The Butcher Priest

Back before the October one shots, our Krevborna campaign continued with an adventure that cleared away a mystery that had been around since the first session: what happened to the priest who used to preside over Braelin's church?

Characters

Dario Diego Durant, swashbuckling swordsman

Ulu, the party's urska mom

Varro, a young snow elf bearing a magical sword

Johanna, lycan bard and fallen noble 

Doctor Anastasia Nadya Strahov, a gun-priest

Morwenna, harpy devotee of St. Vionka

Events

The game began with the characters either engaged in one of their personal pursuits or off on errands around Braelin. Ulu spent some time in Dr. Ilsa's workshop, where she began crafting a few magical items for the group. Anastasia gave Scav a tour of the town so that he and the rest of Boneyard, Inc. would know all the defensible positions in case battle broke out. Dario, Morwenna, and Johanna paid a visit to the Thorn at the now-expanded jail; Dario invited the Thorn and Brother Jacob to dinner at the Kaul House (!!!). Varro paid a visit to the town's new butcher, a mysterious man named Bostwicke with a heavily scarred face. Varro also noticed that the man seemed to be wearing priestly vestments under his dirty clothes.

When the group reconvened in town, they saw that a number of revival tents had been set up across from the church. A number of red-robed figures were inviting townspeople to sit, have their heads measured with calipers, and their blood drained by leeches--all for the promise of a "holy fortune telling." (Anastasia immediately realized something was amiss; a real holy man would call this prophecy, not "fortune telling.") 

Kole, the blacksmith, was waiting in line for the holy phrenology; he told them that Kaldrin, a teenager who lived with his grandparents on a farm at Braelin's outskirts, had gone missing and his grandparents were worried sick about it. He suggested they do something, since they had successfully recovered a missing child before. He gave them directions to the family's farmstead, and they were off.

At the farm, the Hounds met Kaldrin's grandparents, who explained that their grandson had last been seen three days ago heading off to visit his mother's grave. They also told the group that Kaldrin was handed off to their care by the priest who used to preside over the church, a man named Father Grosmere, after his mother died in childbirth. Grosmere disappeared from Braelin soon after, and no one had heard of him since then.

After dinner with the family, the group was able to search Kaldrin's room. They found a sheaf of letters between Catherin, Kaldrin's mother, and Father Grosmere. 

The group passed the barn and stopped to examine a dead, hollow tree on the way to Catherine's grave. The tree had a note stuffed into it--written on butcher's paper--that seemed to be to Kaldrin from an unknown person. At the grave, they also determined that someone had likely disturbed Catherine's resting place; it showed signs of having been dug up recently. The presence of a shovel nearby didn't help quell the feeling that something was amiss.

Since the presence of the butcher's paper pointed them back to Bostwicke, they paid him another visit--but this time he was not happy to see them. He retreated into the depths of his shop, but Johanna followed him. Bostwicke suddenly attacked her, which caused her to fly into a berserk rage; to be honest, the butcher didn't stand a chance with most of the Hounds dogpiling him, so he was dead in short order--killed before he could tell them anything useful. The did discover that the butcher was Braelin's former priest in a different guise--and that he was a vampire's thrall.

Their continued investigation led them to an old windmill. At the windmill, they traversed the decrepit interior to the stairs; on the second floor, they found Kaldrin kneeling before a sack of bones within a chalk circle as he traced symbols in blood on the floor and mumbled to himself. A pale man, who resembled Kaldrin, stepped from the shadows, accompanied by Catherine's specter. Kaldrin's parents attacked while the boy continued his ritual.

As they fought, the group realized that Kaldrin's father was a vampire--which meant that their usual tactics weren't working for them. They had to focus on trying to behead or impale the man, which called for more finesse than they usually employed. Eventually, Ulu was able to tear the vampire's head off.

However, Kaldrin was not stopped from completing his ritual--which meant that he slumped over dead, his blood running to touch the bones within the circle. When contact was made, Catherine's wraith disappeared--and her bones reanimated as a newly born vampire! Luckily, the group had now found their rhythm and dealt with her as they had the father.

Unfortunately, Kaldrin lay dead. They figured out the tragic history at play here: unbeknownst to her parents, Catherine had been impregnated by a vampire; hoping to purge the vampiric blood from her child, Catherine visited Father Grosmere, but the "exorcistic" ritual he performed didn't work; Catherine died in childbirth, and Kaldrin was born a dhampir; as his vampiric traits asserted themselves in puberty, Kaldrin was approached by Grosmere (now a vampire thrall of his father, under the identity of Bostwicke the butcher) who conned him into performed a fake "purging" ritual that was actually intended to revive his mother.

