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cursewoodrecap · 5 years ago

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Session 10: What’s Dead Is [Not] Dead

In the city of Mornheim, among skeletons, wraiths, and zombies, Clem confronts a figure from her past.

At the end of the previous session, we had just entered the vast Epitaph Library of the von Mornheim manor. According to Lady Aubrey, it had been taken over by “creepy robe fuckers,” who she’d seen sneaking around the necropolis. They certainly don’t control all the undead of the city, but they’re certainly commanding a fair few of them. The cultists had previously been working out of the catacombs, in the von Menzer family crypt, but now it looks like they’ve moved into the east wing of the manor house, along with their newest recruits - the straggling remains of the elite Kevan squadron known as the Red Hand.

We stand at the entrance to the Epitaph Library, a huge two-story chamber of books, with a second-story balcony running along three of the four walls. It’s not just a regular rich-people library; it also contains records of all the notable graves in Mornheim and those who were interred there. In the room with us: two skeletons, impassively standing guard; a few cultists in robes who look rather spooked by our appearance; and one of Clem’s old squadmates: Private Sokolov. He’s standing at a table, leaning heavily on his halberd for support, looking pale, gaunt, and sickly.

Clem only has eyes for the ailing, weak elf, but the rest of us do a quick scan. Sokolov is the only Red Hand we can see in the room; the robe guys look Valdian. A decent Perception check of the books pulled from the shelves lets us know that it seems like the cultists are methodically looking through the books, especially those bound in black. Some sections of the library are almost entirely black; we assume those books are the epitaphs. It’s a methodical and comprehensive search.

Clem doesn’t care. Every inch of her impressive figure is tense, like a hunter preparing to strike. She softly steps closer to her former comrade. “Sokolov. Is this where you ran off to?” she spits, voice dripping with disdain.

“I made it back to camp. But the others - Rusalka led us here, after things got – well, you know. He got some of us assigned to a rear guard unit, and kept in touch with the ones he could find during the fight. After the war, we didn’t have anywhere to go. They didn’t make any place for us. You know what it was like.” He laughs humorlessly, which turns into a hacking cough. “Those of us who had no home to go back to came here. There’s money to be made for good swords, in these woods.”

Clem gets even closer, her hand on the hilt of her sword. This close, he looks...well, he looks even more godawful. He’s dying. Clem puts aside her hatred for a moment. “Sokolov...what the hell did you do to yourself?”

He keeps smiling sadly at her. “We came here with an elf knight, one of those Cursebreakers. He took us down to the tunnels. We got hit hard by ghouls. They busted through some of the thinner walls and ambushed us in the middle of a column. All I’m good for is running away, so...I did. I made noise, I led them off, so the others could escape. I wasn’t expecting it, but they came back for me. By the time they found me, the ghouls had gotten me pretty bad, though.”

The armor that hangs off his emaciated frame verifies his story. It’s badly damaged, the leather torn and the metal scarred.

“Don’t worry about me, I’m fine. It was months ago, I don’t even feel it anymore,” he rasps.

The cultists are watching us in stone-faced silence. “Clear off, this is private,” Sokolov snaps at them in Valdian. They step away, heading through the doors on the far end of the chamber.

“Don’t worry about them,” he tells us. “They’re helping us.”

“Helping you do what?” Clem asks suspiciously.

“They were working with ghouls. They had this leader. When Rusalka and others came back for me, they chopped through the ghouls and went after the cultists. Grigor watched our back, but he went down. Then Rusalka killed the leader – he died, and we thought the cultists might scatter and break, but they didn’t. One went over to where Grigori was dead, and he got back up and came back to us. He talked to them - made a deal. We-” - he coughs again, loud and wet – “Sarge, we helped them out with some stuff, and they’re gonna bring her back!”

Clem is absolutely stricken. “Bring – bring her back?!” she stammers. “No, that’s impossible. I saw what happened to her, there’s no coming back from that.”

“They said they just need a bit, a piece,” Sokolov insists, a feverish light in his eyes. “A couple days later - Rusalka was asking around - the Order of the Hammer took out a frost giant with a wounded leg. They threw the body in a pit and burned it. Some of us went there. We can find her bones! That’s all that they need! That and one other thing, but Rusalka says that won’t be a problem.”

Clem is frozen in place, barely able to begin processing this. Just - this can’t be.

“No, this is – you can’t do this, this is an abomination. She died in battle, that’s what she lived for. You can’t just-”

Sokolov interrupts. “She kept us all alive! We would have died without her! We would have frozen in that damn town, arrows in our throats or worse. The least we can do is give her a second chance.”

Clem regains a bit of her composure. “She might have survived that battle if you hadn’t run,” she growls.

“That’s why we have to do this! We lived, while she died! We have to right that. That’s not justice.”

“Sokolov, listen closely,” Clem warns him. “If you have any respect for her, let her stay dead. Let the past stay buried.”

“I knew you’d be this way,” Sokolov grumbles. “Grigori, he’s better at explaining it. He should be here soon. Besides, even if I could, even if I wanted to, we can’t stop. Like I said, it’s too late now, it’s started. They’re gonna get the body, and we’re already paying the price. It’s gonna work. It has to. You’ve seen this wood! You’ve seen the rules don’t apply here!”

