#spook month gregor

[builtintripping]

thank you @eatyourmaker for dragging me to this ship hell, you have no idea what you unleashed in me 🧍‍♀️

[amonstamachine]

Take me to Church!~🎵

Inktober - Boots 👢

[ask-my-spooky-month-ocs]

Spook got possessed by Moloch in Hollow Sorrows like her brother and Pump, here's how she looked while possessed

Bonus art of her biting Father Gregor with Pump

[jacenotjason]

morthy and gadreel brief writing

i wanted to write something just bc its been awhile and i enjoy it

so i wrote some fanfic of morthy and gadreel

this is literally COMPLETELY based on the dream scene from Gravity Falls, mostly from memory so. lol.

enjoy anyways maybe

Whyd i write this what the hell

Inspired by that one scene from gravity falls. I mean like obviously its the same dialogue. I changed it a lil tho enjoy!!!!

Morthy lay face-down on his desk, his head nestled softly on his crossed arms. His eyes were gently closed, and his breathing was deep and steady, punctuated by the occasional soft snore. Around him lay a small pile of messy notes and scribbles, the result of countless hours of work and contemplation.

Suddenly, the world shifted. Morthy’s tranquil repose was interrupted by an awakening sensation that jolted him into a state of acute awareness. He was no longer in his study; instead, he found himself standing upright in an expansive field. His clerical robes fluttered gently in the breeze, their flowing fabric mimicking the swaying tall grass that stretched endlessly around him. The dreamscape was bathed in a surreal, golden light that flickers like sunlight through a thin veil of mist.

Morthy knew he wasn’t truly awake—this was just another fragment of his dreams, a landscape of his subconscious. He took a deep breath, his fingers weaving together in a gesture of calm focus. His eyes scanned the horizon, the verdant sea of grass gently undulating in the wind. It wasn’t often he had such surreal dreams, he enjoyed it.

A distant, unsettling laugh pierced the calm of the dreamscape, sending a shiver through Morthy's frame. The sound was eerie and distorted, reverberating through the endless field like a cruel echo. Instinctively, he tensed, his muscles tightening as he tried to pinpoint the source of the disconcerting noise. He muttered a frustrated curse under his breath, his voice tinged with a mix of irritation and apprehension.

"I know that laugh," Morthy said, his voice carrying an edge of recognition. The laugh was unmistakable, a twisted sound he had heard before. Although he couldn't see anyone, he knew who it belonged to.

"Show yourself!" Morthy's voice cut through the dreamlike silence, breaking the usual softness with an unexpected intensity. It was rare for him to let his voice rise so sharply, but the situation demanded it. For a long moment, the field remained eerily quiet, the gentle rustle of the grass fading into a heavy stillness. The wind died down completely, leaving an oppressive calm in its wake.

Suddenly, a powerful gust of wind swept through the field, flattening the grass and nearly toppling Morthy off balance. He stumbled, his heart pounding as he struggled to steady himself against the unexpected force.

Turning on his heel, Morthy's eyes locked onto the form he had dreaded. There, emerging from the swirling grass, was Gadreel. The demon stood with a theatrical flourish, his arms spread wide in a mocking gesture of welcome. His presence seemed to distort the very fabric of the dream, casting a shadow over the once-peaceful field.

"Well, well, well, wellwellwellwell~!" Gadreel's voice dripped with a sinister amusement, each word rolling off his tongue with a smooth, mocking lilt. "Father Morthy! Aren't you a sight for sore eyes?" He laughed at his own joke, a cruel and unsettling sound that echoed through the field, further disturbing the already fractured tranquility.

"Gadreel." Morthy's voice was a low, fierce growl, his patience wearing thin. "What do you want from me?"

Gadreel's mocking grin widened as he dropped his arms to his sides. "Oh," he said with a smooth, almost theatrical flair, "Quit playing dumb, priest. You knew I'd be back. You think cutting off our contact would stop me?” Gadreel slithered closer, his claws laced together, “I've been making deals, chatting with old friends," he tugged at his shirt collar with an exaggerated, sarcastic bow, "Preparing for the big day! You can't keep that rift safe forever."

With a flick of his wrist, Gadreel conjured a shimmering, false rift in his claws, holding it up for Morthy to see. His eyes gleamed with malicious delight. "You'll slip up and when you dooo~" he sang, letting the rift slip from his grasp. It shattered dramatically against the floor, splintering into a jagged tear in the fabric of reality. For a fleeting moment, the rift revealed a glimpse of Gadreel's dimension—a chaotic, nightmarish expanse teeming with unsettling shadows and flickering flames.

"Get out of here!" Morthy's voice was a thunderclap of authority, his anger burning bright. "You have no place in our world!"

Gadreel's smile twisted into a smirk, his face obscured by the dark shadows of the portal behind him. His eyes glowed ominously as he hissed, "Maybe not right now, but things change, Morthy. Things change." His words dripped with an unsettling promise, leaving a chill in the air.

