SESSION 43E: SNAKES IN A WHOREHOUSE

October 25th, 2009
The 24th Day of Kadal in the 790th Year of the Seyrunian Dynasty

INTO PORPHYRY HOUSE

They found a secluded corner on the northern side of the building, well-shielded from prying public eyes, and drilled through. They found themselves in a long hallway that looked to run almost the entire length of the building. On the long opposite wall of the hall were roughly a dozen secret doors – or, rather, the back-side of secret doors. Although their construction clearly indicated that they were designed to be lay flush with the wall on the opposite side, from this side their nature and operation were plain. The hall was capped at either end by similar doors.

One of these doors gave out into a large, vaulted chamber decorated with hangings of red and blue curtains, risqué paintings, bonsai trees, and erotic statuary. The floor here was covered with a deep, soft carpet that felt as if they were walking across a very firm, forgiving bed. The air was filled with the subtle scents of jasmine-tinted incenses.

In one corner, a stair of intricately carved porphyry curved up through the ceiling. Along one wall a large, elegantly curved desk of gleaming mahogany extruded itself from the wall. And at the far end of the chamber broad, curved steps rose up to a massive pair of daised doors.

The door they had come through was, in fact, disguised from this side. There was also another door of polished wood not far along the same wall. They had clearly entered the “public” area of the brothel.

Crossing the luxurious chamber they ascended to the double doors and eased them open, only to find themselves entering an even larger chamber. The massive hall was dimly lit with glowing tiles in the ceiling and a set of four braziers around a wide, shallow pool of water. Several other pools of heated water off to one side bubbled away, filling that end of the room with misty vapor. Dozens of large cushions were strewn here and there. At the far end of the chamber was a raised balcony lined with a wall of tall of mirrors. The place smelled of sweat and deeper, muskier odors.

Directly opposite their entry was a matching set of doors. Passing through these, they found themselves in a second antechamber similar to the one they had passed through before. Tee even confirmed their suspicion that there would be a matching secret door in the far corner of the room.

Poking around the desk in this room they found papers detailing registrations for various orgies held in the house. Oddly, despite regular orgies scheduled multiple times per week, there was a gap in the registration records indicating that no orgies were currently being held. The next orgy – which was apparently going to be of prodigious proportions – was scheduled on the 18^th of Noctural.

(They noted that all of the records here were for female participants, but a quick double-check in the opposite chamber found that a similar gap existed in the registration for men.)

The secret door in this room also passed into what appeared to be a service hall. A quick check through the other door revealed a luxury-filled hallway lined with matching doors, leading them to conclude that the secret doors probably led into the individual brothel chambers. They didn’t see any need to go into those, and they were fairly certain that what they were looking for wouldn’t be found in the brothel’s public halls.

A little way down the luxurious hall, however, Tee found another secret door in the wall opposite the doors they suspected led to bedrooms. This seemed likely to take them where they wanted to go, so she slid open the panel.

This revealed a large, barracks-like chamber containing four beds (each with a large chest at its foot). The creatures lying in the beds, however, were serpentine monstrosities.

Tee pulled out the onyx ring Nasira had enchanted with an aura of magically enforced silence and motioned the others into position. As the serpent-men started stirring, Agnarr and Tee moved to one bed; Tor to another. While Nasira kept a watch in the hall, Tor swung his blade down and sliced the serpent-man in half.

Despite its  rapid dismemberment, however, the blood-spewing thing’s upper half squirmed towards him. Agnarr and Tee managed to destroy the one they had chosen by slicing it into ever smaller portions, but the arterial sprays of blood were beginning to wake the others—

And magical darkness suddenly descended on the room.

Tor felt his way over to another of the beds and started hacking blindly in the darkness, but the serpent-man who had been bedding there managed to slip away.

Tee stumbled out the far side of the darkness zone and found the two remaining serpent-men trying to regroup by the far door. One of them had grabbed a small bag of black leather and silver stitching that had been slung over one of the bedposts. Now that it was open, the bag glowed from within with a neonesque, blood-red light. The serpent-men were dipping their weapons into the bag and as they drew the weapons out they were drenched in the living light.

Tee, unwilling to give them a chance to slip through the door and raise the alarm, threw herself at them. With their backs literally to the wall, the serpent-men fought with desperation – and the red light on their blades burned her blood where it struck. But Tee was able to hold them long enough for Tor and Agnarr to join her, and then the tide turned and the serpents were cut down.

They took the strange bag to Ranthir, who identified it as a witchlight reservoir. Such reservoirs were designed to hold small quantities of naturalistic magical energy. Empowered with exposure to sunlight or moonlight or with sacrifices of blood or wine, such reservoirs could fuel minor effects. This particular reservoir, as they had seen, was designed to graft its power onto melee weapons. Ranthir was also able to determine that it was currently empowered with human blood, which raised some unpleasant questions about where such blood had come from.