Kaldrin's body was returned to the farm and buried on behalf of the family.

Meanwhile, Ulu and Varro ventured to the revival tents for more answers...and found everyone inside butchered. Varro could tell that a curved blade was used in the mass murders. While under the tents, they were caught by the Thorn, who questioned their presence among the corpses, but let them leave without too much hassle.

But who was responsible?

Serafina's Halloween Party 2026

As is tradition during the Halloween season, Serafina, aka Krevborna's Angel of the Graves, aka protagonist of my novel Ornamental Women, favors the decrepit denizens of the Tales of the Grotesque and Dungeonesque Discord server with a movie of the week leading up to the best day of all. She tends to announce each movie with the deadpan morbid humor of a classic horror comic host, so I've preserved both her selections and her teasers her for posterity.

Posterity--and because she had me at knifepoint until I agreed to do her bidding. Without further ado, here's what we watched in 2026:

Dark Waters

"Our first selection of the haunting season is Dark Waters, a soggy little sin-fest. A young women returns to the island of her birth to visit a convent full of sinister sisters. What kind of demonic devotions happen therein? I guess you'll just have to tune in to find out, boils and ghouls. See you on Wednesday at 8--and don't forget your putrid popcorn and charnel chocolates."

The Orphanage

"I know a thing or two about awful orphans, but not even motherhood could prepare me for the terrifying tots of The Orphanage. Whoever said "the kids are all right" never met these spectral scamps. Slip into your rotten rompers and join me on Wednesday at 8pm in the perilous playroom for a little child's play."

The Abominable Dr Phibes

"I'm no stranger to diabolical doctors, but Phibes may be the worst of the reprehensible residents. Things are going to get biblical on Wednesday night at 8pm when we assemble in the theater for a showing of The Abominable Doctor Phibes. And if you don't survive, your heirs better not sue me for morbid malpractice."

Burnt Offerings

“If the rent on the sprawling Victorian you've got your eye on seems too good to be true, it probably is. That's what the Rolf family learns in Burnt Offerings, this week’s foray into the frightful American family. Haunted house or ghostly guests? You be the judge. Wednesday, 8pm, in the theater of blood.”

Dagon

"I asked Nightsong if she wanted to see something that would make her feel wet, but she wasn't expecting Dagon...and neither are you, my foul friends. Move over Below Deck, we've got a real yacht drama brewing on the sickening seas. Made with all the care and attention he could muster, you'll see that director Stuart Gordon loves his craft if you tune in on Wednesday at 8pm."

Stonehearst Asylum

"We all go a little mad sometimes, don't we? This Wednesday at 8, slip into your most comfortable straightjacket and meet me in the awful operating theater for a showing of Stonehearst Asylum. It'll be a real scream, you noxious nutsos."

Carnival of Souls

"Wednesday, 8pm: It may not be your first rodeo, but it might be the last time you step into the Carnival of Souls. A car accident leads a young organist to a town where nothing seems quite right...including the perilous pavilion she's drawn to. What a way to wrap up the Halloween season--but what can I say? Ghouls just wanna have fun."

Total Skull: October, 2026

Things that brought me delight in October, 2026:

The Cramps, Gravest Gravy

If you're a Cramps fan, you'll recognize a lot of the tracks on Gravest Gravy, but you haven't heard them quite so raw and primordial as this. This batch of tracks was slated for release in the 90s, but they got shelved until now--and we are absolutely blessed to be able to hear them in the year 2026. This is purestrain Cramps--rock 'n' roll that still sounds dangerous, a mindset warped by b-movie and trash culture kitsch, blood pumpin' perfection.

Dark Night of the Scarecrow

This made-for-tv horror movie from the early 80s is a doozy. A mentally handicapped man is mistakenly blamed for the death of a child, hunted down by some bloodthirsty good 'ol boys, and killed. But things don't rest there--one by one, the hunters become the hunted. Dark Night of the Scarecrow isn't the most intense or brutal horror movie you'll ever see, but it possesses a kind of native "sweatiness" that gives it a lurid, "I kinda can't believe this was on television" feel that is worth the price of admission. That said, don't go into this expecting a lot of actual scarecrow action--that's thin on the ground. However, you can expect plenty of murderous farming equipment!

