Session 7: The Undertaker's Ball
The day of the Undertaker's Ball has arrived. It is to be a masked and costumed affair. Valya and Wistul are very keen to get to the bottom of it and understand why the necromancer from the Whitefish family mausoleum had an invite (and hopefully identify who he was as well...) Makabee, Wistul's cousin likes the idea of a party, and Humboldt rarely overthinks any decision, so he's game too. Sabrina seems to have disappeared since Jack and Elan's execution.
They decide to go as follows: Valya will be dressed as a mock wizard with starred robe, pointy hat and a black leather mask. Humboldt will pretend to be his manservant, wearing a hooked nose mask and a ruff. Makabee will be his ladyfriend, wearing exaggerated elf features. The fact that she is currently a woman is a convenient coincidence. Wistul is not disguised and pretends to be Valya's (or rather Reginald Whitefish's) bodyguard.
The ball takes place in the long low building of the St Cuthbert's Mortuary. As the four approach, they are struck by the powerful smell of formaldehyde that seems to pervade the building. A guard in red livery and wearing a wig (but with a sword by his side) takes the fake Reginald's invite and welcomes him. His manservant and bodyguard will have to stay in the servant's welcome area (he waves to the side) but he and his lady companion are most welcome.
Valya and Makabee walk into the reception area. The entire place is candlelit and guests are lavishly dressed and (for the most part) masked. The tasteful music is produced by a string quartet standing at one end of the room. Waiters are dressed in black with a smooth white mask on their faces and Makabee quickly notices that there is something odd about them: they seem to move a bit too slowly. Makabee also notices a good number of fat cats sitting on beams above the party or standing by the curtains on the sides of the room.
In the servant's area, Humboldt starts stuffing himself with the (rather better than usual) fare and making friends. Wistul stands next to the corridor that connects the side room with the main hall where the party is, just in case Valya and Makabee need his help. After a while, he notices that just outside of the corridor some of the waiters have gathered, staring at him listlessly. One of the two guards standing between the ballroom and the side room tries shooing them off, but they seem to come back, to the guard's mounting irritation.
Back in the ballroom, Valya notices a rotund man disguised as a theatrical devil (complete with barbed tail and fake red fork). His posture seems somewhat familiar although Valya can't quite place him. He decides to go speak with him. Meanwhile, Makabee's attention is attracted to the cluster of idle waiters near the servants' room. She immediately notices that the waiters are looking at Wistul, although she can't quite figure out why. While one of the guards again tries to yell ineffectually at the waiters to get them to do their jobs, Makabee walks to the second guard and, mumbling under her breath touches him on the shoulder. This utterance of Mornay's Secret of Lasting Friendship (1) formula causes him to change gender back to male. The guard turns around and looks at Makabee with friendly eyes:
- Oh, it's you my friend! So good to see you here!
- It is indeed!
- Love the transvestite elf costume. They are strange buggers, these elves, aren't they...
- They sure are! I actually have an Elf friend in the servant's area there (he points at Wistul). You wouldn't mind letting him in, would you? He's missing out on all the fun.
- Sure, I'll let him through, just make sure that my colleague doesn't see him.
- Great! See you soon!
Wistul passes unnoticed by the second guard. Humboldt, seeing Wistul goes through, follows discreetly.
Valya is chatting with the theater devil gentleman but the man seems guarded and himself fishing for information. He asks Valya if he knows what is going on behind the velvet door, pointing. Valya looks in the direction the man indicates and notices an ornate side-door guarded by no less than four guards. At this very moment, the door opens and a fantastically beautiful woman walks out. She is thin and tall but curvy where it matters. Her skin is impossibly pale but her lips are ruby red. Her hair as dark as night. "Great costume", Valya gurgles worriedly.
The woman walks towards the guests and immediately is surrounded. She grabs a glass of ruby wine handed to her by one of the guards and starts talking with the guests. Her cristalline laughter resonates in the room and all around her seem entranced. Worried that the wine is not what it seems, Wistul quickly chants the words to Allaskobe's Wonder Identification but determines the wine is not magical. Outside, it starts to snow again (2). A few minutes later, having sipped all of her wine, the pale lady walks back to the ornate door and walks through. The guards block all those who try to follow.
Makabee and Wilbur join Valya in the ballroom, not noticing that Humboldt is right behind them, drinking wine and laughing with guests surprised and delighted at what they assume to be some sort of clown act. "We should try to slip behind that door", Makabee says. Seems to be where interesting things are happening..." But just as they are starting to plot to do so, a guard walks to Valya and says: "Sir Reginald Whitefish ? You are kindly requested to join The Committee. Follow me please."
Valya hesitates an instant then walks towards the ornate door, escorted by the guard and followed by Humboldt who manages to slip inside unseen and hide behind a wall curtain. Valya walks towards the center of the room where a few old but comfortable looking couches have been laid. Five people are standing or sitting there, including the disturbingly stunning lady Valya noticed previously. Valya also spots a few cats languishingly lying in front of a chimney.