They quickly stripped down the room. They found several small caches of gold, but were deeply impressed with the high magical quality of the equipment they found. (In many ways, they were thankful that they had surprised the serpent-men while they hadn’t been wearing or using any of it.) It was somewhat disturbing, however, to see that each of the serpent-men had a suit of the porcelain-and-gold armor they had seen the human guards wearing at the front of the building (complete with human vizor). Were those guards also serpent-men? Somehow disguised in plain sight by their armor?

They locked the door the serpent-men had been rallying near (in the hope that it might slow down any accidental discovery of the blood-stained chamber), and headed back through the orgy registration rooms to what they believed would be a second, mirrored barracks on the opposite side of the building.

They did, in fact, find a secret door where they had expected one. But on the other side, instead of a second barracks, they found an opulent lounge of low-lying couches. On one of these, another of the serpent-men lounged, a hookah lying at its side.

Tor leapt forward and beheaded the creature while it was still trying to rise out of its drugged stupor.

With the onyx silence ring still on her finger, Tee moved to one of the doors on the far side of the lounge. Easing it open, she peered into the galley of a long kitchen. Around a table at the near end two more of the serpent-men were playing a desultory game of cards.

They rushed the table: Tee’s blade literally pinioned one of the serpent-men to the table, while Tor chopped off the head of the other.

Heading further down the length of the kitchen they discovered that it opened up into a larger area with a dozen or so humans sleeping in rags on the floor. All of the humans wore bands of green stone around their wrists, which Ranthir identified as slave rings. A slave owner wearing a master ring could use these slave rings to deal out punishments (including death) and even look through the eyes of his slaves.

Waking the slaves, therefore, was too dangerous. They decided to quietly retreat out of the kitchen before they alerted the entire compound.

Running the Campaign: Prepping Porphyry House – Campaign Journal: Session 44A
In the Shadow of the Spire: Index

SESSION 43D: ESCAPADES OF THE OGRE

October 25th, 2009
The 23rd Day of Kadal in the 790th Year of the Seyrunian Dynasty

SEEKING THE FLAYER

Ranthir had a wand which allowed him to weave magical alarms. Moving systematically through the Banewarrens they laid down alarms at every major intersection, slowly cordoning off the complex. Ranthir also laid a glamer upon his eyes allowing him to see the hidden and the invisible, while Tee kept her sharp elven nose alert for any tell-tale scents.

They eventually reached the room with the massive iron cauldron. Activating her boots of levitation, Tee carried Ranthir up to look into the cauldron… and they spotted the flayer laying at the cauldron’s bottom.

But even in that instant, the flayer reached out into their minds and whispered, “Pass on. You see me not.”

“Yes I do!” Tee cried. And shot him.

The flayer lashed out with a mind blast, causing Tee to fall into the cauldron and Ranthir to land on the floor beside it.

Nasira hit the bottom of the cauldron with a spell that would heat the metal to dangerously hot temperatures. Unfortunately, the immense size of the cauldron delayed the effect to some extent.

Agnarr threw a rope over the top of the cauldron and braced it, allowing Tor to rapidly climb up to the cauldron’s lip… where he was promptly hit with a mind blast and fell backwards off the cauldron, striking his head on the floor as he fell into epileptic twitches.

Agnarr carefully backed up and then ran for the cauldron, leaping up to catch the rim and then hauling himself up. The flayer tried to hit him with another mind blast, but he shook it off and jumped down into the cauldron. Once there, he saw that, although Tee was beginning to burn from the heat of the metal (and the soles of his own feet were sore from it), the flayer was calmly floating three inches above the metal’s surface.

“Flying bastard!” Agnarr roared. “Flying squid bastard!”

In a few short, slashing blows from his sword he sliced the flayer up – its purplish-red blood spattering to boil upon the ever-heating metal. In the end, it was reduced to a pool of coagulate gore… which predictably soaked up into the back of Tee’s shirt before Agnarr finally picked her up and hauled her out of the cauldron.

ESCAPADES OF THE OGRE

With the flayer safely dead, they returned to the outer chamber where Elestra and Kalerecent were keeping an eye on Seeaeti and the mauled-but-still-regenerating ogre.

“Are we sure the flayer’s dead?” Elestra asked.

“Pretty sure,” Tor said.

“But is it regenerating like this one?”

Agnarr grunted. “Tee, turn around.”

Tee did.

“Okay, you see those squid guts all over her? It’s dead.”

Tee rolled her eyes. “Thanks, Agnarr.”

Agnarr called Seeaeti off the ogre so that it could successfully regenerate. They wanted to question it.

But when it woke up, it was the one asking the questions. “Who are you?”

