The Ghosts of Gallhart

We're back to our Savage Krevborna campaign with a Halloween-themed session!

Characters

Aria, a paladin struggling with her true nature

Heck, an affable revenant looking for answers

Panthalassa, a necromancer with a missing arm

Daytona, a dhampir gunslinger fresh from Hell

Garazi, up and coming witch with a bird familiar

Willard Corn and King Beebo, a farmer and his monkey (?)

Events

With the departure of Daytona, and the relative safety afforded by Hemlock Hollow, the party had a bit of downtime to rest, recuperate, and run various errands. Garazi went to Adrian Vergara's house to return his calling card case and ask for a favor. She was surprised that her knock on the door was answered by Ilyona, the girl who had been melded with a tree outside of Borza. Ilyona explained that Adrian had offered her a job as his maid; when Garazi took her aside and asked if Adrian was a good master, the girl appeared genuinely happy with her current employment.

Over tea, Garazi brought up the compendium of death gods and grave spirits that they had found and needed translated. Adrian felt confident he could make a workable translation; Garazi directed him to focus on the entry for the Nightmother and the entry about revenants. She also produced the sheet music for the Hymn of the Nightmother but, being an unmusical sort, Adrian could not make heads or tails of it. As he walked her to the door, Adrian promised to visit her family's farmstead when he had a translation in hand.

Meanwhile, Panthalassa and Aria visited the Ushers to return the two masks they had recovered from the cemetery. This time, they were met at the door by a stoop-backed old woman who seemed blind. As before, they were lead to a parlor--but this one was littered with poorly maintained taxidermy. Panthalassa asked again whether the Fraternitie du Cadavre could have any motive for stealing her arm in particular. This Usher had a theory: if the Fraternitie was intent on creating an avatar of the Nightmother capable of raising the long dead, they would need specific body parts for its construction. Specifically, the woman said that six different arms would be required: the arm of "Everyone's Child," the arm of "The Grandfather" the arm of "The Soldier Boy," the arm of "The Preacher Man," the arm of "The Spinster," and the arm of "The Wretched." Additionally, such a working would require the "heart of The Widow," the "teeth of the Concubine," and the womb of The Mother."

The old woman assumed that Panthalassa's arm was the arm of "Everyone's Child."

Panthalassa was concerned about the sustainability of the Usher's vigil over Madeline, especially since the Usher woman they were talking to kept coughing up things that squirmed in the handkerchief she expectorated into. Panthalassa attempted to link her mind with that of the "sleeping" Madeline Usher; she saw a vision through the other woman's eyes--walking the halls of an ancient school where the instruction was presided over by a devil.

On the night before Halloween, Heck and company had been invited to dinner by Helena Graymalk, the matriarch of the Graymalk clan of witches. They were shown in by Ivara Graymalk, one of Helena's many daughters. Unlike her sisters, Ivara dressed very primly, more like a school marm than a witch. Some members of the group noticed that Ivara seemed to be searching Heck's face for something.

Understanding that Heck's condition as a revenant meant he had significant gaps in his memory, Helena told him that he had once been a powerful warlock in his own right and had been the leader of a coven adept at converting pagans to the worship of the Devil. Heck had met his demise at the hands of Grigori Trask and his witchfinders; Helena suspected that a member of Heck's coven had betrayed him. When asked about revenants, Helena admitted that most revenants returned to the grave once their vengeance had been attained, but also dangled the intriguing notion that some revenants persisted in their second life if they found a reason to continue living. 

Additionally, Aria's questions about her status as a creature made of song were answered by Helena as best she could. She conjectured that Aria may want to seek the Needle of Golgotha in the mountains, a structure said to enable communication with the elder gods of the Outer Dark.

Beebo announced that he wanted to go to the Skarnesti Circus. What on Earth could a monkey want at the circus?