Gadreel’s laughter echoed through the dreamscape, its cruel sound weaving through the fabric of Morthy’s subconscious. The field around him began to distort, bending and twisting as if under the influence of the demon’s dark amusement. Images of chaos and destruction flashed before Morthy’s eyes—visions of his world being torn asunder, ravaged by the malevolent force Gadreel would unleash if ever he broke free from his prison. The scenes were vivid and horrifying, each one more apocalyptic than the last, creating a tapestry of dread that seemed to stretch on endlessly.

With a sudden jolt, Morthy shot awake. He was back at his desk, his surroundings bathed in the familiar, comforting light of the church. His heart raced, and he was drenched in sweat, his breath coming in ragged gasps. The warmth that enveloped him felt unnaturally intense, almost feverish. He was overcome by a wave of disorientation, his body trembling as he tried to reorient himself.

Morthy's hands gripped the edge of his desk, his knuckles white from the pressure. He took deep, shuddering breaths, each inhale and exhale an attempt to ground himself in reality. The vivid images of destruction still lingered in his mind, their impact leaving him shaken and unsettled. The dream’s harsh reality had left a residue of fear and urgency, a stark reminder of the threat Gadreel posed.

[beados10]

WHO IS THIS???? WEEPING ANGEL, DR WHO REFERENCE AYO??

[muffinpost]

HOLY SHIT!!!??!!----

🛐🛐🛐🛐🛐🛐🛐🛐

The costume design is by Slavic priests and a couple of details of his costume. •The symbol on Father Gregor's forehead means honor and pride. •Honor is a great passion for God. Pride is self-esteem according to the standard

[mister-fisch]

Gonna make a Spooky month au where its litterally just dhmis with characters so here is what I have so far. Also @blood-guts-goreeee ik we were just talking about this but I'm gonna change some things a little.Also I need a it of help to figure out who all the characters are gonna be.But first we're starting with all the main characters and teachers :)

Yellow guy-Skid

Duck-Roy

Red guy-Rick

Paige/Sketchbook-Susie

Tony-????

Shrignold-Father Gregor

Colin-Radford

The steak guy:Bob

Tiny can-

Breadboy-

Fridge-

Big can-

Lamp-Mr.Clown?????

Roy-Skiddad

Employed Brendan-Garcia

Unemployed Brendan-Kevin

Todney-Pump

Lily-Lucky

Coffin-Ignacio???

Stain-Robert

Warren the Eagle-

Train guy-Mr.Wonder

Electracey-Jaune

Leslie-Eyes or Lila??????

I'm calling his au Don't hug me I'm Spooked

Also if you have any suggestions on who characters should be weather or not I already have a character chosen let me know cause I might change my mind

[dietsnnapple]

DAY 1

Darkness

in which gregor opened up to larry and angelina about the underland, and the first thing they asked about was echolocation

“Come on, guys,” Gregor huffed, getting more and more impatient by the minute. “Try to focus on me.”

He was met moaning and groaning from the two other 14 year olds in the stairwell with him. Larry and Angelina had been at this for an hour and a half, and in the initial excitement had ignored Gregor’s insisting that it had taken him months to master.

Even so, they were obsessed with the idea of echolocation.

When Gregor tried to return to school, his two best friends immediately knew something was wrong and tried to reach out. And for as much as he tried to distance, if his friends were anything it was persistent, even after two years of running away. However, when he finished his story they were speechless. Larry and Angelina knew they couldn’t help him with the trauma, the scars, the nightmares. So, in a spur of the moment decision to try and lighten the mood, the latter of the two blurted out “How did you learn echolocation?”

And he here was, 2 weeks later. Sitting in a stairwell while his friends clicked away in vain.

“Okay, wait.” Angelina said suddenly. “This clearly isn’t working for either of us. Maybe there’s another method we could try, or maybe—“

“Angie, don’t push him.” Larry muttered. He was clearly just playing along with her plan and trying to be a good sport about it so he wouldn’t get spooked. Am I really that flaky these days? Gregor thought.

He smiled and shook his head. “Trust me, Angie. It’ll take a while to sink in. It took me months to learn, and even then it only clicked when I was trapped in the dark for a few days.”

He went over to ruffle her hair, and she opened her eyes smiling. He realized how little he must be showing his friends any physical affection these days. “Once you get it though, you’ll never be in darkness again.”

Gregor thought back to how useful Ripred’s impatient yelling has been, and took a deep breath. Start from the beginning.

“Remember, you’re trying to pinpoint me by the clicks. This hallway has a lot of reverb. You would hear it different if I was in front of you, right?” Gregor explained. “If you get really good, you can use the sound of your breathing, too.”

Larry perked up at that, opening his eyes to stare at the other boy in awe. “Seriously?”

Gregor nodded.

“That’s amazing!” Angelina exclaimed. “Have you ever had to use your breathing instead?”

