SESSION 33C: SECRET DOORS & SENTRIES

December 28th, 2008
The 18th Day of Kadal in the 790th Year of the Seyrunian Dynasty

“We should kill them,” Elestra said.

“What?” Tee said. “We said we’d let them go.”

“You saw what they were doing to those people,” Elestra said. “They’re evil.”

“And we’re not,” Tee said.

But it was clear that Elestra didn’t want to let them go – Uranik because of what he was responsible for and Arveth because she could so easily identify Tee.

“She doesn’t know my real name,” Tee said.

“But she’s seen all of us,” Elestra argued. “It won’t be hard to track down six people matching our descriptions… not with Dominic being the Chosen of Vehthyl.”

“We could just cut out her tongue,” Tor suggested.

Tee was shocked. She thought of Tor as the moral center of the group, and now she was taken aback by the bloodthirstiness of them both.

Tee prevailed and they left the two cultists unconscious where they lay. (“Cutting out their tongue never works anyway,” Dominic said.) They also decided to head through the secret door.

But as soon as they headed down the sewer tunnel, Elestra tried to double back and kill the prisoners. But she wasn’t sly enough for Tee – in fact, the effort was so clumsy that none of them took it seriously. Tee called her back and kept an eye on her until they were through the door.

Finding the door was easy enough now that they knew where to look. Beyond it they could see where the original line of the sewer had run, although it had clearly been diverted into new construction long ago. The reason for the diversion, perhaps, was the large sinkhole-like collapse that lay just beyond the new construction. A ladder leaning against the side of the sinkhole led down to an older passage of some sort beneath the sewer line.

Tee climbed down this ladder and scouted ahead, coming quickly to an intersection. She peeked around the corner, careful not to make a sound.

Unfortunately, the ratmen sentries had been warned by the light of the sunrod that Elestra was carrying. They took two quick shots at Tee’s head with a pair of dragon rifles as she ducked back around the corner.

Tee paused for only a moment and then rounded the corner again, running down the hall and firing with her dragon pistol as she went. She caught one of the ratmen in the shoulder in a blast of scorched fur.

The others, hearing the shots of both ratmen and Tee, started jumping down from the top of the sinkhole. Unfortunately, the broken floor of the passage below proved treacherous. Most of them fell haphazardly in the attempt.

The two ratmen where standing in a T-intersection at the far end of the hall. They were firing back at Tee now, but as she came closer they suddenly ducked behind opposite corners. Tee cursed, certain that they were going to reach the other defenders of the temple and raise the alarm before she could stop them.

But Agnarr was already scrambling back to his feet and racing down the hallways. He passed Tee easily, despite her considerable head start, and then slid down the last ten feet of the passage – right past the ratman who had scarcely finished turning to run. Before the  ratman could scamper down the hall, draw a weapon, or even turn back to face him, Agnarr had decapitated him.

The other ratman squeaked and retreated back towards a dead end. Tee rounded the corner and put an arrow through his eye.

As the others caught up with them, Tee knelt down to search the corpses. The ratmen had been carrying little of interest, except for the dragon rifles they had been firing. These were worn and badly damaged, marked with the clear patina of age.

“They’re not chaositech, are they?” Elestra asked worriedly.

“No,” Tee said. “They’re just very old.”

They continued into the complex. Several side passages had collapsed or partially collapsed, but they eventually came to a door of thick, sturdy oak. Tee picked a lock on this and they passed into a room that seemed equal parts meditative study and bedchamber. It was mostly empty, with only a straw mat in the middle of the floor. On the walls hung various tapestries (which Ranthir identified as each depicting great wizards of the past). There was a door directly opposite the one through which they’d entered. At the far end of the room there was a small wooden bookshelf containing a dozen assorted volumes. These, of course, caught the particular attention of Ranthir, who was also delighted to discover that one of them was a thick tome of spells.

Ranthir was not able to study the spellbook completely, but the illustrations of eyes being burnt away with acid were enough to leave him concerned.