Demons of the Mind

In October, I watched a Hammer horror I hadn't seen before: Demons of the Mind. You know you're in for something different from Hammer when the first ten minutes pass without any dialog. Something's rotten on the local nobleman's estate: between the daughter who runs away and then hooks up with a medical student and the son who may be murdering nubiles in the forest, it's a real family affair. Throw in a tragic backstory or two, a "doctor" operating on the fringes of mesmerism, a clearly insane hellfire priest, psychosexual menace around every corner, a mob of angry peasants, a folk horror rite and, well, you've got a heady mix going on.

Sister Death

A prequel to the horror movie Veronica, which I also enjoyed, Sister Death is about a young novice who has come to a convent with a dark history and tragic past. There's nothing really showy or pulse-pounding about Sister Death; it's more a slow-burn than anything else, but it is beautifully filmed and feels like one of the few Catholic horror movies that's actually about Catholicism. I'd probably opt to watch Veronica first before watching Sister Death, but I think this film might be the stronger of the two, so do what you want--I'm not the boss of you.

S. J. Shank, Our Lady of Holy Slaughter

A group of German crusaders, their native guides, and a papal knight flee from their pagan enemies after a calamitous rout. The land itself--swampy, choking, mystifying--is an implacable enemy, to say nothing of the brutal pagans who want to take their heads as trophies. As the group traverses hostile territory, Our Lady of Holy Slaughter becomes something of a folk horror story, calling into question the violent proselytizing efforts of the Christians and the brutal old ways of pagan faith. Also, in one of those instances of synchronicity, I read this after reading Vernon Lee's "Prince Alberic and the Snake Lady." I got more snake lady here too!

Elizabeth Dearnley, Haunted Yorkshire

You pretty much can't go wrong with any of the volumes in the British Library's Tales of the Weird series, but I have an especial love for Yorkshire and thus had an especially good time reading this collection of poetry and fiction inspired by the strangeness of the north. Of particular note to me were L. T. C. Rolt's "The Garside Fell Disaster" (a story very much descended from Charles Dickens's "The Signal-Man"), the editor's own "Maiden in the Moor" (one of the few "found footage"-style stories that works), and Lettice Galbraith's "The Trainer's Ghost" (a horse-centric ghost story that prefigures M. R. James in a lot of ways).

Marama

Marama is absolutely amazing. It has to be one of the most traditionally Gothic movies in years, but it also does some very interesting post-colonial things as well. And you are simply not going to find a movie with as much "woman carrying a lantern through a dark house" per minute as Marama because this is the story of a half-Maori woman invited to a remote house in Yorkshire to learn what happened to her family. (Yes, Yorkshire again! Also, we've got haka on deck!) Marama is a beautifully filmed Gothic horror movie with stellar performances all around; it's one of the few movies where I've thought "I wouldn't mind this being just a little bit longer, actually." If you liked Guillermo del Toro's Crimson Peak, you'll probably like this. If you liked Robert Egger's Nosferatu, same. 

A. G. Slatter, Fitcher's Bird and Gemma Amor, The Folly

I'm including both of these books together because I read them both on the same day and because I'd recommend them for the same reason: they're both short, but suitably spooky, novellas likely to appeal to the same reader. Fitcher's Bird is the story of three sisters with a dark past; two of them have been abducted by a serial killer, the eldest is next on the murderer's list. If you're familiar with Slatter's work from her Sourdough series, you may not be ready for the brutality of this one. Gemma Amor's The Folly, on the other hand, is a story about a woman and her ex-con father becoming caretakers of a remote seaside tower in Cornwall, where they encounter a man who speaks with the protagonist's dead mother's voice. The Folly is a short read that is exquisitely uncanny and rich with Gothic atmosphere.

Pan's Labyrinth and The Devils

One new thing that I've begun to look forward to every October is seeing which movies will be re-released on the big screen for the season. This year we were lucky enough to get both Guillermo del Toro's Pan's Labyrinth and Ken Russell's The Devils. Both were restored versions that looked absolutely stunning. They are, of course, two very different flavors, with Pan's Labyrinth being a dark fairytale about fascism and The Devils being a blasphemous and thoroughly psychosexual drama about religious zealotry, though they share the same sort of sentiments about authoritarian power grabs. 

Danza Macabra Volume Five

Severin's Danza Macabra series returns with another set of rare Spanish Gothic films! Strange Voyage is indeed a weird little trip of a movie. It's at once a murder mystery and a black comedy about a crazed spinster who domineers her weak-minded siblings...and there's murder afoot. Exorcism's Daughter plays out like a sadistic shocker; shades of The Devils and the whole women in prison genre here. The Dracula Saga features a family of vampires who only want to keep their bloodline flowing freely into the future. Finally, the Spanish version of Turn of the Screw plays it remarkably straight, even if it does substitute a male lead for the usual governess role. This one does a lot with the psychosexual menace between the children and their caretaker--it isn't explicit, but it's pretty damn unnerving. I was told that The Dracula Saga would be the hit of the collection, and while I enjoyed it immensely, I really have to commend Turn of the Screw for being such a powerful adaptation of the Henry James story.

