Session 6 - Chapter 2
INTO THE PIT
Ashlyn and Arianna searched the main level of the church properly. Arianna found a nook in the altar with a hidden journal, some religious trappings, and a piece of ancient parchment. She looked at this last item and skimmed the text. “It seems to be a necromantic procedure. It’s for raising a… a
‘blaspheme’.”
“Huh,” Toufghar said. “Maybe we should have used that on Ashlyn.”
Arianna shook her head immediately. “That would be bad. This is black magic… the wicked stuff. It gives me a headache even reading it.”
Gerrit took the journal and began reading. “Re-ordered candles from Bildrath’s, washed robes in river, held mass, heard confessions… it’s an accounting of Danovich’s day to day life. Pretty standard fare.” He flipped ahead, looking for the breakpoint. “Here’s a longer passage… ‘Ireena Kolyana is not the natural daughter of Kolyan Indirovich. Ireena never knew, but old Kolyan found her one day at the edge of the Svalich Woods near the very foot of Ravenloft’s crag. She was but a girl then and had no memory of her past. Kolyan adopted her as though she were his own and loved her dearly.’”
The cleric went on, then stopped and flipped back. “Wait, wait… saw it… here. Listen to this. ‘There is a book, the
Tome of Strahd, that might shed light on the steps necessary to destroy the monster of the castle.’”
Ashlyn said “Wait. Didn’t you say Strahd wants you to find this book? Why would he want it if it might help to kill him?”
“He doesn’t want it,” Arianna answered. “He wants us to destroy it. Gerrit, I’m having some very severe second thoughts about my dear old uncle. Where does the journal say that we might find the Tome?”
Gerrit went on. “’It is well known that Strahd kept meticulous notes from ancient times on all he did or said. Perhaps some weakness of his could be found there. This tome was once located in Ravenloft’s library, but now I’m not sure where it is. I asked Madam Eva about it, and she mumbled something indecipherable. Why do seers always speak in riddles?’ That’s where the entry ends.”
“This Madam Eva we keep hearing about seems to have all the answers around here,” Toufghar said. “We had three mentions of her come up before we even met you two.”
Arianna nodded. “If we’re going to find this book, maybe we should talk to her.”
Gerrit pointed to a page in the journal. “I’ve found it. There are no entries for four days, and then one that reads ‘I’ve lost Doru. Bellethanne has seen fit to take from me my only son. My son is dead. I found him laying on the altar. He’s dead.’” Gerrit rubbed the back of his neck. “Hard stuff to read… his penmanship gets more and more scratchlike as his mind unravels. ‘Found something. Could have a way. My son could return. Found a piece of paper that could let me have my son back. Doru could come back! I’ll bring him back. Bellethanne be damned, my son will walk again.”
Toufghar shivered. Gerrit added “That was thirteen days ago. The last entry is three days old. ‘Doru has returned and we’re happier than ever. I laugh more. Today two men came and asked questions about the zombies. I don’t care about zombies. I sent them away. Then one returned. I was struck by how much he looks like my boy. Doru doesn’t look like he used to, but this new fellow resembles him. I could have two! I’ll make another and have two sons. Then I’ll laugh even more than I do now. I tried some of what my son’s friends are having. Doesn’t taste bad. Tastes like pork, and pork tastes like dinner. Fill my plate and laugh and laugh together.’” Gerrit closed the journal. His face was very pale.
“That man was Thendrick,” Toufghar said. “He has Thendrick. Downstairs.”
Arianna said “The spell apparently won’t work on something that’s not a blood relation. He might still be alive.”
Ashlyn nodded. “So… we go down there and get him.”
The group walked to the back room, the one with the trap door leading down. “We should formulate a strategy,” Ashlyn said.
“Right,” Toufghar said as he opened the hatch and stepped down into it. “You guys do that, I’m gonna take a look.”
“I don’t think that’s such a good idea, Touf…”
“Oh relax, I’m not going all the way down. I just want to look and see what they’re…” He stood on the steps and hunched low to look beneath the floor level. He saw all the walls of the cellar, a hard-packed dirt floor, and light coming from the hole in the church’s floor. There were no creatures to be seen. His eyes widened. “Oh n-“
Something bit through the back of his left ankle, severing his Achilles tendon with a moist
splurch noise. Instantly a magical infection paralyzed his limbs and he began to plummet forward into the cellar. Both Ashlyn and Gerrit lunged for him but failed to stop his descent.