During the course of dinner, Helena commended the group on the services they had provided by springing Coraline for Kholograt and saving Lorelei and her sisters from death in Borza. As such, she felt that she owed the group several favors. One of those favors was cashed in immediately: the group asked Helena to scry to the locations of Grigori Trask and Panthalassa's missing arm. Helena asked them what their plans were for Halloween night. Since they seemed to be in search of answers, she offered them a possibility: they could venture into the Forest of Loss, a popular place for suicides where the boundary between the living and the dead was especially thin on Samhain, because many people had reported finding the answers they were in search of in that unhallowed stretch of woods. Helena told them that if they did venture into the Forest of Loss on Halloween they should be wearing masks so that the spirits of the dead would not recognize them as the still living.

Upon venturing into the Forest of Loss on Halloween night, the group was quickly surrounded by a fog that separated them from the other groups in the woods. When they emerged from the fog, the found themselves cresting a hill overlooking a small village lit by jack o' lanterns and carved gourds. The first building on the path leading into the village was an eatery serving soup and dumplings. From the way the dumplings fell through the faces of the two elderly people "eating" at a table outside--only to plop back into their bowls--the group correctly ascertained that they were now among ghosts. The proprietor of the shack, a woman named Danila, knew that she was deceased, though she cautioned that not everyone in village was aware that they were specters. 

She also informed them that the town was caught up in a conflict between two vengeful women--Kestra at the old farmhouse and Sadira of the House of the Maiden. There was a third woman, the Widow, but she had somehow escaped being trapped in the cursed village of Gallhart. According to Danila, all three women were brought to Gallhart by a sorcerer named Valton Blakely. Blakely intended to sacrifice the women and use their body parts to construct an avatar of the Nightmother to--all to resurrect one of Krevborna's tsars. This eerily reflected the supposed goal of the Fraternitie du Cadavre. 

The group decided to explore the Widow's house first. They found it dark, but the front door was unlocked. Inside, everything was neat and tidy. There was a family portrait above the fireplace showing a man with dark hair parted in the middle, a tall woman with blonde hair and a beatific smile, and a young boy whose looks favored his mother. In the attic, they found trunks of clothes belonging to the man and the son; presumably, both had died and their things had been put out of sight.

The Widow's cottage was near a pagan shrine, so the group decided to poke around in there as well. The shrine had been vandalized; the altar was purposefully smashed, the ceiling was staved through, and the place had clearly received no visitors for many years. 

The party's next stop was the House of the Maiden. The building smelled of incense and was lit by a number of paper lanterns glowing with a macabre green light. The door of the House of the Maiden was answered by a slim woman whose hair was held in place by lacquered hair sticks. There was a series of pigeonholes behind the desk in the entrance room; each pigeonhole held a single cloth doll. Nine of the dolls were turned to face the back of the cabinet--only three faced forward. From this detail, the group correctly guessed that the House of the Maiden was a brothel and that the dolls signified which girls were currently "occupied" and which were currently available.

Abetta, the House of the Maiden's procuress, showed the group into the common room. The most notable "fixture" of the room was a nude woman suspended from the ceiling by fine thin threads. A woman with straight black hair, wearing a gossamer robe decorated with chrysanthemums, was playing a balalaika. This woman was introduced as Sadira. Sadira reiterated the facts of her conflict with Kestra at the farmhouse; the crux of the matter was that Kestra had stolen her teeth, a fact she underlined by removing her dentures. She had no real reply when asked why she and Kestra did not join forces against Blakely, who seemed to be the real cause of their woes. Ultimately, the group agreed to venture into the farmhouse and steal back Sadira's teeth with the reward of "a secret only the dead know" hanging in the balance as their payment. 

Kestra's farmhouse was surrounded by a metal fence, the gate of which creaked as they opened it. Similarly, the porch's boards moaned as they traversed them. There was a pitcher, its glass surface dotted with condensation, on a small table by the door. Aria tasted it and confirmed that it contained sweet tea. Garazi sent her familiar into the house to scout around; the bird reported that there was a strange sliding metal door just off the living room. 