Sara Hinkley, The Red Sacrament

Sara Hinkley's The Red Sacrament feels like a love letter to Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles, except it's much more exquisitely written. Of course, "vampires running a theater" will be a familiar premise, but the historical details, especially those concerning the theatrical world of nineteenth-century Paris, are especially jewel-like. The Red Sacrament also isn't afraid to get a little sick with it, and the ending will grab you by the throat and surprise you. The plot is a little baggy, but it's not really a "plot novel": this is one you read for the gorgeous atmosphere and brooding, doomed vampire romance.

Clay McLeod Chapman, What Kind of Mother

In Clay McLeod Chapman's What Kind of Mother, a down on her luck palm reader rekindles something with a high school boyfriend who is the local tragedy: his wife killed herself and their baby son went missing five years prior. He's never stopped searching for his child, and now wants the protagonist to use her dubious psychic powers to help find the boy. Of course, this is something they will regret meddling with. 

One thing I have to give Chapman credit for is the way he has his characters react to the unreality of their situation. A lot of horror writers don't really emphasize how freaked out the characters are, just having then carry on, but his characters are pretty fucking tilted by all this. Their shit is unglued. What Kind of Mother is a really good meat 'n' potatoes horror novel, the likes of which seem rarer and rarer these days.

Wolves in the Throne Room, Estuary

I don't think there is a single lackluster album in the entire Wolves in the Throne Room discography, but I wasn't prepared for how awesome Estuary would be. There's a reason why Wolves in the Throne Room is largely regarded as the best black metal band to come from the US; all the classic elements are there, but they aren't afraid to chart their own course. Estuary has a bit of a doom influence on it, to my ears, and that's a very welcome addition to their sound--which is already pretty varied for a black metal record.

Haunted

I hadn't heard of it before, but when Haunted popped up as a movie I could watch on Tubi I decided to give it a try. It had the kind of Gothic premise I tend to enjoy: a skeptic about the possibility of the supernatural accepts an invite to the home of an elderly woman who feels that her crumbling manor is haunted, but what he encounters is her small horde of strange and off-putting younger relatives. In practice, this is one of the brightest (in terms of being well lit) Gothic haunted house yarns I've ever encountered. Haunted won't be for everyone, but I thought Aidan Quinn and Kate Beckinsale's compelling performances carried this one. 

Michael McDowell, The Elementals

Michael McDowell never disappoints, but even so I really enjoyed this extremely weird horror novel from the mass market paperback era. An extended Southern family takes a trip to their isolated houses on the gulf in Alabama after the death of a familial matriarch, but something unwholesome stirs in the third abandoned house. The real draw of this novel is the characterization; McDowell sketches such different voices with very small details, but each of them has a distinct presence for such a short book. If you're new to McDowell, I think The Elementals is actually a great place to start--it's succinct, unnerving, and has all his usual verve for storytelling.

Rasputina at Tempo in Kingston, NY

I haven't really had the chance to travel much over the last few years, but when the possibility of seeing Rasputina (one of my favorite bands) within a reasonable drive (a concept that diminishes a little every year), I pulled the trigger and bought tickets. It's funny; I put no research into the venue ahead of time so imagine my surprise rolling up at Tempo the night of to discover that Rasputina was playing in an old church, complete with pipe organ backdrop and stained glass windows intact. Rasputina was wonderful, and they played many of my favorite songs, so this was a nice way to end a kinda tough month.

The Annotated Ornamental Women

Ornamental Women, my Gothic Fantasy novel (available here, if you have great taste in fiction) is chock full of allusions and references by design. I fundamentally believe that good genre fiction displays the author's fixations and interests in full regalia, so it's no surprise that my book is brimming over with the things that fascinate me. Victoriana fans will be eating especially well with my novel. Below, I'm going to annotate my own text and unveil my inspirations.

Spoilers follow, of course, so you may want to consider reading Ornamental Woman before continuing. Then again, if spoilers don't bother you, what follows will give you a pretty good indication of whether my novel is the one for you. Either way, I'm not the boss of you.

