Graves and Guitarras

About a month ago I had someone on my discord who lives in the UK approach me to ask if I could run a Krevborna game for them since they knew they would have a September night free for it. Look, if someone is willing to stay up that late for one of your games, you gotta say yes, right? It's too flattering! The premise for this one-shot was simple: the characters were all grave robbers given a simple task that quickly became complicated.

This adventure was adapted from one of the scenarios in Keys From the Golden Vault, in case you're wary of spoilers.

Characters

Harriet Grimstone, a big, tough, mean bruiser

Percy Rood, a sneaky urchin with a dark secret

Cornelia Draven, a necromancer who likes to source her own materials

Events

The grave robbers gathered in the back of a pub called the Old Leather Boot to receive a mission from the Angel of Graves herself. Serafina explained that the first woman blackened skald, Attilika (real name: Olga von Glau) was buried in the cemetery of Tillsbury. She was interred with a magical, skull-shaped guitarra. Their mission: dig up Olga von Glau's grave, retrieve the guitarra, and bring it to the Angel of the Graves.

They found the grave under the cover of night. Unfortunately, it appeared to have already been disturbed. They dug up Olga's coffin anyway. Olga's remains were inside, but the guitarra was missing. Percy was startled by a movement at his peripheral vision; a white mist poured from the earth, coalescing into a corpse paint-wearing specter. Once they reassured the ghost of Olga von Glau that they weren't there to defile her bones, she told them that her guitarra had been stolen by an elven woman and a fat man. She could only point them in the general direction that the thieves ran; she couldn't stray beyond the boundary of the cemetery.

Proceeding in that direction, the grave robbers found a house on a hill surrounded by a ruined orchard. The house was once a grand manor, but had deteriorated. They spotted a sign on the road up the hill proclaiming that the building was now the Lark Conservatory. 

They noticed that there was a stained glass skylight atop the building, which goaded them to scale the building to try and enter via the roof. Looking through a clear section of the skylight revealed that the room below was a large music hall sporting a variety of instruments. 

Percy was small enough to wriggle down the chimney into the unlit hearth below. The rest of the group shimmied down to a connected balcony. After scouting the room, and not finding Olga von Glau's guitarra, they approached a door...and three small demons suddenly materialized out of the ether. They look like humanoid ratmen devoid of all hair; each one of them brandished a different, smoking-hot implement of torture. When each of the demons was killed, it dissolved into a bubbling puddle of goo. Harriet did a lot of the heavy lifting here.

As they explored further, they found a hallway with an elevator cage. Next to it was a suit of armor. They were very afraid of the suit of armor. They located the master bedroom, which had a large footlocker at the foot of the bed. When it was opened, a piercing scream filled the air. They shut it in short order.

By the spiral stairs leading down, they discovered that an oil painting was actually a secret panel leading into a hidden study. The paperwork on the desk filled in some of the blanks about the conservatory. Whoever Lark was--they were badly in debt. It didn't improve Lark's financial situation when the group stole a wooden coffer full of coin they found in a desk drawer.

On the floor below, they stepped out onto a mezzanine. They could hear the sound of voices below. They also heard the sound of the elevator ascending from the first floor. The grave robbers quickly scrambled into the first room they could get into to avoid being spotted. 

The room turned out to be a bedroom used by one of the music students at the conservatory. Strangely, there was a statuette of a demonic, full-breasted woman holding a cat o' nine tails on the dresser. The other rooms on this floor appeared to also be bedrooms for the conservatory's students, but none of them had anything as outlandish as the diabolic statuette.

They proceeded down the stairs to the first floor, working their way through a parlor decorated with antique crossbows and hunting trophies. They passed a particularly large stuffed wolf next to a locked door; Percy noticed that there was a key shoved back into the wolf's mouth.

Unfortunately, they were then attacked by the same (reformed!) demons from earlier. They killed them off again, but not before taking some wounds themselves. 

Closer to the front door, they surprised most of the household to barging into the dining hall while they were in the middle of after-dinner drinks. There was a handsome man with blonde curls (and features that were a little too perfect) and three teenaged music students. 

The man with the blonde curls stood up, swished his wine, and commanded the students to head into the kitchen for their own safety. He then revealed himself to be an incubus and attacked the grave robbers. In the middle of the fight, the elevator came back and Lark (and his rapier) joined the fray. The incubus was defeated and Lark was grievously wounded. Lark surrendered and agreed to hand over the stolen guitarra.

Lark led them back to the door by the stuffed wolf and used the key that had been stashed within the wolf's mouth to unlock the door. Inside was a room that was once a chapel, but it had been profaned as a satanic ritual space. Cornelia recognized that it was dedicated to Abzula, the Demon Queen of Lust. 

Once the guitarra was passed over, the grave robbers left the conservatory in great haste. They went back to the Old Leather Boot and turned the instrument over to Serafina, who was impressed with their work, and paid handsomely for their troubles.