Running the Campaign: Action Schticks – Campaign Journal: Session 33D
In the Shadow of the Spire: Index

SESSION 33B: THE INTERROGATION OF ARVETH

December 28th, 2008
The 18th Day of Kadal in the 790th Year of the Seyrunian Dynasty

After briefly discussing what they wanted to ask the prisoners and how they would go about interrogating them, they started with Arveth. Agnarr grabbed her by the ankles and held her upside down above the turgid sewer sludge. Tor slapped her awake.

She woke up angry.

“Who are you who dare to defy the powers of chaos?” She scanned their faces, but when she came to Tee’s she blanched.

“That’s right,” Tee smiled with vicious glee.

“You bitch!”

Tee smiled and shrugged. “Where’s Wuntad?”

Arveth’s eyes filled with confusion. “Who?”

Tee studied her carefully for a moment, and then suddenly her face broke into a large grin. “Oh! You don’t know anything, do you?”

“You insignificant worm! You’re not worthy of knowing the secrets of chaos!”

“Wrong answer.” Tee signaled to Agnarr, who dipped her into the channel of sludge. She came back up spluttering and gagging.

Tee pulled out the thick stack of papers they had collected. “Did you mean these secrets of chaos? Because I know these secrets. For secrets they don’t seem very well secured.”

Arveth glared. “You came so close to greatness.”

Tee laughed in her face. “Let’s try something simple. Who do you work for?”

“Dilar.”

“The centaur? Okay. What else can you tell me?”

Arveth hesitated.

“I guess you really don’t know anything. Well, in that case…” Tee raised her hand in Agnarr’s direction. The barbarian began lowering Arveth back towards the sewer sludge. Arveth panicked.

“I know things! I know!”

Tee held up her hand to stop Agnarr. “Like what?”

“There are at least eight people who come in and out of this building.”

“Who?”

“I don’t know.”

“What do they do here?”

Arveth hesitated again. Tee laughed. “You really don’t know anything. Did you even tell anyone before you came rushing in?”

“Yes. They’ll be here soon.”

She spat the words. But she’d hesitated for just a moment. Tee laughed again. “You didn’t! And you just tried to lie to me again.” She leaned in close and whispered in her ear. “You came so close to greatness…”

Tee gave a signal. Arveth had just a moment to struggle, certain that she was about to die, before Agnarr slammed her head into the wall of the sewer, knocking her unconscious again. Dominic took a moment to make sure that the wound wasn’t lethal and then they turned their attention to the spellcaster.

THE INTERROGATION OF URANIK

“I’ve seen him before,” Ranthir said. “He was one of the Venom cultists who killed the cultist from the Brotherhood of the Ebon Hand.”

“The one you saw while using clairvoyance?” Tee asked. Ranthir nodded.

They blinded the cultist and Agnarr dangled him above the sewer sludge. Elestra slapped him awake.

“Whoever you are, you’re already dead.” His voice was possessed of a cruel, sardonic tone.

Elestra laughed at him.

Tee ignored him. “Do you know where you are?”

“You blindfold me and then ask me where I am?” The man sneered.

At Tee’s signal, Agnarr hit him across the face. Hard.

The man licked blood from his lip. “All right. I’ll play along. Judging by the smell, I’d guess we’re in the sewers.”

“That’s right. We found our way down here.”

“You found a huge hole in the floor? Congratulations on your powers of perception.”

Agnarr hit him again.

“What do you want to know?”

“Let’s start with your name”

“Uranik.”

“So you can tell the truth.” Tee smiled through her bluff. “That’s right. We know who you are. Now, tell us about the Brotherhood of Ptolus.”

The man laughed. “It’s a fiction. A front for the Brotherhood of Venom.”

“Which you belong to.”

“That’s right.”

“What are you doing here?”

“Being questioned by amateurs.”

Tee wasn’t amused. She signaled Agnarr, who lowered him and began swinging the top of his head through the sewer sludge.

“Stop it.” Uranik managed to keep his sardonic tone, but there was a slight edge of tension in his voice.