Gregor crossed his arms. “Yeah, sometimes in a tight situation there’s no time for clicking. When I fought—“

He stopped himself. What was he doing, talking about his fight with the Bane? He tried so hard to not even think about it most days, and had glossed over it quickly when telling his friends.

Gregor could tell it caused a shift in the energy, too. His two friends fell into an uncomfortable silence, starting at the floor.

Larry finally cleared his throat. “So, was...was Ripred a good teacher?”

Gregor was surprised he could remember the name. He knew they were both trying hard to view the Underland neutrally. Even if it was the same place that stole their friend.

He gave a little laugh. “Not even. Our lessons basically always turned into a roast session.” Gregor opened his mouth to speak again when he heard the unmistakable sound of flip flops smacking down a staircase. A small voice called out “Gregor? Are you there?”

Angelina ran to the railing and looked up. “Is that Lizzie I hear? God, I haven’t seen her in forever.”

Gregor shifted his weight and rubbed his ear. “Yeah...she’s probably just checking on me. We’re having dinner soon, I think.”

Larry and Angelina stared at him expectantly.

“Do you guys want to come over?”

——

As Larry and Gregor raced up the stairs, Angelina reached the window and looked over at the sun setting over the city. She’d get echolocation eventually, she was sure of it. For now though, spending time with Larry and Gregor again was enough. She could live with the darkness for now.

******

super short and barely proofread, i just love thinking about gregor’s life after the series and i want him to have friends again lol

@tucweek

[pitch-pearl-void]

Always said that this ship brings narcissism to a whole new level, (Doesn't stop it from being my otp) so how about one where Sam, Tucker and Jazz discover Danny and Phantom's relationship and freak out? Do what you like, but I think their basic reactions would be, Danny: It's not what it looks like! Phantom: It's exactly what it looks like. Tucker: Ha! Blackmail! Sam: Uhh... Jazz: What the heck?! No! Counseling! Both of you! Don't even think about getting out of this! I think it'd be funny.

OMG THAT’S PERFECT

…but I can’t just copy what’s in theask…

Jazz was clearly taking it the hardest.

Phantom pressed a cup of her favoritetea into her hands and sat back in his chair, watching anxiously as she began mechanically drinking it.There was only so much he could do to help, only so far he was willing to bendto make it easier on her and the others. Fenton had already reached his limit,and the three-way argument between him and their friends had devolved fromsimple questions like “why are you here” and “what the hell is going on” toaccusations and insults that had just enough truth to hurt.

Phantom might have joined in, but Jazzhad only just stopped mumbling about narcissist syndrome. Apparently, evendivided and in love with each other, neither Danny quite fit the symptoms, andthat lack of definition was driving Jazz nuts.

Honestly…

From the sounds of it, Vlad was farmore of a narcissist than him and Fenton could ever be, and Vlad had never eventhought about splitting himself.

…Probably.

Don’t think about it.

“If you guys had just knocked insteadof barging in–”

“Then you two would have kept it secreteven longer!” Sam said, throwing up her arms. “It’s already been…how long?”

“Two months,” Phantom answered, andthen clenched his jaw before he could blurt out the following weeks and days.Specifically, two months, three weeks, and five days. At least he didn’t knowthe hour.

But the sun had been settingwhen he kissed Fenton.

“Two months!” Sam echoed incredulously.“How did you manage to keep it secret for two months?”

“Gee, I don’t know,” Fenton said,sarcasm turning his voice dry, “it’s almost as if we haven’t been keeping amajor secret from the whole town for the past two years.”

“Yeah, but that’s everyone else,”Tucker objected. “We’re your friends! I didn’t even know you were…” Hehesitated before saying in a slightly shaky voice, “Gay?”

“Bi,” Fenton corrected.

“Poly,” Phantom tacked on.

Jazz groaned and dropped her head ontothe table. “They have a different sexuality…” Phantom edged her tea away fromher arms.

“Really?” Tucker asked, momentarily morecurious than upset. “When did you realize you liked guys–and, um, not guys–too?”

Fenton blushed and crossed his armsover his chest. He looked at the ground and refused to even glance at Phantom.Clearly he wasn’t going to answer, so Phantom, rolling his eyes, said,“Gregor.”

Sam coughed into her hand and Tucker’sjaw dropped.

Jazz lifted her head enough to demand,“Who the heck is Gregor?”

“Elliot,” Fenton corrected. “He, um,dated Sam for a while.”

“He also,” Phantom added, one corner ofhis lips twitching, “kissed us in the boy’s locker room. Twice.”

“He what?” Sam and Tuckershouted at the same time.

“It was that cheek thing Europeans do!”Fenton objected. “It wasn’t an actual kiss.”

“Still made your heart race, though,”Phantom said. “Still almost made my powers activate. Close enough to an actualkiss that it made us start questioning things.”

“Oh like what it’d be like to kiss yourself?” Sam demanded. “That’s a bit of a leap don’t you think?”

