dreamt of becoming an actress, so they would put on elaborate performances. As they grew older, their act became more and more complex, lengthy skits with scenarios, costumes, decors and monologues heavily borrowed from Shakespeare. Sometimes for an audience, but more often for their own entertainment. She never asked for the secret behind his tricks, and sometimes he wouldn’t have known how to explain, cards floated in the air, handkerchiefs vanished and wilted flowers bloomed anew.

The other peasants warned him to stay away from her. “If the Baron finds out…” they said. But neither of Jennie’s parents seemed to care. Her father was never home, always in London, allegedly on business. The baroness preferred the company of ghosts. Even at a young age, Peter wondered which was worse: that one’s parents had died or that they didn’t care about their child. They were both orphans in their own way.

And so, Jennie and Peter sheltered each other from the harsh and confusing realities of adulthood. They surrounded themselves with magic and forgot all the rest.

As Peter grew older, he began to understand what he’d been warned against. What they said he would want but couldn’t have.

When she turned thirteen, her father hired a chaperone, and they had to find creative ways of meeting. An abandoned hut in the forest became their refuge after the chaperone had dozed off for the night.

For his fifteenth birthday, she gave him his first kiss, and he promised they would always be together.

For her fifteenth birthday, the baron came back to Featherstone Hall and announced his intention to take his daughter away to London. That night, Jennie ran to him with her jewels wrapped in a piece of cloth.

“We have to go!”

She was always more courageous than him. He hesitated for too long. Her father’s men came after them. They hid in their secret hut, huddled together in the cold night, as dogs sniffed and barked around.

“Make us disappear,” she begged. “Please, Peter, make us disappear.”

He tried.

He failed.

He waited for her.

But she never came back from London, and so, without an anchor, Peter drifted away.

≑

An insistent knock at his hotel door woke Peter up. His head hurt from too much absinthe. He’d slept the morning away. On the doorstep, he found a simple, handwritten note: “Meet me”.

He quickly washed the smudged eyeliner off his face and changed out of last night’s clothes before heading out where a coach awaited.

The cold november wind whipped the tail of his coat about and he held down his hat as he stepped inside the carriage. It was empty.

The carriage drove around for fifteen minutes, Peter rubbed up and down his arms, looking out the window for clues of his anonymous caller. He dearly hoped the message was from Jennie, but it wasn’t rare for some married women to seek him out after a show. His act thrilled them, reminded them that life was too short for a boring husband.

They reached a busy thoroughfare. Peter huffed impatiently at being stuck in traffic. Suddenly, the carriage door opened and someone slipped in directly from the coach beside his. A woman in a garnet-red dress, a veil concealed her face. Peter put a foot up on the bench, sprawling with a cocky smile, a reflex in female company.

When she lifted the veil, he recognized Jennie. Though the carriage was in motion, she had yet to sit. The feather on her hat wobbled and brushed against the ceiling.

“Are you Peter McHoolihee of Northumberland?”

“The one and only.”

She inspected him with narrowed eyes.

“It really is me, Jennie,” he assured her.

She sat on the bench opposite him.

“No one has called me that in ages,” she said.

She didn’t look as happy as he expected her to be. Staring down at her hands, she fidgeted with her wedding ring. The size of the gemstones was an unwelcome reminder of all the things Peter couldn’t buy her despite his fame.

“How long have you been back in England?” she asked.

“Three days.”

“Why did you come back?”

“I’d been gone long enough. Aren’t you happy to see me?”

“Yes. Of course.”

Although she’d learned to mask her emotions better, he recognized that slightly puckered forehead that belied her words.

“So, you’re Peter Vincent now.”

“And you’re a countess.”

“Only since last week.”

“I’m too late, then.”

“Twelve years too late. At least your magic tricks have improved.”

There was a bitterness to her tone he matched in his reply.

“So have your acting skills.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, you must have done something to make an Earl want to marry below his station.”

“Must you be so unpleasant?”

“Must you be married?”

They outstared each other. The carriage creaked and horseshoes beat the gravel path, filling the silence. Jennie broke the staring first and looked out the window.

“What was I supposed to do?” she asked after a long moment. “I wrote to everyone in Featherstone for news of you, but you had left without a trace. I tried to find you.”

“So did I. I went to London.”

“You did?” Her face broke into a grin.

Since their first kiss, he’d learned how to seduce women, but now, one smile from her and he was a fumbling teenager again. His palms were clammy, and he couldn’t think of a single smart thing to say. Just like the courageous but naive seventeen year-old lad he had once been, the one who set out for London with only the clothes on his back and a literal ace up his sleeve.

But the city was much larger than he’d anticipated, and the sight of rich gentlemen-- the kind she may be presented to-- discouraged him. He found work on a cargo ship sailing to Denmark; if he traveled the world, educated himself and became rich, then he might be worthy of her. He roamed the Continent, taking odd jobs and performing magic tricks. But as he journeyed East, he started hearing legends of blood-sucking creatures, and his purpose evolved.

In Poland, he met Emily de Laszowska Gerard, a writer and literary critique. Scottish by birth, she took a liking to Peter and his skills, and hired him to work in her home. Her library contained many a book about myths and legends that they read together. When her husband, a Polish chevalier, twenty years her senior, was stationed in Transylvania, Peter followed them. Still officially a member of staff, but in fact, he and Emily researched the local vampire lore. She even published a book about Transylvanian superstitions the next year. She was the first person, after Jennie, to whom Peter revealed what he had seen kill his parents. She was also the first person, after Jennie, to kiss him. She was older than him by six years and taught him how to give a woman pleasure. They enjoyed each other’s company, but he didn’t love Emily as he had Jennie. Eventually, her husband found out about the affair and kicked him out. Armed with a new confidence and knowledge on two equally mysterious creatures— vampires and women— he started his life as Peter Vincent.

He didn’t confess his insecurities and affairs to Jennie, only summed up that he hadn’t found her in London and then started travelling.

“No wonder you could not find me in London. Father hired this dreadful tutor, and locked me up for hours with her so she might teach me everything a lady should know.”

“So he might offer you to the highest bidder?”

She didn’t deny the allegation, but amended, “He wanted a better life for me, better than I had with Mother. But I did not want it.”

“I’m sure you managed to sneak out every once in a while.”

Her eyes sparkled with mischief and his stomach swooped. Even if she spoke like a proper lady, in his presence her northern accent and idioms resurfaced. And he laughed, still incredulous that the baron’s daughter was so bold, and that she even deigned talk to him. Him, a peasant boy. It felt like they had never been apart. As he spoke, he lost his cocky façade, and Jennie leaned towards him, elbows on knees.

“I never escaped very far. Not as far as you did.”

“I crossed the continent. I saw Russia and the Ottoman Empire. Always searching… I learned about myths and the origins of faith and fear in men.”

“And vampires?”

“I saw what looked like the victims of vampires: illnesses that medicine has yet to explain, and corpses that decomposed in odd ways, but no real vampire. I must have imagined it all. It became inspiration for my show.”

He switched seat to be next to her, his legs pressed against hers, but she didn’t move. Head cocked to one side, she openly studied him. He didn’t feel unrecognized by her anymore. Her honey-brown eyes warmed him more than the autumn sun shining on his stubbled cheek.

“All that wandering, did you ever find what you were looking for?” she asked.

“In some measure. But something was always missing.” He brought her hands to his lips, holding her gaze, and turned on the charm.

Jennie chuckled softly. “I see you learned about more than folklore.”

