Castle Xyntillan – Session #14 – Goin’ to the Chapel

The Company:

• Hendrik (MU2)
• Bartolomea (C4)
• Davignon (C2)
• Gene (C1 retainer)
• Jürg (husband & non-combatant retainer)
• Rivka (porter)
• Edna & Lina (heavy foot)

Loot:

• Three bottles of wine
• A bunch of ladies’ wigs, fans & lacy things
• King’s garb
• Fool’s outfit
• Bishop’s mitre
• Bishop’s bronze staff

Casualties: Lina, stabbed to death by a bunch of masked murderers.

Report:

While preparing for the next expedition, Hendrik considers buying seemingly mundane crystal ball from the Mordechai’s curio shop, but ultimately decides against it. In an effort to increase her chances of completing her holy quest to find the oil of cleansing, Bartolomea asks around for information on chapels in the castle, and manages to acquire intel on the general location of a number of chapels. She also deals with Father Brenard, who challenges her about her ongoing relationship with Jürg. She insists she is helping him by training him up to become an adventurer, just like her. The father reminds her of the plight of Jürg’s parents, and leaves, unimpressed.

***

Upon arrival at the castle, the company has agreed the plan is to head underground and find the cross-shaped chapel of Bartolomea’s visions.

They enter through the grand entrance and head for the stairs to the wine cellar. They quickly make their way past the many stacked casks and enter a root cellar, where they are surprised to find a dozen giant beets waddling around.

They decide not to provoke the things and carefully cross the room to a corridor leading further north. The beets growl like pugs in a bad mood when they get close, but otherwise leave the company alone. Upon reaching the corridor they start moving further up north, checking doors left and right. From behind one door, they hear pleas for help (“release meee!”) and decide to steer clear. Behind the next they see a large circular room with alcoves along its perimeter, a shaft in the ceiling, the floor scattered with corpses, and a pervasive sound of scratching and squeaking.

Before they can decide what to do about the rodent-infested room, they hear multiple creatures head their way from the south. They make a run for the next door and crash through it into an empty hall. But the company’s escape was a loud one (several are wearing plate) and so their pursuers are soon at the door, too. When it opens, they see a skeleton in disheveled courtly attire carrying paintbrush, palette and bucket, followed by an entourage of undead courtesans. The artist (whom the ladies refer to as “Bartholomew”) demands to know who the intruders are, but they immediately respond with brandished holy symbols and vigorous preaching. The ladies are instantly destroyed and the painter turns and flees in terror.

The company gives chase. Hendrik’s heavy foot soldiers both score hits with flung spears, and they catch up with the artist near the root cellar, almost killing him. But when he runs into the mob of animated beets, they decide to let him go.

They head back to the empty hall where the altercation started and open a double door to the east. They are greeted by yet another bizarre spectacle: A large group of undead nuns dancing around a pillar. However, the nuns are even more surprised to see them, and so the company’s contingent of clerics once again start preaching and waving their crosses around. Most of the nuns are instantly turned to ashes. The remainder are mopped up without too much trouble in the ensuing melee.

They search the room. Bartolomea finds a peep hole in the north wall. Through it they see a cosy little cubicle with some books, bottles of wine, and a bishop’s staff and mitre. They also see the outlines of a secret door in the back.

Keen on acquiring the bishop’s items, they resolve to find an entrance to the room. The company backtracks and goes up another hallway heading northeast. They arrive in a room with a statue, a five-by-five foot square seam on the ceiling, a closet door, a grate in the east wall, and a corridor leading northwest.

They check the statue, which turns out to be a wise-looking priest. They don’t find anything curious about it.

Through the grate they see a plain-dressed man sitting in a room with frescoes. He appears to have been willingly locked in there to atone for his sins, and believes he is in a very holy place. He also says a man named Samuel sometimes brings him food. Bartolomea finds a secret entrance to his room and barges in. Here, she spots another secret door and passes through it, into the cubicle she was hoping to find! Here, she inspects the literature, which unsurprisingly turns out to be a little naughty. She grabs the bottles, staff, and mitre, and heads back out. The man can only react with surprise and confusion.

