Callie’s Journal
Bec casts cloud of daggers and creates a pretty purple storm. Stylish and lethal, that’s our Bec! After slicing off, just, like, so many tentacles, she sneaks around towards the sarcophagus.
Sophie yells at Cal, “Flank it!” and smites the Death Tyrant. An eye opens behind her and shoots some kind of ray at her.
Vondal shoots a ray out of the wall of light at the Death Tyrant and it roars in pain and anger. Vondal’s ray destroyed the tentacles that were ensnaring him, but new ones sprout out of the walls and try to grab him again.
The Death Tyrant grabs at Oz’s sword and the light from it is extinguished. The oppressive feeling in this place is back.
Freki shoots a hail of thorns at the Death Tyrant. He hits it right in the central eye, kapow! It flips around to reveal a gaping maw and starts sucking in the nearby ghosts. It seems to find the ghosts…delicious. Urghghghghghgg.
Freki shoots at it again, but one of the eye stalks snags the arrow right out of the air and tosses it to the floor. “PATHETIC,” says the Death Tyrant. It moves towards more of the ghosts.
After taking a swing at the Death Tyrant, Cal makes his way over to the sarcophagus and does a little hop to see inside. There’s a gargantuan creature in there. Could it be the Brucolac? It has the sword, as seen in the stained glass window and other depictions. Was the Death Tyrant…feeding on it?
The Brucolac bursts out of the sarcophagus. Its wings unfurl in the air.
With a wave of its hand, it clothes and armors itself. We can’t see the wings anymore, but it can still fly.
It stares straight at Cal and something seems to pass between them. For the first time since I’ve ever known him, Cal doesn’t want to kill undead? SNAP OUT OF IT, CAL!
The Brucolac looks at the Death Tyrant and orders it to leave. The Death Tyrant doesn’t react in any way.
I have a vision of an army of ghosts, swarming into the church, over us, and towards the Death Tyrant. I also hear the strumming of a harp, driving the ghosts towards the Death Tyrant. As more ghosts enter, the desecration gets worse. As the harp plays, everything ripples, shifts, and changes. It feels a bit like the Feywild. There’s yet another will behind that, someone weaving reality. The feeling gets more intense until I snap out of it. I call out to my teammates, “We have to get out of here or kill the Death Tyrant NOW!”
The Death Tyrant sucks in the nearest ghosts. Its eye stalks look around and then it moves toward the Brucolac. It’s like, “I hunger” and the Brucolac says “I know.” I’m tilting towards RUN at this point.
Oz does a flurry of attacks against the Death Tyrant and does some damage that can’t be healed by, uh, ectophagy.
Bec, noticing that something is obviously wrong with Cal, tries to dispel whatever is affecting him. She successfully unravels the charm! Nice!
The Brucolac kind of offhandedly uses the power of this horrible place to do something horrible to us. We all lose some of our vitality!
Michael: “If we all fail, then it’s not a very good teacher.”
On the fly, Freki makes an arrow of slaying out of wall tentacle, prays to his bird friends, and swears an oath on his bow: “A swift death to those who have wronged me. May my bow strike true, and may this be the end of you.” The bow whispers something back in Elven. Vondal seems like he’s weaving some kind of massive enchantment or something (six sorcery points!) to help Freki’s aim, too. Even with all the help, the arrow flies straight and true, but not exactly at the right…spot…. Hugin and Munin appear to escort the arrow!!! The Death Tyrant looks grievously wounded! Then it turns an eye stalk on Freki and shoots a ray at him.
The air starts to ripple OH NO IT’S JUST LIKE MY VISIONNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN
Vondal starts firing magic beams. With each one, more green fur sprouts out of him until he’s covered with it. And the Death Tyrant has been incinerated by Oscar the Grouch! What kind of armor class does a trashcan have?
The shimmering in the air stops. That’s a relief! Now we can be killed by the Brucolac instead.
The Brucolac thanks us for purging his sanctum. We all look over at Cal, except Freki, who says, “Well met.” Ironically, that’s probably the most diplomatic response any of us could muster.
The Brucolac says his house seems to be in some disorder. While he is deeply malevolent, he’s not actively trying to kill us, so that’s nice. I feel that he is shaken by this experience, which should not have been able to happen. He’s also furious, unsurprisingly. Should I point his ire in some direction that isn’t us? Probably should, right? Yeah, probably should.
Vondal notices that even though the Death Tyrant was slain, the power of the Flux here is still super strong and the stained glass windows are still messed up. Whatever’s wrong seems to be ingrained in this place.
Freki smells something like Oz (or his sword) from the shadow woman. The other woman smells like Cal, or his sword. The Brucolac picture smells like the Brucolac.