Gideon Morris and Joanna Rusk: a central plot point in Ornamental Women is that the artist Gideon Morris buried a book of love poems with his wife, Joanna, when she died--and then later wants to have the poems exhumed from her grave. This has its basis in the history of the real-world Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. Dante Gabriel Rossetti really did bury a book of poems with his wife and model Elizabeth Siddal, and then later "re-acquired" the poems for publication. Of course, one hopes that Dante Gabriel Rossetti was a better man than Gideon Morris is in the novel. 

The Quattrocentro Movement: The Quattrocentro Movement is, of course, based on the Pre-Raphaelites, but there's also a good deal of the British aestheticism/symbolism movement worked in there as well.

Gideon's wombat: Dante Gabriel Rossetti really did keep a menagerie of exotic pets, including a wombat.

Piskaro: it's Gothic fantasy Slavic Venice, of course. 

Tsar Arturus: the quasi-Arthurian legend that Celestine tells Wayland Morgaunt while she labors over his sword was inspired by a similar story told in Algis Burdys's Rogue Moon.

Valter Freavis-Moleridge: the literary critic that Abelard pulls from the shelf to explain the Quattrocentrists to Serafina is an allusion to Walter Pater's The Renaissance, which was more or less a blueprint for British Decadence at the fin de siecle. The passage he reads aloud is a winking allusion to Pater's thoughts on the Mona Lisa.

The Abbot & the Lusty Acolyte: the book the Widow is reading throughout the novel is an homage to the overheated Gothic romances that are dear to my heart, though the Widow's book is an unabashedly gay version of the paperback Gothic romance. Imagine Matthew Lewis's The Monk, but for Pride. 

The Yezhuli: When Serafina talks of her childhood to the Widow, she mentions that she grew up in a Yezhuli household. In Krevborna, the Yezhuli are fantasy Mormons. The plural marriage and patriarchy stuff probably gives that away.

The Hook: the strange, quasi-Lovecraftian tavern were Serafina meets some of Piskaro's down-and-out grave robbers was inspired by an out-of-production liquor called The Incredible Hook that a friend shared during a D&D meet up.

Black skaldism: the kind of music that Nightsong plays is a Gothic fantasy take on black metal. Notice the mosh pits, people throwing the horns, the leather jackets and spikes, the use of magic to create musical distortion and amplification, Nightsong's corpse paint, the use of phrases like "true kvlt," etc. The chapter title "A Blaze in the Piskaran Sky" is a nod to Darkthrone's album "A Blaze in the Northern Sky." Nightsong would love Darkthrone.

Nocturne: the underground tavern Nightsong is performing at is so named because, for a while, every goth night seemed to be named "Nocturne." Did your town have one or two of those too? 

Nightsong's call to action: the words Nightsong uses to call her fanatics to enter the fray and assault Abelard echo the lyrics of Electric Wizard's song "Witchcult Today."

Nightsong's church arson: the act of Nightsong burning down a stave church was inspired by real-world church arsons in Norway perpetrated by people from the local black metal scene.

Otto Eichwald: Eichwald's fencing fixation is Krevborna's equivalent to the German mensur tradition. Also, I paraphrased various "apocalyptic folk" lyrics and the crappy "philosophical" writings of various historical edgelords for some of the insane things Eichwald says when meeting with Serafina and the Widow.

Cassie Mabcrowe's hand and eye: Cassie's disturbing transhumanist approach to witchcraft was originally a homage to Michael Moorcock, who wrote some of the first fantasy fiction I ever truly loved. You may have noticed that Moorcock has a few protagonists that end up with magical replacements for their limbs and organs; Cassie is the feminine inversion of that.

The Noknitsa: nocnitsa are Slavic nightmare spirits, though mine also have a great deal in common with the traditional succubus. The hagstone Wayland uses and the circle of knives he lays around Bilka are drawn directly from the folklore.

Mariana: Wayland notes that the painting of St. Mariana in Ormlesti's church is a little too buxom and knowing; this is a reference to Matthew Lewis's The Monk, in which a painting of Mother Mary gives the titular monk some rather impure thoughts. Naming this saint "Mariana" was inspired by the Ghost song "Mary On a Cross."

Nightsong's descent into Hell: I re-read Dante's Inferno to capture some of the feel for the Ninth Circle.

The Redmayne League: the gentlemen's club with a shared grotesque fetish for women with red hair doesn't have a historical antecedent, but it was inspired by talking to women friends of mine who happen to have red hair about what freaks men can be about their hair color. I suppose, on some level, Arthur Conan Doyle's "The Red-Headed League" also played a part.

Vlaak brown: there is a fleeting mention that the bodies of the ancient vlaak have been sold and ground up to make brown paint; this is a real thing that European artists did with Egyptian mummies.

