Second Ptolus Campaign Journal, #37
24th to 25th of Moons
While I was off helping my Aunt Silvia and Uncle Kren put up a new barn on their farm north of the city, the rest of the group went on a mission on behalf of Celdore, in thanks for the help he gave us in finding out more about the Hu-Charad. I feel bad that I couldn’t help, considering all I learned about my heritage thanks to Celdore, but there’s no arguing with dad when he puts his foot down about family matters.
It seems that a servant of one of Celdore’s friends was murdered, so the group went to the home to investigate. They found the remains of an old staircase in the room where the fatal attack occurred. The stairs went down to a magical conjuration lab under the city (beneath the couple’s house). As they progressed down there they came upon a group of horrible ethereal creatures who seemed to be all mouths. They could not only make their foes go ethereal with their attacks, but they also fractured a victim’s sanity. Following a long and bloody battle, they discovered a tear in the fabric of the space in the lab where the creatures were coming through. The tear was held open like a doorway by some sort of dimensional spike.
After they had closed the portal and taken the spike, the group discovered some journals and a spellbook from the wizard who created this lab. Divinatory spells reveal that this wizard, Tirestian, was trying to open a gateway to another plane about three hundred years old. A bit more research reveals that he also was the designer of the Pale Tower and the estate of House Dallimothan, both of which are notable for being larger and differently shaped on the inside than on the outside.
Calista learns from her Pale Tower friends that Tirestian was a good guy, a human long since dead. A very powerful wizard, he understood spatial relationships much better than most. When the Pale Tower was erected, the Malkuth thought he might perhaps have built even more into it than they knew about, but they were never able to find anything.
I arrive back in the city to find my friends still puzzling over what they found in the undercity magical lab. We decide to hang onto the dimensional spike for a while. When we all meet up at the shop again, our clerk Taevel brings us the violet gemstones that we got off the body of Swordthrasher in Kaelist, the haunted elven city to the north. (Swordthrasher was the one who sundered my axe!). She says she thinks they are very powerful inherent sources of magical energy but doesn’t know beyond that. I wonder whether they are related to the shard in Castle Shard. They’re sure the same color.
This week Myraeth’s Oddities receives an invitation and four free tickets to attend a new theater in Oldtown. It’s a shadow theater, where magical shadows play out on a large white screen. Sounds intriguing.
28th of Moons
We attend the show at the Shadow Theater, leaving our weapons at home. Fearing the free invitations were a ruse to get all of us out of the shop so thieves could have their way with it, Archinemus elects to stay behind. Barbatos is consumed in the spellbook of Tirestian, so he doesn’t go either.
The show was fun, but I was more interested in the handsome and tall young man a couple rows over. He smiled at me! But alas, he seems to be with another girl. (Diethan hires a lad to follow him home, and the messenger comes back to give us the address.)
As we’re about to exit, someone’s standing there waiting for us. It’s Charnoth! We haven’t seen him for months, ever since he had to go back to his tribe to handle some difficulties. With a roar, he tackles his brother. (I was worried at first, but apparently it’s just some sort of familial greeting.) He reports that the tribe of Malethar is all well, including some of the folks who were the most injured in the Shuul episode.
Charnoth said he returned to “free” his tribal brothers from their “enslavement” by the city. At first I thought he referred to a new slavers’ ring that was preying on his tribe, but then I realized he thought it was unnatural for litorians to live in the city. He said he has returned for his people, and with him he brings his new bear companion, Krondar.
Strangely, Calista disappears from the road in front of the theater, followed closely by Tharn, Charnoth, and the bear. Diethan and I follow, only to discover that Calista was led back behind the theater, compelled by the voice of a woman in her head. Then I hear it too — the woman urges me, “Come closer, come… what is that thing?” But then the voice is gone. We don’t see anything, though Tharn smells something he’s never smelled before back here in the alley.