The group crept in; predictably, the metal door made an awful racket as Heck slid it open. Just then, one of the other doors in the house crashed open and two figures, one a man in stained overalls and a pumpkin obscuring his face and the other a woman in a babydoll dress wearing a goat head mask, came barreling toward them. The man bore a sledgehammer and the woman held a cleaver in one hand and a butcher's knife in the other. The battle that followed was fraught, especially when a third participant--this man clad in Napoleonic uniform and his face painted like a clown--entered through the front door and began firing a pistol and swinging a cutlass. A few members of the party were injured, but ultimately they were able to kill their foes--even after a botched spell from Panthalassa briefly reanimated one of their attackers!

They then searched the house. The room beyond the sliding metal door was an abattoir, complete with human torsos hanging from hooks. They found the personal affects of their three attackers, including four unlabeled glass vials full of unidentifiable liquids. The darkness in the cellar proved impenetrable by the light of their lantern, but they could see two large yellow eyes shining in the shadows. They had found Kestra.

Kestra admitted that she had Sadira's teeth in her possession, but was equally uninterested in the question of why they hadn't joined forces against Blakely. However, Kestra added that she hated Sadira because the woman had stolen her womb--which she wanted back. In fact, she made an offer of her own: if the group got her womb from Sadira, she would give them a secret known only to the dead and tickets to ride the last "iron beast of the Vlaak." 

We'll see how they resolve this next time. 

DEAD GIRL SUPERSTAR

PLANET MOTHERFUCKER is back with a new supplement called DEAD GIRL SUPERSTAR that's full of thrills 'n' chills just in time for Halloween!

(You gotta have the "adult content" filter on at Drivethru for that link to work, homie.)

 Here's the blurb:

Welcome to a special midnight showing of PLANET MOTHERFUCKER. Get yourself a soda, a bucket of popcorn, and some Mike and Ikes from the concession stand. Then put on a poncho ‘cause you can expect a hefty blood spray this time around! Inside these pages, you’ll find a bunch of horror-themed Shticks, some bad guys to throw into the meat grinder, big pimpin’ villains, and a bunch of random tables for shit like Martian invasions and dumb Monster Mash crap like that. Viva la Wolf Man, bitches!

Inside you'll find:

• New character types like Spooky Scary Skeleton, Unnatural Symbiote, and Werewolf Heartthrob!
• New monsters like Hungry Hungry Himbos, Sheet Ghosts, and Wet T-Shirt Sirens!
• New Bad Guys like Bellatrix Lugosi, Guantanamo Bae, and Otto von Jizzmark! 
• Other crap for your game!

Get it today, it's spooktacular! And often really reprehensible and gross!

Fascinations of the Flesh

I like to run a few horror one-shots in October when I'm able--baring illness like the one I had last year that derailed my plans! For the following one-shot, I offered the players their pick from a bunch of pregens; all they knew about the game in advance was that a) it was going to be a horror game b) the premise was that they would be playing the cast and crew of a horror film called Fascinations of the Flesh that was being filmed at a historic castle in the Swiss Alps and c) they would have a brief description of their characters' abilities and their dark secret.

They did not have character sheets for their characters. They did not know what game system we would be using. And most importantly, they did not know that the scenario was taking place in the world of Clive Barker's Hellraiser.

Characters

Aurelia Swann, fx artist

Maurice Ivanov, drug dealer

Vincento Lombardi, actor

Roland Schrader, camera operator

Quentin Markov, producer

Events

We opened with the group traveling in Quentin's car, winding their way up the mountain to Kargen Castle, where Yann Cramling's Fascinations of the Flesh was being filmed. Cramling was well known for his erotic Euro Gothic films, but an indiscretion of some sort--no one could agree as to what it was--had marred his reputation, so Fascinations of the Flesh was to be his comeback film. 

Oddly, when they arrived at the castle, they didn't see anyone milling about despite the fact that a number of other vehicles were parked at the side of the fortress. The castle's main doors were out of reach behind a lowered portcullis. Embedded into the stone of the wall beside the portcullis was a brass plate bearing a strange design. After examining the plate, it was determined that it had four quadrant pieces that could be moved and a dial that could be turned in the center. After fiddling with the plate, the portcullis raised--and they heard the tolling of a distant, ominous bell.

