Skin in the Game
21st of Lamashan 4707 A.R. (Absalom Reckoning)
Not one for stacking pebbles, Cob claims the vampire's slippers as his own, small nimble fingers making quick work of securing the flowing silk ribbons to his own feet. '
Slippers of Spider-climbing,' Sirim calls them, a sensible name for a very useful item as your small friend quickly begins prowling about the ceiling looking for secrets. His search is quickly vindicated when he finds a loose stone right above the center of the dungeon that when flipped open reveals a wound up chain that can be pulled—by Gorok from the ground, Cob is many things, but strong is not one of them—to lift up the mirror in the blood well chamber, revealing an almost dark space beyond.
Sirim Knowledge (Arcana): 1d20+12 = 22 (Success)
Cob Perception (DC 22): 1d20+15 = 27 (Success) -> Gorok Strength (DC 11): 1d20+2 = 19 (Success)
There, on a bed of stone, lies a woman, bound and unconscious, all but skin and bone. You're no stranger to the sight of people who haven't had enough to eat. There had been seasons when the crops were blighted, the hunting poor, and all that could be found for nourishment for the People were feeble flames. But this... this was
deliberate. Strangely enough, a single shaft of light illuminates her face and nothing else, leaving no doubt as to her identity. You had found Elenora in truth.
"Is she...?" Mina can't quite bring herself to ask the question.
"She's alive," you answer, to your eyes she still glows with the slow heat of all living things, though for how long it's hard to say.
"Why would she
do this?" your friend asks, frantically searching through her bags for something, food, water... Honey-water, you have a vague memory of that working.
"To prepare her for some bleaker fate," Sirim sounds as subdued as you had ever heard him, floating above the altar bearing steel and silver instruments.
"I... some of these instruments are familiar to me. They are used by kythons to strip skin from living subjects." You step by him, unsure what if any comfort you can give, relieved when he asks for a
spark of luck, but even that does not jar his memory. Perhaps it's for the best. What he
can say with some certainty is that the mirror includes a
scrying ward that probably kept any diviners DeVerge might have employed to find his sister from doing just that with magic.
Sirim Knowledge (Religion) (DC 20): 1d20+12+1 (Guidance) = 18 (Failure)
Sirim Knowledge (Arcana) (DC 21): 1d20+12+1 (Guidance) = 26 (Success)
Gorok takes the vampire's head with a heavy thunk and no one has anything more to say on the matter for a bit as Mina tries to wake the prisoner, but too no avail. She is either too weak from hunger or...
Elenora Fortitude Save (DC 20): 1d20+1 = 10 (Failure)
"Might be poison," you suggest. "If she had just been starved, I imagine she'd have made quite a lot of noise until it got to her. Unless she had a particular fondness for the sound of her victims screams, some kind of sleeping poison would have saved Breolia from having to listen to her while she was bathing."
"Worth a try," Mina says, pulling out an anti-venom you'd been hanging onto since Cauldron, carefully holding the girl's head up to drink it.
1x Antitoxin Used -> 3 Remaining
She wakes with a sputter to what must be quite a curious sight. "What... who, you're not her..." Trying to shift her weight she finds she does not have the strength, but she still bats aside Mina's reassuring ministrations. "We have to get out of here, she'll find you!
We have to get out!"
"No worries, she's dead," Cob proclaims as he dashes back towards the pool room. Having grown quite wise to the ways of Cob you put a hand on his head to stop him.
"Don't bring the head, she'll be scared."
"But she's dead-dead. I stabbed her good," he frowns up in confusion at the notion that someone could be scared at the sight of a beaten enemy.
"You sure did." There's real fervor to those words, not to mention gratitude, but you temporize them with an explanation of how some people might find a loose head upsetting.
Judging from the foot stomp and quick glance down at his knees you don't think your friend gets it, but he does mentally sort it under 'Longshanks things' and doesn't try to get the head.
Mina quietly explains what had happened to Elenora and that you are going to get her back to her brother just as soon as it's safe.
And the mansion is thoroughly looted, you add mentally. Speaking of looting, Sirim had been swirling around the corpse, searching for arcane auras of which he had found two more; a
hair band hidden in her curls that enhance both her grace and magic and a pair of silver bracers that made her
more adept weaving spells in battle.
Sirim Arcane Rolls to Identify items: 21, 26 (Success, Success)
You are halfway to affixing the hair-band onto your own head when the shadow mage starts twisting in the air, like the smoke from a flaring campfire.
"I know what she was planning. The girl just informed Mina that the lady of blood had planned to take her face and live her life. There are many spells that can do that for a day or weeks, months if one is careful, but when the victim is a person of wealth and lineage upon which many divining eyes are turned... when one wishes to live for years or decades behind the mask, what finer material for it than wished-for-skin? I suspect that accounts for the starvation and the exposure to sunlight."