Wayland vs. Eresh: the "choreography" for this fight was inspired by the classic stop-motion animations of Ray Harryhausen. Also, though Eresh has some qualities in common with Kali, there's also a bit of Erichtho in her origins as well. That's more Dante creeping in.

Simon Drokar's silver nose: the silver nose Simon Drokar uses to hide his ravagement at the hands of a disease recalls the historical libertine and poet Lord Rochester's use of a silver nose to hide the damage caused by syphilis. 

Serafina first seeing Nightsong: Serafina expects a frail woman "half in love with easeful Death," an allusion to John Keats's "Ode to a Nightingale." Nightingales are definitely NOT the same thing as Nightsongs, as she quickly learns. 

The Wormwood Star: the absinthe cafe where Serafina and Nightsong have their date was inspired by Parisian "death cafes." Mel Gordon's book Cabarets of Death was essential to the description here.

"You probably, like, read poetry about mine collapses in your spare time.": This line is essentially a dig at myself; one of my earliest publications was a poem about a mine collapse, titled "Death Had Come to the Crying Town," when I was in middle school. It was published in a SUNY series called Poetry and the Children.

Nightsong's ghost story: the ghost story that Nightsong tells to break down Serafina's walls was inspired by the Pine Hill Haints song "Whisper in the Dark." I had the good fortune to see them live years ago; cracking good band.

The fruit plate: the overlong list of fruits on the dessert plate that Serafina and Nightsong share at the Wormwood Star was pulled from Christina Rossetti's poem "Goblin Market." Rossetti's poem is, at heart, about the love between women, so it felt like the appropriate reference to make in a chapter where two women are steadily falling in love with each other--even if one of them doesn't realize it at the time.

Nightsong's folk song: the song Nightsong sings for the patrons of the Wormwood Star is a version of "The Two Sisters" (or any of its twenty-one variations). In the real-world song, the musician does make an instrument out of the murdered sisters body, the sound of which exposes the living sister's crime.

The Pearl: the inn Nightsong is staying at is a reference to The Pearl, a Victorian pornographic publication that featured a good deal of lesbian sex. As is probably clear in Ornamental Women, Piskaro's Pearl caters exclusively to a lesbian clientele. 

Nightsong's real name: all three parts of her real name are an allusion to Lady Gaga's "Alejandro." Sometimes you just have to have some fun with it to keep yourself amused.

The Unholy House of Manfred Gretzenhof

To cap off our run of interconnected Halloween Month one-shots, I ran a game of Blades in the Dark for the group. Instead of using the game's default Doskvol setting, I used Krevborna. The premise was that the characters were all blackened skalds--devil-worshipping bards--who had been hired by the infamous Nightsong to infiltrate a Hallowmass party and steal an unpublished manuscript written by Morten Jaqard (who featured in all four of the Halloween Month games). 

Characters

Winterwake, the Cutter

Nithogg, the Lurk

Vigil, the Hound

Ashlen, the Slide

Bleakwold, the Spider

Ulfurbryn, the Whisper

Events

We began play with the characters arriving at a lonesome house on the moors just outside of Creedhall in their stolen catering uniforms and domino masks. But how did they get into this position? We flashed back to the events leading up to this moment. Ashlen kept watch over the house, learning that it had been shut until just recently when its master had returned. Ulfurbryn used his occult contacts to discover that the master of the house was a man named Manfred Gretzenhof, a powerful sorcerer who had been absent for years. Winterwake and Bleakwold paid a visit to a costume shop and learned that the guests were du Grandier (a traveling healer who would be dressed as a jester), Striborg (a Church agent who would be dressed as a monk), Osanna Blucher (a noblewoman who would be dressed as a nun), Dimitri Marozov (a drakoi glutton who would be dressed as a knight), and Genivette Harlow (a highwayman who would be dressed as a pirate, specifically as Vanessa Laurant). Nithogg arranged for a smuggler to be waiting with a carriage, hidden in the trees, so they could make a quick getaway.

It was Vigil's trip to the catering company that allowed them to stage an ambush and take the caterers' place for the evening in question. Once in position in their roles as the catering staff, the group noticed that something was "off" with the chef--he didn't seem to know his business nearly as well as he should have. Even more disconcerting was the fact that none of the costumed party guests knew why they were there--there was talk among them of mysterious invites and hints of blackmail should they fail to attend.

