Second Ptolus Campaign Journal, #51
Still the 10th of Birth
Just as we’re about to venture after the vampire(s) that Calista senses, Sir Feruch arrives at the house to join us. Barbatos opens a magically sealed door to a large room where we see two cages, one containing two writhing, tormented, emaciated vampires and the other containing two underfed, poorly treated teens. While I release the children, Feruch uses his undead bane sword, Final Peace, to put an end to the vampiric creatures; his strikes reduce then to tormented mist. Prevented as they are from reaching their sanctums, surely they will die soon.
While Barbatos monitors the two clouds of mist (and peruses the journals of Chellaster that he finds in the room with them), Feruch, Diethan, and Calista search the house. Meanwhile, I find something for the human captives to eat. The two teens, brother and sister, tell me they are from Pharis, a fishing village north of here. They were taken from their homes by “bad men” and brought to a cave filled with monsters where they were sold to a “metal man with the old man head.” They arrived here only a couple days ago. Cave with monsters? Sounds like a slaving center. They said they were taken from their village on a boat and removed from the boat at night. They remember some cliffs and being brought down some streets past buildings and into another building that backed up against a big cave. I tell them how brave they are as I make a mental note to check around for this cave.
On their search, Feruch, Diethan, and Calista locate a book called Blood of the Vampire hidden away in a niche behind a wardrobe. (Apparently this book includes instructions on transforming a person into the sort of dual creature Chellaster was.) Diethan picks up some additional loot along the way including a pair of mummified hands (hung over the front door — they look like they might be one of the wards we came here for).
A knock at the door interrupts us. It’s the City Watch! We explain that we are with the Keepers of the Veil here to suss out some vampires, adding that came upon two captive youngsters destined to be dinner for the undead. We ask them to take care of the two kids and make sure they get home (we give them some gold from a sack we found in the house to see their way back).
The guards take a final sweep of the house, then agree to let us wrap up our investigation. “We’ll defer to your order on these matters. As usual, if you’ll just have your people make a final report to us…” We agree readily and they leave, promising again to take the children home. Wow, Keepers get a lot more respect than members of the Delver’s Guild. We could get used to this!
The journals tell us Chellaster hates vampires and uses them cruelly to sustain his long life. They also refer to his activities selling children as slaves to the Ennin. He mentions the Ennin’s “Pactlord masters” — wonder what that means. It seems that he has many contacts within the Ennin including a woman (or an it”?) named Annagias, the one who traded some slaves for that Blood of the Vampire book we found elsewhere in the house).
And we learn from the journals that we can’t destroy Medre permanently while her cat familiar remains alive. Oh, no! We didn’t even see her cat, Aryla. Now we have to go back down there! Chellaster adds that Hadrien Runihan (whose magical Sword of Ptolus, Deceit, allows him to remain hidden from divination while in the city) and Koban the litorian are back in the Covenant. Other members are the wizard Tabares Sorsen (friend to Maystra Balacazar), the Harrow elf Ka-Ree (dead already, thanks to us!), and the dark elf Zachean (whom Doeradian Mythlord hates and who once was a foe of the Covenant). He says the number of vampires in the city is growing.
The journals refer to the Shuul as being powerful, though blind to true ambition. Chellaster used Shuul agents infested with devil-parasites to build him his new mechanical body. (Cravish Nathed, the Balacazar crime boss of the Nobles’ Quarter, hooked him up with the devils.) He later learned that the Shuul created a mechanical head for his body and seemed quite upset about it.
In closing, Chellaster wrote that he had to trade Illistar, the greatest of his wards, to the Ennin for more slaves. One more reason for us to find those slavers and destroy them!
Using spells of magical detection, we locate quite a few items and wards here at the house. Gathering them up, we head out to our carriage and make our way back to Pythoness House. (Barbatos also insists on taking a harpsichord from Chellaster’s place, presumably to provide some Pythoness House with some class.) We hang the mummy hands over our front door, and it seems to help.
Afterward, we retire to the shop to ask Taeval to identify some of the materials we gathered from Chellaster’s place. Archinemus uses his magical helm to ask Zavere for more details on Aryla, Medre’s familiar. “It’s a fiendish white cat, I always hated it,” comes the mental reply. “It’s got a collar of invisibility.” (He sounded like he might have been in the middle of a fight or something when we “called.” Ulp.) Feruch heads back to update the Keepers’ leadership at the Siege Tower.
Much as I’d like to go and bust up some slavers, we need to go find a certain cat, pronto.