Clem’s hand twitches on her sword, every muscle in her body straining with tension as she resists the urge to stab the little rat.

“Sokolov,” she says urgently, putting all of her composure into one last try at reason, “whatever you’re doing, it’s not too late to stop it. There has to be some way you can prevent this abomination from going through.”

“They already went to get the body. Rusalka’s gonna get the heart - the heart of the one who wronged her. Got himself an ambassador position, up in Schotzengrad. That’s all we need.”

Clem closes the rest of the distance between them and growls softly right into his face. “Sokolov. Where is this happening?”

“I don’t know that part.”

“Is that so. You said Grigori’s gonna return here soon?”

“He did,” says a voice from above. An elf in a Red Hand uniform steps out onto the balcony, holding a longbow. Unlike everyone else we’ve met in this building, he actually looks...completely healthy. “Sergeant.”

Clem recognizes him instantly. “Grigor. Whatever you’re doing, you have to stop this.”

He scoffs. “Why must we? Why must we not right the greatest wrong to ever face us? Our homes were destroyed. We were abandoned. The Czar has no interest in us. We served Khoshev’s purpose, and he would not look out for us. We are outcasts. In Valdia they needed our swords, but again we were abandoned. We have found a new patron, one who will do us a great service and give us a place.”

Desperation creeps into Clem’s tone. “I was...very hurt by her death, you were too, but this isn’t what she would want! She’d want us to move on, and survive! It would be the greatest disrespect to resurrect her!”

Grigor is unmoved, even smiling slightly. “Why not let her make the choice, since we can give the dead tongues?”

Clem closes her eyes briefly, takes a short breath, and makes a decision. “Shit. Well. Gregor, it was a pleasure to have served with you, but-”

Shoshana claps a hand on Clem’s shoulder, correctly sensing Impending Murder. “Grigor, you said?” she calls up to the elf looking down at us.

“Is this your business?” he asks her disdainfully.

She squints at him. “...Let’s say I consider Sergeant Haxan my business. I have a question for you. You came back, but you’re not like the others out there - you’re no shambling corpse. What makes you different?”

“Ah, them. They have not returned, only I. My body, my life, is a sign of the blessing of the bounty the Pale King will bestow upon his servants. Why fear death when you serve its master?”

“Why were you chosen?” the sorceress asks him.

“To prove to the others that the Pale King is a bountiful and generous lord. We lived every day in fear. My return proves that for us, that is not necessary. The dangers of this place – the claws, fangs and poisons – we do not need to fear them. Death...is merely an inconvenience. One way or another, the Red Hand has found a new master. We would like you to join us, Sergeant Haxan. One way or another, you will.”

Clem has officially had enough of this shit, and cleaves Sokolov in half.

Shoshana jumps back, cursing. Clem’s greatsword doesn’t make it all the way through him, but buries itself deep into his torso. “Sarge!” he gasps as he slumps to the ground, bleeding out. Grigor doesn’t seem especially perturbed, but shouts “TAKE THEM. THEY WILL BE MADE TO SERVE.” As two cultists run back in to assist and the skeletons creak to life, we roll initiative.

Sokolov is dead. Clem sprints past his body and shimmies up the ladder to the balcony.

We all burst into motion. Grigor draws his longbow, firing at Clem but missing.

Gral chucks the adamantine wrench towards Valeria, knowing she’s closer to the skeletons and they’re weak to bludgeoning. Gral heads to the ladder on the opposite side of the balcony, casting Mirror Image for defense.

A cultist runs up to Gral, pulling out a heavy bell and ringing it at him, but missing. Valeria snatches the wrench off the ground, which in her hands is a Warhammer, and starts smashing at one of the skeletons. The other skeleton corners Shoshana, preventing her from shooting at the further targets.

As the room explodes into violence, Clem, racing toward Grigor on the opposite end of the balcony, sees Sokolov’s body start to move. The blood now completely drained from his face, he props himself up with his halberd. “Damn, Sarge, what’d you have to go and do that for?” he whines, with the last of the air in his lungs. The gaping, fatal wound is still there, but he’s movin’ around. Uh oh.

Shoshana swipes at her skeleton, and the piece of her mind that belongs to the Hunt hisses, tear open your foe, feast on his organs! Oh wait, it’s a skeleton. Going for his throat doesn’t work if he doesn’t HAVE a throat. You can’t disembowel a guy if he doesn’t HAVE any bowels. This explains why she’s rolling absolutely terrible against a weenie-ass foe.

The DM grins wickedly at us. Time for Grigor’s special ability!

As Clem approaches Grigor, she sees his mouth split into massive grin, a terrible madness in his eyes. He sprints backwards, running away from her. He twists, to turn away and run – but his torso twists around unnaturally, with a horrifying snapping sound, so he is still facing her as he continues firing arrows.

Clem barely succeeds her WIS save against being frightened, but Grigor still sticks her with two arrows as he runs.

The DM lets us know that, by the way, a special thing unlocks in this zone if you are bloodied. Is it Taint? It will, in fact, be Taint.

Gral plays a minor chord and woobles, moving directly through the cultist, up the ladder and directly toward Grigor. Surprise! He’s gonna Phantasmal Force a punk cultist. The cultist is convinced that there’s a still a bunch of Mirror Image Grals attacking him.

