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Characters
Garazi, a young witch
Aria, a strange paladin
Heck, an affable revenant
Panthalassa, a necromancer with a missing arm
Daytona, a dhampir gunslinger fresh from Hell
Rudolpho and Beebo, an organ grinder and his monkey
Events
The party was en route to the town of Borza, which required them to skirt around Chancel--a city they felt it was best to avoid since they had just caused a riot and staged a jailbreak at Kholograt Prison. Their goal was to deliver a scrap of flesh bearing a occult tattoo written in the Verbis Diablo to the Graymalk witches.
The group spent some time wandering the streets of Borza looking for the Taurus Inn, where the Graymalks were staying, but they eventually had to snag a Polnezna man who was selling talismans and amulets to ask for directions. Heck and Panthalassa both bought amulets of dubious efficacy, but in doing so they learned that the Taurus Inn was located on the road leading outside of town. He also told them that the Taurus Inn used to be the manor house of a boyar family, but had been repurposed as an inn when the family fell on hard times. The place had a disreputable reputation; few people stayed there.
The group took a path through the woods north of Borza and could see the inn semi-concealed in the midst of a pear orchard. It was definitely an older, storied building, though it had also clearly fallen into disrepair. Disconcertingly, there were no lights in any of the windows and Heck's knock on the front door went unanswered.
However. they could hear the sound of a woman crying coming from within the pear orchard. Following the sound of her weeping brought them to her; at first, they thought the teenager girl was leaning against a tree, but the horror of the scene mounted when they realized that her body had somehow merged with the tree. Panthalassa attempted to dispel any active magic, but the effect appeared to now be permanent. Ilyona, a maid at the inn, explained that she had been picking pears for a pie when she "fell" through the tree and it merged with her flesh. Daytona experimented with breaking off a sprig from the tree to see what would happen; the woman screamed, the broken end of tree began to bleed, and then she lost consciousness.
Since they could not determine what they could do for her at this point, they made their way inside the inn and were confronted by a sickly sweet odor pervading the first floor. From the most recent entry in the guest book on the check-in desk, they were able to determine that Lorelei Graymalk and her sisters had arrived two days prior.
As they explored the inn, it proved to be a hostile environment. They were attacked by two suits of animate armor and a demon-possessed sword that nearly killed Panthalassa. Unable to score a meaningful hit on the sword, they retreated and barricaded it into the chamber it was protecting. Other chambers proved just as dangerous--one of which was actually fatal. Aria was nearly entranced by the leering faces emerging from horrifying paintings in one room. Rodolpho the Magnifient's head exploded due to a psychic assault in another. King Beebo, though sad, carried on without him.
Once they located the spiral stairs that ascended the inn's garret tower, Garazi sent her familiar up to scout for them. Garazi's finch reported that there was someone perched on top of a pile of rubble on the third floor of the tower; the man was wearing a cloak, but his body was big, bulky, and covered in shaggy fur. The group decided to traverse the stairs to meet him. Panthalassa introduced herself and the beastman shook her hand, introducing himself as Adrian Vergara.
He told them that he had come to the Taurus Inn to assist Markos Delarosa, the inn's owner, with an occult ritual that was supposed to empower them both. However, the ritual had gone horribly wrong; in the course of it, Adrian had been knocked unconscious and when we awoke he had been transformed into a bestial form and was now unable to leave this room of the tower. The group offered to help him; he believed that if they brought him a star map of the constellation known as the Great Beast from a room on third floor it would effect a cure of his altered state. When they told him of the maid trapped in the tree in the orchard, he offered that a similar map of the Sky Tree constellation could aid her as well.
Of course, getting the star maps was easier said than done. Between them stood Marko's butler, who had been transformed into a goat-headed monstrosity with bone hooks for hands. The "man" stood within a circle of vile, smoking runes; however, the circle did not bind him, which the party discovered when he stepped forth and attacked. The group took a beating, but they were eventually able to slay the demonhost.
With the star maps now retrieved, the group returned to Adrian--who wadded up the map of the Great Beast and stuffed it into his maw. Once the map was swallowed, he began to shake--two human hands erupted from his belly and peeled the beast's hide aside as if they were opening a robe. A tall, well-built man with a luxurious beard stepped from the remains of the monstrous body. He glistened with gore, but was now free from his curse.
Adrian thanked the party for their aid, gave them a magical password to bypass magical traps within the Taurus Inn, and helped them feed bits of the Sky Tree map to Ilyona to free her from the tree. When they showed him the scrap of flesh they were meant to entrust to the Graymalks, Adrian conjectured that Markos had done something to them and had stolen similar scraps that he had used in his ill-fated ritual. In terms of the War in Hell, Markos had declared himself for Baphomet, one of the rebel demons who now opposed the Devil.
At this point, the party--battered and bloodied--decided to return to Borza with Adrian and Ilyona to rest before again attempting to find the Graymalks within the infernally warped inn.