They naturally refused to answer. But although they tried to question it, threaten it, intimidate it, and scare it, the ogre just kept on asking questions. “Who sent you? What do you want?” And so forth.

But they resolutely refused to answer.

“Ah,” the ogre said at last. “I see I will learn nothing here.”

And it turned into a gas… and then the gas itself vanished.

Nasira uttered a holy oath, banishing the invisibility effect. But this only resulted in causing the gas to reappear. Agnarr and Tor ran forward to attack it –  and they may have even caused some damage to it as their swords ripped through it in arcs of fire and electricity (although, on the other hand, perhaps it was only wishful thinking on their part) – but then a magical darkness popped into existence.

There was mass confusion: Tor became convinced that he had the ogre cornered (although it turned out he was only cutting away at empty air). Tee raced to block the entrance to the Banewarrens, but more darkness popped up. Then one of the alarm spells Ranthir had laid went off and they all rushed to the spot to find… nothing at all. A few moments late another alarm went off back in the antechamber and they realized that they had been completely outmaneuvered. Although they pursued him down the tunnel, the ogre had disappeared.

MORNING MISSIVES

In the morning Ranthir tracked down two scrolls detailing the creation of missive tokens. One he used to create a new missive token for Kalerecent to make sure the Banewarrens remained secure; the other he would study so that he could create them at will in the future.

The morning newssheets reported that, prior to the Midtown kidnapping, children had been disappearing from the Warrens for weeks… but no one had been reporting on it. (It was just the Warrens, after all.)

The more sensational headlines, however, reported three more killings on the Columned Row in Oldtown. Like the priest the night before, the victims had had their heads ripped open.

“Did we do that?” Elestra asked.

“No. I’m pretty sure—Wait, when did it happen? No, that wasn’t us.”

The murderer was being referred to as the “Columned Row Killer”.

Not long after, Shim reported to them. Physical scouting around Porphyry House had found no other entrances. He had tried to track down the architect responsible for the building, but nobody knew who had designed or built the place.

He was able to tell them that Porphyry House had first opened 12 months earlier (in Kadal 789). It had replaced a smaller, less prestigious brothel that had previously been built on the same site. There were rumors that, since that time, Porphyry House had been trying to force other brothels out of business in an effort to corner the market. The place was particularly famed for reputedly being able to instantly cater to the most specific (and perverted) needs of its clients. Shim had also learned that a major orgy was to be held at the House on the 18^th of Noctural.

Thanking Shim for what he had found, they focused their attention on forming a plan of action. They briefly revisited the idea of trying to break in through the sewers, but ended up rejecting it because they would need clairvoyance spells to pinpoint where to dig and they suspected such spells might trigger alarms within Porphyry House.

Instead they decided to use their stone-shaping spells to simply tunnel in through a side wall.

Running the Campaign: NPC Conversation Agendas – Campaign Journal: Session 43E
In the Shadow of the Spire: Index

SESSION 43C: THE BATTLE OF THE BANEWARRENS

October 25th, 2009
The 23rd Day of Kadal in the 790th Year of the Seyrunian Dynasty

Kalerecent insisted on coming with them as they headed down the excavated tunnel into the Banewarrens themselves. Tee stayed ahead of the light pressing at her back (trusting to her elven sight to guide her), but as she passed into the first chamber of the Banewarrens she discovered a stygian, magical darkness blotting out the passage leading into the generator room.

She waited for the light to catch up and still the darkness didn’t budge. Not knowing what else to do – and fearing what the Pactlords might be doing at the sealed door – they plunged into the darkness.

Hidden in the darkness, the giant spider they had fought before tried to drop on top of them. Fortunately, Tee’s sharp ears heard it coming and she rolled quickly to one side. It scuttled after her, but instead found itself skewered upon the blades of Agnarr and Tor.

The spider collapsed in a spray of ichor. (Tor licked his lips: “Is that ichor?”) But even as it fell, the party found themselves attacked from above by vicious claws and the quiet beating of wings. They guessed that it was the winged lamia, but it was subtler and craftier than the spider and they were forced to fall back.

But as they did so, more of the magical darkness was laid down – extruding itself into the outer chamber and leading to a confused melee where only Tor’s blind-folded training leant an edge against their unseen foes.

Slowly, with Tor’s guidance, they managed to surround the lamia. Once they were in position, the tide of battle turned drastically.

“Nissentar!” the lamia cried out. “I don’t care how hurt you are! They’re forcing me back!”

“Fine, Wiver!” a bitter, inhuman voice called out from beyond the darkness. “I’m coming! I’m—BATS!”

Elestra had gathered the bats to her through the Spirit of the City and sent them into the chamber beyond the darkness.  Nissentar had been caught in a tornado of frenetic flying fur. A moment later, Ranthir followed suit – summoning a faithful hound of pure energy.