“Pull him up,” Tee said. “Hmm. You seem to have gotten a little dirty. Now, I’ve got one of your fancy pieces of cloth here – the one with the purple liquid on it. I suppose I could just wipe your face clean with it…”

“This isn’t necessary,” Uranik said. “If you let me live and let me go, I’ll tell you whatever you want.” He was outwardly calm, but it was clear that Tee had rattled him.

Tee considered it for a moment. “Dunk him so that we can talk.”

Uranik opened his mouth to protest… which was a mistake.

While he gurgled they quickly talked it over. Elestra didn’t like the idea of letting him go – unlike Arveth, Uranik had been directly responsible for the atrocities performed in the apartment building above them. But the rest of them decided to accept his terms.

Agnarr hauled him back up and they sat him down on the ledge. Tee quizzed him about the work that had been done in the apartment complex, and by comparing those answers to the papers they had retrieved she confirmed that he was being truthful… about that at least.

They learned that the cultists had broken into the apartment complex and started their experiments on the residents. When they ran out of residents, they started bringing in slaves from the Temple of the Rat God.

“And what’s down here in the sewer?”

“The Temple of Deep Chaos,” Uranik said. “It was founded by Wuntad.”

They quizzed him about Wuntad. He had apparently left the Temple here about a month and a half ago and Uranik hadn’t seen him since, although he believed that Illadras – who was now in charge of the Temple – was in contact with him. Uranik claimed to know nothing about Pythoness House.

“You work here with the Ebon Hand?”

“And others.”

“So why did you kill the other priest?”

“Reggaloch? He was planning to betray us.”

“And yet he’s the one who’s dead.”

“There were two of us and only one of him.”

“How do you get into the Temple?”

He told them of two entrances – an iron door down the western tunnel and a secret entrance up the northern tunnel. If they went through the iron door, they would enter a long stone hall. He described one of the walls of this hall as being illusionary, and said that there were four priests who stood as guardians and could look into the hall through a peephole.

“And through the secret entrance?”

“There’s a tunnel with two sentries on duty. If you can get past them, you should be able to come up behind the priests through their quarters. There’ll be a staircase down—“

“We’re going to leave you here. When you get out of your ropes, don’t try to warn your friends. We’ll make sure they know you’re a traitor. And we both know what you do with traitors.”

Agnarr knocked him unconscious. Tor loosened his ropes… slightly.

Running the Campaign: Bond. The Opposite of Bond. – Campaign Journal: Session 33C
In the Shadow of the Spire: Index

SESSION 33A: DOWN THE SEWER HOLE

December 28th, 2008
The 18th Day of Kadal in the 790th Year of the Seyrunian Dynasty

With the two cultists securely manacled, they went upstairs to deal with the tentacular horror of translucent protoplasm.

Tor and Agnarr removed the barricade of furniture from in front of the door. Then Tor kicked open the door and stepped through.

Its abode disturbed, the creature surged out of the broken cocoon and lurched its way across the room. As it came, it spat a viscous glob of acid spittle towards Tor’s face. Tor narrowly dodged the spittle and then sinuously whipped back the other way as a pseudopod lashed out towards him.

Having kept his balance despite his acrobatic dodging, Tor lunged forward with his own blade. But the creature burst apart – opening a gap through which Tor’s sword passed harmlessly.

As the creature reformed its mass, however, Agnarr slipped into the room as well, and cut down at it. The barbarian’s blade ripped into it, leaving an acrid stench as it burned its way into the heart of the creature.

This sent the creature into a frenzied rage. It spat venom randomly in all directions, catching Dominic in the eyes, and then lashed out at Agnarr with a half dozen tentacles. Agnarr managed to weave his way past a few of them, but the sheer mass of the attack overwhelmed him – four of the pseudopods struck him and latched on. These clung to his flesh and then, using them like anchors, the creature hauled itself towards him. Before anyone could react, the creature had engulfed him.