“Not really. Have you seen us?” Phantom braced his chin inhis hand, his elbow on the table, and flashed a grin at Fenton, half-liddinghis eyes. “We’re irresistible.”

Sam coughed and Tucker shifted back a step, his eyes wide.

“Oh my god,” Jazz moaned, once more dropping her head, “they’reflirting.”

A pink tint colored Fenton’s cheeks, but when his eyes metPhantom’s, the ghost winked. Fenton’s clenched jaw loosened and he stood upstraighter, his eyes widening as he caught onto Phantom’s plan. They had oncebeen the same person, after all. Their thoughts often moved along the samelines, so much so it almost seemed like they could still hear each other’sthoughts sometimes.

Jazz and Phantom were the only ones sitting at the table,Fenton having stood when Tucker and Sam had to keep them from looming over himand Phantom. The three had moved about the kitchen as Sam and Tucker kepttrying to stand closer to Fenton, as if proximity would help get their feelingsacross. But now that the two Dannys had a plan, Fenton shrugged past theirfriends and moved to stand by Phantom.

“We’re not just kissing,” he said. His eyes were narroweddefiantly as he glared at Tucker and Sam, but Phantom looked for and saw thetiniest twitch of his lips that hinted at a hidden smile. “And we’re notfooling around. We’re dating.”

“You can’t date your—“ Jazz’s sentence chocked off as shemade unhappy groaning noises.

“Why not?” Phantom asked. He leaned back in his chair, hisarm brushing against Fenton’s leg. “I love him.”

A horrified silence descended on the kitchen, and evenFenton’s leg twitched. They had said it to each other before, but not in frontof…anyone else. And the three hereknew about their shared past. Now that their relationship was becoming less ofa secret, however, Phantom had no intention of hiding again, so he pressed hisarm against Fenton’s leg. After a moment, Fenton pressed back.

“How does that even work?” Tucker groaned. “You guys mighthave split, but you’re still the same person.”

Jazz’s head popped up. “Yes!”

“I think that’s something we decide,” Fenton said, and Phantom smiled. That very question hadplagued Fenton for a while. Probably still did. “And we decided two months ago.”

Fenton’s hand was fisted at his side, temptingly close, soPhantom reached for it. At his cold touch, Fenton’s hand loosened, and Phantomintertwined their fingers. “It works,” he said, bringing the back of Fenton’shand to his lips, “like this.” He kissed Fenton’s hand and stared into Jazz’seyes and then into Tucker’s and Sam’s. They looked supremely uncomfortable.Good. He gave Fenton’s hand a slight squeeze as he lowered it.

“And this.” Fenton placed his other hand against Phantom’s temple,and Phantom allowed his head to be pulled towards Fenton’s chest. He smiled as feltFenton’s warm lips kiss the top of his head.

“It was working incredibly well right before you lot bargedin on us too,” Phantom added, smirking. “Incrediblywell.”

“Oh my god,” Jazz whispered, clutching her tea cup to herchest. “No.”

“How far have you two…”Sam trailed off.

Phantom arched an eyebrow. “Do you really want to know?”

“No!” Jazz shouted.

“Let’s just say,” Fenton said, and Phantom could imagine thevindictive smirk on his face, “that masturbating isn’t the same anymore.”

Tucker chocked and started coughing.

“Nope!” Jazz stood up, her chair screeching as it slidacross the floor. Still clutching her tea to her chest, she dashed out of theroom, raising her voice for one last, “Nope.”

Fenton squeezed Phantom’s hand, and the ghost felt his otherhalf’s chest hiccuping with suppressed laughter. He grinned too. One down. Phantomglanced at Sam and Tucker, noting Tucker’s wild eyes and Sam’s shakenexpression. They were still reacting to Fenton’s and Phantom’s relationship,too wound up in their shock and confusion to really listen, but that just madeit easier to spook them.

With that in mind, Phantom shifted in his seat so that hisknees bumped against Fenton’s and then tugged on his hand. Fenton hesitated amoment before he sat on Phantom’s lap. Phantom wrapped his arms around Fenton’swaist, the human Danny relaxed against his chest, and Phantom rested his chinon Fenton’s shoulder, close enough to his neck that kissing his boyfriend’s throatwas just a turn of the head away.

Phantom smiled at their friends. “I love Danny Fenton, andwe’ve been dating for two months. Any other questions?”

[cursewoodrecap]

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.