Again, they did not see or hear anyone within the castle, even though they kept calling out hoping for an answer. They did managed to locate the castle chapel; the room was initially awash in gem-like blue and red tones from the light filtering in through the chapel's stained glass windows. Strangely, there was no cross on or near the altar. The altar was made of stone and, upon further inspection, they saw that there was another brass plate embedded into its surface. This plate had a large central circle that could be turned. Once manipulated, the circle slid upward as a cylinder, rotated, and descended back into place with a loud click. The room was immediately plunged into darkness as if the sun outside had been extinguished. 

The group rushed to look out into the courtyard to see what was going on, but they found that the world outside had been plunged into the darkest night. Despite the darkness, they perceived a beam that was darker than the gloom around them that swept the grounds at regular intervals. The beam's origin proved to be a massive octahedron on the horizon that rotated in place. 

While they were looking at the shape, they also noticed that blue light was now filtering from the mortar between the bricks of the castle's walls. A section of the wall opened like a door, from which emerged a humanoid figure. Their skin was so white that it appeared to be tinged blue. The skin of its cheeks had been peeled downward and pinned in place with iron keys. Its black leather skirt was splayed to reveal the mutilation that sat where its genitals should have been. At its belt was a heavy ring of medieval-looking keys, a curved knife, and an instrument that resembled a hacksaw.  

The creature introduced itself as the Chatelaine. It explained that it was an explorer "in the further reaches of pain and pleasure" and that their interacts with the brass plates in the castle had summoned it. Once summoned, it regarded all within the castle to have requested that it take them to "the Labyrinth" so that they too could experiment with the extremity of sensation. It told them they had four hours until they could be claimed; until that time, they were free to spend their time however they wished.

It then stepped aside.

They opted to spend their time searching the rest of Kargen Castle in hopes of finding a means of escaping the Chatelaine. In one room, the discovered a film projector--which they would return to later. For now, they wanted to return to the courtyard and explore the doors they had passed there. Much to their distress, they saw that there was now a large smear of blood across the courtyard's grass leading from the stables to the castle's surrounding wall. They were reluctant to enter the stables, but when they did they found a pile of fur and skin in each stall--it was as if the horses inside had been skinned and their bones and meat had been taken away.

They then located the room that Yann Cramling had been occupying. Aside from his cot and a pile of Gothic novels, they saw that he had not yet finished the script for Fascinations of the Flesh; the final scene was missing from the manuscript. They also located a number of film reels, but the third reel was missing. Finding that reel, and watching it on the projector previously located, now became a priority. 

Ascending the castle's tallest tower, they found another brass plate embedded into the wall at the top. When its moving pieces were manipulated, a chain ending in a barbed hook shot out and injured Aurelia. Tucked within a crack in the wall was a page torn from Bram Stoker's Dracula. Attached to the page was a post-it note on which someone had written a speculation that the scene where the three brides of Dracula menace Jonathan Harker was based on an encounter with three "cenobites."

In another room, the group found a member of the crew who had chosen to hang herself from the rafters rather than be taken by the Chatelaine. At her feet was a dropped crucifix necklace and a suicide note. 

When they explored the upper floors of the castle, they reached a level that should not have existed given what they knew about Kargen Castle's layout. In one room of the mysterious level they uncovered the missing third reel of film. They also found another reel that revealed Roland's dark secret: he had been party to filming a real snuff scene.

While moving a collection of detritus out of a room so they could reach the door beyond, someone cut their hand--this would become important later. In the chamber beyond, they found the body of a woman, the skin of her face flayed back to reveal a hideous grin, who had been nailed to the surface of a table. They quickly found another body; this one had been opened from sternum to pubis. 

When they attempted to return to the lower level, they found a figure standing between them and the stairs. The figure was human, but their skin had been removed and although their body glistened with blood, they did not seem to have enough meat to be complete. They recognized the person's voice as that of Yann Cramling; he told them that the blood spilled clearing the room had allowed him to escape the Labyrinth--but he needed more blood to fully rebuild his body. Unwilling to give up their blood without a fight, they attacked him. He slashed a few of them with a razorblade, but ultimately they were able to destroy his body. 