Meanwhile, Hendrik checks the closet. The locked door is broken down by one of their mercenaries with a lot of noise. Inside is a dressing screen, a fool’s garb and king’s outfit. The magic-user takes both.

As they are stowing away their loot (and Hendrik feels the itch of flees that were in the king’s suit) they here something large and insectoid scurrying towards them in the hallway leading north.

Intent on avoiding whatever it may be they make to head back south but there see a man dressed in robes and a pointy hat heading their way, too.

Pressing on, they see the man has a skeletal visage, two burning eyes observing them somewhat absentmindedly.

While the rest of the company is considering how best to engage the impossibly ancient wizard, Davignon once again raises his holy symbol, and commences preaching…

Nothing happens.

The next moment, the lich waves a hand and all of the company’s members hear a voice booming inside their skulls: “I seem to have misplaced my crystal ball… Please find it for me? I believe that one gelatinous cube absconded with it… Someone told me, I forget who, the jelly is partial to bathes. I think it was last seen in the count’s bathroom, near the grand entrance. Let me know when you find it.”

And with that, the lich makes his way past the company, while they recover from the shock of what just happened. As they collect themselves, they hear the lich greet someone named Gregor from behind them. The greeting is returned with an unsettling sound of chittering.

The company realises they are now magically compelled to seek out the loch’s crystal ball. Hendrik slaps himself for not buying that damn ball back in town. They pull out their maps and consider various approaches. In particular, they want to try and avoid having to pass through the count’s suite. Ultimately though, they decide to resist the geas’s compulsion and return to town, so that they can properly prepare for a run at finding the item.

As they make their way towards the exit, just when they are about to enter the vestibule, they hear a scuffle develop in the back ranks. An ambush! Some corpse-like figure dressed in purple and black tights, along with a bunch of black-clad masked assassins, are backstabbing away at their hirelings and their cleric retainer Gene. Lina is killed, and the rest make a run for it, while Gene desperately holds the villains at bay. As they emerge from the castle, they are relieved to see he too has made it out alive. Together, they begin the trek back to Tours-en-Savoy.

Referee Commentary:

Oh boy, another A+ session this time around. I was laughing so hard at some of the room descriptions as we encountered them. First the root cellar with the giant beets, and then later, the room with the dancing nuns. Very funny, but I guess you had to be there.

And then there were several random rolls that conspired to produce the absolutely delightful moment where the lich geased the company. The crystal ball for sale in town was randomly determined. The lich (Aristide) was a random encounter. The fact that he geased them was the result of a random roll, triggered by Davignon’s player’s hot-brained turning attempt. The substance of the geas however I did predetermine by searching through the module for things related to Aristide elsewhere in the castle. (This was a while back, well before randomly determining the availability of a crystal ball in town.) When I came across the thing with the gelatinous cube and the crystal ball it seemed funny to have him command PCs to go find it.

We did have to have a little “meta” discussion about what the mechanical consequences of the geas are, in particular because we have this strict one expedition per session policy that we’ve really become fond of, which at first glance is a bit at odds with the rules around geas. In OED Book of Spells, a character that disregards a geas loses 1 STR per day. When they hit zero, they die. That’s nice and clear but also kind of brutal, and does not jive well with our structure of single-session expeditions with one in-game (and out-game) week of down-time between them. So I decided to relax the consequences somewhat, and will tell my players they will suffer STR loss only every expedition not devoted to satisfying the geas. Should work okay.

Finally, I don’t think I ever mentioned this, but those quests that the cleric Bartolomea and the thief Ynes are pursuing are both the result of carousing outcomes. (As mentioned before, we use the table by Jeff Rients.) So is, by the way, the whole subplot around Bartolomea’s husband Jürg. I don’t devote too much space in these write-ups to the fun little back-and-forths we have between sessions about these elements, but they add just that little bit of low-stakes drama to an otherwise full-on dungeon crawl-focused game.