Cultist fights the fantasy Grals, doing no actual damage. Valeria bashes her skelly. It’s nearly crunched but not fully, with 1hp left, which is massively annoying. We miss having Kaze, our tiny murderous golem from our previous campaign who’d sometimes tackle a nearly-dead foe. Shoshana, still awful in melee, is bloodied by her weenie-ass skeleton.

Sokolov stands up, very clearly undead at this point. He heads to the ladder to go help Grigor. He stops and looks at the cultist flailing at thin air. “...What are you even fighting?” “THE ORC!” shouts the frustrated mook. Sokolov sighs. “Cultists.”

Clem is gaining on Grigor, who fails to hit her even as he uses his special Archer’s Eye ability. “Really, arms? Stop fighting me on this,” he quips, as he gruesomely cracks his spine back into place.

Gral moves in and hits ‘im while he’s messing with his lumbar support. Gral will do his best to un-support his lumbar! Whatever Grigor is, he doesn’t resist Gral’s psychic damage. (He does seem to have a working mind, unlike a lot of zombies.) The poor cultist is still stuck in the fantasy Grals. Valeria nat 1s at the last skeleton. Why do we roll such garbage against skeletons?!?!?!

Shosha wastes a sorcery point rolling garbage against skeletons. Sokolov climbs the ladder and runs to intercept Gral. Clem finally closes the distance on Grigor and shows him just what a Battlemaster can do. Maneuver! Trip attack! Action surge! He’s bloodied, looking decidedly worse for wear.

Shoshana, in frustration, explodes her fucking skeleton and moves into spellcasting range. Grigor does not like being in the Clem/Gral adventurer sandwich and Withdraws, scootin’ away. He jumps off the balcony and lands on top of one of the freestanding bookshelves in a display of surprising grace.

Gral casts Dissonant Whispers on Sokolov. He fails his save, taking a bit of damage and running away from Gral. As Clem gets her AOO, Sokolov sasses her: “Stop amputating me, doc, I’m fine!”

That cultist just keeps fighting them imaginary orcs. He staggers, shouting “MY LIFE FOR THE PALE-” and falls over dead.

Valeria fiiiiinally shatters that stupid pile of bones to dust, then heads toward Grigor.

Sokolov shakes off the whispers and charges back at Gral, reaches out with withered, pale claw. He pops one of Gral duplicates. “I’m HUNGRY!” he howls in frustration. He has his blade, too, but he misses.

Clem jumps off the balcony next to Grigor, missing him as she plummets onto the top of the same bookshelf, barely managing to keep her balance. Shoshana, finally free to cast, twins a Chromatic Orb and hits both undead elves with a searing stream of acid.

Grigor nimbly hops back up onto the balcony, avoiding Clem’s AOO. He points at Shoshana, his eyes appraising. “You…will be useful.” His arrow crits her. Shosha is down, taking 3 taint. Her Strength of the Grave ability fails to save her.

Grigor looked alive when we first saw him, but the acid from Chromatic Orb is eating away at his face, exposing bone and muscle. Yet he’s still grinning widely, even as he’s inches away from falling apart. He seems to feel no pain.

Gral slashes at Sokolov, throwing a Healing Word at Shoshana with his bonus action. “Yo, what happened?” she mumbles, coming to. “Are these arrows in me? ...Can I keep ‘em?”

Grigor smirks. “I’m gonna want them back, once you serve the Pale King.” She flips him off.

Valeria whonks Sokolov with the wrench, smiting him, which is extra damage against at undead. 22 damage on a single smite. Screamin’ Rack on a Bicycle! He’s super dead, HDYWTDT? Valeria just caves in his head with a wrench, and there is a burst of light as rose vines wrap around him. “STAY DOWN THIS TIME,” she growls.

“You’re taking the fun out of-“ He dies, exploding as the vines tear through him.

Clem continues chasing Grigor down, vaulting back onto the balcony from the bookshelf and slamming her sword down. As she cuts through him and shatters his bow with her sword, something weird happens. An odd spectral form peels itself out of Grigor’s flesh. It sort of looks like a jellyfish? But there’s a skull floating within its bell. The DM reveals it looks slightly different to each of us. Shoshana thinks the skull looks human; Clem thinks elven. Gral can clearly see orcish tusks, while Valeria sees a distinctive dragonlike skull.

It’s floating there, being a jelly. Shoshana shoots it with lightning. Lightning doesn’t seem to especially affect it – it seems resistant, and somewhat incorporeal.

The skull looks like it’s laughing. “Ah well,” it says, looking at Grigor’s ruined corpse. “Plenty of meat where that came from.” Clem AOOs it for some damage as it goes, but not enough to kill it. It blorbles away smugly, phasing away through the wall faster than we can chase.

Quiet falls over the library. Valeria rolls well on her Knowledge!Religion check and realizes what we just saw was a Dybbuk, a malevolent fiendish spirit that possesses corpses. (They teach you all about this stuff in Paladin school.) It can animate corpses Once it’s got its tendrils into a meat noggin, it knows what they knew in life, so they’re very good at impersonating people. They can alter corpses to look like they’re still alive. They’ll Detect as both undead and fiend under Divine Sense. They’re extremely skilled infiltrators – or they would be if they weren’t complete sadists, and there’s only so long they can keep up the polite façade. They’re known to be fond of twisting their possessed bodies in horrible ways to shock, terrify, and disgust people.