Tor, hanging close to the lamia in an effort to keep her under control, was taking a terrible beating. He called out for help. Nasira, still standing outside the area of magical darkness, shook her head. “I don’t want to go in there.”

But she plunged in anyway. They needed her, after all.

They had pushed the lamia back into the generator chamber itself, but discovered that the darkness extended even here. Almost simultaneously, the unseen Nissentar managed to skitter far enough away from Elestra’s bats that the swarm turned their ire against Ranthir’s hound and the flank of the front line.

Agnarr had been holding back in the outer chamber in an effort to protect the spellcasters. But, feeling that the front line had moved into a position where the risk of the Pactlords circling around unseen was minimal, Agnarr charged forward—

And ran into the wall.

Nasira called out to him: “Agnarr! The door is over here!”

Agnarr adjusted himself, charged forward—

And ran straight into the bats.

“BATS!”

But they were completely out of Elestra’s control.

Ranthir, planning to follow close on Agnarr’s heels (without quite following his example), decided to even his odds in the darkness somewhat by turning himself invisible. He did so, leaving only Kalerecent in the outer chamber… just as an ogre came lumbering up the other hallway and dropped another blot of darkness over the knight.

Kalerecent cried out. “The foe is upon us!” The ogre was upon him only a moment later, pounding him with grievous blows (although Kalerecent gave several in return).

Agnarr turned and ran back… out of the shadow and right past the unseen ogre, who hit him hard in the shoulder as he passed. But Agnarr planted his foot, turned hard, and swung his sword. The force of his blow knocked the ogre back across the length of the chamber. It fell hard in the corner… and the darkness fell with it.

As the full length of the generator chamber became visible they saw the spidery Nissentar crouched high upon the wall near the far end of it. And the flayer standing proudly resplendent before the sealed door. (Which, they thankfully saw, was still sealed.)

Both Nissentar and Matha withdrew towards the flayer. They were clearly planning to escape again by means of the flayer’s teleportation.

But Ranthir, with a desperate effort, hurled himself forward and cast forth a dimensional anchor: A beam of green energy shot from his finger—

And struck the wall uselessly.

But Ranthir dragged the beam across the wall, sustaining it through the sheer force of his will, and then forced it to affect the unnatural, purplish flesh of the flayer.

As the green bands of force locked down around the mind flayer’s form, the enemy formation burst apart again. Tor, who had raced across the room towards the spiral staircase leading to the catwalk and the sealed door, attracted the flayer’s ire. Struck by a blast of pure mental force he was left twitching on the floor.

Nissentar, already badly injured, fled in a panic, disappearing into one of the side chambers.

It felt as if the battle were turning their way, but as they took a moment to regroup, the flayer – circling the catwalk – hit them with a second mind blast and then escaped down a side passage, leaving Tee and Agnarr on the floor.

Ranthir ran back into the outer chamber where Seeaeti had been abandoned (forgotten in the confusion of the darkness) and dropped a web across the hall leading to the iron cauldron (hoping to seal the flayer into the inner complex and preventing him from circling around behind them and escaping).

It was a lucky thing that Ranthir did, because it gave him a chance to spot that the wounds on the ogre were beginning to rapidly heal of their own accord. Drawing his dragon pistol he fired once into the corpse, and then (with a fair degree of effort) managed to convince Seeaeti to continue ripping the ogre apart in a perpetual fight against his regeneration.

But this left only Elestra and Kalerecent in the generator chamber. Wiver the winged lamia flew down at them in a savage, full-flighted charge. Elestra screamed in panic, feeling herself little match for the lamia’s leonid fury. But Kalerecent pushed her behind himself and bravely stepped forward to meet the lamia in mid-flight.

A furious melee broke out between the two, with Kalerecent dealing blows as severe as he received. But the winged lamia slowly rose into the air, maneuvering on its wings to gain an indomitable aerial advantage over Kalerecent—

At which point Elestra shot a hole through its wings.

The lamia crashed to the ground and Kalerecent finished it off.

That’s when Nissentar reappeared. It shot a glob of web from its mouth, catching Elestra fully around the torso and then hauling her off her feet to leave her hanging ten feet off the ground. Then it leapt down to attack Kalerecent, but the knight raised his arm to catch the vicious bite intended for his neck and chopped the spider-creature’s head off.

The others began to stir, slowly recovering from their mind blasts. Once they had fully recovered, they quickly searched the corpses (finding a tantalizing key on Wiver in addition to a plethora of expensive equipment), cut off the heads of Wiver and Nissentar, and then organized a manhunt for the flayer (leaving Seeaeti to continue mauling the still regenerating ogre).

Running the Campaign: Running Darkness – Campaign Journal: Session 43D
In the Shadow of the Spire: Index