11th of Birth
Bright and early we set off from Pythoness House to search for this invisible fiendish cat. Sir Mirauch and a couple lesser knights come along from the Siege Tower, as of course does Sir Feruch (who seems to have adopted us).
Calista’s locate spell detects nothing from the front door of the Dark Reliquary, so we venture down to the lower levels once more. We arrive at the horrid toothy hall, beyond which lies the chamber with the hemispheres of force that sheltered Medre’s coffin and the horn of blood. No sign of the cat.
We presume that the cat may have wound up in the hands of Medre’s ally, Menon Balacazar. If that’s true, it may be in the manor home of the crime family located along the cliffs just north of the city. We’ve been below it when we sought to recover Linele almost a year ago. More recently, around the time we met the Hussar, Diethan checked the place out from the outside. Sir Mirauch knows about a weak spot in the wall behind the Reliquary, where we can exit the city on the sly and head up the coast.
We go cross-country along the top of the cliffs. As we come in sight of the large three-story house, we come face to face with a band of ruffians — including TWO men who stand nine feet tall! After an exchange of insults between Diethan and their leader, we are pelted by an assault of arrows and crossbow bolts coming from the area beyond the ruffians. It’s an ambush!
Some of the knights sustain grievous wounds, but we more than hold our own in the fight. We face many foes, but they are no match for us and the knights. Those who do not fall retreat from us in panic. As the leader goes down, he manages to call out, “Somebody alert Arkhall!” Stepping forward, Calista detects the presence of our fiendish feline quarry within the house!
Naturally we fall to bickering about what to do next — Sir Feruch and I strongly favor retreating, regrouping, and entering the house from below through the sea caves we discovered last year. The others want to press the attack on the house, and while we argue about it, Diethan dons a magical disguise and races forward. We try to get behind some cover as we wait for him to scout the house — at least, we hope he’s just going to scout around. Those of us in heavy armor can’t hope to sneak up in Diethan’s wake.
As Diethan approaches the house, he manages to take down the last ruffian, only to run afoul of a vrock sentinel. It doesn’t seem to see him, but the manor’s front door opens, and some more guards come out, along with a warrior guy and a woman in spiky leather armor with a whip. They see the dead sentry before them and begin looking around. THEN the vrock sees him and squawks loudly. Diethan shoots one of the guards and tears off back to our position. Hot on his heels is an angry demon and a batch of the crime lord’s finest. Great. I begin to mentally plan on drinking potions of levitate and water breathing and hurling myself off the cliff while the rest (hopefully) teleport away.
Session XCVIII – Still the 11th of Birth
Diethan high-tails it over to us, followed close behind by a great big purple vulture-demon. It shrieks as it approaches — and then we hear another shriek from behind the trees. Good Mother of All Machines: TWO of them? How will we survive?
We all gang up on this demon and get in some good licks, but then we hear two more creatures moving through the trees at us. They are enormous blue man-scorpions. The vrock goes down under an assault from my Hu-Charad sword but before we can engage the man-scorpions fully, new foes arrive: three winged stocky humanoids and another vrock along with a number of humans and half-elves, including the woman with the whip that Diethan saw up at the house. “Oh for all the gods’ sakes, if you keep fighting, you’ll just get killed,” she says.
Not as daunted as we should be, we fight on. Diethan jumps on the back of one of the scorpion-men, hoping to get it to release Sir Feruch. Things are looking grim, but suddenly I note a strange barefoot elf covered in a leafy cape near where we’re fighting. “If you want to live, do exactly as I say,” he commands, as he creates a magical wall of thorny growth between Calista and her group of foes.
I don’t mind taking some direction right about now, as the winged demons spew sticky bile all over me. I look up at the elf and say, “You’d better make it quick!” He tells me to gather my friends and come to him — maybe he can teleport us all out of here! He throws up another thorny wall between us and one of the scorpion-men and the flying demons. Some of our foes begin circling around the wall at us. “This way! Follow me!” cries the elf, and he ducks through an archway of trees that he just conjured up. He disappears. One by one we follow him through.
We appear in a starkly quiet wooded area. As the last of us comes through the archway, we see the elf druid gesture at it, and it closes up again. All sound here seems quite muffled, and we can’t really smell anything either. The druid regards us. “So, you were attempting a frontal assault on the Balacazars’ mansion.” We explain that that wasn’t actually our intent and thank him for his much-needed aid.