Then a door opens in a building at the back of the alley, and the woman whose voice we heard in our heads now speaks aloud. “Get that giant’s amulet — or whatever it is!” She ushers out a group of animated gnoll skeletons. “I made these old friends special for you,” she simpers to us. We engage our foes, and as Diethan runs to shout for the City Watch, he runs afoul of three little vampire children. When we have dispatched the skeletons, a woman appears from within the theater — but she is no ordinary woman.
This vampire Harrow elf remarks: “Hadrien suggested this would be easier.” The special protective plate I’m wearing (a gift from Malkeen Balacazar) shields me from the powers of the Covenant of Blood — and it seems to be protecting me against her. Before I can get to her, she releases rabid city dogs with red glowing eyes at us. Sadly my punches do not seem to daunt her. As we slay these dogs, we see their bodies turn to black sludge and sink into the dank ground. Calista lays the vampire woman low with two devastating attack from within spells. We surprise her with our tenacity. “This will require more thought,” she mutters, retreating back into the building, a simple storehouse. She turns to green vapor and escapes beneath a doorway inside.
Meanwhile, the City Watch arrives to deal with the vampire threat. “Aww, rats,” says one of the little undead boys. Then all three turn into green vapor and fly away. Well, they try to fly away, but Calista manages to cage one in a magical globe of force. We agree to let him go if he talks. He tells us that his mistress is Karee, the Harrow elf woman we saw. He confirms that she’s one of the Covenant of Blood. Hadrien Runihan wanted her to come here for us because he wants us dead and she owed him a favor. He smirks. “The Covenant has big plans for Ptolus.” He admits that they are “one big happy family” with the Forsaken, and that the Covenant and Menon Balacazar get along famously. “Big Daddy is fruit like you, but nobody’s going to pluck him.” He also metnions that Hadrien has Linele’s watch (but that we knew).
The City Watch takes our report and confirms that child vampire attacks have been rampant here in Oldtown. We think the Covenant of Blood wants us dead because Hadrien Runihan had wanted the Swords of Ptolus, but we wouldn’t release Spyncer Coil to him. Now he wants revenge.
If it isn’t one thing…
Back at the shop, Diethan tells us that he knows of a North Market enclave of Harrow elves — perhaps we can find out about Karee’s lair from them. Also, Barbatos’ Dragonscales tutor is a Harrow elf; maybe we can learn more about Karee from her. We also reflect on the ties between the Forsaken and the Covenant of Blood, and the Forsaken and the chaos cults (they were looking for something called “Lilith’s Womb,” we learned from a note taken from one of their bodies in Cordaris). Meanwhile, Charnoth says the spirits called him to come here rather than take up the chieftainship of his tribe — he hopes to remind his people of their true destiny and lead them back to life on the plains. To help his quest, he wants to find Father’s Warclub, the weapon in the hands of the Shadow Eyes. Then he and Tharn have words about how “citified” the younger litorian has become.
Session LXXII – The 11th of Year’s End.
It’s been a little while since my last entry. The shop has done well lately and, while I can’t attribute all of the success to the Adventuring Workshops, I think they did have an impact.
Charnoth has told us that in his travels he’s learned that the slavers who captured the litorians from his tribe were of the Ennin. I’m eager to go after them and hopefully find the still-missing Sallam. But the rest of the group deems the matter of our recent vampiric assault to be more pressing. It’s hard to argue.
We decide to pursue the matter of Karee, the Covenant of Blood vampire who led the attack on us after the shadow play. Barbatos seeks more information on her from his Dragonscales tutor, who is also a Harrow elf (but not a vampire). She tells Barbatos Karee was a high-ranking member of their society and close friends with Karetsan, who lives in the Zar’at (a Harrow elf neighborhood in the North Market). She explains that all the Harrow elves of that neighborhood – and of the city as a whole — are descendants of those who came to this world pursuing an ancient enemy. After Barbatos “lets her win” a game of Dragonscales, she urges him to visit Karetsan for more info.
