Notes

Jack (Joe) ended up in another bar-brawl as various members of the Stygian guard began to antagonize him over his ½ Orc heritage, but the rather one-sided brawl ended suddenly when a ½ Elven member of the Unfailing, Corrus, put out by all the ½ breed slurs, forced them to back off. For an unclear reason, he led Jack to his old quarters in town, which are now in disuse as he bunks in the Underfaust with his charge. He told Jack to ‘keep an eye on the place’ for him and then responded to some arcane signal from his master, leaving abruptly. Corrus’ home is directly to the left of the shrine of Tanil.

Serena (Bill) ended up being mothered by Halvara Tarn, the high priestess of Madriel, and after a busy day at the shrine, was invited to bunk downstairs in her personal residence for a time (Halvara sleeps upstairs, as her residence, inherited from her mother, is fairly posh). Halvara’s villa is across the street from the shrine of Tanil, and Halvara enjoys the ambience, with local birdlife attracted by the high priest of Tanil and fragrant flowering vines.

Erianna (Curt) spent a few days getting into and out of trouble before finding the shrine to Tanil, and now is acting resident caretaker, while high priest Mather goes off on one of his regular sojourns to talk with the residents at the local druids circle. Mather seemed to be distracted and absently forgot to mention anything about getting a curfew token for Erianna.

Tyrus (Tom) is living with his mentor Sokath, who has been receiving regular visitors from the Underfaust, and even apparently been invited under the mountain to directly speak to some of the city leaders. Given the reputed cold welcome normally given to visiting arcanists, this is highly peculiar. ‘Sokath’ maintains his regular habit of telling Tyrus absolutely nothing, although he is the only one to acquire a curfew token for his student. Sokath’s residence is in the corner building to the right of the shrine of Tanil.

Around midnight, Erianna, asleep in the shrine of Tanil on a bed of moss, is awoken by the barking of her wardog, which is afflicted by a Cause Fear effect and runs off. Four ooze-like masses of cold human blood swoop into the shrine area and envelop her, blinding and suffocating her, as they begin to slowly drain the heat from her body. Alerted by the sounds from the neighboring building, Tyrus, Serena, Jack and Jack’s Dog all boil out of surrounding buildings. (Halvara has her window shut and hears nothing, sleeping through the entire incident. Sokath is nowhere to be seen, and Tom’s familiar, Toad, shows no interest in getting involved, watching from the doorframe, but not actually leaving their house.)

The necromancer who controls the blood-shadows realizes that this has gone way out of control, and orders the blood-shadows to disengage as she tries to retreat. One blood-shadow is destroyed quickly, then a second and a third. The fourth doesn’t make it to the sewers, and the only reason that the necromancer gets away is because of a rear-guard of three armed and armored masterwork skeletons. Once she hits the sewers, two more skeletons carry her to safety. A Turn attempt by Erianna turns away two of the rear-guard (and the third is destroyed) and the party sets out in pursuit, finding the open sewer grate. With Jack in the lead, charging and attacking, they finally are stopped by a Web spell, which the necromancer manages to cast despite the vigorous motion of the skeletons carrying her through the tunnels at speed. (Her two attempted Scare spells, from a wand, did not succeed in frightening the willful ½ Orc, leading her to speculate that he is immune to fear-magics.)

Erianna runs back towards the shrine to get her armor, but is stopped by a city necromancer, who turns out to be incongruously young, and demands to know what she is doing out without a curfew token, why she’s covered in blood and what all these huge splatters of gore and shattered skeletal remains are all about. She attempts to explain that some sort of blood elementals attacked her and he gives up trying to figure out what she is talking about, ordering her to lead him to the rest of this gang and show him this ‘evil necromancer’ that they are chasing, hoping to prevent some horribly misunderstanding from claiming the life of an innocent Guildsmage.

They show up and using his flint and steel, burn through the webbing, moving on through the sewers to find themselves coming up in a ruined bathhouse in the dead quarter. Moving quickly out of the cramped private saunas, after taking note of the anatomically improbable artwork, they find six normal skeletons arrayed against them, and Jack is again hurt fairly badly before Serena manages to Turn them. Against a side-wall, a single bone servant can be seen popping open clay urns, to release shuddering masses of preserved viscera, that pull themselves towards the living by muscular contraction. Jack manages to cut one of them down, but is sprayed by a gout of digestive acid from a second and nearly goes down. Serena’s attempt to Turn these creatures fails, and her and Tyrus team up and destroy the bone servant before it can unleash the remaining two visceral constructs from their sealed vats. The remaining viscera are then dealt with, but the necromancer has fled the scene, running into the Dead Quarter at night.

Returning through the sewers, the party rises to find three Guildsmen, a dozen or more Stygians, a few Unfailing, and a good thirty or forty skeletal guardsman boiling around the ‘crime-scene.’ Explanations are made, and apparently believed. Everyone is sent home and in the morning the young necromancer returns with word from the Guilds that their story ‘checks out’ and that they are to be commended for their actions, rewarding them each with 100 gp for their services to the city in revealing this rogue necromancer and foiling her research.

Serena notes that it would perhaps be helpful to talk to someone who might be a little more experienced (read; old enough to grow facial hair), and Mokharitos, the young necromancer, agrees to see if he can arrange a meeting with Councilwoman Danar, his personal patron.