Sophie looks at him suspiciously and asks why he isn’t killing us right now. She lacks subtlety, but knowing his motivation is just paralyzing me with fear, to be quite honest, so maybe it’s best not to be burdened with knowledge sometimes.
The Brucolac acknowledges that consuming us would give him more power, sure, but he thinks we have a part to play besides being eaten by him. Which is more than we could have expected from him, really.
Vondal, meanwhile, puts his hand on one of the windows and gets sucked in. I mean, I wish I could say I’m surprised? He finds himself on a hill with three elves and a ring. He feels himself being torn. His two halves are separating. Eventually the ring’s power will wash over the world and heal everything, but when it reaches the apex of its power, the ring cracks! With a feeling of deep betrayal, Vondal gets thrown out the window. He has just witnessed the birth of the Flux. One of them ruined the ritual and created the Flux. This is all because of some asshole elf! Let’s find them and kill them! He recognized two of the elves: Janus Ilaris (now the Ghost here in zombieland), one was Priscilla Stormcloud, and the other one was someone Vondal knows but couldn’t see.
The Brucolac tells Vondal that he’s playing with fire and it’s only a matter of time before it destroys his mind.
Oz taps at one of the windows, feels his head exploding, and knows that the woman in the window is the woman from his sword. She reaches out to touch his head and impart the depths of her pain. Her name is Dallah Thaun. She was betrayed by someone, and it’s Oz’s job to find out who and wreak her terrible vengeance.
Cal goes and stands near the other window. He feels deep sadness and knows she is dead. The Flux has started to erase her. That’s why her face is obscured.
Bec is trying to figure out what it all means, but she realizes that she can’t get it right now.
Cal touches the middle window.
GM’s note: Cal has a vision of Moradin in full steampunk armor, as he forges the Arkenstone into a sword:
“Mother… we will make them remember…”
The Brucolac says, “Perhaps I spoke too soon. More and more you grow.” Cal asks if he knows the people in the windows, but the Brucolac says he can’t remember.
Oz tries to pick the Brucolac’s pocket. He feels something he really didn’t want to feel, but at least he didn’t get noticed and turned into some kind of flesh milkshake.
The Brucolac (who used to be known as Cronus) says he remembers “devouring them all, including her. But I do not remember who she is.” Cal thinks Morrigan (?), who wants revenge, may have been devoured by this guy. But Vondal said the Flux was caused by elves, and what Cronus is talking about happened a long time ago, much longer than the Flux.
Oz wants to liberate the halfling ranch. The Brucolac asks what our companion would say about that. Sophie says the Death Tyrant is dead, so everything is fine now. Also she doesn’t believe the Brucolac isn’t in league with Xaryu, though he says he isn’t.
Sophie says if he’s really thankful to us, he can help us destroy Xaryu. And don’t eat us while he’s doing it, please and thank you!
The Brucolac says he wants our information if we expect to get anything from him. Cal says that he thinks the Ghost sicced the Death Tyrant on him, but the Brucolac thinks he and the Ghost are allies and this is unlikely. So I tell him what I saw in my visions. He says that information is valuable enough to merit him sending “an agent” with us, if that’s what we want. Someone who fills a need in our party, someone patient and smart. Hey now, I do not say out loud.
The Brucolac bids us to consider one of these three: Calderon the Cold, who knows all about spiders and tunnels. Orlok, who can find anything and go anywhere. Or Elloia Canarl, a consummate hunter (though she might start by hunting Oz, and who could blame her?).
Nate: “Let’s take the ‘they/them’ and stir up some may-hem!”
Curtis: “Orlok goes by it.”
Michael: “Let’s take the ‘it’ and stir up some shit!”
Sophie says before we teleport out, this is the last time we should speak freely because Xaryu is always watching. ALWAYS WATCHING. Even sign language is out!
We all go through the portal. Oz yells “Your wings look like shit!” as he’s about to step through the portal. The Brucolac reaches out to close the portal, so Oz, reading the action, backflips through it before it can close.
Left alone with the Brucolac, Cal says, “What now, uncle?”
The Brucolac tells him that Xaryu is what prevents the vampires from wiping out the halflings entirely, so is the situation really so simple? Cal responds that nothing is ever simple. “Truer words were never spoken,” says the Brucolac, and… lets Cal go??
Lingering questions:
- Two vampires connected to Goratrix seem to be involved in this…assassination attempt…so why did Goratrix lead us right here?
- If vampires aren’t allowed to set foot here, as Goratrix said, then what was the Brucolac doing here?
- Was Meerlinda’s dream power involved in creating the Death Tyrant in the first place? Seems like her wheelhouse.
- But in my vision, someone was directing the ghosts to feed the Death Tyrant, so maybe Janus Ilaris? Cal thinks so.
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