Sokolov mentioned that back in the tomb, Grigor died holding the line. Then, after they killed the cult leader, Grigor came back. Likely, the cult leader was a corpse possessed by the dybbuk, and when that body was killed it slipped out stealthily and immediately possessed Grigor.

They’re incorporeal and can teleport, so they’re extremely hard to lock down. Order of the Rose protocol for dybbuks is to bring in clerics to cast Dimensional Anchor. Or, once you identify the target, to hit it with overwhelming force. Lock it down and surround it with paladins before you kill the host body.

Valeria tells the rest of us us how dybbuks work. “They’re real slippery. We definitely need to kill it, but I’m not sure how to lock it down.”

By this point, we’ve all met up on the balcony where Clem is still standing, catatonically, over Grigor’s body. Shoshana leans into Clem’s shoulder in a catlike headbutt of support.

Gral heard the cultist mention a “Pale King.” “That might be like Key. That’s the Prisoner that’s affecting this place.”

Valeria goes over and examines Sokolov. He was brought back as a wight, an undead made by having its life essence drained away. They’re bog-standard undead, one of the nastier forms. We saw the transformation – he was PRIMED to come back as wight the moment he died. He was basically already a wight sitting in his skin; Clem just evicted him.

We look at the piles of books, where the cultists were sorting through records of the dead. “So, they’re clearly trying to find a SPECIFIC dead guy. Maybe that person they were trying to bring back?”

Clem has idea of their plan, but is just too emotionally shell-shocked to get into it.

Shoshana Investigates well, looking at the books they’ve kept out; there are notes with names and grave locations. The names they’ve pulled out have a bit of a pattern; they’re not looking for specific person so much as specific types of people.

The name of Dr. Reniger Reia, the necromancer we fought in the catacombs, is circled; there’s a bunch of names circled that are buried over in Gallows Hill – not average murderers, more like “this knight went mad and slaughtered an entire village” or “this wizard was found doing illegal experiments.” There’s some names of Sturmhearst engineers.

“These are all people who are gonna be USEFUL to them,” Shoshana realizes. “This is their recruitment list!"

We snag the lists and notes, because a) useful info; and b) ha ha they’ll have to redo all their research, suck ittttttt. But what do we do next?

Valeria wants to go after the Dybbuk, but it’s only one nasty ghost in a sea of many, and now that it’s lost Grigor’s body, it’s lost its sway with the former Red Hand. It’s totally gone, anyway - it probably retreated to a safe space to regroup, the special snowflake.

We’d go after whoever’s Behind Everything, but it sounds like the Pale King is a Prisoner, and that’s waaaaaay above our weight class, even if we knew where to start.

We remember to be worried that Sokolov mentioned an ambassadorship in Schotzengrad. Nobody but Clem has much of an idea about the details, but it sure sounds like they were planning to assassinate somebody.

Well, this is all very complicated future planning. We’re gonna search rest of house, and then decide. (“Let’s split up, gang!” Gral chirps. “FUCK YOU, FRED, I WILL NOT BE YOUR DAPHNE” hisses Shoshana.)

Valeria pulls an arrow out of Shosha and gives her the Shoulder Pat Pat of Healing. Thanks, bud.

We hop on through the doors of the balcony, further into the east wing. Looks like this area of the house was more working than residential. In this hallway, there’s a bunch of offices and meeting rooms, full of desks and bookshelves for various clerks and officials. Seems like the cultists have set up camp here, too. I guess even zombie cults have bureaucracy to deal with.

We find a big map in one of the rooms and yoink it for later. Clem draws a card for our next encounter: the Heretic. (Natch.)

We hear some chanting coming from a doorway, in a language none of us recognize. Valeria gets to roll to try, but she is Not A Linguist and can’t place it. Anyway, it sounds like there’s a spooky ritual goin’ on in there, and there’s only one thing for a paladin to do about that.

Valeria kicks down the door.

Oh, now everyone’s looking at us.

Four cultists are standing in a circle, chanting over a pool of blackish dark water, encircled by runes. Three armored skeletons stand guard over them. In the pool of water lies a dessicated corpse.

(“Ah. They are rehydrating it. Like one of those foam dinosaurs.” “MOISTURIZE ME.” “Seriously, who is playing Bonetrousle right now???”)

Gral Banes the skellies, who retaliate with their loaded crossbows! They all miss. One swings a sword up at Valeria. It whiffs. The skeletons are disappointed, more in themselves than anything.

Clem pulls out her Warhammer (has she had a Warhammer this whole time?!) and smashy smashes a skelly into dust. Another gets an AOO on her, but Valeria gets to Sentinel it back.

The cultists, meanwhile, all pull out heavy bells. Two dongs for Clem! (HEH HEH, DONGS OF TAINT.) She saves against one heavy, thunderous ring, but takes a d12 of Taint for the other dong. Valeria suffers a similar attack.

However, the thing about being in a fun chanting circle is that everyone’s nicely grouped up for an AOE. Shoshana peeks around the corner and casually pops off a burst of energy into the center of the ritual. 4 targets, 4 failed saves. BOOM. Shatter just…shatters ‘em. The chanting ends abruptly as bone shrapnel goes flying and cultists collapse. The pool/basin also shatters, the dark water leaking out over the room.