After we tell him what we were doing at the mansion, he says, “You were led there. Divination spells don’t work in there.” He introduces himself as Maeshon and explains that he keeps an eye on the place (it seems that he is a member of the Imperial Eyes, a secret organization that spies for the Commissar). He adds that the Balacazars have been attracting more and new demons of late. “In fact, that may have been a sales demonstration,” he says.
When we ask where we are now, he says, “This place has existed alongside the world since, presumably, shortly after the Creator made my folk.” He says it’s both in Ptolus and outside of Ptolus. The forest here is called the Otherwood — it appears manicured, with all the trees exactly symmetrical and uniform. Once we’ve walked a ways, he forms a new archway, and we follow him through to Iridithil’s Home. I’m awfully embarrassed to be here smelling the way I do (I still have demonic spew all over me).
We take our leave of Sir Mirauch, who heads back to the Siege Tower to report to Phadian Gess. My friends all head back to Pythoness House while I visit the bathhouse on Tavern Row to de-bile myself. (It takes rubbing alcohol to get it off — the whole thing is totally humiliating.)
When my friends arrive back home, it seems our wizard friend has been practicing his new harpsichord. Barbatos listens to the story with interest while finishing a donut. He thinks the woman with the whip might be a slavemaster or demonkeeper of some kind — she’s not someone high up in the Balacazar organization, as far as he could tell from her description. He tells us that from the research he’s done in Chellaster’s journal, the mummified hands above the door frame make it impossible for vampires to enter into the residence. He also has read in the journal that a group of evil creatures called the Pactlords of the Quaan (beholders, lamias, and so on) seem in charge of the Ennin.
So now we don’t know whether the cat is really in the manor of the Balacazards or whether it was just a ruse. The journals of Chellaster made it clear that, as the most powerful vampire in the world, Medre could transfer her soul into her cat’s body upon her death and, with difficulty, come back to life. (That implies that the threat is not as imminent as we had thought.) The journals also make it sound as though the cat was ordered to go immediately to Menon in the event of her mistress’ death.
So we need to get back in that manor house. Unbelievably, Diethan still favors a frontal assault, but I say no way! When we know a secret underwater way in? We spend the rest of the evening debating a plan of attack. Meanwhile, Calista orders a special magic item to make me weightless in teleportation. It will be ready in four days.
Meanwhile, Diethan goes out drinking and bragging about how he was there when the Malkuth left; he starts telling the bar patrons all about Falstef and showing off the mace. As he’s staggering home, he finds a note in his pocket. “I wish to speak with you and your friends at Wondrous Tattoos in the North Market tomorrow afternoon.” It is signed Durant.
The 12th of Birth
We gather in the morning to discuss our plan. I am in favor of getting someone to create a distraction with a bomb in front of the manor while we enter through the sea cave area. I head over to the Smoke Shop to shop for a bomb. They have a great selection, and I wind up buying six powder bombs, three smokebombs, and a length of fuse, along with some large metalworking tools (they always come in handy).
Calista wants to find allies who can help in the assault. Meanwhile, Diethan goes over to the Watchhouse in the Nobles’ Quarter to claim Chellaster’s body (hoping to speak with dead on it), but it’s already been disposed of. But he does bring all the mechanical parts of Chellaster home for me to tinker with.
Back at Pythoness House, Diethan tells us about the meeting with Durant, so we head over with him to the meeting place, a shop called Wondrous Tattoos. The halfling who runs the place tells Durant we’re here. Durant, a troglodyte in Killraven’s employ, explains that the Killravens are interested in hearing more about the future as we saw it. Diethan wants to talk only to Kevris herself, but Durant says that’s not the way it works. Our friend tries to make nice by telling the troglodyte of our anti-Balacazar plans. It’s definitely of interest.
Durant goes on to say that his own organization has had some “setbacks” of late. (He looks meaningfully at us.) “We are willing to let bygones be bygones if it’s a mutually advantageous situation.” He says the Balacazar stronghold is protected against divinations and teleportation — but we discovered otherwise yesterday, we report. He wonders if someone has sabotaged them, or whether someone was luring us into a trap. Diethan offers information on where and when to assassinate Menon in exchange for the Killravens getting us the cat.
Before leaving, the shop’s proprietor, Anagio Quigg, gives us water-breathing tattoos to use on our mission (Durant was going to make him give them to us for free but we insist upon paying). We also promise to refer customers to him from our store if they are looking for a potion we don’t have. He seems delighted by the prospect, as the Killravens come down hard on him for extortion money (75 gp per month).
I remember back in the not-so-distant past when Durant was trying to drive us out of business. Who’d have thought we’d someday be doing business with him?