Vigil was able to sneak upstairs to scout the possible location of the manuscript; however, the first room she entered was set up for some sort of foul surgical exhibition. An unconscious woman was strapped to a chair on a raised dais, with five chairs arranged for an audience to watch. Vigil heard the squeak of wheels approaching; ducking her head out of the door, she saw a man in a skull mask pushing a trolley laden with surgical implements toward the room! Confronting the man didn't work very well--he was quite unimpressed by her threats of violence, and a wave of his hand sent her flying. 

Vigil was only able to escape the situation when Ulfurbryn intervened by throwing a vial of ectoplasm at the man's feet and using his magic to conjure the specters of everyone he had ever wronged. Even this was only a temporary solution; the man tore off his mask and began to eat the many ghosts arrayed against him!

Meanwhile, Ashlen tumbled through a secret door while the dinner guests were occupied and fell down into the basement--which was strewn with human bones and corpses hanging from meat hooks. The guests were alarmed by the sound, and by Ashlen's discovery, but as they tried to leave they discovered that everyone was magically trapped inside the house. Winterwake was able to confirm this when she attempted to use dynamite to blow the front door open, to no effect.

Bleakwold followed the chef upstairs and saw him enter the library and begin to unsuccessfully rifle through the books. A hidden room was located on the same floor--in which the manuscript was uncovered and duly stolen.

Nithogg made his way to the fourth floor, where he had an unfortunate encounter with a woman who slopped out of the muck in a filthy tub. He ran for it, locking himself in a bedroom. Meanwhile a few of the others were able to join him on this floor and dispatch the woman so he could leave safely.

Ultimately, the group uncovered a few things that enabled their escape from the house: besides Manfred (the man who had the skull mask), there was another powerful source of magic operating within the house--the woman Manfred had planned to perform occult surgery on to be "inhabited by the Dark Mother." (After which, he planned on using the woman to kill off his dinner guests, who had all offended him in one way or another.)

Secondly, the woman was trying to communicate with them via the witch boards they discovered within the house. By speaking to her via the witch board, they were able to figure out that she could be awakened by spelling out her name--Veronica--using the planchette. Unfortunately, channeling her reduced two of the skalds to twitching vegetables. Once awakened, she was able to fight Manfred and destroy the magical lock keeping everyone within the house. As they passed the room in which she confronted Manfred, they saw Veronica push her thumbs into his eyes as he screamed on his knees.

The blackened skalds dragged their incapacitated comrades to their waiting carriage, sped off into the night, and delivered the manuscript to Nightsong, who planned to give it to her wife as a gift. When asked if she knew anyone who might restore their friends, Nightsong offered to take them to the lab of Viktoria Skarnstein.

I'm sure the "improvements" Viktoria makes to them won't hurt...too much.

Beyond the Black Goat's Woods

The Halloween one-shots continued with a very different PLANET MOTHERFUCKER game that was re-flavored to feel more like a grimdark fantasy than the usual psychotronic trash culture apocalypse. The connections to previous one-shots in this series continued as well; this time we were playing through the final chapters of Gary Brown's (teenage survivor of a plane crash in the first session, genre author using his fiction to spread the madness of Shub-Niggurath in the second) final novel.

As you might notice from the list of characters below, none of the characters had actual names. As is the old-school rpg trope, the characters were referred to only as their "class." I guess Gary was a bit of a grognard, eh?

Also old-school was the nature of the adventure. I used a hacked-up version of "The Death Ziggurat," which is mostly a randomly generated hexcrawl with a few detailed locations.

Characters

Mortuary Knight

Funereal Priest of Kalag-Mohr

Ossuary Cryptarch

Order of the Scarab Assassin

Ranger of the Thornwoad

Dustspeaker of the Empty Hell

Events

Beyond the Black Goat's woods, the party found a deep depression filled with ruins--it looked as though a giant fist had pummeled the earth. They located the camp of a fearful group of cultists clad in furs, outlandish headdresses, and dangling bits of bone. The cult's leader brought them to the cavemouth that could lead into the depression. This was a literal "cavemouth": its rocky fanged jaws were clamped shut, but they opened when the Ranger of the Thornwoad bled upon it.

They explored as they moved north from the cavemouth. Strange phenomena occurred as they traveled. At one point, the daylit sky turned to black night and a hole that was darker than darkness could be seen expanding in the sky. (This was a callback to "Black Hole Sun" playing in the Velvet when the agents went to stop the handoff of Gary's art.) At another point, snow began to fall from the black hole in the night sky.

The group encountered a pack of priests in black robes with wide-brimmed black hats and veils. The priests attempted to warn them off of venturing further through the ruins, then warned them of Arkuhn, the Child of the Cosmos, Daughter of the Black Goat. The group ran for it as Arkhun approached--they didn't even stop to get a look at her.