Tee tumbled into the room and stabbed at it, hoping to lure it off of Agnarr. It spat venom in response. She was struck in the face and cried out in pain, trying to wipe the blinding, burning goo out of her eyes.

Ranthir, seeing Agnarr’s plight, hurled the familiar spell of enlargement at him. At its touch, Agnarr literally grew his way out of the engulfing creature. It ripped painfully free from his body, leaving trails of blood to pour down onto the floor.

The creature retreated from the now enormous Agnarr, spitting venom into his eyes as it went. Crying out from the literally blinding pain, Agnarr swung his greatsword—

–and struck Tee! The blow cut her down where she stood.

But the wide swing also had the effect of forcing the creature back into the corner of the room, from which – with no place to flee – it propelled itself forward again, latching two of its large pseudopods onto Agnarr’s chest. As the others stared in horror, it began sucking the blood from Agnarr’s body – sending misty trails of crimson fluid pulsing through its amoeba-like body.

The barbarian, still fighting blind, raised his sword back and struck mightily at the floor directly beneath the creature. The unsupported floorboards splintered beneath the strength of the blow, and the creature fell through the hole. It tried to drag Agnarr down after it, but Agnarr’s prodigious strength held and the tentacles ripped free.

Dominic, still blind, cried out in fright: “I think the floor is collapsing! We need to get out of here now!”

Agnarr’s vision, however, was clearing now, and he could see the creature still writhing on the lower level. With a grunt he leapt up and plunged down through the hole, driving all of his enlarged weight (more than two tons) onto the creature.

With a squalmous squelch, the creature burst – spattering eddies of protoplasmic grotesquerie through the room.

Agnarr straightened up, poking his head back up onto the second floor. He saw Tee lying in a pool of her own blood. “What happened to Tee?”

His wounds were still bleeding badly, but Elestra was able to tend to that.

Dominic was regaining his own vision. “Ah!” he cried. “You weren’t that big the last time I saw you… What happened to Tee?”

Dominic was able to heal Tee’s wounds easily enough. With a grimace of pain she sat up.

“What happened to me?”

DOWN THE SEWER HOLE

They were satisfied that they had done everything they could to cleanse the apartment complex of the horrific experiments that had been conducted there (albeit while wreaking massive property damage).

“Well, at least we didn’t burn the place down.”

“We did not burn down that house!” Tee insisted.

“What should we do now?” Tor asked.

“We should hurry,” Tee said. “It’s been at least ten minutes since the fight broke out on the street.”

“Right,” Elestra said. “The guard will be coming.”

“Or more cultists,” Tee said.

“Yes. That would be worse,” Dominic said.

They collected their two cultist prisoners (replacing the manacles with knotted ropes firmly tied by Tor) and dragged them over to the hole in the back corner of the first floor. Climbing down the rope ladder they found themselves, as they had predicted, in the sewers. Tee came last, dragging a rug over the hole behind her to help conceal its presence, cutting the rope ladder, and then floating down using her boots of levitation.

They were standing at the intersection of four major sewer passages. Narrow walkways of beslimed stone ran along a wide, slowly flowing channel of raw sewage. Agnarr examined the ground and determined that the walkways to the north and west had recently seen a great deal of traffic. They suspected that was the direction the cultists would come from, so they decided to take the prisoners a little way down the southern passage instead.

Quickly searching them, they found several carefully folded and oiled silk, each of which contained some sort of alchemical substance (which Tee guessed was poison). They also turned up a thick sheath of research notes in a hidden pocket of the spellcaster’s robes. They took the time to study these and the other papers that they had recovered from the alchemical laboratory upstairs.

THE BOOK OF VENOM’S TRUTH

This small, gray-covered volume is a paean to all manners of vile activities – drug abuse, sexual perversions, acts of cruelty and violence – treated with the reverence of holy ritual.

In totality, the book appears to be a cult manual for the “Brotherhood of Venom”. They worship chaos, speaking of the “slow swarm of the Elder Brood” – by which they appear to mean the slow, methodical, and (above all) secret sowing of chaos and dissolution. They perceive ordered society as a curse and seek to undermine it through a slow and steady erosion of disintegration.

