Second Ptolus Campaign Journal, #38
The 12th of Year’s End
The devil that just appeared as we invade the false orphanage is thin and gangly yet muscular. He’s seven feet tall and wields a large sword. He appears in a flash that stinks of brimstone and immediately presents himself as a formidable foe. He wears a medallion that glows red when it magically inflicts damage on us. After three such attacks, he licks his amulet and says, “This will feed the dragon well.” Then he disappears before our eyes. The coward!
We try to pry up the panel in the floor again to see where the vampiric mist went, to no avail — clearly it is held shut mechanically. So we climb the stairs to the next level of the tower. Here we see a table/altar in the shape of a red dragon’s head, which Archinemus manages to open using the combination dials on the front. Slowly the panel back down on the first floor clicks open.
Our light sources have a hard time penetrating the darkness down here. As we advance, we notice a carving of rose vines on the wall. The vines begin to turn green as we advance down the hall and through the door. Waiting for us is a humanoid thornbush and a female litorian, the latter of whom looks pallid and punctured by bite marks. “We’re friends of the Green,” cries Tharn, showing them the leafy circlet we received from the dryad Faestra in our adventures north of the city.
“Vanaster!” cries the litorian, racing out another door as the thorny vine grabs Barbatos and starts sucking his blood. Charnoth begins chopping at the vines but not only does it not help, his actions seem to cause the entire wall of rose-etchings to come alive and attack back. Under the power of Calista’s spell, the shambling thornbush collapses in a burst of flaming leaves. Charnoth and I hack up the vampiric rose vines and free the hapless Barbatos.
We follow the litorian-thrall to a chamber that contains a bed atop a great pile of coins — could that belong to the half-dragon? — as well as miscellaneous furnishings and a trio of foes: the litorian thrall, a big red humanoid column of fire, and the half-dragon in glistening red scales and plate armor.
“Karee, are you listening?” called out the half-dragon. “They’re coming, prepare to protect the dragon!” Protect the dragon?
After the half-dragon lays Tharn low, Charnoth strikes him with a formidable blow and ends his life. I note that the thrall continues to observe everything, likely transmitting all our actions to her foul mistress, so I knock her out. We’ll come back and free her later, when Karee is dead.
Moving down a corridor, we hear a loud but distant sound of phlegmy breathing and some movement. Entering the next room we find a massive bronze door emblazoned with a red dragon’s head. The door is round and appears sealed. Before we can see much more, I find myself surrounded by gobs of fleshy goo that drop on us from the ceiling. To make matters worse, another door opens, and there’s our old devil-friend again — the one we fought upstairs in this tower.
The fleshy gobs are lemurs, and we manage to dispatch them quickly. Barbatos summons a gout of white-hot energy and nearly slays the devil; I manage to finish him off, then sunder his cursed life-draining amulet.
We cross into the adjoining room, ready to meet our vampire foes at last. As we enter the chamber, we hear a clattering, teeth-rattling sound of bones skittering across stone. A tall, gaunt figure moves along the wall toward us, its impossibly huge scorpion tail poised behind it, ready to strike. And then another emerges from the gloom, near a dark pool in the middle of the floor.
Session LXXIV – Still The 12th of Yearsend
As we explore the underground areas beneath the orphanage, looking for Nostravant the half-dragon and Karee the Harrow elf vampire, we’ve already killed one half-dragon, a fire elemental, vampire children, and some blood-sucking rose vines. Now we’re in a lower level in a room with a door that bears a large dragon motif. A number of foes have already taunted us with references to “the dragon.” But first we must face down two horrible skeletal bone devils…
As I pound on one of the bone devils, it whispers in my head, “You have to destroy her amulets, then we can help you. She hasn’t commanded us yet not to tell you that.” However, I have a hard time convincing the rest of the group to trust the word of a pair of devils, so we continue the attack.
Just as we polish off those bone tyrants (after they send three of our number fleeing in panic) Barbatos, Charnoth, and I find ourselves trapped in the bone devil room behind a closed portcullis. Karee and a female half-dragon stroll out. “I need the blood of seven heroes. That’s why you’re here. You’ve freed slaves and killed my minions. You’ll do.”
We defy her brazen offer and manage to raise the portcullis and get out to face her. Calista’s stunning use of a ride the lightning spell inflicts a good deal of damage on the two of them, but sadly the vampire manages to dominate Charnoth, who attacks me and lays me low.
“Their blood works just as well if they’re dead,” Nostravant sneers, and they renew their attack on us in earnest. The dragon-emblazoned door behind us opens, and we can see a monstrous egg inside the room beyond. Tubes hooked up to it feed it what looks like blood from a large vat into the egg. We can see a draconic form within — it looks as though the egg could burst open at any moment.
We’re all fighting for our lives against the fiery staff and breath of the half-dragon and the insidious vampire abilities of Karee. The Harrow elf vampire even sacrifices her own familiar (an imp) in an area attack against us, but we still manage to take out Nostravant. Then, after healing me, Calista hits Karee with a blinding sunburst bomb (too bad it catches Tharn in the crossfire, burning his eyes right out). The invisible Archinemus opens up on her with his dragon pistol and its silver sheened ammo. Although blind, Tharn manages to smash her into green mist. (With his keen sense of smell, if any one of us had to be blind, he was probably the right choice.)
Calista catches Karee’s mist in a magical globe and we ponder what to do with her. After considering our options, we decide the best thing to do is use Tharn’s Stoneblade to create a stone sphere to encase her, so that when the magical globe dissolves, she’ll be unable to return to her coffin to regenerate.
The plan seems to work, because before long more vampire children arrive to come to her aid. We stake them as they try in vain to break through the stone barrier between them and their mistress.
After a few minutes, we hear strange noises coming from the dragon room. Sure enough, the wyrmling is hatching! The enormous head snaps out of the egg, and it’s clear that this is no ordinary dragon. First of all, it’s vampiric. Its red and black striated pattern looks odd, and all the blood it’s been fed has turned it into something quite fearsome. In hindsight, we probably should not have challenged it. The huge form lurches toward us, hoarsely demanding, “Blood!”
After a few futile attack attempts, we go to Plan B: RUN! We back out of the room and Archinemus manages to disable the door that has risen just enough for the dragon’s snout to emerge. “Bluuuuudddd!” it rasps, but the door holds. After a few more moments of bashing at the door, it sighs and expires. Its snout and tongue turn black and oily and melt away to nothing as the dragon dies of bloodthirst. I sag to my knees in disbelieving relief.
We wait a full two hours, then enclose the vampire in a magical globe again and dispel the stone sphere. The mist swirls down to the bottom of the globe and congeals into a dried and desiccated female corpse with all Karee’s equipment. We sigh our second sigh of relief of the afternoon and start to plan our strategy for finding the coffins of the child-vampires. That’ll be a piece of cake, right?