[empressofnothing]

More Book Recommendations

Hello. I made a book recs list on my last blog and I've decided to rewrite it, including old ones and new ones. - Chaos Walking by Patrick Ness Todd Hewitt is the last boy in Prentisstown. But Prentisstown isn’t like other towns. Everyone can hear everyone else’s thoughts in a constant, overwhelming, never-ending Noise. There is no privacy. There are no secrets. Or are there? Just one month away from the birthday that will make him a man, Todd unexpectedly stumbles upon a spot of complete silence. Which is impossible. Prentisstown has been lying to him. And now he’s going to have to run. (Taken from a website) My thoughts: very unique but prepare yourself for some very sad moments and a very unusual writing style. - The Reckoners by Brandon Sanderson Summary: in a world where superheroes are not heroes but the villains, called "epics", average people squabble to at least survive until the next day. David has a score to settle with an invincible epic. My thoughts: Very good. Explores very interesting power struggles and a very disturbing world. Writing seems infantile at times, which I don't think is a flaw, but is more so purposeful because of the main character's maturity level. - The Rithmatist by Brandon Sanderson Summary: Joel wants to be a Rithmatist. Rithmatists have the ability to infuse life into two-dimensional figures called chalklings, which are the only defense against wild chalklings, violent and merciless creatures. When students from the Rithmastist academy start going missing, Joel and his friend Melody find themselves in the middle of a plot that will change their world. My thoughts: creative and it's Sanderson so it's automatically awesome. - The Last Apprentice by Joespeh Delaney Summary: Todd is the seventh son of the seventh son. When he goes to train with the Spook, a man who drives out witches and evil entities from towns, things change for him. My thoughts: not very far into the series, but I loved the first book. It's got a very dark atmosphere and gory parts but it's also Percy Jackson-esque in that it's a children series anyone can enjoy. - The Raven Cycle by Maggie Stiefvater Summary: Blue has been told her whole life that if she kissed her true love, he would die. Gansey is on an impossible quest to unearth an ancient king so he can be granted a favor. When they meet, sparks don't fly, and Blue, begrudgingly, joins his journey along with his weird friends: Ronan, Adam, and Noah. My thoughts: loooovveeee - The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman Summary: Nobody Owens is average. Minus the face that he lives in a graveyard and his family are ghosts. He lives a happy life, but there is a man called Jack out to get him--a man who killed Bod's family. Summary: one of my faves. Neil Gaiman is the king. - Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld Summary: Alex is a prince on the run. Deryn is a girl who happens to be disguised as a boy. When both are on the whale ship called the Leviathan, antics ensue while the war goes on. My thoughts: awesome. - Gregor the Overlander by Suzanne Collins Summary: When Gregor follows his little sister through a hole in their laundry room, he finds a land filled with giant creatures and people called underlanders. There's one downside: this world is at war. My thoughts: sooo underrated! Read it please. - And I'm done. Happy reading!

[shobanarayan]

  This is the type of email that authors like to get– to put it mildly.

Hi Shoba—I’m so excited to share your review in the New York Times Book Review! See attached. The review is part of a feature on travel-related books, and you’re in great company. The review is mostly summary but entirely positive. Congratulations!

You’ll be able to find the review in print in the June 3 edition. (I’m not certain if the book review runs in international editions—if not, we can certainly send you a copy!)

All best, Brooke

Brooke Csuka, Senior Publicist Algonquin Books & Algonquin Young Readers

The New York Times Book Review Summer Reading/Travel

MILK LADY OF BANGALORE – NYTBR

Travel (link here to the NYT page)

The Art of the Wasted Day

by Patricia Hampl

Alone Time

by Stephanie Rosenbloom

Walking the Americas

by Levison Wood

The Tip of the Iceberg

by Mark Adams

Beyond the Map

by Alastair Bonnett

Couchsurfing in Iran

by Stephan Orth

A Line in the River

by Jamal Mahjoub

The Epic City

by Kushanava Choudhury

The Milk Lady of Bangalore

by Shoba Narayan

The Traveling Feast

by Rick Bass

The Road Trip Book

by Darryl Sleath

By LIESL SCHILLINGER

Like a literary companion to Google Earth, a host of new books zero in on points across the globe from Alaska to Iran, the Middle East to Mesoamerica, Khartoum to Calcutta and, of course, Paris (we’ll always have Paris), providing highly individual answers to the question: Why do we travel?

Patricia Hampl isn’t sure we should. Raised in Minnesota, educated by nuns, she long sought to reconcile her Roman Catholic school appreciation of the “inner voice” with her “native” Midwestern trait: “the desire to be elsewhere.” Early in THE ART OF THE WASTED DAY (Viking, $26), she reaches back to Chaucer to grasp the roots of wanderlust. “Springtime, after a winter cooped up, and everyone wants to hit the road,” she writes, paraphrasing his zestful Canterbury pilgrims. Hampl suspects that a less cheery impulse motivates contemporary American wanderers, a national mania — encoded in the Declaration of Independence — to pursue happiness, rather than “stay put” and simply be happy. But after the death of her husband, she found that her enjoyment of her quiet hours had palled. To rekindle her pleasure in her own company, she embarked on “a tour of the heroes of leisure,” men and women like the “sluggish, lax and drowsy” French philosopher Montaigne, who holed up in a drafty tower to write his “Essais”; the Moravian monk Gregor Mendel, who founded the science of genetics as he cultivated his abbey’s garden; and the reclusive 18th-century Welsh BFFs known as the Ladies of Llangollen. Here Hampl finds proof of the endurance of “the sane singular voice, alone with its thoughts,” which doesn’t need to cross mountains to express itself.