Entire passages are given over to describing the basic dynamics of power and how to subvert them – serving as a generic manual n how to infiltrate the highest levels of a society through its most important individuals.

The cult prefers the clandestine. They are patient and careful, never wanting the authorities or other potential opponents to know they exist.

A name is scrawled on the inside back cover: BROTHERHOOD OF PTOLUS

THE MASKS OF DEATH

This folder of blood-red leather contains a collection of associated parchments which appear to serve as something of a cult manual for a group calling itself the “Brotherhood of the Deathmantle”, the Death’s Grimace, or the Tears of Blood.

The cult serves chaos through the worship of murder and slaughter. The more chaos and fear each murder creates, the greater the veneration. Mass murder – the slaying of a whole town, a whole city, or a whole nation – is their ultimate goal.

Each cultist wears a death’s head mask, usually of copper or bronze but occasionally of iron painted skull-white. The cult frequently associates with the undead, and there is even the suggestion that the most faithful among them are undead themselves. They venerate graveyards as holy places and speak of the end of days as “the grave of all worlds”.

Much of the book is given over to the painstaking detailing of the instruments of death: The making of poisons, the care of weapons, and so forth.

Some of the manual is given over to what they would consider the ultimate religious ecstasy: The death of a god.

ALCHEMICAL NOTES ON ASKARA

These notes detail the creation of a magical poison referred to as askara. The notes appear to have been frequently altered, apparently in an effort to perfect the process. The effects of the poison are not described.

The notes appear to combine alchemical and mystical knowledge credited to both the Ebon Hand cultists and the Brothers of Venom.

OBSERVATIONAL NOTES
ON VENOM-SHAPED THRALLS

These are detailed notes on the effects of a poison referred to as askara. The poison is designed to mutate its victim in a prolonged misery that lasts for weeks or even months before the victim dies. During this time, however, the victim’s mind becomes pliable – effectively becoming a slave of those administering the poison.

When victims are injected with askara, they weaken until they collapse. Within twelve hours, their bodies secrete a dark, syrupy substance that covers them and then hardens, forming a black, spherical cocoon. Within another twenty-four hours, the victim emerges from the cocoon, mutated into a hideous amalgam of an insect-like creature and their former selves.

A large section of these notes detail the perfection of a solution that must be applied to the cocoons during the gestation period. Without that solution, the resulting creature “lacks cohesive physical form”. This solution appears to have been difficult to perfect, and was reached only after “Wuntad assured us access to the teachings of the Deathmantles”.

Other notes refer to “unexpected activity in the post-emergent cocoons” including a reference to “violet slime” and “secondary spontaneous cellular generation”, but these are not particularly detailed.

Running the Campaign: Fantasy Sewers – Campaign Journal: Session 33B
In the Shadow of the Spire: Index

SESSION 32C: ENTER ARVETH

December 20th, 2008
The 18th Day of Kadal in the 790th Year of the Seyrunian Dynasty

Tee went over to the door that the venom-shaped thrall had been guarding and found it, predictably, locked. But it was no more difficult than the last one. Swinging it open, however, she found an even more disturbing sight: Five prisoners shackled hand-and-foot to the floor.

Tor, nursing a sick suspicion, crossed to a cocoon that was enmeshed in one corner of the hall. With a single slice of his sword, he cut it open… and a vaguely humanoid form tumbled out in a gush of acidic liquid.

“Venom-shaped… Shaped by venom.” Horror and disgust were mixed evenly in his voice.

Tee moved to free the nearest prisoner. They immediately panicked. “No! Not me! Where are you taking me?”

“It’s okay. It’s okay, I’m here to help.”

As Tee worked to undo their shackles, Agnarr headed back down the hall and grabbed the unconscious spellcaster from where they’d left him in the entryway. He wanted to keep a close eye on that one.