Swallowing the acrid taste at the back of your throat, all you can answer is: "I hope the devils find her soul." Maybe you are not as good a Gorok at breaking the damn well, but you
put your back into it.
Blood Well Destroyed
After Mina makes Elenora as comfortable as your supplies allow, a sleeping bag and some honey-water, you leave Pepper to keep watch, encouraged by the fact that not a sound flows down the stairs as you search the dungeon. When you finally make your cautious way up the stairs, Cob in the lead as ever, you find the mansion... deserted. Had all the servants been devils sent back with their mistress' death? Or more worryingly, had they all been set
loose? Regardless, the kitchen yields up a bounty of crystal and silver sure to sell for a pretty penny, especially for those who prefer 'crests' on their cutlery, of which Mina assures you there are quite a few. Alas, there is no vault to be found as in your ad-hoc lie, but you do find a small lock box in the solar... which Cob unfortunately jams in his haste to get at the shinnies.
Treasure Rolls 3d100: 33, 53, 97
Disable Device (DC 30): 21, 16 (Failure, Critical Failure)
It takes thirty blows from Gorok's axe back downstairs in the dungeon where you are sure no one can hear you to smash enough of a hole into one side of the box to get all the coins out and that axe is going to need more than sharpening, magical mending from Sirim most likely. Though speaking of Sirim... by the time you make it back up he had slipped into the library and found a hidden hollow space behind a bookshelf... the kind of book that one needs no explanation for hiding.
The Thousand Faces of Ardad Lili has a cover of gold, though it bears no adornment save the impression of a screaming human face emerging from beneath as though it had been given a mask of molten metal in its final anguished moments.
Gorok's Axe is Broken
"The book's language is that of Hell, but not I think touched by any of the dark power of that realm. At a glance it contains the rite one must use to become such as Breolia was and so is the rite of the Flesh Mask she had meant to use to steal the girl's life along with several others relating to life, death, as well as the states betwixt and between. All of it written in the fool's own hand," the shadow mage sounds vaguely incredulous that anyone would set such dread insights in plain writing.
Mina however recoils at the sight as though there before her was a life snake. "Why would you keep that?!
Burn it!"
Sirim Will Save (DC 15): 1d20+5 = 17 (Success)
"Knowledge is never wasted," Sirim's answer stings in the mind like the touch of a welt-worm, then metaphorical hand pinned to a wall he admits.
"It is my hope that such insights as it contains can be the foundation to regaining my body."
Her expression softens. "I feel like I know you at least a little these past few months, so I trust you and hope that you trust me." She praises awkwardly, as though waiting for a nod that does not come, until at last she gathers up her courage to say:
"You would find no joy in the fruits of such bitter understanding."
"Rest assured I have no plans to flay faces, else I would not have shown you the book." He too stops, though you suspect more to get his mind in order, projecting his thoughts outwards.
"In battle we have crossed shadows and together, guarded each other in slumber and in peril, entrusted ourselves to the power of the other. Yet this day I confess that I must ask for more in the study of this tome. I must ask for your aid." The bright embers of his eyes move from you to Mina and back again.
Sirim Diplomacy (DC 20) 1d20+12 = 28 (Success)
Slowly, without looking at him, almost as though her body had reached a decision before her mind could, Mina nods. "Alright... I'm willing to try if that's what you want, if that's what you feel you need."
Items gained
- Slippers of Spider Climbing
- Headband of Alluring Charisma +2
- Spellguard Bracers
- Large Enchanted Silver Mirror (Nondetection)
- Crystal and silver cutlery
- 741 gp
- The Thousand Faces of Arad Lili (Book of Occult Rituals)
What are Kori's feelings on the Grimoire?
[] Horror, he won't touch the thing
[] Reluctant sympathy, he will help, but no more than that
[] Fascination, to shape flesh and soul, the old ones had done it long ago
***
Hardly had you gotten your thoughts in order that for the first time since you climbed into the house you hear the sounds: the thump of something heavy against the front door, a crash and then raised voices and they aren't shy. The Eagle Knights have arrived.
Akorain Perception (DC 15): 1d20+9 = 28 (Success)
What do you do?
[] Go out and greet them
+It will make your heroics public, potentially gaining greater rewards
-Gavhaul will know you killed one of his contacts
-You will have to hide that book and lie about what you took from the house
[] Get the girl up from the dungeon and get out while they are still searching the front of the house
+Allows you to maintain secrecy
-You are going to have to sneak with a malnourished former prisoner (probably in bag of holding)
Dictionary
Stacking Pebbles - Woolgathering [Darklands]
Crossing Shadows - Working together for important or secret purpose [Nidelesse]
OOC: If you guys had chosen to loot less you would have gotten fewer loot rolls. In this case you would have missed the book, but you also would not have had to talk to Eagle Knights