“Shall I demonstrate?”

He scooted closer to her, Jennie instinctively leaned forward, smiling conspiratorially.

“You may.”

He ran his hands up, from her wrists to her shoulders, and rested them on her neck. His thumb brushed her jaw, and her lips parted. He had dreamt of those lips. He kissed her as slowly as his weak restraints allowed. He needed her to think about this kiss for days and weeks to come. He needed her to blush every time she was with her husband, and take pleasure in tasting the memory on her lips. He kissed her deeply, adoringly, and feeling her melt against him was his reward.

Too soon, the carriage stopped.

“I have to go,” she said.

Peter caught her arm to stop her, though his grip was light, she winced as if he’d hurt her which alarmed him.

“Rough honeymoon?”

“My husband is… mercurial.”

“Run away with me. I’m rich now.”

“You think that ever mattered to me?” She swiped his fringe to the side and kissed his forehead, but the gesture was too forlorn for him to enjoy. “I wish I could-- there’s so much to explain... Richard would hunt us down.”

“Jennie…”

“Goodbye, Peter.”

“When can I see you again?” he pressed.

“I don’t know.”

And she vanished into the street crowd.

≑

Part 2

#Teninch Fic #ktrosesworld #Peter Vincent #peter vincent x jenny #I start feeling queasy when I don't post fic for a while #I hope you guys will like this despite the unusual pairing #Lostinfic writes stuff #autumn prompts #Raven & Goldfinch #the raven and the goldfinch

37 notes · View notes

cursewoodrecap · 4 years

Text

Session 9: City of the Dead

We investigate Mornheim, the city of apples and graves.

We begin where we left off, meeting with Aubrey von Mornheim inside the walls of a city where the dead have risen.

We try to figure out the relative ages of Aubrey and our friend Ser Balderich, with whom she shares a last name. She’s in her early-to-mid-20′s, so he’s the right age to be a dad or uncle.

The citizens of Mornheim have retreated from its farmlands, withdrawing inside a hastily built wall around the city center. Inside the wall it’s pretty crowded, as the townsfolk have had to make room for the farm people to stay. Clem has seen towns like this in warzones before; it’s fairly standard Hunkering Down procedure. Seems like they demolished some of the houses on the outer edge of town and used the materials to build up the wall. Some of wall is actually made of broken gravestones and slabs from mausoleum walls.

It’s not a total disaster; it’s a fairly functional town. We can see that during the daytime, braver citizens are still venturing outside the wall to tend and harvest what crops they can, though the plant life is withering. The biggest building in the walled city by far is the cider mill - Mornheim is known for its apple orchards and cider production, and it looks like the mill is still operating.

In the distance, outside the walls, we can make out the old von Mornheim manor house and a large stone temple. Inside, there are small cannons and ballistas sent up on makeshift watchtowers, which are mostly bunkers set up on the rooftops of taller buildings.

Aubrey escorts us in, handing Feivel some rings and jewelry as payment. “You know where everything goes,” she tells him. “Food to the inn, building supplies to the shed, medicine to the doctor. Find Crabber. If he’s drunk, sober him up. If he’s sober, tell the innkeeper not to serve him until he looks at those ballistas. Meanwhile, I’m gonna sort through our loot.”

She opens a sack she’s hauled out of the mausoleum, and immediately pulls out a bottle of wine. “Spoils of hitting the wine cellar,” she tells us.

Mercedes, the pyromancer goblin, nudges her. Aubrey looks back at us. “Oh, right. Come with me.” She leads us into the cider mill.

Parts of the mill are operating, but it’s clearly not at full capacity. Much of it seems to have been turned into an impromptu war headquarters – we can see an armory of weapons and maps pinned up on the walls. Aubrey plops down in a wooden chair and hands her sack of grave treasure off to a clerk. “So, what can I do for you?” she asks us.

Valeria is always ready to get down to business. “Ser Quentin sent us to find out what happened with the Red Hand. You said some of them are still here - do you know what happened?”

“I know they went to the von Menzer family crypt,” she tells us. “I told Q I’d heard weird chanting around there. He showed up with the elves in tow. They went in. He returned alone. Said they’d gotten cut off from one guy and had refused to leave man behind. Idiots. They returned the following morning, looking worse but alive. Then they just quit his service. Some headed out, a couple stayed around.”

“I spotted them lurking around, and I’ve heard from my cousin Leah, who told me they’ve taken up residence along with some others in the manor house, up where we keep the epitaph records. Y’know, the listings of all the people buried here.”

We need to get the basic lay of the land. She points to a map on the wall, passing us a similar-looking copy. (Valeria’s player adds one map to her Map Collection, which is now a thing.)

“There’s no central location they come from. The worst come from Gallows Hill, obviously.” Gallows Hill? “Undead couldn’t rise in Mornheim, right? So rich people would get buried here, sure. But you know, there are certain types of people who have a habit of coming back as nasty undead. And people like that might die in way that would make ‘em come back angry, yeah? So you’d bury ‘em in Mornheim. And now they’re all coming back.”

The von Menzer family crypt is circled in red. “We first heard about the cultists there. Since shortly after Q went, we’ve seen more happening in the east wing of the house. Stay out of the west wing, though.” She pulls a glass from under the table and pours herself a generous slug of wine. “You might be fine there, but. Well.” She takes a long drink.

Shoshana has to get clarification: “Um, is this a Spooky Ghosts kind of thing, or an ‘it’s my house, don’t wreck it’ thing?”

“Ghosts, mostly,” she tells us, and conspicuously fails to elaborate.

Maybe a topic change would be wise. Looks like there’s Penitents labeled on the map? “Cousin Leah was an acolyte working at the temple, a low-level cleric. After things got really bad, she took up with the Penitents. Got a whole crew of them in the temple there, now. Every so often they come by. Stand outside our gates, say we’re living a horrible debauched life without the gods. Apparently, I personally need to go to the temple to do some kind of penance that will purify Mornheim of its sins and stop the undead tide.”

Um, #doubt.

“Yeah, you might notice how I’m not at the temple getting purified. At least they distract plenty of shamblers.”

We’re pretty wary of the Penitents, but she seems mostly just aggravated about them. “I’m not worried they’ll attack us or anything, but I’m kinda worried Leah’s given her goons standing orders to drag me back to her.

Are they something we need to take care of while we’re here? She shakes her head. “Look, if they wanna be ghoul food, that’s on them. So far all they’ve done is hand out pamphlets and stand outside yelling at us. They’re welcome to keep to it. If you’re stuck out there and night’s falling, best to make for temple. It’s not a GOOD bet, but I’d rather deal with them than try my luck being out after dark.”

So: what can our paltry crew of protagonists do to help, besides just assisting in holding them off? Is there some big plan or strike we could help with?

She laughs bitterly. “Against WHO?”

“Well, this all started with those cultists, right?” Valeria asks uncertainly.

“It started YEARS ago! It began real slow, which was already pretty shocking, given our history. It was just a handful at first, but they just kept rising.”

“Is there any kind of pattern or organization to the undead attacks?”

“Not really, no. Most just wander, or attack the nearest thing they see. Some die trying to get into the temple; others attack the town and we take ‘em out. Some slip into woods but don’t get very far, what with all the other shit lurking in there. Not our problem, once they’ve gone that far. Some fight each other. Some seem to be working together? The cultists definitely have some under their control, but not all or even most of them. It’s a big spooky graveyard full of undead, welcome to my home. Sure, a big military strike, we could kill every rotter we see. Doesn’t matter! They keep GETTING UP!” She takes a long chug from her wine glass.

