The End of the Maculate

DM Note: Derek on an interview today, so Ghlaads under DM control again.

Ruins of Sincarel Adar, Western Nhased, 10th July 1818, 6am

Hougaard bent to the prone form of the Maculate wizard Coriahad and neatly severed his head, then battered it apart until he could reach the skullgem inside. As he straightened, everything went black...

From within the magical Web Egia turned slowly, her blessed sense of rightness probing for the location of the invisible Maculate. As she did so, she saw a twenty-foot hemisphere of utter blackness spring into being where Hougaard had stood. Someone had cast some kind of Darkness spell. As she continued her sweep, she called out to her companion, describing what had happened and where the edges of the effect were. 

Close to her, Ghlaads lightly touched the fingers of one hand to the collar of the tunic the priestess Mylnai had given her. Instantly the pale, ghostly flames of the Fire Shield sprang up around her, shrivelling the strands of the Web she was trapped in away, and leaving her - like Egia - free but surrounded. Angling her path to take her past her sister, she started walking slowly out of the web, her caul of flame carving a path as she did so. 

As she watched Ghlaads approach, Egia worked a Dispel Magic, drawing on the power of her Goddess to try and break the Darkness surrounding Hougaard. She felt her spell clawing at the smooth dome of blackness, but the spell had been placed by an expert and the Dispel failed. Ghlaads reached her at that point, and the pair walked out of the Web together. As they did so, all three suddenly felt a wash of fatigue roll over them. Their heads nodded, eyes became heavy, muscles slackened with tiredness as a spell of Sleep tried to slip them over the edge. Shaking their heads and gritting their teeth, they threw the spell off, and Hougaard yelled "Gem!" 

Skullgem

Both he and Egia pulled free a skullgem and smashed them, trying to spark a cry of pain from their remaining invisible foe but he managed to resist the pain and stay quiet. Egia and Ghlaads broke into a sprint as they exited the web, splitting up to run one around each side of the dome of Darkness. Hougaard had already emerged from the far side and stood poised, bow half drawn, listening for sounds from their invisible foe. A moment later he got what he was hoping for as an inexpertly thrown dagger bounced off the rock at Egia's feet with a faint ping. A faint scrape of moving clothes had come from above, at an angle of around forty-five degrees. The Maculate, of course, could fly!  If he's down enough spells that he has to throw knives at us, he's on the ropes, thought the Unfettered as he lifted to the draw and loosed. At the same moment, Egia hurled her sword. 

DM Note: Technically, after such a cooking with a Fireball, the dripping blood should have been gravy....

Both sword and shaft struck home, and one of them must have scored an unexpected hit on the vampire's belly, because blood started to drip down from the point at which they'd shot. Ghlaads grinned, and launched a Fireball at that point. 

For an instant, Wyr Venkos, damned loremaster and eater of children, last of the Maculate, was visible as an agonized shape twisting in a bloom of flame in mid-air. The Maculate were resistant - very resistant - to fire, but Ghlaads' magic became better with practice, and the blast was still enough to scorch him badly. Egia followed this up with the Searing Light of her weapon, and Hougaard put two more arrows into him, though the mundane arrows did little damage. This seemed to discourage their enemy, because the trail of blood drips started to recede towards the back of the cavern.

Egia flung Sunrazor again, and Ghlaads unleashed a flurry of Magic Missiles, while Hougaard dipped his arrow points into holy water and sent another two to harry their prey. From the target area came hasty words of magic, and the three braced themselves for another magical attack. Nothing happened for a moment, and then the trail of bloodstains dwindled sharply in volume and accelerated, crossing the distance to the back of the cavern, veering towards the top corner in mere seconds before appearing to vanish as they reached it.

The three walked across to the wall, staring up at where their foe had disappeared. Ghlaads lifted a hand, and called on the Light that was so much a part of her angelic heritage. The point of bright white radiance threw harsh shadows around the corner, and Hougaard pointed. "There!" he said, "there's a hole." Egia eyed it. "Bit small," she said dubiously - the hole was the size of a man's head. "Gaseous form?" asked Ghlaads. "Maculate don't seem to do that," said Hougaard. "My money's on shapeshifter." He glanced up at the wall, flexed his hands, and started to climb. The flowstone's jagged shape made the ascent straightforward for him, and soon he was peering into a shallow hole, three feet deep and without exits. It looked empty, but as he stared, a sharp jab in the forehead confirmed that something was in there. Hougaard reached in and grabbed. He'd expected the leathery furriness of a bat, and was surprised to find himself gripping feathers - a bird. He tightened his grip cruelly and began to climb down.