Watching the third reel made them uncannily aware that it was footage that documented their every move and every encounter since arriving at Kargen Castle.

With their time running out, Roland had an idea he wanted to try: since the script they had found was incomplete, perhaps writing a final scene could warp the reality of their situation and allow for them to leave Kargen Castle? The Chatelaine now slowly made its way down the hall to the room they had huddled up in. Unfortunately, writing their own final scene had no effect. Roland attempted to bargain with the Chatelaine, offering himself as a candidate for cenobite-dom. The Chatelaine was not interested in what was offered; hooked chains shot from the darkness, stringing Roland up, suspending him in the air, before rending him apart. 

Quentin was the next to be caught by the cenobite's chains; his neck was wrenched backwards by a hook through his lip, killing him. 

Vincento slammed the door shut and the remaining three members of the group waited.

Time passed, and nothing happed. They peeked out into the corridor, but the Chatelaine was gone. All three ran to the courtyard and main gates. 

Unfortunately, they found the bloody bodies of the skinned horses guarding the gate. Screaming the Lord’s Prayer, Vincento sacrificed himself to the monstrous horses to give Aurelia and Maurice time to slip through the gate. The last thing they heard was the sound of a hoof caving in Vincento's handsome face.

Once past the gate, Aurelia and Maurice, both heavily injured and teetering on the verge of insanity, found that the world was once again sunny. They could see nothing unusual in the courtyard of Kargen Castle--even Vincento's corpse was gone. They commandeered Quentin's car and sped away into what remained of the day--forever changed, forever marked.

Hoodtown

Bad Books for Bad People, Episode 80: Hoodtown

Christa Faust’s 2004 novel Hoodtown takes the reader to an alternate universe Los Angeles, where crime drama is brewing in an underground culture populated by masked wrestlers. Skulls will be cracked and butts will be fingered when Jack and Kate get in the ring with this pile-driving mix of murder mystery, romance, and action.

Why is it important to be nice to your local exotico? Does everyone from New Jersey have a gym membership? Is an especially skanky carpet the ultimate heel? All these questions and more will be explored in this episode of the podcast.

The Metal Monster of the Slot Canyon

A couple players in my ongoing Friday night Krevborna game gave me "nights off" by running something in usual campaign's stead. One of those games was Deadlands. My character was Frances D., aka Frances Donner, who survived the Donner Party ordeal but came away from the experience haunted by the ghosts of the eaten and charged with fighting supernatural evil by way of survivor's guilt.

Ironically, when the game started she was working as a camp cook.

The other characters were Alpeena (a conspiracy-theory obsessed gunslinger), Aloysius (a muck-raking journalist), and Sassafras (a kindly ranch hand).

We were headed through Deseret on a stagecoach when we stopped to see the twisted metal wreckage of a train crash. But we observed more than we bargained for; three tied-up folks were being menaced by gun-brandishing villains. Nearby the villains stood a large crate. Well, we couldn't stand idly by and watch these people get killed, so we took on the villains. During the course of the fight the leader of the villains blew a whistle, which caused a gosh-dang nosferatu to break out of the crate and join the melee. The gunluggers were easy enough to take down, but the nosferatu required some teamwork to dig the heart out of its chest.

One of the defeated toughs tried to make a run for it, but I knocked him out and dragged him back by the boots for questioning. After a few threats and a little interrogation, we learned that the group had been hired to steal a pile of ghost rock from the train. They were under the employ of One-Eye Abbie, whose hideout was somewhere in a nearby canyon.

We went into town and gathered more information. We learned that some sort of professor was holed up in the canyon as well. The town's blacksmith was particularly helpful; from the parts he had been asked to make for the boffin, we figured that the professor was building some sort of big metal automaton. That sounded like bad business, so we snuck out there to put an end to it.

We took Abbie and her hooligans by surprise. Aloysius distracted the goons while Alpeena dropped a boulder onto them from above in the canyon. When Aloysius came under fire, I came charging in with cleaver and pistol at the ready. We tried to get Abbie on-side, but she proved truculent and had to be killed as well.

There was some funny business with a big weird tuning fork, but I can't rightly say what that was all about.