“So it’s more important to get info than to kill shit,” we observe.

There’s not a whole lot else to discuss, other than to go over the map and pick our next move, so Shoshana picks this moment to ask the question that’s been hanging over all our heads.

“So, uh, I don’t want to pry. But we’ve been traveling, and we met this guy. And he’s, uh, definitely in the business of Fighting Evil Things, and he has kind of a familiar last name, so I gotta ask: ...why isn’t Ser Balderich here?”

Aubrey glasses her in the fucking face. As Shoshana shakes wine and glass shards out of her hair and tallies her Actual Hit Point Damage, Aubrey stabs her knife into the table with an ominous thunk. “DON’T. MENTION. THAT. FUCKING. COWARD.”

“So, uh, I definitely have ques-”

“GET OUT.”

We take the hint and skedaddle, as Aubrey starts drinking straight from the bottle. The door slams behind us.

Mercedes intercepts us as we tumble haphazardly out the door. “So that is two people you have upset tonight?”

“Who else-”

“The Doctor.”

“...yeah, that’s fair.”

“What did you do?”

Shoshana sheepishly admits, “I...said a name I shouldn’t have?”

“Ah, her father.” Mercedes nods. “That is a very sad family tale. If you want to hear it, it is not my place to share someone else’s family drama. You’d have to ask family.”

Shoshana stares at her. “Uh, seems like I should NOT ask, actually,” she deadpans, picking a shard of glass out of her chin.

“Ask the old groundskeeper, he’s basically family.”

Valeria starts helping Shoshana pick the last of glass out of her hair, adding a Lay On Hands to erase her cuts. “No no no stop putshkying stooooppppp” Shoshana whines, gratuitously Yiddishing as she bats Valeria’s hands away like a proper embarrassed teenager. Valeria, both in and out of character, Does Not Know What That Word Means.

Mercedes ignores the slapstick. “Yes, Lady Aubrey has issues, but the last couple of years have been rather stressful. She blames her father. I do not. He is very nice. I originally came here as a favor to him; I was planning to stay about a month.”

“...why didn’t Ser Balderich ever come back to help?”

“Different types of fear take different forms,” she says cryptically. “I’m gonna go keep an eye on her. You can find the groundskeeper out behind the mill, if you really want to know the story. Also, if you see a man with a burning hammer on his shoulder - If he is drunk, send him to me. If he is sober then send him to the front. I think he’s hiding from me.”

She turns to leave, muttering to herself in Goblin, and then turns back for one last aside.

“Oh, and if you see a person in a bird mask, run.”

We’ve met Sturmhearst guys, so that seems ominous???

“The doctor is not evil, she just want to kill you right now. I know the rumors you have heard about Sturmhearst. She is Sturmhearst trained, but hasn’t been there in years. One of the old school, before things got so strange.”

She heads in to where Aubrey is no doubt drinking at a highly unsafe rate. Meanwhile, we parley a moment to figure out our next move.

So the Red Hand has apparently joined up with this necromancy cult? What the hell?

Gral notes that the Prisoners recruit cultists by enticing them with what they need, the way the Key drew in the artists with promises of knowledge. “Clem, you know the Red Hand. The Astronomer said something about overcoming death, or reversing it. Would that have been tempting to them?”

Clem looks uneasy. “As much as any soldier, I guess? We’ve all lost loved ones. The Red Hand was basically family to me, and we lost plenty in the war. Who wouldn’t want to see their loved ones again?”

“Maybe it would be best to talk to the Red Hand at the manor house first?” Valeria asks. “And then maybe we’ll have a better idea what we’ll be up against?”

Clem nods. “I agree. We’re making a lot of assumptions about them. I admit the whole situation looks damning to my former comrades, but we don’t have the full picture. There’s nothing stopping us from going up and just talking to them.”

Gral shrugs. “IF they’re friendly.”

Shoshana is pretty distrustful, as a rule. “Yeah, that’s a big if. They’re hanging with necromancy guys. What if they send skeletons at us?”

“Well, that’ll happen everywhere in Mornheim,” Gral interjects reasonably.

Clem’s quite insistent. “They could have a good reason! We don’t know they’re totally evil.”

Valeria sees what Clem’s driving towards. “There could be some kind of magical influence or something, something that we could fight!”

Gral’s amenable to this. “We approach with caution, looking out for ambushes. Clem does the talking, we stay back and provide support. I would like Lady Aubrey not to be angry with us; we’ll inform her of the plan beforehand.”

Shoshana looks uncomfortable, like she’s going to talk, but thinks better of it. Some things are better kept private.

It’s getting on afternoon, though, and we’re all well aware that the necropolis is a much more dangerous place after sundown. We resolve to set out in the morning.

Clem sighs. “I’ve waited a long time to see members of the Red Hand again. I can wait another couple hours.”

In the meantime, Valeria wants to go apologize to the doctor about losing the medicine, and we’re all absolutely dying of curiosity to go get the groundskeeper’s story. We head into town and perception check around, and Shoshana’s player drops a die on the floor and rolls a natural floor twenty. Blaze it!

The town is gloomy, even though the sun hangs unobscured in the sky. The shadows are long and twisted. Yet one is sort of misshapen - wait, that’s a dude on the ground.

We wander over to find a fella passed out against the back wall of the cider mill, a dribbling bottle clutched limply in his hand. He’s wearing the kind of clothing that would usually be layered under full plate armor, with a burning hammer insignia pressed into the corner. He’s got a warhammer on his hip as well. It’s familiar to the soldiers in our party - that’s a symbol of Lethe, the Forge Goddess, and specifically it is the crest of the paladin Order of the Hammer.

Valeria, who knows paladins, and Clem, the experienced soldier, immediately notice something is wrong, if this guy is really a paladin of Lethe: his equipment looks battered and heavily worn. Clem has SEEN the Order of the Hammer fight. Until the Orcish berserkers joined the fight, these guys were the ultimate shock troopers. Flaming weapons, celestial steeds with sparking hooves, heavy EVERYTHING. And most importantly, the Paladins of the Forge Goddess always had pristine equipment, as if it had been freshly smithed. This man’s armor? It’s decidedly NOT.

Valeria wonders if Lay On Hands can sober people up. Alcohol IS technically a poison, right? Might as well try it.

Valeria cures one (1) poison or disease and gives the poor man an insta-hangover. “Are you all right?” she asks pleasantly, and probably too loudly for him. “I’m Kyr Valeria Argent, at your service.”

“A Kyr? ….Rose?” he mumbles. She’s very shiny, and that’s definitely making his hangover worse. “...Didn’t think any of you survived.”

Valeria’s attention is instantly captured. “D’you know anything about what happened to the others?” she asks.

He squints up at her toothy face. “I was detached. Got left behind to rebuild a town, while everyone else went forward. More of a builder than a fighter, y’know? Heard what happened to the rest of ‘em after…”

He picks up his bottle and tries to take a slug, looking vastly disappointed when he finds it empty.

We notice he did NOT introduce himself as Kyr, the title of an active paladin. “Horatio Crabber,” he mumbles, by way of introduction. He has a Galwan accent. “What’re you doin’ here?”

“Ser Morozov hired us to figure out what happened in his previous expedition,” Valeria tells him helpfully.

“Uh, I think Mercedes was looking for you,” adds Shoshana from somewhere in the back.