In ALONE TIME: Four Seasons, Four Cities, and the Pleasures of Solitude(Viking, $27), Stephanie Rosenbloom, a travel columnist for The New York Times, set out on her own for a more practical purpose. Learning that increasing numbers of Americans were taking vacations-for-one, she decided to test-drive the trend in some of the world’s most sociable cities. In so doing, she not only dispels the stigma attaching to solo travel, she debunks the myth of the “supposed horror of solo dining.” In Paris, she picnicked amid the promenades of the Luxembourg Gardens, feasted on oysters at the Closerie des Lilas and ambled through Balzac’s home, Hampl-style. In Istanbul, she lolled in the steamy Cemberlitas hamam. In Florence, she communed at the Uffizi with the most ogled woman in the world, Botticelli’s Venus. “I liked to be alone in Constantinople,” Greta Garbo said. So, Rosenbloom discovered, did she. But she also explored New York, her hometown, as if she were a tourist: “Savoring the moment, examining things closely, reminiscing — these practices are not strictly for use on the road. They’re for everyday life, anywhere.”

The veteran adventure writer Levison Wood had no desire to go it alone on his 2016 trek through Belize, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama, which culminated in a death-defying crossing of the bandit-ridden mountain jungles of the Darién Gap. For one thing, as a seasoned British paratrooper, Wood is steeped in esprit de corps. But WALKING THE AMERICAS: 1,800 Miles, Eight Countries, and One Incredible Journey From Mexico to Colombia (Atlantic Monthly, $27) reveals a less sentimental reason for the author’s fondness for company. Without the translation skills and acute regional spider-senses of his compañero, the Mexican photographer Alberto Cáceres, Wood might have been kidnapped, or worse, by the desperadoes they encountered. His latest wanderlog, a self-declared “tale of adventure in the modern age,” continues the exoticizing, thrill-a-minute tradition of “King Solomon’s Mines” and Indiana Jones. For four months, the friends forded streams, plunged into skull-filled cenotes, slithered up muddy ridges, skirted quicksand, huddled in bat caves and hacked through forests filled with tarantulas, scorpions, poison frogs, jaguars and fer-de-lance snakes. There were rewards along the way, from hugging a “dopey” sloth to summiting Costa Rica’s Mount Chirripó at dawn. “We stood in wonderment while the sky grew redder and the sun rose above the eastern horizon,” Wood writes. “To the east shone the Caribbean Sea, merging into the sunrise, and with a sweep of 180 degrees, I looked behind me, and there was the golden panorama of the Pacific; two oceans from one vantage point, separated by one narrow spit of land.”

At the edge of the Darién Gap, Wood came across a sign on the Pan-American Highway that read: “12,580 km to Alaska.” Unbeknown to him (presumably), another explorer, Mark Adams, had completed his exploits of the northern reaches of that road soon before Wood began his down south. In THE TIP OF THE ICEBERG: My 3,000-Mile Journey Around Wild Alaska, the Last Great American Frontier (Dutton, $28), Adams repeats the steps (and oar strokes) of the 1899 Harriman Expedition to Alaska. Fifty years before the territory became a state, the Gilded Age entrepreneur Edward Harriman led a reconnaissance tour of the Alaskan coast, starting in Seattle, heading north through the Inside Passage, up to the Gold Rush town of Skagway, on to the former Russian capital, Sitka, and from there to Kodiak Island, the Aleutians and “obscure places … labeled UNKNOWN on maps.” Among the passengers were the eminent naturalist John Muir and George Bird Grinnell, founder of the Audubon Society. Taking a boat into Glacier Bay, Adams observes sea lions clustered on low rocks “like ants on a dropped lollipop,” then turns in time to spot six spouting whales. Jumping from ferry to kayak, he glides with a guide into a cove dominated by a “neon-blue glacier” and sets up camp on Russell Island, “a cathedral of ice,” to behold the Grand Pacific Glacier. Adams and his guide wake in that breathtaking setting to a heart-stopping spectacle: two grizzly bears nosing around their tent. After trying to scare them off, the men high-tail it for the kayak. Later, Adams meets a cruise ship pilot who had spotted them on the beach before the ursine invasion. “I thought, Man, look at that setup!” the pilot tells him. “Those guys must be having the time of their lives.” He wasn’t wrong.

