Sessions 43-44 Recap and the Take

Sessions 43-44 Recap and the Take

Confronted with the Sordid Latch, Salinger easily picked the rusted padlock. With the first of the seven portals overcome, the rusted and wretched door swung outwards. Lantern light fell on a room with walls of tan stone. The ground of the room was cut paving stones, now buckled and broken, and rank weeds sprout up to waist height here and there in the darkness. Against the back wall, five sets of metal shutters were closed, as though they were covering windows set directly into the rock wall. Three were at a height of five feet, and two at height of 12’ in trapezoidal arrangement. After a little poking around, the party yanked open the low, easternmost window shutter with a grating sound, revealing a bricked-up window behind.

The party opted to head west, coming upon a set of stairs that led 15’ down to a larger room. The floor was made of massive irregular stone tiles. The northern wall of the room was composed of a black rock, carved into a set of elaborate columns that rose up to a height greater than the flash of their lantern reached. The columns flowed with carved organic forms, vaguely suggestive of anatomy illustrations as they might be depicted in a hellscape of Hieronymous Bosch. They were set with elaborate white porcelain gutters, like a giant marble run, that came from high up in the darkness, emptying at the base into a pool of blood in a depression in the floor.

No sooner than the party entered the room, then a small girl in a filthy nightshirt stepped from the easternmost northerly exit of the room. She addressed the party, pleading for their help. Upon interrogation, she said that she was a shade, 8 years old when she was taken from her parents by the Butchers of the Fleischguild. She claimed that it was her blood running down the gutters, and showed the party grievous wounds on stomach. She implored the party to destroy the altar in the room to the west, which she said would free her from suffering.

Following her to the west they party came upon a grey stone altar set before a marble statue. The statue was of a young robed figure, with a cruel smile on his face, holding a scalpel in one hand and a book in the other, as though demonstrating in an operating theater, or delivering some strange medical benediction. The altar had flowing organic forms on it, like diagrams of capillaries or the nervous system, and was set with white porcelain gutters that flowed into an empty white porcelain bowl at the altar’s base. The party recognized the statue as a representation of Malprion, the Lord of Organism, the aspect of Vulgatis worshipped by the Fleischguild.

Declining to help the uncanny girl until they knew more, the party headed up the westernmost northerly passage, coming to a room set with a big and deep oval pit. Steps led down from the north, and beneath an overhang, they could see in their shining lantern light recessed doorways. The party opted to head east rather than explore the pit, and when the passage split, turned south.

This led them into a room dominated by a strange apparatus, on which a massive roll of parchment sat. The room was littered with pamphlets, all the same. Titled, “An Arrow to All Tyrants” the pamphlet is part poem, part eschatological political screed about the day of reckoning. As the party had begun to examine the pamphlet, they were beset by the puppet automata of the Inquisitor’s Guild, four stuttering murder machines. Their once gay colors were now streaked and their fine costumes stained and torn. Their forms were terrifying: a pregnant woman with a razored parasol, whose belly disgorged a fetal puppet with feral claws; a double-faced punch and judy puppet, one side breathing fire and the other wielding curved swords; a ballerina on deadly scissor legs; and a bird whose beaked maw concealed a monstrous ramming needle. The party won, although the costs were heavy. The pregnant puppet cleaved Holsus, their deluded hireling who believed himself to be on his way to godhood, into two neat pieces. Dozar and the hound Hector were both close to death when the party finally prevailed.

Wounded as they were, the party left the western area to explore a region of twisting alleys to the north of the Sordid Latch. Satareh the houri scouted ahead in the dim light of her candle, covering a lot of ground. After looting a wicked flail and some rune inscribed silver nails from a room with a bubbling pot of cabbage soup and ascetic iconography, the party decided to head north through a metal door in a queer coutryard. Ever cautious, as they entered the thin alley moving north, the party jammed the door open behind them with a flail. Satareh ranged ahead by candlight. As soon as they gotten a ways down the corridor the door attempted to slam shut behind them, grinding on the flail, and a deep reverberating bell rang three ominous times. As the party retreated to the other side of the door preparing for an assault of some sort, Satareh extinguished her candle and remained in the darkness listening carefully.

Quickly, the rest of the party that had retreated heard a whistling—an ominous ditty—approaching from the south, i.e. the direction of the Sordid Latch. As the party switched orientation to deal with the new threat from the rear, Satareh strained her ears and heard a regular stuttering sound approaching from the north through the darkness in the twisting corridors beyond the jammed door. Running back, she quickly removed the flail and spiked the iron door shut to hold at least one of their fronts. As the door closed, she saw several puppet figures approaching rapidly. Meanwhile, the whistler from the south came into view, a man with stained, ragged clothing, and a mask of makeup, caked and crumbling. He moved with an unnatural vigor and carried a wicked looking rusted machete. Behind him a number of others like him moved in single file down the small corridor. The party won initiative, and Sir Regimund Cruft, the British addict and oneironaut raised one hand to his feathered turban, laying a potent charm upon the front figure.

As murder puppets pummeled the door, and his peers jostled to get past him, the party discoursed with the disheveled victim of the charm. He revealed that he and his companions came “through the portal” regularly to this are “when called” to “hunt and also for reasons of pleasure”. He seemed eager to take the drug that Regimund waved before him, and hinted that he might be able to reciprocate. However, as he was revealing his secrets, blacks petals of flame rose silently behind him, engulfing his form until his flesh burned away. The passageway unblocked for his jostling companions to pour forward, the party entered battle. Dozar wielded the Petal Blade, which was eager to strike at these AGENTS OF THE HIDDEN KING. Although Dozar was wounded badly, the party vanquished their foes and fled the room. On their way out, Cletus animated the remaining corpses as skeletons and left them to defend the door from whatever was coming.

The party fled to the east of the Sordid Latch, moving into a natural cavern. A stream from the north fed a pond here, which smelled a bit off. Past a few pine trees, narrow steps led up to the porch of a house that was set into a natural rock ledge. Exploring the one room house, the party discovered a plain wooden table, a strange magical symbol under a carpet, and a shabby wicker basket. The session ended with them easily dispatching a puppet that had fought past the skeletons to pursue them. At this point they departed through the Sordid Latch into the brambles beyond.

Feats Accomplished:

Opening the Sordid Latch 500 XP
NOTE: Opening each of the seven doors in the Abyssal Dungeon yields twice what the previous door yielded in XP. Opening the Gleaming Seal will be worth 1000 XP to the party

Foes Slain:
Four of the Lost 260 XP
Six Puppet Golems 1200 XP

Filthy Lucre:
Large roll of parchment 1000 XP
Five Arcane Puppet Engines 2000 XP
Assorted Puppet Bits 200 XP
Two tins of brown powder (4 doses) 200 XP
Eight silver nails 80 XP
A big, strange flail
A jar of fiery grog
A number of potent rusted weapons that are junk by the time you wake up
Two plain machetes (treat as scimitar 1d6)

XP per player:
Cédric Plante 990
Eric Boyd 990
Aleksandr Revzin 990
Chris P. 990
Gus L 495
Unasi 495 (3597 to date)
Desh 495 (2530 to date)