However, when we found the professor, he had a sad tale to tell. Apparently the big metal contraption he was building was meant to be a kind of ambulatory life support for his wife--without it she'd die. The big metal body was also intended to be a weapon of revenge against the man who got her in such a sorry state. So, even though we had gone out there to stop him, we had a change of heart. Maybe we're soft-hearted fools--I guess we'll find out when the professor and his wife's deed makes the headlines one way or another.

The Ossuary

Hot--well, somewhat cold--pursuit of the Ushers' missing masks is underway, which means the characters are headed into a little dungeon for some exploration and violence. 

Oh yeah, Beebo the monkey talks now.

Characters

Aria, a paladin struggling with her true nature

Heck, an affable revenant looking for answers

Panthalassa, a necromancer with a missing arm

Daytona, a dhampir gunslinger fresh from Hell

Garazi, up and coming witch with a bird familiar

Willard Corn and King Beebo, a farmer and his monkey (?)

Events

We left off in the last session with the characters descending into the ossuary they had uncovered beneath the cemetery behind the Usher House. The walls and ceiling of the subterranean dungeon were lined with bones arranged in unnerving decorative patterns. Any doors they encountered were stolen from the crypts above; they were merely leaned against the portals they covered rather than being attached in any meaningful way. 

Daytona immediately triggered a spiked log to swing from out of the darkness and crash into the party as he went to inspect a crushed skeleton laying on the ground. In another chamber, Beebo noticed that the chandelier made of bone could be lowered; that also triggered something--but they never figured out exactly what that something was. In yet another room of the ossuary, they found a necromantic lab, complete with a pile of severed arms. They determined that someone had tried to cast a spell to preserve the dead flesh, but had failed. It should be noted that none of the arms were Panthalassa's missing limb.

As the group explored further, they discovered that the "ossuary" part of the caverns was connected to an undecorated system of caves--one of which opened out onto an underground river, complete with a violently swirling whirlpool. Tied to a rock was a rowboat meant for traversing the underground river. 

Another chamber in the ossuary was clearly a devotional room, as it was fitted out with an altar of bone and several pews. The altar cloth showed the symbol of the Fraternite du Cadavre. Upon the cloth were a number of scrolls, which were titled "Lord of Blood," "The Black Prince," and "Hymn of the Nightmother." A member of the party recalled that the Nightmother was a pagan death goddess, who wasn't worshiped so much as placated. She was also depicted as a multi-armed deity. Heck destroyed the altar, hoping to find something hidden within, but alas, now it was just a broken altar. 

Garazi spotted one of the Ushers' skull masks in a corridor, where it had presumably been dropped; Panthalassa put it on, but nothing happened. Meanwhile, a strange red rune briefly appeared on Daytona's forehead. The group determined that someone was trying to teleport him elsewhere. Panthalassa attempted to dispel the runes, but all she got for her trouble is a familiar voice in her head telling her that she was not a match for whoever was casting a spell on Daytona.

The party then examined a statue of the Grim Reaper that was stationed in an alcove. The base of the statue bore the legend "Beyond Death Lies Truth." When Heck moved the Reaper's scythe, the statue slide aside, revealing a small hiding place. Inside was an object wrapped in a cold wet cloth. Inside the cloth was a locked tome that Beebo was able to unlock. The book was titled Compendium of Death Gods and Major Spirits of the Dead, but its contents would require translation.

There was also a great deal of tomfoolery with some chairs sat at the base of statues of various necromantic figures, such as Dracula, Countess Alcesta, Count Magnus, the Grim Reaper, the Black Prince, and an uncouth and unfamiliar figure. Switching out who was sitting in which chair had no discernable effect.

As a change of pace, the group encountered someone who was actually still among the living in a tomb when they stumbled upon a snow elf named Eshrevaal rummaging around in piles of bones, hoping to chance upon repositories of necromantic energies. When they found him, he immediately assumed a defensive stance and drew an ice dagger, but Garazi managed to get him to drop his guard. The front of his shirt was covered in blood, but he explained that the blood was fake--it was intended to make people assume he was dangerous so they'd give him a wide berth. He explained what he knew of the Fraternite du Cadavre, as well as informing them of the presence of a foul-smelling chasm within the caverns, but also told them that he hadn't encountered any of the Fraternite members in the ossuary. The talked Eshrevaal into accompanying them as they finished exploring.