After fleeing from Arkuhn, the party discovered a spiraling chapel. From the top of the chapel's spire, they saw a frozen lake and smoke rising from an encampment of some kind, but they did not see the ziggurat they sought. 

They decided to head for the encampment to see if they could gleam any information as to the ziggurat's whereabouts, but they never made it there. On the way, they encountered another pack of Arkuhn's rot-priests and two dark young of Shub-Niggurath. The priests really latched onto the Ossuary Cryptarch, chomping away at his flesh while the others fought off them off. Somehow, he survived.

They searched the priests' bodies after the melee and discovered that they all wore medallions that held hidden keys. Now that they had these, they decided against visiting the encampment. Instead, they headed for the frozen lake. The lake was surrounded by moaning undead whose feet were stuck in the frigid mire. They ultimately decided that they didn't want to mess with that.

Heading north again brought them to the spiral chapel again. However, those who now had medallions could see a swirling tornado of fog partially obscuring a black ziggurat that they hadn't been able to see before. Investigating the mural of a priest surveying the cosmos also netted them a crown that was bladed on the inside. The Ossuary Cryptarch removed the blades from the crown, but it didn't do anything when he put it on. 

Those who had medallions had to lead those who did not, but they eventually pushed their way through the fog tornado and up the steps of the black stone ziggurat. At the top of the ziggurat, they used three of the keys to unlock a "scab" that led straight down into a pulsating "throat" of flesh. They shimmied down the wet flesh tunnel and found themselves in a meaty cavern where a large heart was beating.

They also found Arkuhn, a floating child with too many eyes, goat horns, and a toothy maw running vertically down her body.

While the rest of the group engaged Arkuhn in combat, the Order of the Scarab Assassin stabbed the heart, killing it. (This was a wise thing to do; if the heart wasn't destroyed, Arkuhn would have kept resurrecting.) The Mortuary Knight hit Arkuhn hard enough to send her spinning out of control. The Funereal Priest's devotion gave everyone the zeal to hit harder, and the Ranger of the Thornwoad peppered Arkuhn with arrows--until her bow was damaged. The Dustspeaker of the Empty Hell tried to demoralize her to get her to flee, but Arkuhn held strong in the face of adversity. The Ossuary Cryptarch stabbed Arkhun with a blade from the crown, but this healed her--undoing a lot of their hard work to slay her. She relentlessly blasted them with bolts of cosmic evil from her eyes. Ultimately, the Order of the Scarab Assassin leapt through the air and stabbed the eldritch child to death.

The grim party who had fought their way beyond the Black Goat's woods had triumphed. Their world was safe from Shub-Niggurath's influence. 

But what of the echoes that would reverberate across other worlds? Well, we'll tackle that in the last of these Halloween one-shots.

Dark Horse Ravenloft Comic #1

The first issue of Dark Horse's new Ravenloft comic is out. Is it any good?

Well.

It's fine, but it has some problems.

The premise is semi-interesting: Rudolph Van Richten is off on some sort of expedition--and is needlessly tight-lipped about what he's up to or why--and his goodbye note to Ezmerelda D'Avenir, the Weathermay-Foxgrove twins, and Alanik & Arthur sounds so much like a suicide note that they all set off to find him. 

This first issue focuses on Ezmerelda's search. (I know we're supposed to call her "Ez," but I don't understand the reason for the change.) Ezmerelda encounters some gremishka, which really illustrates how hard it is to have an introductory comic with one character with no sidekick to bounce off of; she ends up just giving a lore dump, out loud to an audience of no one in the fictive world, as she fights the monsters, which feels incredibly clumsy. She has no real reason to be explaining why she has a prosthetic leg when no one is around who could benefit from that information.

After she falls down a glacier, she meets up with a nameless stranger and then they're both promptly taken captive by Viktra Mordenheim's minions and brought to the mad doctor's schloss. Viktra is suitably creepy, discounting anyone and everything except her own devotion to science. Ezmerelda eventually turns the tables on Viktra so that she and the mysterious stranger (a reborn) can escape. They run into a monster again, which causes Ezmerelda to immediately name what it is out loud (sigh). The issue ends with Ezmerelda smashing up Viktra's experiments and doing some arson on the way out.

Overall, it's an okay issue, but I'm not sure okay is good enough for a first issue of a series. Grab our attention, go big with it, damn it! 

The Weathermay-Foxgrove girls look to be the protagonists of the second issue. We'll see if it picks up.