27 Kythorn 1491

Session 20, 4/09/2021

The next morning we began our day in the common room of the Roc’ Nest as has become our tradition. The Professor, who yesterday had locked himself in his room instead of conversing with Professor Mirakle did not show up. When we heard nothing from him, we decided it was better to proceed without him for the day and catch him up to speed later.

We rehashed what we had learned yesterday at Windmeer’s keep. It seemed, to make more progress on putting an end to the Council of Bones and maybe saving Ravenna, we would need to break out Marrik Fordham from the dungeon underneath the vampire castle.

Anekli also related an interaction she had on the streets yesterday evening where she witnessed a child being bullied. The child being bullied told the others that she hoped the monster took them in the night. We then explained to her the ongoing investigation we have into the creature taking children at night and our belief that it is a boneclaw. A creature formed during a failed attempt to form a lich.

Sylrel wanted to go in search of the boneclaw, but the others all voted to try and break Marrik out. As a consolation to Sylrel, we decided if all went well at the vampire castle during the day, then that evening we could maybe look into the issue of the children.

We spent some time planning our prison break. How we would get in and out. How to handle Ravenna if we encountered her. And other details.

We decided we would enter during the day and use a back entrance through one of the crypts that was found on our last visit. It should lead directly into the dungeon and hold cell area. Once we had located Marrik, I would use Wind Walk to turn everyone to mist and allow us to move quickly. If possible, at that point we would make a detour to the library and see if we could find out the members of the council.

Entrance into the castle went pretty much as planned. We located the crypt and did a quick inspection for traps. Ankeli wanted to take more time to search, but we quickly hustled her inside and down the stairs to get out of view of the main castle.

Once in the dungeon, we realized Sylrel had an issue with not being able to see and she would need a source of light. Another quick, but heated conversation, about the dangers of a light source, but in the end, she was provided with one.

We then took off in the direction of where we thought the holding cells would be. Making sure to watch out for the pits in the water that we had fallen into last time. Ankeli took the lead, followed by myself, then Sylrel and Evelios.
Eventually we came to a closed and locked steel door. Listening through the door we could hear loud, deranged laughter, but nothing else. Ankeli decided to manifest her familiar on the other side of the door. It was able to see, but also to be seen. So, it saw a short continuation of the passage followed by a T intersection. It moved to the T intersection and then saw a number of wights. Of course, the wights saw it as well, and they started running and yelling.

Evelios attempted to force the door, but failed, so I tried as well and succeeded. We rushed down the pathway and attacked the wights. There we only 3 of them, so we quickly overwhelmed them and stopped them from spreading the alarm.

We then searched the hallways. We found a number of metal doors with sliding view ports in them. Some cells were empty, but others were occupied. The occupants all seemed to have been driven mad by their imprisonment. It would have been best if we could have freed all of the prisoners, but I was concerned that they may pose a danger to us and each other in their madness and we would not have the time to both provide for their care and complete our mission.

Finally, in the last cell we inspected we located Marrik. He was pale and malnourished looking, but we could easily recognize him from the painting we had seen as Windmeer’s keep. He did not believe we were there to save him at first, but seemed to quickly change his tune after listening to our story. At that point he demanded we let him out and flee right away. But our search and conversation had taken too long and more guards had shown up.

There was a long hallway running to the holding cell area with a staircase at the far end. Evelios saw two vampire spawn (like we had fought in the water pit days ago) descending from the stairs. He called the alarm and we move into action, leaving Marrik locked up for the time being as we had no quick way to free him.

The combat did not go very well and was very close. To be honest, we did not handle it well, and were lucky to get out alive.

Ankeli, in a furry at the undead rushed down the hallway to engage the vampire spawn. She used a special ability to get all the way down there and, honestly put me out of combat for what would have been several turns.

Then, a third undead creature showed up, a nosferatu. But it came out of aside passage between the group and Ankeli, which then split the group. The nosferatu turned the the remainder of the group to attack vomiting on us and causing large damage to us.

We fought valiantly, but not so wisely. The creatures were obviously healing from damage and radiant damage was clearly preventing that. But the group kept splitting up it’s damage and wasting large amounts of damage on creatures only to see it healed up the next turn.

Eventually, we pulled our act together, but not before I was beaten unconscious. Then Sylrel and Evelios focused their attacks on first the nosferatu and then the vampire spawn one by one. They were able to destroy the creatures, but not before Ankeli had burned through all of her protective magic and taken a severe beating herself.

After the battler Sylrel revived me and I healed myself up a bit as well. We returned to Marrik’s cell and explained our plan for getting out of there using Wind Walk. We decided, obviously, to skip the visit to the library at that point. I cast the Wind Walk spell and luckily we were not interrupted during the cast time. We shifted to mist and quickly flew out of the dungeon and to the Roc’s Nest where we materialized outside to keep from frightening anyone.