Questioning the prisoners they quickly determined that they had been brought here only a few days ago. There had originally been eight of them, but the cultists had been taking them away one at a time. Three of them had been kidnapped from around the city (mostly straight off the streets), but the other two reported being sold through a black market slave trade of some sort running through the Teeth of Light. And one of these reported seeing a temple with a statue of a rat-shaped man in it, leading Tor and Elestra to conclude that the followers of the Rat God must be involved, as well.

ENTER ARVETH

But what were they going to do with the prisoners? Tee definitely didn’t want to be responsible for them. And she knew that the building was being watched. They eventually decided to give each of the prisoners 10 gold pieces, told them to cover their faces, run for it, and get as far away from here as they could as quickly as possible.

But as they gathered them up to lead them out the front door, Elestra and Ranthir – who were still standing in the hall – suddenly whirled towards the front door. Two people had just come in: A blond woman and a thuggish man.

The woman hissed. “Kill them.”

Then she drank a potion and disappeared.

Tee quickly shouted at the prisoners to head upstairs – there was a window with a rope: “Get out. Get out as fast as you can. Go!”

Tor rallied the prisoners and led them upstairs. Ranthir, meanwhile, dropped a thick web into the entryway – it clearly caught the thug and he hoped it had caught the invisible woman, as well.

What they couldn’t see through the thick web, however, was that both the thug and the invisible woman had ripped their way out of the web, gone back through the front door, and were circling the building.

Tor had barely reached the rope on the second floor when an axe thrown from below thunked into the windowsill next to him. He ducked back… and the former prisoners panicked, scattering through the upper level – some cowering in corners, another getting ambushed by a patch of violent slime that fell from the ceiling, a third trying to climb out of a different window only to fall with a scream into the cobbled alley below.

Meanwhile, downstairs, Tee and Ranthir were rapidly gathering up the papers and alchemical equipment from the laboratory.

Between the axe and the panicking prisoners, Tor didn’t notice the subtle shifting of the rope as the invisible woman climbed it. She appeared suddenly before him as her knife plunged into his shoulder.

Grunting heavily, Tor dragged her through the window with her dagger still buried in him and then slammed his sword into her. She crumpled in the corner.

By the time he’d yanked the dagger out, however, the axe-throwing thug had reached the window, as well. The thug took one swing with his axe – which Tor easily ducked – and then was run through the heart with the electric-arc of Tor’s return thrust.

Tor turned to Dominic. “Heal the woman, then we’ll haul her downstairs and ask some questions.”

While Dominic did that, Tor and Tee gathered up the rest of the prisoners. One of them, unfortunately, had been killed by the violet slime. The one who had fallen out of the window had broken his leg, but Elestra was able to heal that. Then they sent them on their way. “Get as far from here as you can.”

While Agnarr and Dominic kept an eye on the prisoners – making sure that they got away safely – the others quickly mopped up the various nests and cocoons left scattered throughout the complex, making sure that the cultists’ work here was completely destroyed. They left only the barricaded room with its dangerous, gelatinous tentacles, which they resolve to deal with before going down the hole.

They reconvened on the first floor. The woman (who Tee identified as Arveth, who had recruited her into the Brotherhood) and the spellcaster were traussed up in the manacles that had formerly held the prisoners.

They were in for a rude awakening.

Running the Campaign: Non-Combat Goals – Campaign Journal: Session 33A
In the Shadow of the Spire: Index

SESSION 32B: SHAPED BY VENOM

December 20th, 2008
The 18th Day of Kadal in the 790th Year of the Seyrunian Dynasty

ENTER THE CULTIST

Tee, who had taken up a position at the top of the staircase to serve as a look-out, heard a door open below. She snuck down the stairs and looked down the central hall on the first level… just in time to see someone disappear around the far corner of the hall into the front entryway.

Signaling silently to the others above to follow her, Tee made her own way down the hall. Agnarr, oblivious to all of this, continued poking around through the largely deserted complex of rooms he’d dropped into.

Tee peeked around the corner into the entryway: One of the doors on the northern side of the room was slightly ajar. She took a few moments to consider her options while the others crept down the hall behind.