An unpaved highway in the Brazilian Amazon rainforest. Alamy

The British geography professor Alastair Bonnett has a flair for communicating his passion for “the glee and the drama, the love and the loathing” that emanate from the earth’s most perplexing and mutable places. Prudently, he has gathered 39 of these protean zones between two covers, so readers will know what on earth (or water) he’s talking about. And if BEYOND THE MAP: Unruly Enclaves, Ghostly Places, Emerging Lands and Our Search for New Utopias (University of Chicago, $25)doesn’t produce a tsunami of new geography majors, he isn’t to blame. Had you heard that a peat bog as big as England was discovered in Congo only four years ago? Were you aware of the term “spikescapes” — public spaces that urban planners mine with booby traps, like benches barbed with steel prongs and rosy flourescent lighting that showcases acne, spooking teenage loiterers? Don’t you wish you could visit the massive film set in the Ukrainian city of Kharkov, the size of two football fields, built between 2006 and 2011 to hold a disturbingly exact replica of 1950s Moscow, where thousands of drably clad actors re-enacted Soviet life, including nighttime visits by the K.G.B.? Bonnett’s provocative detours show us how much more we can know of the known world, if we know where to look, and how.

Still, some places are harder to access than others. When the journalist Stephan Orth traveled to Iran, he was aided by the accident of his German nationality. Americans have a hard time getting visas to the country and it’s not much easier for others. Nonetheless, like a web-savvy denizen of Bonnett’s 16th stopping point, “Cybertopia,” Orth used the internet to launch himself into a fantastical realm that happens to be real. In COUCHSURFING IN IRAN: Revealing a Hidden World (Greystone, paper, $16.95), he describes the openhearted reception he encountered in that closed country, where he found lodging in the homes of ordinary Iranians who put him up free during his two-month trip. This was brave of them because, as Orth’s host in Shiraz explained, taking in foreigners is forbidden. “Be quiet and don’t speak English on the street,” he is warned. “Otherwise, the neighbors will hear you.” Orth found his hosts mostly through the app “Couchsurfing,” an international enterprise that pairs travelers with sociable locals. City by city, he winged it, texting his hosts to arrange meeting points. On the island of Kish, in the middle of the night, he fished for bream and catfish with a die-hard Iranian fan of the American motivational speaker Anthony Robbins. In Isfahan, he played guitar (Adele and Metallica) for a classroom of schoolboys. And in Tehran, he joined a clandestine gathering of mild-mannered BDSM devotees in a public park. “The people here are hungry for news from other countries,” he observes, adding that outsiders are just as hungry for on-the-ground knowledge of Iran. “I have an explicit answer to the question of whether you should visit a country where you are at odds with the political leadership,” he writes. “There are no bad places if the reason you are traveling is to meet people.”

The novelist Jamal Mahjoub has been at odds with the political leadership of Sudan for much of his life. Born in London in 1960 to a Sudanese journalist and a British accountant, he was raised in Sudan’s capital, Khartoum. He went to England for college and stayed abroad thereafter. His parents remained in Khartoum until 1989, when an Islamist coup spurred them to move to Cairo, never to return. But in 2008, Mahjoub began a series of his own returns. A LINE IN THE RIVER: Khartoum, City of Memory (Bloomsbury, $30) explains why. It is said, he writes, that from the sky the city resembles an elephant’s head (“khartoum” means “trunk” in Arabic). But on his visits, he saw that Khartoum’s outward face had changed, studded with towering buildings courting oil-industry wealth. Beneath the boomtown mask, he detected a palimpsest of the past, from imperial interference (Egyptian, British) to the rise of the charismatic “Mahdi” to the demise of Maj. Gen. Charles Gordon, which provoked Lord Kitchener to reassert British influence. When, in 1956, the British relinquished their hold, Khartoum was reborn as the capital of the Republic of Sudan. Why, Mahjoub asks, has his country made so little use of its freedom? “Out of half a century of independence Sudan has seen 40 years of civil war.” With this book, he wanted to trace “the evolution of the tragedy of a nation never achieved,” a task he likens to “trying to throw a rope around a cloud.”

While Mahjoub’s fascination with Khartoum is largely political, the journalist and political scientist Kushanava Choudhury takes his own hometown extremely personally. Passionate and pugnacious, Choudhury’s EPIC CITY: The World on the Streets of Calcutta (Bloomsbury, $28)reveals a man head over heels in love with a badly behaved but alluring metropolis. Westerners see his city as “the epitome of urban hell, the Detroit of the world,” but to him, the city’s flaws can’t dispel its enchantment. Although born in Buffalo, Choudhury lived in Kolkata, as the city is now known, until he was almost 12, when his family moved back to the United States. Resistant to American transplantation, he pined for the chaotic hubbub of West Bengal and after graduating from Princeton returned to Kolkata to work for an English-language newspaper. Back in Bengal, he exulted in the “aimless, digressive” conversational pastime known as adda; savored the street food; admired the gaudy chariots and costumed revelers that thronged narrow lanes during Hindu festivals; and embraced the whoosh of the monsoon rains that send the tarpaulin roofs of sidewalk restaurants “flying open like giant capes.” He left again to study at Yale, but returned after he got his doctorate, with his grad-school girlfriend, soon-to-become wife, Durba, in tow. Immune to her husband’s magnificent obsession, she protested when he mocked her preference for Western-style coffee shops over tea wallahs whose stands faced open gutters. “Who do you think you would marry who would be happy here?” she exclaimed. But “Epic City” makes it clear that Choudhury’s heart already belonged to another. What living woman can compete with an immortal old flame?