“Shit, the ballistas,” he sighs, pushing himself heavily to his feet. “I’ll go take care of that. I know what she wants.” As he fruitlessly tries to straighten himself up, he looks back at Valeria with haggard eyes.

“Take it from me, Rose. Do what you came here to do, and get out. You look like a good knight. Armor still shiny. Just…don’t let this….you gotta get out of this wood. There aren’t many of your kind left, and this place will chew you up.” He slumps away.

Valeria chirps at his receding back, “I don’t think it will. 😊”

We have completed Side Quest: Rouse the Fallen Paladin.

Valeria would know what likely happened to this man: Usually, in order to Fall, a paladin would have to commit evil deeds. But paladins of Lethe can Fall due to despair alone. If they give up and lose faith, their powers desert them. As Falling goes, it’s relatively more easy to come back from – they don’t need to redeem themselves from evil, but they truly Gotta Believe. Lethe does not tolerate quitters. (We assume her legions are made up entirely of hot blooded shonen protagonists.)

(Also, is everyone in Mornheim an alcoholic? They live in the zombie apocalypse and the only major business still running is the cider distillery. Of course everyone’s an alcoholic.)

Time to find the groundskeeper. We follow the river up to where it flows through a grate in the city wall. It looks like there was a house up against wall that was partially deconstructed and gutted. Next to it, there’s a massive, hulking figure sitting there, its feet in water. Holy shit, my dudes, that’s a big old Troll! One arm is oddly shriveled, like it didn’t regenerate properly. Trolls can usually grow limbs back like it ain’t an issue, so that’s not a good sign. It’s unusually well-dressed for a troll, wearing a stitched-together brightly colored leather vest and pants and a big straw hat.

Valeria’s claws immediately go to her sword. She knows the amphibian sea trolls who hit fishing villages, and what a terrifying menace they are. A troll attack from within, on a city this weakened, would be disastrous. Gral knows that the more mountain-living orc tribes have had to fortify heavily against mountain troll raids. Clem’s heard horror stories of the frost trolls of the northern steppes.

Shoshana takes one look at all of them gearing up for a fight and complains, “Really? Who raised you?! Can you be polite for, like, three fucking seconds?!”

Valeria is baffled and defensive. “Trolls attack people! It’s what they do!”

Shosana rolls her eyes and tells everyone to wait here for a fuckin’ sec. She ambles up toward the troll, telegraphing her movements like someone apologizing for intruding. She gently knocks on a piece of wood from the gutted house, starting to...sing? She does a couple lines of a dumb little nursery rhyme about a fumbly bumbly-bee.

The troll stirs, and speaks in a deep calm dopey voice. “This isn’t my bridge, you didn’t have to sing, but I appreciate it. Hi. What can I do for you?”

“We were looking for the groundskeeper?”

Gral whispers an aside: “I think we found him.”

“The one in the mask is right,” the troll says placidly. “I am Skelbor, groundskeeper here for past 83 years.”

Shoshana can see he’s an old troll, but not especially healthy. There’s an odd greyish discoloration to his skin, and his left arm is withered & especially pale. He tips his hat with the withered arm.

Gral is confused, and tips his mask in return. “Hello! We are not from here, but-”

“Yup, I could tell. I woulda seen her before,” he agrees, pointing to the Large and Shiny Valeria.

“We’re friends of Ser Balderich,” Shoshana volunteers.

“Oh huh! How’s he doing? Haven’t seen him in a while.”

“He’s doing well! ...I mean, he’s wounded, but he’s healing up. He’s...actually staying in my house right now?”

“Mmm. Is it a nice house?”

Shoshana shrugs awkwardly. “Sure? It’s small, but it’s not bad. It’s full of weird cats?”

“That’s good, that’s good. He liked dogs better, when he was a boy.”

We awkwardly manage to stammer out that Mercedes sent us to ask what happened to Ser Balderich, why he’s not here to help the defense.

“Oh yah. Now that is a sad story. Come in, sit down.” He gestures to the hollowed out house; we realize it’s not been destroyed, just hastily renovated to fit a troll. It’s still pretty cramped for him, though.

“My apologies,” he intones in his deep slow voice, leading us inside. “Lady Aubrey convinced me to leave my very nice lair. I can’t stay there no more, it’s too far outside the walls.”

“Your new house is...very nice?”

“It’s a dump, but it’s mine. It is what it is.” He shrugs, and begins his story.

“So. I knew Ser Balderich a long time, since he was just a boy. I knew Rosalind, too. She was a gardener here, or she was, as a young girl. Even up ‘till the end she was always workin’ with the plants. Kept the flowers and things nice for the graves.”

“Did you work with any of that?”

“Oh ya, I helped with all that stuff. Fixin’ up the graves and mausoleums and such. Good stonework ‘round here. I’d help out with the liftin’ and carryin’.

“Soon enough, Rosalind and Baldy caught each other’s eye! Bit of a scandal, the noble heir marryin’ a commoner, but we’re not so uptight as to make a big fuss ‘round here, not like other towns. And then I don’t gotta explain to you where li’l Aubrey came from.

“And then one day all the dead people stopped bein’ so obedient! One tried to chew m’leg off. Had to give it a good smack. I told Baldy, he told me to keep an eye out. Kept getting worse. Soon myself and Ser Balderich and some of the guards had to patrol every night to keep ‘em down. Back then that was workin’ quite fine.

“Until Lady Rosalind got sick. Went up the river to the old trollstones, one of her favorite spots. I found her collapsed in the water, an’ she was mighty cold. I brought her back to house and she got real sick. Didn’t last much longer, after that. It happens, sorry to say. Buried her in the family tomb. And then the tragic bit was, she came back. And, well. Ser Balderich couldn’t take that.

“First night she came back, well, uh, I took care of the corpse, as it were. And he went and was sad, but the next night, the ghost appeared. And that was too much for him. I can’t take care of that with these,” he says ruefully, holding up his meaty fists. “Ser Balderich’s the one with the magic sword.”

“Rosalind was seen out in the hills, shoutin’ his and Aubrey’s names. He went on out to confront her, and...he couldn’t. Heart as big as a mountain, that man, but some things ain’t about courage. He couldn’t do it. That was when he left Mornheim. Left his brother in charge, left Aubrey, and took the oath of a Beggar Knight.

“His brother was good man, but he didn’t last too long. Same with the cousin, Aubrey’s aunt Josephina. Been tryin’ their best, but dead folks have been gettin’ mighty rambunctious out there. ‘Fore long it was just Aubrey. Well, and Cousin Leah, but she went off tryin’ ta get some help from the Archcleric. Came back claimin’ she had a solution, but I don’t like it. Somethin’s wrong about her these days.

“Aubrey had to abandon the homestead, the ol’ manor. When I went back out there latest, I thought I heard Lady Rosalind out there, in the western wing. That was their old livin’ quarters.”

“Aubrey’s mighty upset at her father for leavin’. We don’t talk about Ser Balderich, but it’s good to hear he’s doin’ well. Knew him since he was a boy, an’ he always treated me right. Bein’ a Beggar Knight’s not the easiest life, but none are these days. We are tested by the times we live in,” he finishes sagely.

We quietly contemplate Ser Balderich’s personal tragedy, and thank Skelbjor for telling us. In an effort to make everyone feel a little better, Shoshana tells Skelbjor all the news she has of what Ser Balderich’s been up to lately.