- "Welcome, Sir Reginald. For those not in the know I am Lady Tate, but you have probably heard of me under my real name, that of Lady in Tatters. We at the Committee are glad to finally meet you in the flesh, so to speak. Let me introduce my colleagues."
Lady Tate points to a man (or creature) disguised with what looks like really ancient cloth bands and wearing nothing but an old and worn iron crown on his head. She introduces him as Rostrum King.
She then looks at an impossibly emaciated looking woman whose arms are abnormally long and whose skin seems to have been painted grey. Lady Tate calls her Ashaya Thin.
She then turns to someone whose disguise consists solely of a white sheet with a couple of holes cut out for the eyes. "This is Evan Essence", Lady Tate says.
The last member of the Committee seems to be a man, or to have been a man. His parched skin is stretched so thinly upon his skull that it seems like there is no flesh in between. There's a faint amber glow emanating from his eyes. Lady Tate introduces him as Jiang Feng, the oldest wizard alive.
- "So, Lord Reginald, even though our contacts have so far been distant, you were awakened a few months back and accepted the tasks we gave you. How does your mission progress ?"
- "Errr. Well. It progresses well. Very well."
- "That is rather vague. Please be more specific. How many of the noble family mausoleums have you infected with the Rot?"
- "Errr... How many... Let me see... About a dozen, I think. Yes."
- "Which ones for example?"
- "Well, the Whitefish of course, but also the Brittleshins, the Silverfish and many more."
Lady Tate looks at Valya with a glint of suspicion in her eyes and then says:
- "You seem ill at ease... And why is it that I sense a pulse coming from you?"
- "Ahhh, magic! I found an amulet that fakes the body heat and pulse of a live man. But this costume is ill fitting and that's why I fidget!"
Lady Tate crosses eyes with the other members of the committee, and after a long silence she speaks again.
- "Very well, Sir Reginald. I trust you will continue with your mission. We need all the mausoleums infected and ready for the Long Night one month from now. Good luck."
Valya bows and walks out. Humboldt, who was too busy looking at a spider crawling on the curtain he was hiding behind paid no attention whatsoever to the conversation and totally forgets to leave. He hears the voices inside the room in heated conversation, but still does not pay any attention until suddenly everything goes silent.
- "I can still feel a pulse!" a female voice says.
The curtain is swung open, and Lady Tate stares straight into Humboldt's eyes.
- "Who are you?" she hisses menacingly.
- "I'm Humboldt. Pleased to meet you!" the dimwitted halfling says, holding his hand out.
- "What are you doing here?" Lady Tate asks, a little taken aback.
- "I was looking at a spider. Fascinating little creature, it was! But it must have ran off when you opened the curtain. If spiders do run off. Crawl off?"
- "What have you heard of our conversations?", Lady Tate asks again, this time in a more seductive voice that carries a lot of persuasion.
- "Conversations? Nothing at all. As I told you I was looking at this really interesting spider. It had red speckles on its hairy legs. I wonder where it's gone..."
- "Enough with your damn spider! Look me in the eyes."
Humboldt does as Lady Tate asks, and she waves her hands slowly in front of her.
- "You will forget every conversation you heard while inside this room!"
- "Conversation? What conversation?"
Lady Tate seems satisfied (3). She opens the door and kicks Humboldt out.
While all this is going on inside the room where the Committee sits, Wistul and Makabee loiter outside, trying to look inconspicuous. Again, waiters dressed in black and wearing the disturbing white face masks seem to congregate near Wistul. They start moaning in low voices.
- "You seem to attract them," Makabee says. "I've noticed there's a faint smell of fermentation around them..."
- "Yes. I suspect they are not human but undead. I was bitten by one like them once, and maybe they feel some kinship with me..."
- "You are full of surprises, cousin, even though that particular one seems rather more gruesome than I'd like..."
Suddenly there's a commotion when one of the waiters rushes towards the ornate door, only to be stopped by the guards. His mask is torn off, and Wistul recognizes the man he and his companions called the necromancer, first encountered in the Whitefish Mausoleum.
- "You don't understand!" the man yells. "I am Reginald Whitefish!"
Makabee loses no time and rushes towards the man, still held by two guards, while muttering the words to Mornay's Friendship formula, which causes him to change gender again. He touches Sir Reginald who turns around, suddenly despondent and obedient (4). Makabee flashes her best smile to one of the guards and charmingly apologizes for her drunk uncle. She and Wistul quietly move away with a now unresponsive Sir Reginald Whitefish.
Once Valya and (a few minutes later) Humboldt exit the Committee's salon, they join Wistul and Makabee and decide to make a quiet exit. Once outside, they find a dark alley and start questioning Sir Reginald. He only answers to Makabee, and the friendship formula seems to have a less spectacular effect than on the guard Makabee seduced earlier.