There’s one cultist and one skelly left, but between Valeria, Clem, and Gral, they don’t even have a chance to put up a fight.

There’s an old dead body lying in the remains of the basin. Soggy and gross. Valeria uses her Divine Sense to detect what this whole ritual was about, and the water pings her as undead - it’s not itself an undead creature, but a good Knowledge!Religion roll tells her that any bodies left in this zombie soup will animate as undead. Looks like they were specifically marinating that one big mummified body in it.

Gross. We should probably move all these bodies lyin’ in the zombie juice, before they come back to bite us in the ass, literally. Shoshana pokes one with her staff.

Gral volunteers to use his magical woobles from the enchanted lute-strings to help Clem move shit around without taking taint. Clem agrees, but takes a rattling dose of psychic damage when Gral strikes a power chord and Key-woobles the both of them. It’s odd to watch. They can touch the cultists’ bodies, but the water just falls through them.

“That’s kinda fucked,” Clem observes. Gral and Clem use their woobliness to drag the old corpse out of the center of the basin. Valeria takes one for the team and drags the rest of the cultists out of the zombie juice, taking a chunk of taint for getting it all over her hands.

Shoshana does a medicine check on the Mysterious Old Body the cultists were trying to raise. This is a pretty old corpse! Honestly, she’s surprised it isn’t completely skeletal. It looks like it was mummified, but she can see a strange design tattooed on one of its arms. It’s warped, since the skin is so dessicated, but it’s clearly written in Old Valdian. It’s hard to make out what it says, but there are a few legible letters and words here and there. Something about ‘guardian,’ or ‘warden?’ Whatever it is, this is old, OLD-school Way of the Woods symbolism.

The other arm is also covered in tattoos, but these ones are in a language Shoshana doesn’t recognize. It sort of looks familiar, though? Valeria, peering over her shoulder, doesn’t speak that language but has seen it on countless old buildings. This is Old Aquilian. (Where’s Lucinius Galvan when you need him?!)

That’s weird. Those two old cultures weren’t friends??? History tells us that the Aquilians dropped a few fortresses in Valdia and then mostly fucked off, because flying legions of Aarakocra aren’t good at forests, and by all accounts, the locals were Not Happy with the occupation.

Valeria tries to copy down the symbols on the tattoos, so we can show Lucinius later. She does an excellent job!

Gral is impressed at the excellent mummification job on this fella. Orc bards are VERY familiar with the process of mummification, as it is traditional for particularly important orcs’ bodies to be mummified after their spirits have joined the Allsoul.

(“Our mummies are magical batteries, and it’s great,” Gral’s player brags. “We’ve got one back at base camp and it’s very strong.”)

As for the rest of the room: There’s a weird skull statue thing over the basin. Underneath that there’s a frame, with a big piece of tapestry in it. The tapestry appears incomplete, like someone was working on it but never got the chance to finish. It shows a skeletal figure seated on an elaborate throne, with a shining crown resting on its skull. Only the head and shoulders of the regal figure have been finished. It’s hard to tell with the tapestry only partway woven, but it does vaguely look like something is coming down from above the figure, wrapping around it and binding it to the throne.

Well, we did tell Ser Quentin we’d give him any more tapestries we found. Loot!

Whoever was working on this was working very diligently – this is incredibly detailed. The rare artist zombie? (Discussing with the DM, The Key is the curse that’s about creativity – this painstaking work was about discipline.) So now we have the image of the Pale King. Looking at it is...very memento mori. We wrap it up, so we don’t have to look at it.

There’s also a locked chest. How conveniently loot-like! Valeria uses the ol’ Paladin Lockpick, smashin’ it wide open. It’s full of cultist robes. Who keeps their laundry in a locked chest?!

Underneath that we find the good stuff: cloth of gold vestments, about 100g worth (25g x 4 robes)! Plus, there’s 200g of coins in a purse at the bottom.

We have found the Eldritch Laundry, and the Eldritch Underwear Drawer Money Stash.

Gral investigates the room as a whole and crits. He finds an annotated map of the necropolis. (One more for Valeria’s collection!) It’s more of a series of detail maps. Certain graves are marked, as well as different factions’ areas of influence. The temple and road are marked as under the control of the Penitents; the west wing of house belongs to Lady von Mornheim. Gallows Hill is not under the cult’s control. A bunch of small individual family crypts are, including the von Menzer tomb. A few of the maps are hand drawn and fairly recent, and those show very, very deep catacombs. There’s some Aquilian symbols on one of them, which is shocking, considering the Aquilian occupation was many centuries ago.

Several specific tombs are marked. Cross referenced with the notes we lifted from the library, we confirm the tombs marked are specific individuals they want to recruit to their undead army.

What time of day is it, anyway? Looking out the windows, we realize it’s afternoon; we need to get back to town by nightfall to avoid the undead horde.

Guess it’s back to the catacombs for us, then.

Shoshana draws a card: The Dead. Fancy that, in a place like this!

As we cautiously creep through the tunnels back the way we came, we can hear some slinking and crawling sounds. Things are moving in the dark.

(”What’s your marching order?”

“Valeria first, Clem in the back, casters in the middle.