He nods. “I’ll tell those what knew him, except for Aubrey. Hope he makes it. Good to hear he’s upholdin’ the oath, good to hear he’s still walkin’. Still breathin’, anyway. Lotsa things here walk but don’t breathe.”

We ask him if he’s heard of the von Mentzer tomb, the one where Ser Quentin got separated from the Red Hand.

“The von Mentzer tomb? Musta been years ago I was out there - it was ‘bout a year ago that Lady Aubrey got me outta my den under the bridge. Now that tomb, it was a good tomb. Worked on it myself. Beautiful sculpture. It even had scrolls! Hard to do scrolls, but it was a family of scholars, so it seemed appropriate. Imported marble, very pricey, worth it for something like that. Well, the outside was marble - the inside was honest Valdian granite. Most of the family was in there, ‘specially accomplished ones.”

No clues there. Maybe, as the groundskeeper, he was familiar with the manor house?

"Well, I didn’t go in there that often, for ceiling and floor-based reasons, but yeah, as familiar as I could be. When I first showed up, I could usually squeeze through the doors, but I’ve gotten bigger in my age, and you can only break so many frames before people start askin’ ya to keep outside. They were real nice about it, we had an understandin’. Had all the staff parties on the ground floor outside, so I could join.”

Skelbjor is lovely company, and we’d love to make our DM do a dopey troll voice forever, but it’s probably about time for us to get going.

“Well, I wish ya the best, good luck out there. Headin’ out in the mornin’, I’d guess?”

He hands each of us a pouch of something white and powdery, before we go. We don’t know what it is.

“You’ll need somma dat in case you encounter specters. Don’t worry, I pulverized it myself, it’ll flow nicely. You sprinkle it over ‘em. Or throw it at ‘em, the pouch will burst. Then they’ll be vulnerable to smashin’ and slashin’ and such things. Lady Aubrey heard that trick from the Cursebreakers, and we got plenty of wizard bone here. You can go and make some more in the field, though I don’t recommend it. Works best with a li’l holy water and silver dust, but you do what you can do. Saved my life more’n once. Lady Aubrey made sure I had plenty. I can’t do much against a specter without it.”

“Fortunately for the town, they seem less inclined than most to come through the walls. We mostly get rotters and shamblers, the bony types. But if you’re goin’ into the necropolis, bring yer powdered wizard bone.”

We add our Bags of Powdered Wizard Bone (1 use, negates ghosts’ resistance to physical damage) to our inventories.

“I’m mostly here, unless there’s a wall breach they need me to hold, or need me to fix somethin’. Now I’m gonna go rest up, they might need me at the walls tonight. You’ll know if there’s an attack, we’ll sound the bells. Maybe my arm will come back!”

We hadn’t been tactless enough to ask about the shriveled arm, but he brought it up himself, so we do. “Yeah, a couple ghouls gnawed on it, an’ then a ghost got to it. So I chopped it off, as ya do, had a real nice meal. And then it didn’t come back right. That was ‘bout a year ago. It was what convinced me to give up my den. A troll with two arms can take care of himself, but one-armed not so much.”

As we wave goodbye and head back towards town, Valeria whispers aside to Shoshana, “I didn’t know land trolls were so civilized! Sea trolls are The Worst.” Gral and Clem nod in agreement, still honestly a bit unnerved by the whole scene.

Back in town, Valeria still feels pretty guilty about losing the medicine, so she stops in at the makeshift hospital to see if there’s anything she can do to help. The doctor is pretty mad at her! In our defense, we didn’t know there was a disease. Also we tried to defend the Stuff, but our plan didn’t work. (Well, our characters thought it would work, the players are self-aware of our own idiocy). Gral turns out to have been guiltily skulking behind. Wait, no, all of us want to be in the scene now.

Valeria offers to help by Laying On Hands; Clem has been a battlefield medic, Gral has assisted in war zones, and Shoshana has some knowledge of herbal medicine. Between all of our various expertises, the DM tells us: these people aren’t taking HP damage, they’re Sick.

Valeria can heal 2 people using her Lay On Hands to “cure a disease.” She does so; she has suppressed the symptoms, but there is no way to know if the cure is permanent. Using her Detect Magic, she can tell there is something faintly magic about the sickness here. It’s necromancy-ish, natch.

Clem’s training tells her that what we’re seeing is a pretty usual mix of diseases you get when lots of people live in close proximity eating bad food. Y’know, war zone stuff. On top of all of that, though, there’s some kind of extra x-factor. Everyone is more drained? Some fatigue is expected, but this is hard to put a finger on. Everyone has this consistent level of drained-ness. A lack of life? And it’s consistent no matter the severity of the patient’s disease. Clem would not have noticed if Valeria hadn’t pointed out the magic. Places like this do not need help getting people sick.

Clem: “These people have trench foot for the soul. Trench soul.”

Gral raises the sick folks’ morale with a lovely Performance check, and Shoshana rolls a Useless on helping out.

Valeria and Clem don’t point out the magical malaise to the doctor. What would she be able to do? Better not to put another impossible burden on her.

We find a place to sleep. Our overall impression of town isn’t totally post-apocalyptic. If you stay away from the manor and the necropolis, the undead really only come out at night. People are still working the farms and orchards somewhat, they’re just sleeping in the walled town because of the nightly undead hordes.

Gral is awoken in the night, hearing something outside the walls. There’s a commotion out by gate. (We hope it’s free cheese.) Gral untangles himself from the snoozing adventurer heap and heads over to the gate. Guards are looking out; we see the fallen paladin and the troll there as well. Skelbjor is standing at his full height, holding a ballista with his one functional arm. “Looks like that’s the last of them for tonight,” the fallen paladin sighs. “Oh, here come the helpers. You want me to take the shot?”

“No, we’ll hear their piece and let ‘em leave,” Aubrey yells back.

A magically enhanced voice booms over the gate. “Citizens of Mornheim! This night the Penitents have delivered you from your attackers, but you will not be truly free until you have unburdened yourselves of your crimes in the eyes of the gods! Any who wish may be escorted to temple and absolved of their sins, so they may be granted the divine protection of Rack. Carry our words: the Lady Aubrey von Mornheim can end this horror if she submits to her penance! We shall wait one hour for her to surrender herself.”

Predictably, nobody opens the gates. Skelbjor takes a look. “They’re just standing there. HIIIII, PENITENTS.”

Crabber looks at Gral, significantly less hungover than the first time they met. “Hey. …are you an orc?”

“Yes, Gral Omokk’duu, pleasure to meet you.”

“Horatio Crabber. They do this most nights. We usually stay behind the walls, but they’ll send a squad out to deal with the nasties. We’re not ungrateful, but then they do this bit afterwards and wake everybody up. More of a nuisance than a threat.”

“Anything I can do to help?”

“Honestly, we’re probably done for the night, except waiting for these idiots to leave. You can head on back to bed.” Gral takes his advice.

We wake up in the gloomy morning. This place is, unsurprisingly, still oozing goth.

Shoshana makes a point to get Clem alone while we’re all still getting ready.

“Hey, I just want to warn you,” the young sorceress starts awkwardly. “I know that you want to talk to the Red Hand and get their side of the story, but...look. I know it’s hard, but you’ve got to accept the possibility that they’re gonna be, y’know. Too far gone to talk to.”

“Shoshana, I know you believe you have to immediately ‘put down’ anyone affected by the curse, but I need to hear them out.”

“That’s not - Clem, I just....don’t want you to get your hopes up. They might attack us as soon as they see us.”