Things began to lurch from behind the staircase towards the helpless half-orc. Arianna, at the back of the room, broke into a run for the main church area. Gerrit tumbled down the stairway with two cartwheels, landing perfectly and kicking at a skeleton that had begun to chew upon Toufghar.
Ashlyn lumbered down and swung her longsword into a zombie. The cut that was opened along its chest glowed bright white for a moment and the thing hissed in pain.
The mad priest Danovich emerged from his hiding place and began casting spells. “I told you you’d never take my son,
never take my son!”
Arianna landed in a kneel on the dirt floor, firing two arrows past her friends and into the darkness behind the staircase. Something there giggled with black sharklike teeth and eyes that shimmered like a cat’s in the darkness. It walked out and Arianna recoiled at the sight of it.
It resembled a corpse that had been surgically modified by a lunatic. Skeletally thin, its arms were too long while its head was wide and wedge-shaped, with a mouth split so that it was able to open wider than a normal person’s would. Its teeth glittered like shards of black, steaming ice. Two arrows jutted from its chest.
“You must be Doru,” Arianna murmured as she put more arrows into the priest’s undead son. “Pleased to meet you.”
Whatever in Doru’s bite had paralyzed Toufghar wore off and the half-orc stood up with a broad slashing motion. He’d been entirely conscious of being eaten alive by skeletons as he lay helpless on the ground, and the sensation had driven him mad. His eyes bugged, his veins bulged, and his clothes tore from the strain of his muscles. A bloody froth had begun to seep from the corners of his mouth. He smashed at the skeleton with his cleaver.
Gerrit was dealing with two zombies and a skeleton all at once and taking a good number of hits. He called upon the power of Vennia and drove two of the undead away from him with holy power.
Doru was rushing at Arianna. It ran with a loping stride that didn’t keep to a straight line- it zigzagged across the earthen floor and giggled with a boy’s voice. It reached her and sank its teeth into her shoulder. The elf screamed even as her body went limp.
Ashlyn leapt forward and laid her sword across the thing’s back, opening a long, dry wound that was filled with dead maggots. White light from her sword shone from the gash. Doru turned on her and lunged for her and bit at her arm, almost tearing it entirely off of her. Ashlyn’s muscles went dead and saw Doru move for her throat.
Arianna’s body unfroze and she called out “No! Here!” Doru turned to her as she stepped back, casting a spell. A blade of fire grew from her hands and she swung it into the blaspheme.
Toufghar was bleeding from almost a dozen different wounds and running on rage. He cackled as he cut and hacked at the dead.
As Ashlyn had been bitten and paralyzed, she had become frightened. The foul waft of troglodyte musk filled the already dank cellar. Gerrit and Arianna gagged, Toufghar didn’t seem to notice, and Danovich vomited.
The priest was focusing on Gerrit, who was defending himself against the remaining zombie. The priest cast a spell and moved towards the halfling with a finger, about to deliver death by touch alone. Gerrit saw it coming and lashed out with a punch in an attempt to distract the madman and ruin the spell. The fist and the finger passed each other on the way to their targets, and the priest’s nose was smashed flat. In his pain he lost the spell and the black energies fizzled as the finger touched Gerrit’s shoulder.
Through his bleary eyes, Danovich saw Ashlyn cut a wound open in Doru. “No, not my son!
Don’t you hurt my boy!” He ran forward, forgetting magical crafts or tactics entirely. He just wanted to attack the witch that was hurting his son. Ashlyn saw him coming, whirled around with her sword and plunged it through the priest’s gut, right up to the hilt. Danovich gasped and slid off the sword to the ground, muttering his nonsense as his broken mind died.
Gerrit limped towards the blaspheme and attempted to land a
cure spell upon it. He overextended his reach and stumbled forward, and Doru bit into the halfling with its knifelike black teeth. Gerrit fell to the ground and his eyes rolled slowly up into his head. They were yellow underneath.
Toufghar, gibbering and howling in fury, cleaved a chunk of meat off of Doru. Arianna landed a blow with her flaming blade and Ashlyn landed another with her longsword of undeadbane. The blaspheme wounded and paralyzed them with every attack, but it couldn’t keep up with the massive amounts of damage it was taking. With one more raking blow from Arianna, the top of its head came off and its body turned to dust.
All over town, zombies stopped walking. Their white eyes fell back into their skulls and their bodies tumbled to the ground limply. Not a zombie was left standing… every one of them died its second death. The necromantic infection had been put to an end.
The three remaining adventurers barely noticed that just before Doru was destroyed, Gerrit had been slowly attempting to stand up.
Coming up
THE AMAZING THENDRICK
.