At the bottom, Egia was waiting with Sunrazor. Wyr Venkos tried desperately to escape, shifting from bird to snake, but Hougaard simply added a second hand to his grip, then slid his hands apart until he was holding the snake between spread hands at arms' length. "Smile, snake!" grated Egia, and smote with Sunrazor. The holy sword bit, backed with everything she could put behind it, and the last of the Maculate died. 

Once the sphere of Darkness had faded, the three searched the bodies of Geofram, Coriahad and Wyr Venkos. Ghlaads pounced on the spellbook of Coriahad, adding it to Severi von Dorenn's; one day she was going to get some time to study them and make the spells her own. Then she cast an Identify over the major items from the three bodies. 

Behind the throne, they found steps leading down through an archway into a wide, oval room, illuminated in a pale, unhealthy green glow. At the far side, the whole floor rose in steps - each riser carved with invocations to Cain - to a wide plinth, on which stood three objects. Two heavy wooden chests flanked a stone stand upon which rested a vast globe of glass, nearly ten feet across, from which the light emanated. Swirling patterns of green fluid shifted and changed inside, and suspended in the centre was what looked like the corpse of what had once been a man, curled into an unmoving fœtal ball. Ghlaads reported that it radiated very strong necromantic magic (which wasn't a surprise) and Egia scowled. To her revealing gaze, black evil rolled off it like dark smoke, and she was very clear as to what they should do with it. "Destroy that," she said flatly, "we don't need to know what it is." 

DM Note: The Holy Brick of Antioch?

She bent to look for a loose rock, and while she did, Hougaard lobbed a vial of holy water at the thing. His throw was precise and the vial smashed against the front of the sphere. The blessed water, infused with a fraction of the divine power of Belisama, flowed down the curves of the globe, and a loud hissing sizzle arose, steam rising from where it flowed, the glass clouding as the evil magic bound to it was attacked by the water. 

Then Egia murmured a blessing over the block she'd picked up and hurled it at the globe. Her aim was faultless, and the block smashed through the glass of the globe just as if it were any window. The structure of a glass globe that size wasn't strong enough to be self-supporting once damaged, even if not filled with dense fluid, and the whole thing collapsed in a scatter of shards and a rush of released liquid. The green, heavy, viscous fluid inside the globe washed down the steps, still hissing and steaming in places where the holy water still attacked it. Atop the stairs, the corpse that had been floating in it dropped onto the shattered fragments below it and then had more sharp shards drop on it, slicing the black, leathery flesh in multiple places. The body sprawled among the wreckage, twitching faintly, though there was something disturbing about the movements, something inhuman. Hougaard lobbed another vial of holy water at the body, reasoning that it was the source of the malevolence, but the clear liquid simply splashed onto the thing's skin, washing off some of the green stuff, and lay quiet. Egia smashed one of the smaller skullgems, but this too had no visible effect. Both the magic and the evil had dispersed - they seemed to have been a property of the globe rather than its' contents. 

Stepped ahead to "early next morning" to get the items IDd before the end of the session. Seemed reasonable to me!

The fluid seemed to be escaping through cracks in the floor, so Egia cast a Create Water over the wreckage, sluicing the stuff away. Once it was gone, the three cautiously walked across and up the steps. Hougaard knelt down and examined the blackened, shrivelled corpse. It appeared human, as far as could be told, though it looked as if it had been dead for decades. Certainly it should not have moved an inch. Taking a knife, he cut into its' head, hunting for a skullgem. He didn't find one, but the corpse's brain gave him pause. All of them had fought battles and seen split heads. The brain inside this one looked as if its' owner had been alive and well five minutes earlier. In fact, it looked a little oversized for the head containing it. He split the torso, looking for the distinctive vampire anatomy, but finding only the dessicated remnants of human viscera. 

Meanwhile, his two comrades had checked the heavy chests for traps and spells and opened them, to reveal several more magical items and a respectable trove of ancient golden coins. 

Ruins of Sincarel Adar, Western Nhased, 11th July 1818, 10am

By the next morning, all three were rested and healed, and with the aid of willing workers among their rescued prisoners the chests of treasure had been hauled to the surface. Some of the magical items were of use to the three, but most were stashed for possible sale or donation to the temple of the Triad. Thoughts of return to Mylnai reminded Hougaard of the reluctant werewolf Tarchoth, and their promise to seek a cure for him. 

Session Date: 24th April 2013