“I was told a man named Sokolov would be there. I don’t want to fight my former unit, but I need to have words with Sokolov.”

Shoshana can definitely grok needing to talk to someone just to get closure, even if you have no hope for them. “I mean, I get that, I really do. I’m just worried.”

“Thank you for trying to help. I know you have the best intentions. But I’d say that my time with the Red Hand robbed me of any optimism I had,” the actual war veteran diplomatically reminds the 19-year-old who’s barely ever left her village. “I’m just being even-handed. I know there’s a good chance we’ll have to ‘put them down,’ as you would say, but I want to go in as even and level headed as possible. I’ve learned that it’s better not to fight when you don’t have to. I want to hear them out. If I see Sokolov, though, things will be different.”

“Please understand: these people were basically my family. So going in there swords blazing is not an option.”

“That’s not really what I-”

“I’ve spent a few years looking for these people, since seeing my actual family is a far-off possibility. It’s very bittersweet that this is how we meet again.”

Gral pipes up: “I’ve gotten my own bittersweet closure. I understand.”

Shoshana: oh my god other people are here

We scoot in opposite directions, Clem trying to appreciate support even if it’s misguided, and Shoshana convinced that the buff lady is about to get her heart broken.

AAAANYWAY. How are we going to get to the manor, where the Red Hand and their cultist friends are occupying the eastern wing? According to the map, we could go either over land or through the catacombs.

We find Aubrey, who is drinking water and looking wan. Her advice is to go through the catacombs. It’s how she and Mercedes usually go, though the two of them are stealthy enough not to draw attention, and our party has a couple of clanky tanks. “The undead can only come at you from two directions, in a tunnel. The biggest threat with the crews of shamblers and rotters is getting mobbed. In the catacombs, they can’t really surround you. Break through one side, and you’re free.”

Aubrey makes us a rough map of the catacombs. They’re used regularly enough by the resistance for transportation, so there’s signage up. The bigger routes are easier to find, although it’s easy to get lost trying to get to the smaller passages. She points us to a route that will take us up through the manor’s wine cellar.

We ask if she wants us to bring her back anything from the wine cellar. She requests her favorite vintage: purple and made of grapes.

(A side conversation ensues, regarding what kind of wines we’re all familiar with. Shoshana, being from a small and very Yiddish village, is clearly only familiar with Manischevitz, or homemade moonshine. Moonischevitz? MAN-SHINE.)

Aubrey gives us a few tips on navigating the tombs. “Look out for specific symbols on the tombs: a tree means a Knight of the Greatwood, this rune here means they were a spellcaster, a bird mask means a Sturmhearst graduate, and this symbol means they were executed. You see a bunch of THOSE, you’ve hit Gallows Hill. You end up there, get OUT. Nobody is buried with anything good, and they’re pretty angry.”

As we head into the catacombs, the DM has us draw a couple cards from his deck. Shoshana draws The Faith. Clem draws The Tome.

Valeria navigates first, rolling a 16. We do not end up in Gallows Hill.

Deep inside the tunnels, we find a small chapel to Rack. (Thanks, The Faith!) There’s no real guardian of the dead in the Oberian pantheon, but Rack is the most commonly used for funerary rites, since he’s in the Pit and the afterlife tends to have us all thinking about suffering vs. mercy. The Curse is quiet/lessened here in the tiny chapel, and Valeria can feel the presence of Rack. It’s a free short rest area, basically. For Gral and Clem, the statue of Rack upside-down in chains upside down is kinda creepy. The chapel also serves as the tomb of a couple clerics of Rack. They are seemingly undisturbed by undeath.

We travel on. Once we’re out of range of the chapel, Shoshana, with a good Perception roll, feels the air grow a bit cold as something spectral shifts out from behind a corner.

(Clem’s player’s Roll20 name is blocking the map, since he has put Clem’s entire very long name as his handle. “Dude, can you shorten your name for me? It makes it hard to scroll.” -DM

“I’d rather die.”

He immediately makes his name in chat EVEN LONGER.)

We can hear voices from the direction of that cold ghostly wind. No, it’s just echoey - this is more like a singular rather cultured voice. “Now. Calm yourself and let’s be as reasonable as we can.”

“Grahh,” something replies.

“Now there’s no need for that! I’m sure there’s a reasonable explanation for this, including your current behavior, which is VERY rude.”

“grrAH,” the something says aggressively.

“Um. Oh dear. Help?!”

Clem turns the corner and can see four shapes in the darkness, accompanied by the sound of rattling bones. A-Luxor, our floating light-beetle, floats around and light spills on four skeletons and some sort of skeletal specter looming over them. The skeletons look hastily assembled - the bones aren’t matching; one has a leg much shorter than the other, one has 2 right femurs. Clem can tell, she went to enough med school to know what bones should look like.

“UM, HELP, THEY’RE BEING QUITE UNREASONABLE,” the voice yelps.

It’s time to fight Bones Malone and the Spooky Boys. The distant trousle of bones begins to play on somebody’s laptop speakers.

As Gral hits the bony boys with Faerie Fire and Valeria unleashes her frigid breath weapon, the eyes on the Eyegis begin to roll in every direction. It’s as cool as it is creepy.

A terrible voice hisses, “Slaaay them, they will serrrrrve.”

The first voice, which seems to be coming from the wall, shouts, “Is somebody out there? Help!”

Valeria calls back, “We’re trying!”

“Thank youuuuu!”

Shoshana crits one skeleton with thunder damage and EXPLODES it. Her other beam nat 1s and thunder damages the wall, everyone taking a small amount of rubble damage as rock splinters from the wall and ceiling. Clem stands up too fast and bonks her head on the wall. Clem swings, but the skelly trousles away. Gral smashes one with his sickle. Valeria stabs and twists with her trident, getting a bony boy between the ribs and just stirring.

The ghost poofs over and begins to drain Shoshana’s life essence away. The sorceress rolls good enough CON to avoid losing any of her spell slots, though she temporarily gets her max HP cut. It hisses, “powerrr…mine….give it….I need it…” Shoshana’s retaliatory swipe goes right through it. You can see bony bits floating in the ectoplasm.

Valeria hustles on over to the talking tomb and investigates, but badly. It’s the tomb of someone named Dr. Leonard Wendell. There’s bird masks carved on tomb, and the inscription says “Healer, Leader, Teacher, Founder”

Valeria is like, cool, and pulls the lid off the stone casket. There’s a body in there, as well as a ghost crouching in there, looking like a transparent person in fancy robes and a much older style of bird mask. “Oh, dearest me!” he cries.

The evil ghost points at Clem and hisses. She feels her bones trying to lock in place, but it doesn’t work. Clem tries to hit the ghost but just KEEPS WHIFFING, what is the DEAL with her dice, seriously.

“Goodness me! Is Doctor Rial still out there?” asks the Sturmhearst ghost.

“There were a bunch of skeletons and a ghost, I didn’t catch any of their names?” Valeria admits.

“My colleague, Rutiger Rial, he was acting quite beside himself and irrational. He wanted me to come with him and see something, and I didn’t think that was a good idea! And he got very upset at me!” the ghost huffs.

Valeria blinks. “…you certainly seem more civilized than other ghosts I’ve seen.”

“Well, Rutiger was as educated as I, although in a different field. I always said the study of the arcane would lead to irrationality! To a point. I admit it can be very useful in certain contexts.”

“Uh, I’m Kyr Valeria Argent….at your service?”