- "So, what's this 'rot' thing, Reginald?"
- "The Committee brought me back to undeath to contribute to their master plan. They gave me a substance that they call 'The Rot' that slowly seeps into the corpses of the dead and buried and brings them back to undeath."
- "And what is the master plan?"
- "I don't know for sure, they did not tell me, but the size of the army of undead I am helping to create suggests that they want to take over the city. Maybe even more..."
- "And these undead that are created, are they intelligent like you?"
- "Oh no. They follow the orders of the most powerful undead in the vicinity. Some are slow and tough, usually those that still had some flesh on them when revived. Others are skeletal, fast but weak."
- "Any idea how the Committee could be stopped?"
- "Not really, I think they're unstoppable. But they seem worried about the Congregation of the Carnifex."
- "What's that?"
- "A pervasive Vornheim legend. It is said that in the City's hour of need, the spirits of the dead Carnifex will rise to help those who would protect the city."
- "Is there any truth to this legend?"
- "I have no idea, but the Committee seems to think so..."
Finally, Makabee asks Reginald to list all of the mausoleums that he has already infected with the rot. She then asks him to bring them to the Whitefish Mausoleum. Reginald finds a nearby sewer exit and takes the four friends down with him to just under the Whitefish palace. Wistul and Valya who have already been here notice that the secret exit they broke through has not been repaired. They walk inside the mausoleum following Sir Reginald.
As they enter the central corridor with the stairs leading to the ground floor, they are suddenly faced with a massive Iron warrior wielding a sharp sword. It moves swiftly towards them, clearly intent on an attack. "The animated statue!" Valya yells. "We'd forgotten about it!"
But Makabee is once more undeterred. She touches the iron statue and utters the words to Mornay's Lasting Friendship. To the utter surprise of the others, the statue stops in its tracks. It cannot speak, but it seems to obey Makabee's words: he understands instinctively that the magic that animates the statue is triggered when intruders steal valuables in the mausoleum. In his newfound deep male voice, he simply instructs the statue that they are not intruders.
They follow Reginald to his tomb, the place where Wistul and Valya first confronted it. Makabee instructs the undead to rest, then on a signal given by him, they all attack it at the same time. Wistul and Humboldt's sword blows combine with an eruption of flames from Valya's hands and a parallel eruption of a purple fluid from Makabee's hands. The undead is reduced to cinders in an instant.
"I do like Vezz'enan's Netherworld Refraction (5) when confronting undead...", Makabee says with great satisfaction.
They spend the next few minutes looting the mausoleum of all they didn't have time to retrieve during their previous visit, and then exit.
Once outside, they find an upmarket tavern bizarrely named The Grotesque Cousin, and order a good bottle of wine as well as a large jug of beer.
- "So," Valya says, "it looks like we need to find those dead Carnifex if we want the city to survive the undead onslaught..."
- "The undead helping us against the undead, how ironic", Makabee replies. "Do we care about the city though?"
- "We do!" Valya answers heatedly. "I was born here, I've never left the city walls. Vornheim may not be much, but it's all I've got!"
- "I quite like it here as well..." Wistul says more quietly.
- "But I thought you were coming back with me to the Elven Forest? That's what they sent me here for, you know..."
- "Cousin, I hate to tell you this, but I doubt it..."
- "What do you mean?"
- "Everybody hates you back there. You're a weirdo, shifting gender all the time. You even do it for fun. You try to seduce people of both sexes. I don't mind much, but they do back home. I think they sent you here knowing full well that I wouldn't want to go back, just to get rid of you..."
- "I'll be damned!"
- "Hey, Humboldt," Makeeba says after a few minutes of silence, "what about you?"
- "What about me?"
- "Do you care about Vornheim?"
- "Of course I do! I'm a hero here, everyone thinks highly of me!"
- "Really?"
- "Oh yes, just you wait and see!"
- "OK, so if we're going to try and save Vornheim, how do we go about finding those dead Carnifex?" Valya asks.
- "A Carnifex, is that like a king?" Humboldt asks.
- "Well, I suppose..."
- "I saw a dead king of Vornheim in the sewers once. He told me stuff. Sounded important, but I can't really remember."
- "Yes, yes, we know", Valya says. "You told us a million times."
- "Wait a minute", Wistul interjects. "What if he really did see a dead Carnifex? Humboldt, do you remember where you saw the dead king?"
- "Not precisely, but I think I could find my way back there..."
***
(1) Charm Person
(2) Wistul's Mercurial Magic Effect for Detect Magic is to change the weather
(3) Against all odds (he has Intelligence 4) Humboldt made his save, but since he didn't know anything in the first place, Lady Tate thought her suggestion had worked
(4) In DCC Charm Person works on monsters with a penalty. Makabee's player Greg rolled really really well that night.
(5) Chill Touch