At that point, in the daylight, Ankeli realized that Marrik appeared to be undead himself and quickly made a move towards him.

Session 21, 4/23/2021

The Professor joined us in the front of the inn at this point alerted by the quite loud argument we were having. He was quite surprised to see Marrik with us and we quickly explained that we had not been able to find him this morning, so we decided to break Marrik out without him.

Ankeli was quite upset that Marrik was apparently undead and seemed intent on killing him. After the fight we had just been through it was hard to blame her. But I did not want that to happen until we had a chance to question Marrik and find out if he had the information we have been looking for.

At this point Evelio recognized that Marrik was a revenant. He was hyper focused on the one he thought had done him wrong and should not be a danger to anyone in the group.

With that information and The Professor’s help we were able to diffuse the situation and move the group, including Marrik, up to Sylrel’s room. The Professor sent for Lorien Yost thinking he would have some valuable information to share and while we waited, Marrik shared his tale.

It began pretty much the same and Windmeer’s and Yost’s tales. They came to the area with plans to kill the vampire and save the town. They did so, but then encountered the Reaper who appeared to be beyond their abilities to handle.

The remnants of the Cult of the Greymaster approached them and explained what had happened, that by killing the vampire they had released the stored evil energy and it had formed the Reaper. And even if they could defeat it, it would continue to reform and attack/torment the town. They made the offer, that if the adventurers helped, they could create a replacement for the vampire and they Reaper would once again be restrained. It would just cost the sacrifice of 1 innocent soul.

The party agreed as they could see no way out of the situation. Marrik even admitted to helping convince the rest of his group to go along with the plan. But here Marrik’s story varied a bit from the others.

Marrik did not trust the cult, so followed the cultist to their hidden temple when the went to perform their ritutal on Ravenna. So not only did he know the locaiton of the hidden temple, but he had observed the ritual and he knew how to undo it. During the ritual, Ravenna’s soul (or a portion of it) was removed by the cult leader, Zaremba, and stored inside a gem/crystal. If the gem were to be destroyed, Ravenna would be freed from her curse.

After some time had passed and Marrik had begun to regret the group’s decision and his role in persuading everyone to agree, he decided that he would destroy the gem and free Ravenna. Marrik told Yost his plans, but the Cult was monitoring Yost and over heard. They tracked Marrik down and killed him before he had a chance to undo what had been done.

That is when Marrik was reborn as a revenant with his burning desire to destroy Zaremba. He made a number of assaults upon the temple, but each time he was struck down and destroyed. Finally, the cult realized he would continue to respawn, so they captured him during one of his attempts and locked him inside the dungeons of the vampire castle.

When question directly, he also admitted that he knew there was a book or document inside the library of the vampire castle that listed the members of the Council of Bones. But he had never seen the document itself and did not know the names listed.

About this point Lorien Yost finally showed up. He was shocked to see Marrik and what had become of him. I had expected some tension between the two, but Marrik’s hate was solely focused on Zaremba. And Yost himself is a broken man already. I am not sure what it would take to stir him to action at this point.

After Yost left, we had to decide what to do next. Marrik insisted we assault the temple immediately and destroy Zaremba of course. But knowing that would kick off the formation of the Reaper and a cascading, worsening set of circumstances, it seemed to make more sense to try and find out who the other members of the council are before we started destroying them. It was decided we would take a rest and the next day attempt to access the library.
Sad to say, at this point a bit of drama developed. The Professor, entranced by the opportunity to actually see the death and reincarnation of a revenant insisted that he be allowed to kill Marrik “for science”. He hoped he would be able to gather a good bit of information to further his research back at the university.

The discussion at this point was honestly quite odd. Marrik was all for the idea. He understood that we were not going to immediately assault the temple, so I believe he saw this as a way to escape from us so he could attack the temple sooner. I was put off by the idea for sure, but could not argue with The Professor against it. Marrik was clearly a thing and not a person. Ankeli had not long ago wanted to destroy Marrik, so she seemed in agreement at first.

Strangely, it was Evelios who was dead set against the idea. He truly saw Marrik as a victim of circumstances, and killing him at this point just further abuse of someone who was clearly broken. Sylrel agreed with him, that killing him seemed unnecessary cruel.

And, as it was further discussed, they brought myself and Ankeli around to their point of view. For Ankeli, it did not seem to be empathy or a moral objection, but more the loss of Marrik as a tool and weapon against the Cult of the Greymaster. In the end, The Professor agreed not to kill Marrik and we tied him up for the night so we could sleep without him escaping.