“A pleasure to meet you!”

“You were calling for help?”

“Ah, yes. Rutiger and his skeletons were threatening to drag me off! And I called for help, and you graciously assisted. I say, are your friends okay back there?”

Smash cut to Gral getting smacked by a ghost.

Shoshana channels her Primal Savagery and claws at the specter, tearing through the ectoplasm, getting a good grip on its remaining cervical vertebrae, and RIPPING them right out. It shrieks horribly, and falls to the ground. Its ectoplasm evaporates, and the bones fall to the floor, bounce bounce bounce clatter.

“…They seem to have it under control,” Valeria says.

“Yes, well, we woke up some time ago,” the transparent Dr. Wendell tells her, as the rest of us brush bone fragments off our clothes and come over to talk. “Rutiger was considerably less coherent than he was in life; he went off, saying he heard something calling. I, however, am a man of science, who knows better than to go exploring strange tombs, even if they’re my own!”

“If it’s your own, isn’t it not a strange tomb?”

“Well, I’ve never seen it! The last thing I remember is treating plague victims!”

Shosha takes a biiiiiiiig step back.

(“He died of Serious Stank,” Gral’s player quips.

“Yes, overcome by miasma is what we called it in my day,” the DM responds in-character.)

The ghost looks sheepish, as much as one can while wearing a big ol’ plague doctor mask. “To be perfectly honest, I don’t know how much longer I would last here, before I degraded like Rutiger there. Might I leave with you? I can’t really offer anything except my experience, and companionship, I suppose.”

“I’m not really sure how to- well, Rutiger there WAS a specialist in necromancy, and we shared rooms often. I was no caster in life, but I think I can get away with it by – ah, yes, that should do nicely,” he mutters. “What year is it?”

We haven’t actually come up with a calendar for this campaign, so Clem’s player guesses. “...1965?” Suddenly we all have Mad Men haircuts, and the Orc homeland is Vietnam.

“Last I remember, it was 1843. If I recall my instructions upon burial, there should be a scalpel in there!”

Valeria indeed spots a scalpel, on a small shelf above his body. “Ah,” Dr. Wendell sighs, “we saved many lives together.”

The inert skeleton in the tomb is in in pieces, separated neatly in little alcoves. “Ah, perfect! Just as I asked for in my will. I was fully dissected upon death, of course! I’d be something of a hypocrite, with all the trouble I went to acquire cadavers.”

“Anyway. There appears to be an influence in this place I’m not fond of. I can reside in this scalpel, until perhaps I can be ensconced elsewhere. I’m safer in the scalpel than out there.”

We have acquired the haunted scalpel of Dr. Leonard Wendell, Founder of the Sturmhearst College of Medicine.

We short rest in the chapel. We take no taint, due to the holy ground.

During the short rest, Gral reflects on how orcs don’t really have a problem with ghosts or hauntings. Because once you’ve sent a spirit to the Allsoul, it kind of stays part of the Allsoul. He kinda finds it irresponsible of these foreigners to just leave ghosts lying around like that, instead of consolidating them into a giant ghost-powered memory blob.

(Orc ghost stories are a bit different than human ones – generally some warrior gets lost, and you defeat them by singing the death song and sending them to the Allsoul. The ghost’s appearance is what lets the heroes know that “Oh, they’re dead, not missing.” We want to know about Orcish murder mysteries that start with a ghost attack, but the DM gets us back on track.)

“So, as a scalpel of science, did you see anything that would have caused such a change in your colleague?” Clem asks Dr. Wendell.

“Apparently, we had all been chosen to serve in some sort of army? I’ll have you know I was in life a strict pacifist. Until the day I died I swore I would Do No Harm. That doesn’t really apply anymore, but. It’s the principle of the thing.”

We explain to him that there’s, like, a curse going on. It’s looking like “Serve” and “Chosen” are its buzzwords in Mornheim.

“Well, I conscientiously object!” he huffs.

(We do not tell him about the Key, just in case. Do the Prisoners get along well enough to share custody? I guess we’ll have to see.)

Time to keep traveling. We head back out into the catacombs, and the DM has Gral draw one more card: the Madness.

Clem must immediately make a WIS save. She does bad.

As we walk through the chill of the catacombs, something about the tunnel – Clem could swear she hears whispers. Looking at the names on the alcoves, they’re not Valdian…they start looking Elven. Which is weird, ‘cause she’s in Valdia. She looks, and she starts to hear voices of her fallen comrades. Those that died in the original charge, those that died in the winter that followed, those that died in the years of war. Help us…help us return….you can help…find them…..

As the group passes a statue, and she looks up, it’s a figure holding an axe. ...It’s Her.

Clem, the DM asks, how do you react to you-know-who?

Clem stops dead in front of the statue, confronted by a terribly familiar face. Her sword slips from her grasp as helpless tears begin to drip from her eyes, and she collapses to the ground.

We all hear the enormous greatsword clang to the ground. Clem’s looking at a statue of “Ser Marina Ivanovna.” It’s an elf woman wearing a cloak - an old Kevan soldier’s uniform. There’s a story inscribed on the pedestal. Looks like the person interred here was part of the elven forces during the Kevan occupation, but she was considered a hero in Valdia after she fought some dragon that took over a huge section of the wood. Clem is staring up at the stone figure, the usually stoic drow sobbing openly.

Shoshana snaps fingers in front of Clem’s eyes and shoves at her shoulder. Clem’s enormous form doesn’t move.

Valeria assumes the statue is doing some kind of mind effect on Clem and gets her weapons out. The statue stands there, foot on a dragon skull, looking vaguely heroic at us. Valeria pokes it with her trident. It is stone.

Eventually Clem comes to, a bit. She looks at the statue again, now that A-Luxor has floated over and cast a better light on the figure. It’s not Her.

Yes, it’s an Elven Greencloak, holding an axe, but the face is different. Clem can see the name now, with its granted Valdian title. Clearly a different woman. The axe is different, the uniform is different. Clem suddenly becomes aware of the situation, and is WAY EMBARRASSED. She pushes herself to her feet, scrambling to get herself together. “I’m – sorry, I’m fine, I, uh, thought it was someone else-”

Shoshana rolls Insight. Clem is clearly upset by what just happened, and is trying to pretend everything is okay. It has to do with the statue? Clem’s doing double takes at the statue and mumbling “I-I could have sworn it was her...”

In Clem’s distracted mumbling, Shoshana manages to pick up a name that the others don’t seem to hear. Private Messaging, the digital equivalent of passing notes.

We all agree that there must be mind magic going on, and hurriedly press forward.

We follow the signs that the resistance has put up, and eventually emerge into a basement. Clearly this was once a lavish, well appointed building, but it’s now dusty and dead. This is a pretty nice wine cellar – there’s much imported Demish wine and a setup clearly suited for hosting fancy parties.

Valeria’s noble enough to pick out a good vintage. Valeria wants to take one that seems like there’s a lot of, or might be significant to the house of Mornheim. She finds a “Chateau dePas” and stashes a bottle for Aubrey. Clem grabs a bottle at random and takes a slug to deal with the ordeal she just went through. She’s not drinking enough to get drunk, and is also huge enough that it would take a whole lot for her to get there.