A more placid female smoothed Shoba Narayan’s re-entry to India when she moved with her husband and young daughters to Bangalore — southern India’s tech hub and finance center — after nearly 20 years in the United States. That female was a cow, whom she encountered in her building’s elevator, “angled diagonally to fit,” heading three floors up to bless a housewarming. “You’d think that a modern democracy like India would get over this cow obsession,” she thought, amused; but after mulling it over, she hustled upstairs to ask the cow to bless her apartment, too. The friendship Narayan struck up with Sarala, the cow’s escort, forms the subject of her amiable memoir, THE MILK LADY OF BANGALORE: An Unexpected Adventure (Algonquin, $24.95). At first, Narayan was wary of the earthy, grassy-smelling unpasteurized milk Sarala sold, produced by cows that grazed in the neighborhood. Before long, though, she became an “evangelist,” inviting neighbors over for coffee in hopes of converting them to fresh milk. Soon she resolved to buy a cow to donate to Sarala’s herd, scouring nearby villages for a candidate. “This is a good cow,” the owner of a Holstein-Friesian assured her. “Its milk will taste like ambrosia.” Sold. As her new acquisition munched betel nuts, coconut and bananas, Narayan decided the creature was “positively Zen” and named her “Blissful Lakshmi,” for the goddess of wealth.

Rick Bass had other sacred cows in mind when he began a multistop literary and gustatory pilgrimage a few years back. Reeling from an unsought divorce and yearning to reinforce his bonds with the authors and artists who had shaped his writing life, he devised a soul-nourishing, road-burning act of tribute. He would leave his log cabin in Montana’s remote Yaak Valley, travel to the homes of his mentors and thank them by cooking them a meal. In the record of this culinary catharsis, THE TRAVELING FEAST: On the Road and at the Table With My Heroes (Little, Brown, $28), Bass serves up a rich smorgasbord of a memoir, truffled with pungent anecdote, sometimes funny, sometimes sorrowful, always savory. The melancholic power of these reunions is heightened by the reader’s awareness that some of these literary lions (Peter Matthiessen, Denis Johnson, John Berger) were soon to roar their last. But there’s also abundant hilarity, usually provided by Bass’s mountain-man approach to the dinner table. Whether the GPS points to Wisconsin (Lorrie Moore), the “meadow-scented green wonder of West Sussex” (David Sedaris), the French Alps (Berger) or northern Idaho (Johnson), Bass loads the cooler with salmon, elk and rhubarb, like a bear on holiday. At Tom McGuane’s place in Montana, he attempts to grill a turkey, producing a “sonic blast” that rocks the house, burns “like a comet” and blazes in a golden “molten, gurgling, flaming corona.” At Berger’s farmhouse, on the other hand, where a crowd of friends and family has gathered, every course is perfection. As Berger pours out wine “like rich paint in our sunlit crystal goblets,” Bass reads grief in his host’s eyes. Remembering that Berger’s wife of 40 years, Beverly, had died not long before, he recalls the emotion that gave rise to his pilgrimage: his fears, as a suddenly single man, about what the rest of his life would look like. “What do I need?” he asks Berger. “Courage” is the reply.

THE ROAD TRIP BOOK: 1001 Drives of a Lifetime (Universe, $36.95)requires a different kind of courage, as well as, in some cases, “nerves of steel, a seriously capable vehicle and very good health insurance.” Covering “every country on the planet that was feasibly accessible at the time of publication,” this ravishing and sometimes hair-raising bucket list for the bucket seat was assembled by ace road-tripping writers and edited by the “motoring journalist” Darryl Sleath. Don’t mistake it for a mere coffee-table book: Although its lavish photographs invite armchair daydreams, this tome doubles as a reference work. Each entry includes a Google Maps link and helpful tips (if driving in Bhutan, be advised that roads are generally eight feet wide, tops, unpaved and “subject to severe landslides”), and the drives are organized according to an orderly geographic scheme and meticulously indexed. Especially tempting entries include the Beartooth Highway drive, which starts in Montana, with stunning views onto Yellowstone’s glacial lakes, pine forests, waterfalls and mountains; the Trollstigen National Tourist Route in Norway, whose hairpin curves reward those who don’t need Dramamine; and, in Northern Ireland, the “Game of Thrones” drive, which begins at the Titanic Studios in Belfast, heads north past the Antrim coast, and loops round to the Cushendun Caves, before descending to the spooky Dark Hedges on the King’s Road. Fasten your seatbelts!

Liesl Schillinger, a critic and translator, is the author of “Wordbirds: An Irreverent Lexicon for the 21st Century.”

Explore All Travel Books

The New York Times Book Review!! This is the type of email that authors like to get-- to put it mildly. Hi Shoba—I’m so excited to share your review in the 

[jacenotjason]

ok which ask blog should i make

why do polls last so long sobs