Meanwhile, more runes had appeared on Daytona's body and they were getting brighter.

In one of the caves, they found a number of wheels held aloft on spikes; the wheels had skeletons woven through them. Predictably, the skeletons animated when the group got near and clambered down the spikes with their wheels to roll menacingly at the party. The wheeling skeletons were not difficult to take down, but they kept reforming--even joining together to form new creatures when they were too damaged to continue on their own. Willard and Beebo figured out a novel way to circumvent the skeleton's constant reformation: they grabbed the skeletons' wheels and hurled them down the stairs. 

Some of the wheeling skeletons made a pleasing splash as they fell into the underground river and were swept into the whirlpool. The rest of the group began to follow suit with grabbing and throwing the wheels, but one of the skeletons managed to grab Aria's sword and take it with him into the river. Since that sword is near and dear to Aria's heart, she quickly tied a rope around her waist, handed the other end to her companions, and dove into the river after it. It was a tense moment, but Aria was able to wrest the sword from the skeleton's grasp just before it went down into the whirlpool.

The only thing left in the cavern was the chasm and the small underground lake nearby. There was a severed hand that had been gnawed upon at the lip of the charnal-smelling chasm. There was a small island at the center of the lake upon which stood a thin plinth. Beebo had the bright idea to retrieve the rowboat they had found earlier and use it to cross the lake. This was a wise move as they felt something touching the bottom of the boat as they crossed; if they had tried swimming instead they would have met whatever it was head-on. 

Beebo was able to climb up the plinth and retrieve an item from the top of it--it was a bone whistle on a leather thong. The whistle was determined to be magical. Tired of the dithering about it, Panthalassa blew the whistle; it summoned two monstrous humanoids garbed in ragged hoods from the depths of the cavern. The two figures claimed to have another of the Ushers' masks, but they would only trade it for FLESH. They preferred ROTTING FLESH, as it turned out. Beebo remembered the pile of arms they had found earlier and that made for the perfect exchange. The group now had two of the missing masks in their possession.

Having explored the extent of the ossuary, the group reemerged in the cemetery. Unfortunately, Daytona now found himself surrounded by a circle of runes that threatened to whisk him off to parts unknown. Before he vanished he handed Panthalassa his hat--a sure sign that he would make his way back to the group come Hell or high water.

Where did Daytona go? Read this to find out.

The Knights of the Helsing Vow and the Knights Labyrinthian

Below are two "knightly orders" in Krevborna that are nothing like knightly orders in practice.

The Knights of the Helsing Vow

The Knights of the Helsing Vow are a group of templars, witchfinders, inquisitors, and monster hunters associated with the Church of Holy Blood.

• Though the Helsing Knights hunt all manner of supernatural horrors, they hold a special enmity for the undead and view vampires as the ultimate expression of evil.

• The ultimate goal of the Helsing Knights is to conquer and reclaim the lands of Sibersk.

• Of the Church’s many factions, the Knights of the Helsing Vow are among the most militant, unbending, unforgiving, and secretive.

• One secret that the Helsing Knights zealously hide is the fact that the master of their order, Castor Leonidas, has fallen to darkness and currently serves Countess Alcesta von Karlok as a revenant knight.

The Knights Labyrinthian

The Knights Labyrinthian are a mystical conclave of gunslingers and rangers who are the heirs of a defunct order of knights sworn to protect pilgrims and penitents journeying to sacred sites.

• Although they are now knights in name only, the Knights Labyrinthian act as guards and guides for caravans traveling through Krevborna’s dangerous wilds.

• The Knights seek and study technology left behind by the Vlaak Empire and are particularly interested in the magical firearms found within Grail Tombs.

• Due to their frequent quests into the Grail Tombs, many of the Knights Labyrinthian inevitably fall into madness.