“We are a sandwich, in which the slices of bread are very bad at sneaking.”

“And I, the noble turkey!” -Gral)

Guess what: it’s time to fight Gilly Ghoul and the Graveyard Gang.

Two horrible, loathsome creatures sprint out from the darkness. One of them reaches for Valeria with its grisly claws, which drag harmlessly against her shield. From the back, two more spring out to attack Clem. All of these ghouls have rusted manacles on their arms, dragging broken chains.

(”Chain chain chaaaiiiin, chain of ghouls...”)

Clem can see the distinctive abrasions around the attacking ghoul’s neck that indicate this person was killed by hanging. You can tell by the broken hyoid bone! Must be a body from up on Gallows Hill.

Gral Banes ‘em all. It works great; the undead are not known for their charisma. There is a horrible stench radiating off one of the attackers lunging at Clem and Gral. Clem’s worked in a field hospital, and Gral’s worked with burials, so this is nothing new for them – they both save against the Stank of a Criminal.

Shoshana leans out from behind Valeria and casts Burning Hands on the two ghouls in front. Clem is very glad she didn’t take the fire giant tragic backstory, as the hallway fills with the smell of burning flesh.

Some say the world will end in fire, some say in ice. Valeria follows up the fire with a blast of her icy breath weapon. They’re not looking too hot. (Which, yeah, ‘cause she just froze them.)

A ghoul tries to paralyze Shoshana, but Shadow Sorcerers don’t get paralyzed by paltry ghouls! On the other end of the party, the third ghoul and their leader (who we realize is a whole-ass ghast) attack Gral, looking for the softer, tastier targets. He’s paralyzed. “Ow, my trick knee!”

A few more slashes and spells. Valeria forks a ghoul (back) to death, and the other two are on their last legs. Looking terrified, the one in front loses its nerve and runs for it, its chains clanking as it skitters off into the darkness.

The ghast, seeing her minion flee, hisses “USELESS.” She shoves the last ghoul into Clem’s face and makes a break for it. The ghoul panic-attacks Clem, who takes some damage and resists paralysis, but there’s still a ghoul on her face. With the skill of a surgeon, Gral manages to hook the ghoul off her with his sickle, a process the ghoul does not survive. We can sort of hear the ghast vanishing into the distance, if we want to give chase. We don’t.

One more card! Gral draws The Spirit.

“Um, excuse me,” says the ghostly voice of Dr. Leonard Wendell, from Gral’s pocket. “Did I gather correctly that you’re intending to venture back out into this space?”

“We might take a short rest, but, yeah.”

“I see. Well, far be it from be to be a freeloader. I believe I’ve worked out a way to lend assistance! You see, I am a ghost. BUT I AM ALSO A MAN OF SCIENCE. Specifically, of medicine. These tunnels are full of spectral foes that may prove resistant to physical weapons. Growing up, I had a joke about always wanting to dissect a ghost – I guess you had to be there, for it to be funny – it was a whole thing, back then. My point: when I was corporeal, I could dissect a corpse! Now, I believe I can dissect a ghost. If the holder of my scalpel would be willing to work with me slightly, I think I could give a few pointers!

Basically, as a bonus action, the holder of the Scalpel of Dr. Wendell can make a medicine check to activate his magic against that foe. On a success, it makes the weapon attack magical, negating ghosts’ resistance to physical damage. Additionally, once a day, the wielder can add poison damage to their attack.

(”HELLO. I AM DR WENDEL. I AM HERE TO PERFORM YOUR VIBE CHECK.”)

Clem adds “knife ghost” to her inventory, as she’s the physical fighter most in need of some magic, and proficient in medicine checks.

Dr. Wendell continues trying to help. “Additionally, I might be able to provide some assistance as party medic. How do you all feel about leeches?”

“...Negatively.”

“Perhaps it would be medically negligent for me to practice on the living, as my techniques are much outdated. I must study the latest techniques if I am to practice! Did we ever figure out how to cure that thing, with the worms?”

(Somewhat understandably, this fella hasn’t exactly kept up with his Continuing Ed requirements. That medical license is waaaay expired.)

The DM asks us to draw juuuust one more card. The deck gives us The Path, and concurs the DM should stop throwing random bullshit at us, because it’s super late and we all wanna go to bed.

We find our way back to Mornheim before the sun goes down. From the looks of things, Lady Aubrey did not go out on any missions today. We find her helping with repairs on the wall.

“Oh hey, you survived,” she notes, mildly surprised. I mean, we’re pretty beat up.

We’re pretty beat up.

We talked to them.

“You...talked to them. What, they were just willing to chat?”

“Yeah! And then they shot me,” Shoshana deadpans, showing off her arrow wounds.

“Okay, yeah, that sounds about right.”

Gral pipes up. “We disrupted a ritual, and discovered one of of their leaders is a digi– a dibi- um...”

Shoshana saves him: “Dybbuk,” she says, saving the rest of the party from having to try to pronounce Yiddish words.

We tell her all about the dybbuk, and the ritual. Also, we got this neat map! They’re collecting corpses specifically to recruit undead with skills they need, and this map has marked which ones, along with detailing exactly which areas of Mornheim the cult controls.

“And we took it, so they don’t have their map or their research anymore. Ha ha, suck itttttt,” Shoshana gloats.