We find some stairs up and find ourselves in a crumbling, once-opulent and imperious house, in the Grand Foyer. Animal heads adorn the walls, covered in webs and dust. Appropriate for all cliches, there’s a big painting on one wall over a fireplace. It’s of three people: clearly a younger Ser Balderich, a woman standing next to him, and in proper cheesy pic style, they’ve both got their hands on the shoulders of young girl. They’re smiling, standing in front of the hills north of house in a little garden area. We can see the ancient trollstones framing them. (Trollstones are ancient standing stones - perhaps not as elaborate as Stonehenge, but the general idea is similar.) There’s lots of other art of dusty ancestors, portraits, and maps. It looks like there’s been fighting here - there’s battle damage and a few arrows stuck in the rafters.

The peasant among us gapes at all the artwork. Do rich people just paint picture of everyone they know???

“Not everyone, usually just family. And they hire someone,” Valeria tells Shoshana.

(We decide that in traditional Dragonborn portraits, they are surrounded by their Unusual Hoard – their prestigious collection of their favorite thing. Thanks for the inspiration, iguanamouth! Valeria doesn’t have a hoard yet. If she’s got a painting, it might be her with her parents’ hoards. Family ones tend to be their industry, or thing they’re king of, etc. Maybe Valeria’s can be her collection of souvenirs and gifts for NPCs? Her player’s already started a tally of how many maps we get...)

We’re in a big foyer. We don’t see anything immediately; it’s kind of a big mess of a room. Time for Investigate checks! Shosha investigates in case the cult left shit lying around. She finds, in a closet, hanging up, a cloak. It’s well made, with the Mornheim crest on it. The cloaks next to it are damaged, but this one isn’t at all - definitely a sign of a possible magical object.

“Guys, is it poor taste to loot the house of a person you know?” she calls back to the others.

“I mean, Aubrey’s technically a graverobber,” Clem tells her.

Shoshana feels weird as a kind-of-guest taking Aubrey’s shit, but she takes it nonetheless. Loot!

She puts it on and it’s a Cloak of Protection! +1 to AC and all saving throws!

The DM decides to roll on a table of item quirks and we get lucky: “This item whispers warnings to its bearer. You receive +2 to Initiative.”

However he also gives it “While you wear it, it’s constantly muttering.”

Apparently the cloak was enchanted to warn the wearer of danger, but it’s in the friggin’ Cursewood, which is absurdly full of danger, and it’s been trying to warn for soooo long, that it is Constantly Muttering. Like running through like five years of voicemails you can’t skip, except they’re about potential doom. DM, you gave a perfectly good cloak anxiety.

It’s embroidered nicely, though, with Mornheim’s iconic apple trees. The DM’s rolls tell us it was given as gift to a Mornheim noble who went on a quest of some sort

Clem, meanwhile, finds a purse of gold + jewels – 100g worth of jewelry. Score!

Valeria crits her Investigation. She finds a Secret Door, which looks very old. Valeria grew up in noble households and manors, she spent her entire childhood looking for fun secret doors. She pulls on a candlestick, just for old times’ sake, and it goes click!

There’s a secret passageway that goes west, into a small room. It’s set up as some sort of wizard’s lab. She finds a spell scroll! There’s many notes with it, written in a fine hand. This....doesn’t look like a standard spell scroll. For one thing, it’s written in Old Valdian. Holding it, Valeria’s sense of the arcane tells her it feels like a highly advanced and modified version of spell Purify Food & Drink. The notes in Old Valdian, too. This must be a custom spell somebody had developed.

Looking around the wizard lab, it’s full of magical plants and herbs, but they’re all long wilted.

Shoshana, in a mirror, sees something moving, coming from the direction of the ghost’s wing. There it is - the ghost itself, phasing through the door. The eerie spectral form glides into the room, weeping.

SAD GHOST ALERT.

With a natural 20 roll and her natural attunement to the Curse, Shoshana can feel power RADIATING from the ghost’s sobs. This is a seriously powerful spirit.

We all scoot into the secret room, popping our heads out in order of height, Scooby Doo style. We instantly recognize it from the portrait: indeed, this is the spirit of Rosalind von Mornheim. Her ghost is weeping thick black tears that hit the ground and poof into dark smoke. She floats into the foyer and slowly gazes up at the portrait of herself and her family. The sound of her weeping washes over us like a tangible wave; those of us who fail our saves instantly take Taint, as watching this spirit in utter despair makes the fear of death curl an icy hand around our hearts. Eventually she makes her slow, mournful way back towards the living quarters of the manor, phasing away through the wall.

Once she’s gone, Valeria hands Shoshana the spell scroll, since the sorceress is the only one who speaks Old Valdian. She skims it quickly. It seems to be a ritual of divine magic, druidic in nature but could be cast by any cleric, druid, or paladin. It’s some kind of supercharged version of Purify Food and Drink, but with a much wider radius. It wouldn’t fix poison, but the effect would be much longer-lasting and wider-range.

The spell components are decidedly druidic-type ingredients, rather than holy ones. It’s low on silver, holy water, or the rattling chains of Rack – more rare flowers, the horns of a mountain ram, crushed spider legs, (a bit of cilantro, black pepper to taste?)

It seems like the intended use of the spell is for purifying a water supply. Looks like it culminates in some kind of stone or blessed object, which is placed into the water supply.

We should put that in the water near the trollstone!!! Where Lady Rosalind got sick! That’s the same river as the water supply into the town; it might be carrying something that’s causing the necromantic illness in the townsfolk.

Shoshana skims the accompanying notes, too: the writer thinks something has happened to the local water and intends to inspect source; she is worried about Skelbjor under the bridge. (We are unable to find a name, but we can tell it’s a female author.)

Valeria finds a map detailing Mornheim’s irrigation systems, dated about 10 years ago, and takes that as well. She’s excited. If this is a spell paladins can cast, she could fix the water supply, and Save The Town, and Be A Hero!!!!

But we’ve got a cult to fight first.

We open the door and head to wing the cultists have taken over. From Audrey’s description, we know the main feature of this side of the house is its library, the Epitaph Library. In addition to being a regular fancy library, this was also where the epitaphs and records of the notable dead were kept. If you want to find a particular tomb or learn the history of those who were buried in Mornheim, this is your ticket.

In the library, many of the books have been pulled from the shelves and scattered around, but in organized piles, like someone has been doing research. There are candles lit in various places around the room. (Yes, they have glass covers, for fire safety. The players insisted, because we’re book nerds and we’re sad for Witness Bea.)

Gral and Clem, in the gloom, can see a couple of sickly, thin figures – cultists. On either side, there are skeletons standing guard. As we open the door they turn to look directly at us. The cultists turn, too, and we realize – they, too, are suffering a late stage form of the sickness from town. They’re gaunt, pale, and weak. One’s in robe, but the others are in regular clothes.

A thin, reedy voice shouts, “WAIT!” and then devolves into hoarse coughing. The source limps out from behind shelf, leaning heavily on a halberd like it’s a walking stick. “THEY’RE EXPECTED! Grigor said they were coming!”

And Clem sees: his skin is pale and gaunt; he’s limping, barely holding himself upright with the halberd. He wears elven armor, like the suit Clem used to wear, and his withered hands wear worn red gloves. He’s coughing heavily; this elf is clearly deeply unwell.

Private Sokolov smiles sheepishly and says in Elven, “Hey, Sarge. Glad you could join us.”

#session recap #mornheim #aubrey von mornheim #balderich von mornheim #clem haxan #gral omokk'duu #shoshana bat chaya #valeria argent #private sokolov #the pale king #leonard wendell #skelbjor #mercedes the pyromancer

0 notes