Out of the Oubliette
After finally finding Erich Zahn at the end of the previous session, we are discovered by a couple of vampires and are forced into a combat. Our goals though were to find Zahn and break the ritual on the Star Stelae, so staying to finish the vampires wasn’t high on our agenda. I think the fact that the GM is awarding XP when we reach set points in the adventure helps a lot towards helping us make rational decisions. We don’t need to think that we need to finish things off in order to get XP to level up, we can back away from fights if we want to – something that makes a lot more sense for a campaign inspired by Call of Cthulhu.
Down the bottom of the Oubliette was a rather battered musician who was muttering and moaning to himself. Catiana floated down to pick him up, and carried him up to the top where we could attend to him. He was shaken and mindless so we tried to calm him down, and myself and Erasmus prepared to break the curse that had stolen his mind.
Breaking the enchantment took a while, and as I began casting the spell there was a sound from up above as the secret door from the library was opened. A rather shapely pair of ankles appeared at the top of the ladder, and were quickly followed by thighs and then a ball gown wrapped up around the waist of one of the guests – Lady Ovonda. She dropped down to the took, taking a moment to rearrange her dress and then addressed us.
Lady Ovonda: I admire your enthusiasm, but you really shouldn’t be down here.
Sheena: Well my love, where should we be?
Lady Ovonda: On your back, with my teeth in your throat.
It wasn’t quite the direction I was expecting the conversation to go, and she ended all chance of dialogue by baring her fangs. From down the ladder drops a second of the guests – Lord Ulthor, who was similarly pale and equipped with canines which were too prominent for polite company. He cast a spell, which caused Sheena to turn tail and flee in panic.
Ovonda leapt at Catiana, digging her teeth into Catiana’s ectoplasmic throat and paralysing her, before leaping back away from her. I just finished casting the spell at that point, so redirected it to include both Erich and Catiana.
Gregor shot Ovonda with several arrows, distracting her long enough for Erasmus to Heal Erich and bring him back to sanity. He recovered quickly, and began singing a song that inspired us to take on the two vampires. Ray threw acidic snowballs at Ovonda, ruining her dress and causing her to rip it off and yell threats at us. I stepped out from where I’d been hiding around the corner at that point and was momentarily distracted by the site of her, but managed to grab her body and rattle its skeleton with Boneshaker. At that point the beautiful, youthful body slipped away and she became aged and slick with blood. She was a Sayona – not quite a vampire, but a creature that could drain the youth and beauty from their victims.
Gregor finished her off with arrows, but instead of dying she turned to mist.
That left Lord Ulthor, who was also finally defeated and forced to take on a misty form. They both fled through the maze, heading for their sarcophagi which we recalled had their names on them.
I managed to track down Sheena and cast a Remove Fear on her, so we were all ready to either chase after the two vampires, or leave. Eventually we decided to teleport out, since we had what we wanted.
Once we were safe, we had a chance to talk to Erich Zahn.
Erich told us that he was from a city called Paris which was on another world, where he had ran into problems with the captain of the guards there. He had protected himself with the use of a musical masterpiece – the Fuge de Rue d’Auseil – but had been dragged here along with part of the city.
Whilst we spoke to him, we came to realise that he wasn’t actually speaking to us – his words came telepathically and he himself was mute.
Our next step is to revisit the vineyard and deal with unlinking the Star Stelae, but that also means dealing with the plant creature that dwells there. We believe that it is tied to the vineyard, so hopefully if we stand back and hit it from a distance we might be able to deal with it without too much risk to ourselves.