Aubrey grins. “I like this chick,” she tells Mercedes.

She looks over the map. “Yeah, this matches up with what I’ve seen. There’s my mom…” (Aubrey clearly DOES NOT want to talk about her mom, or how we nearly ran into her. Given her propensity to break glasses on people’s faces, we respect that.)

We give her some of the spoils of looting her house. Valeria gives her the bottle of wine from the cellar. “

“Ah, Chateau d’Somethin’,” Aubrey observes with satisfaction. “A good vintage: fermented. My favorite.”

Shoshana gives her 100g of the money we found, which she appreciates more seriously. “Wow, yeah, this is a big deal. Think I’ll schedule a trip out of town – with this, I can get some medicine for the doctor, and some other stuff too if I play my cards right. Thanks. Honestly, I was not expecting you to bring back anything.”

She’s pretty happy to hear that we busted four of the cultists, as well as Sokolov, and especially Grigor. “The archer’s dead? Good. That bastard made it real difficult to operate on the surface. He was the one partially scaring off the Penitents, though, so they might be a bit more active now. Y’know, as much as they talk about suffering, I’ve noticed they’re weirdly protective of their priests.”

“‘Priests’ includes your cousin Leah, right?”

“She calls herself a Redeemer now, but yeah. I’ve seen her sticking in the back, popping off spells, but she always takes a couple of big burly guys with her.”

Have we got anything else for her? Oh yeah, the millenia-old body, in the ritual we blew up. Might as well ask her about that.

“Nobody knows how old the catacombs are, or how deep they go,” Aubrey tells us thoughtfully. “According to legend, Mornheim was a graveyard long before the days of the Aquilian occupation. The first cathedral here was supposedly a stone circle built by ancient druids. I always assumed it was propaganda for the necropolis, you know? Mornheim: give us money and we’ll take your corpse.”

We wonder if there’s something under Mornheim, other than its enormous volume of corpses and apples, that they’re looking for.

She looks at the hand-drawn maps of the deepest tunnels. “It’s all fun and games running around the catacombs as kid when you don’t wanna do your chores, but you stay on the upper levels. Not even Skelbjor has been this deep - not that he’s gone in the catacombs much in the last couple of decades; he’s gotten too big. We used to have a couple of catacomb guides, but I don’t think any of them survived. There was this one real old guide, but the last time I saw her she was….well…running away into darkness as I tried to call out her name. I don’t know if she was undead, I didn’t get a good look at her. She had a hood up - it gets drafty down there. Didn’t look healthy, but none of us do anymore.”

That tracks. The cultists looked sick and weak, and Sokolov was near death even before Clem stuck a sword in him. The DM lets us know that Aubrey basically has a feat that allows her to resist Pale King taint, but even she looks pretty drawn.

Clem speaks up. “One more thing. I don’t know your messaging capabilities, but it is imperative you get a message to Ambassador Khoshev in Schotzengrad – I believe the cultists intend to make an attempt on his life.”

Aubrey doesn’t seem too hopeful. “We don’t have any kind of regular message service - things are pretty isolated here. Okay, that’s not entirely true. There’s definitely one person in Mornheim who can cast Sending.”

“…It’s Leah, isn’t it.”

“Yuuuup. I know, because when she has spare spell slots, she bothers me with it.”

We’re not gonna try our luck with the Penitents. If we need to get a message out, we’re mobile enough to leave Mornheim on our own and find a messenger.

So where do we go from here? We could go check out the von Menzer crypt, but it seems like we have all the info we need on what happened there. We could try going into the super-deep catacombs to investigate what the cultists might be looking for, but we don’t know what kind of mega-undead may wander the deeps. Clem would really like to get that message to the ambassador, since assassination warnings are kinda time-sensitive.

Valeria, meanwhile, is curious about the water purification spell scroll that we found in the wizard lab. The people of Mornheim are only gonna get sicker - this might also be time sensitive, if we’re gonna prevent as many deaths as possible. Valeria’s gonna Save the Town!!! And Be a Hero!!! (She hasn’t thought to, like, tell Aubrey - the whole vision is for her to stride in and Rescue Everyone.)

Shoshana, though, is the practical herbalist, and the one who can actually read the damn thing. There’s a long list of spell components that require a ton of preparation, and they’re all distinctly druidic. Holy water and magic swords, Valeria could get, but this is all rare and potent medicinal herbs. Some of it can be adapted to be more Paladin-like, but most of this is gonna be a serious fetch quest. The herbs required are native to the Greatwood, but we definitely ain’t gonna find enough of them, or of high enough quality, in the sickly Tim Burton hellscape of Mornheim.

Shoshana’s herbalism proficiency tells her that you can’t just walk into any old woods and find this stuff - they all come from different and specific environments. The sorceress is proficient enough to find the stuff in the wild, but only if she was in the right area to begin with.

She goes and asks the Doctor if she has any leads on sources for this stuff.

“The best herbs I get come from the valley, about a day or two’s travel from here. It’s also where we get most of our food. Feivel brings preserved stuff, but produce, wheat, flour? We cart it in Bad Herzfeld. Follow the river north - not the one that flows into town; you can find it on a map. Word is, they’ve got herbs galore up there. Everything grows well in Bad Herzfeld.”