We have some trouble getting the folk of the Zar’at to point us to Karetsan’s house. Finally, one of them takes us to her. She carries a quiver of many wands and was friends with Karee when they were both alive. She is no friend of the Balacazars. “It is Hadrien Runihan that took her from me,” she said. “Her loss was significant.” She added that she knows where Karee lairs. “She and her friends have taken up in a place called Mother Harone’s orphanage.” She has been there for around ten years, but has only been in the Covenant of Blood a short time. She said her very nature has changed, not just her life status — she’s a monster now. She suspects that someone named Nostravant plays some role in this change (Nostravant is a human woman with dragon blood in her veins, we’re told).
The Harrow elves really warm up to us when we relate the story of our visit to the Shuul complex and the tale of how we killed one of Feegus’ tentacled masters, Xilaranatak. Some of them seem familiar with what “Cephalax” is — and it’s not a mind flayer. Xilaranatak was an ally of the Elder Brain, the creatures’ monarch.
We stop over at the Temple of Asche and get supplied for a vampire-hunting trip, then on to the Siege Tower to speak to Phadian Gess about technique. Her Keepers of the Veil are experts at undead-slaying. (We brought wayward knight Irid Palamac to her here some months ago, when he was hunting half-demons like our friend Kanagi.) Phadian suggests we get weapons that are both silver and magical. She urges us to use fire rather than cold or lightning and get some spells to restore drained energy and life force. Phadian warns us that vampires can turn into a cloud of noxious vapor and they retain the powers they wielded in life. We can only destroy Karee in her coffin. There we could disintegrate her or use a stake through the heart, followed by incineration. We could cut off her head and stuff her mouth full of holy wafers. Vampires re slightly repelled by garlic. Phadian warns us that her lair will be proof against sunlight, so going during the day won’t save us.
She goes on to relate that Hadrien Runihan is a very old vampire who has plagued the city for generations. He is actually the son of famed hero Abesh Runihan, who destroyed the ghost-lich Kagrisos. She warns us of the absolute seriousness of our endeavor and wishes us good luck.
That night I work on a new invention: a suction device that will draw vampiric mist into a flask of holy water. The result is not quite what I intended; it’s more of a holy water spritzer. But that’s valuable in its own right. I’ll bring it along.
12th of Year’s End
Today’s the day! We head over to the Temple of Asche again for a holy blessing before our fight. We also pick up some garlic at the market and make our way to Mother Horone’s orphanage in the Guildsman District. We pause outside the place and Barbatos sends in his arcane eye to reconnoiter. He sees children playing ball and frightening graffiti that says, “Help us” and “She drinks our blood.” The eye also finds a chapel within a tower on the orphanage’s grounds and another room with two vampire children. He sees many staff members and children who are not vampires as well — more like thralls. He also sees dragon statuettes and such truck around an altar; possibly the lair of Nostravant.
The kids in the yard drop their jaws when they see us enter the front gate: a giant, a sibeccai, two litorians, a bear, and a wizard. They must think the circus has just come to town. Too late we realize that wearing garlic necklaces is not the most subtle tactic if we’re going to try to pretend to be interested in adopting orphans.
The abbess of the orphanage, Miss Laurel, is a greying woman who immediately looks deeply suspicious of us. She slams the door on us and yells, “Children, children, come to me right now!”
I bash open a door behind which Barbatos said two child vampires waited. Two children here are playing with a large wooden box of toys. When we enter they drop their toys and stare. I spritz them with holy water and they hiss! A couple good blows turn them to green mist that flies through the wall into the tower next door. As we gaze into the tower, we see fifteen-foot-tall columns carved to resemble dragons, then a green mist seeps down through cracks in the stone floor. Just as Charnoth and I try force up a plate in the floor to see where the mist went, a devil appears in a flash of smoke and brimstone.
“I’ll have all your blood!” it growls.
Now what?