But before she could reach a decision, Agnarr finished exploring the rooms he was in and emerged – loudly – into the entryway through a different door.

As he did so, the slightly ajar door burst open and two venom-shaped thralls charged through. Agnarr took half a step back and drew his sword to defend himself—

But at that moment, a beam of scintillating energy shot out from a second door – only slightly cracked – and struck the barbarian in the chest, paralyzing him completely. Agnarr was completely defenseless as one of the thralls thrust its lance-like claw through his chin and up into his skull, killing him instantly.

Ranthir – seeing Agnarr fall – threw a fireball into the entryway. It exploded spectacularly. Tee seized the opportunity to tumble past the two large thralls. Bursting through the door from which the beam of energy had come, she saw the spellcasting cultist backing away. With a single bounding leap she was on him, viciously cutting him across the chest.

The cultist fumbled a potion of healing to his lips and raised his other hand to cast a spell – but then his eyes grew suddenly large as a cocoon behind Tee suddenly belched forth a swarm of chaos beetles.

Tee ducked back out of the room and slammed the door shut. The last thing she saw were the beetles sweeping over the cultist, biting and stinging at him repeatedly.

Tor, meanwhile, had led the charge against the two venom-shaped thralls. They had been badly injured by Ranthir’s fire ball, and Tor was making short work of them.

With the entryway cleared, Dominic came around the corner, looked at Agnarr’s grievous wound, and sighed heavily.

EXIT THE CULTIST

As the last thrall dropped and Dominic knelt by Agnarr’s side, however, the sound of breaking glass came from the room Tee had left the spellcaster in.

“He’s jumped out the window!”

Tor and Ranthir rushed outside into the street. A moment later, the cultist came stumbling out of the alley, a vicious cut on his arm sending blood streaming down his arm. Seeing them he spat. “Chaos shall eat your hearts!”

The cultist raised his hands to cast a spell… and Ranthir undid the casting before it had even begun.

Tee came through the door, dropped her sword, and drew her bow.

The cultist yelped and turned to run, but Tor chased him down and tackled him to the cobblestones. Getting his arms wrapped around the cultist’s neck, he began to choke the life out of him.

Tee, glancing at the stares they were receiving from the others in the street, quickly trotted back inside – collecting her weapons as she went: They were going to have to hurry.

“The Brotherhood… will…. never…” The cultist slipped into unconsciousness. Tor grabbed him by the collar and dragged him back inside.

SHAPED BY VENOM

As Tee came back inside, she saw that Agnarr was shaking his head gingerly – Dominic had resealed the bond between his soul and body. She moved past them, performing a quick sweep of the rest of the apartment’s building’s lower level.

There were a few more nests and cocoons, along with some patches of the dangerous violet slime, but there were only two points of true interest: First, a small room near the back of the building where the floorboards had been broken from below. A ladder leaned against the side of this hole and the smell of raw sewage drafted up from below.

Second, a locked door.

By this time, Tor had dragged the unconscious cultist back into the entryway.

“The watch will be here soon,” Elestra said.

“Yes,” Tee said, coming back from her sweep. “We should move quickly.”

“Where are we going?” Dominic asked.

“Down the hole.”

But first they wanted to find out what was behind the locked door.

With Agnarr backing her up, Tee easily picked the cheap lock on the apartment door. Swinging it open revealed a room cluttered with various papers and alchemical equipment. Near the middle of the room there was a large, wooden table that had been outfitted with crude shackles. Strange stains dotted and pitted the surface of the table.

Of more immediate concern, of course, was the venom-shaped thrall crouched low before the door on the opposite side of the room. With his demesne disturbed, the thrall attacked.

Agnarr shoved Tee out of the way and faced off against it. Under the brunt of the creature’s assault, he was pushed back against the far wall of the hall, but then the vicious thrust of his counter-attack skewered it.

Running the Campaign: Death at Tier 2  – Campaign Journal: Session 32C
In the Shadow of the Spire: Index