Shoshana squints suspiciously. “Do the plants come alive at night and try to eat you?”

“What. No. I mean, this forest is weird enough, but that’s an oddly specific scenario?”

We decide on a course of action: we will leave Mornheim in the morning, heading toward Bad Herzfeld. Hopefully as we reach a less-isolated town, we’ll find a way to send a message to the Ambassador.

The DM breaks in. “Permission to ignore travel times to make a cool scene?” Yes, absolutely, we are all 100% in for that.

As we’re stopping in to let Aubrey know our plans, there’s a banging at the door. “There you are!” cries an exhausted, familiar voice.

It’s Flynn Fairgold, looking absolutely awful, panting and ragged. “Found you. Finally. ...You need to go to Herzfeld.” With that last wave of effort, consciousness deserts him, and he sags into the burly arms of his sister. Fiona waves hello with a tight-lipped smile.

We all demand to know what happened. Fiona signs at us, as clearly as she can with an armful of swashbuckler. We get the impression that some stuff happened with the trolls, and then they rode as fast as they could to get here, and...no, none of us know sign language, we’re absolutely lost.

We make an educated guess: “Did it have to do with creepy-ass fungus?”

She nods.

“Do you want to come with us to Herzfeld?”

She looks at her brother, clearly conflicted. Valeria heads right on over and Lays On Hands, saving just enough that she’ll be able to Cure a Disease if she needs to.

Flynn blinks up at her, coming back to us. “Kyr Argent! Thank you! I dub you the Healing Knight – no, that’s bad, we’ll - we’ll work on something.”

“Uh, Kyr Argent is fine, but what’s so urgent in Bad Hersfeld?”

“That farmer, the suspicious one. We caught up with his sons on the river, shortly before they made contact with troll family. One of them was human - the other merely looked it. He was some sort of strange mushroom creature – he could pass as human, from a distance, with a hood on, maybe. He hit me with these strange spores.”

Flynn coughs – we can see discoloration on his tongue and down into his throat. Valeria immediately spends the rest of her Lay on Hands to Cure a Disease. It helps; he looks a lot less exhausted, and the discoloration in his mouth reduces. We can tell he’s definitely not cured, though; this is something beyond Valeria’s capabilities.

“We knew you were here,” Flynn explains, regaining his breath. “My sister insisted on riding through the night to get to you. She knew you were the closest people who had any chance of being able to help me.”

“What happened to the fungus guys?”

“We caught up with them and finished them off. We checked in with the troll couple and their son – they’re fine, they were grateful, but it wasn’t the first time they’d heard of Herzfeld. They’d heard something from other trolls headed there. Word had come down about a troll moot being held up at Herzfeld in the valley. If there’s something there that can corrupt trolls…”

As the only Valdian in the party, Shoshana’s heard of troll moots, but they’re more of a legend than anything. A gathering of trolls? That only happens once in many generations.

“I don’t know how many will respond,” Flynn tells us. “A troll moot is not a common thing, but. Even three trolls affected by this fungus would be too many.”

“You’re NOT WRONG there,” Valeria gripes.

Looking at her, Flynn seems to remember something. “Oh! One more thing! The human brother had this, he attacked me with it.”

Out of his travel pouch, he pulls out a dagger. Not just any dagger. This one is very finely crafted and instantly recognizable. The pommel is shaped like a delicate rose, and detailed vine-like chains wrap around handle. We all understand the symbolism, but Valeria knows exactly what this is: the ceremonial sidearm of an officer of the Order of the Rose.

“Where did you get this?!” she demands.

“As I said, one of the sons had it on him. I don’t know where he could have gotten it. But I recognized it from some books – I figured you’d want to know.”

Valeria immediately casts Detect Magic. The knife itself is faintly magic, as she expected - simple paladin-type things, such as being eternally sharp and glowing in the presence of fiends. But there’s a very faint sense of some sort of other magic – something dark and sickly. It’s not the taint that suffuses Mornheim; this is something different.

“It was covered in spores when we recovered it, with all kinds of stuff growing on it. We took the liberty to sterilize it before we traveled with it. That is, my sister made a fire and we chucked it in. If it was what we believed it to be, we knew the blade would remain unharmed.”

“…thank you,” Valeria murmurs quietly, distracted. As she turns it over and over, something catches the firelight. There’s a name inscribed delicately along blade: Marius. The name of her mentor, who we know hasn’t been seen since the disastrous Crusade to Valdshart.

Well, our path looks clear. Next stop: Bad Herzfeld.

Flynn and Fiona are willing to go with us; Flynn’s still looking sickly, so it might be a risk for him. We decide that leaving him in Mornheim is definitely not gonna help him get better, though, so he’s coming with us for at least the first part of the journey.

We all roll against our accumulated taint, and all save.

The DM has us draw four cards to determine our journey. We draw: The Folk, The Curse, The Scales, and The Pale King.

The DM gets real excited, which is dangerous. We haven’t picked a red card before. We’re about to meet something nasty.

But for now, we rest uneasily behind the fortified walls in the city of the dead.

#session recap #mornheim #the pale king #aubrey von mornheim #private sokolov #clem haxan #shoshana bat chaya #valeria argent #gral omokk'duu #flynn fairgold #fiona fairgold #leonard wendell

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