The Characters
Raoul Carathis, occultist and necromancer
Countess Catarina Redmoore, prioress of an unsettlingly convent
Doctor Pendleton Torst, rogue anatomist
Events
On the way to Sibersk, the party stopped for the evening at a hostelry called The Hanged Man Inn. They arranged for rooms and a meal. As the proprietor brought their food to the table, he noted the weapons they carried, leaned in close, and asked them not to kill anyone inside the inn. This seemed like a strange request, and it quickly began to look like an impossible request when four mercenaries walked into the inn and took a table. Pendleton noticed that they all wore cloaks made of rat fur--a tell-tale sign that they were the Black Rats that Serafina had warned him had been hired to apprehend him by the Holland family.
When violence inevitably broke out, things did not go in the Black Rats' favor. Catarina blew one of their faces off with her pistol; the Widow crushed another's windpipe. Once the dust settled, the innkeeper began to panic. Just then, the inn's door swung open and a black-robed figure, its face obscured by a cowl, glided into the establishment. The strange interloper gathered up the dead Black Rats and stuffed their corpses, rather improbably, into a large sack. The creature then paid the innkeeper for the bodies, dropping coins into his trembling palm. It then departed without ever speaking a word.
The entity had left one of the Black Rats behind, who proved not to be dead. He was dragged outside, and before he expired he intimated that they had "the girl" in their clutches. The group pondered whether Rebecca had been captured again, but Pendleton conjectured that perhaps they had kidnapped Serafina. Examining the coins the creature had given the innkeeper, they saw that they were stamped with the likeness of Countess Alcesta von Karlok--Raoul suspected that the creature was a minion of the Crucifuge, an order of necromancers who sometimes served the vampiric lieges of Sibersk.
In the morning, they resumed their journey. Their next stop was the village of Valekia on the threshold of Sibersk. When they arrived, the village was in the midst of a celebration, which they quickly learned was in honor of the four heroes who had liberated Valekia from the rule of the vampire Countess Vlodeska. Each of the heroes was a woman (Petra Ivanova, a templar of the Church; Wolfblood Nenika, a huntress from the Silent Forest; Jiriel, an elven pyromancer, Svetlana Silbervaas, a daring rogue) as only they seemed immune to the Countess's supernatural beauty. The villager they spoke to recommended that they attend the sermon in the Convent of the Sacred Innocence, where the entire tale would be recounted as part of the festivities. Curious about the village's history, they decided to do something out of character: they went to church.
The sermon was long and tedious...up until the holy symbols within the convent burst into flame and a acrid smoke began to obscure the windows. Attempts to leave the convent were stymied by forceful blasts of vile smoke; the Widow was flung across the room--her shoulder joint was broken by the impact as she slammed into the wall. The group attempted to flee deeper into the convent, but the whole building came down on top of them. They were all knocked unconscious as both the ceiling and the floor collapsed.
They awoke to dawn's light streaming in from above. In the room with them was evidence of a satanic rite: a pentagram drawn in blood, a burned-down black candle at each of its five points, words written in the Verbis Diablo written around the perimeter of the pentagram. They cleared the rubble away from the room's only door, but were disturbed by the sounds coming from beyond the door--alternating sounds of something noisily feasting, growling like an animal, and giggling like a child. Spying through a crack in the door revealed that the sounds were all coming from a wolf-like figure with burgundy fur that was eating something or someone on the floor of the hallway beyond the door.
Unwilling to deal with this monster directly, Raoul summoned the ghost of one of the convent's long-dead nuns to lead the creature away from the door. The nun chastised the wolf-like woman into retreating to one of the chambers connected to the hallway. The group opted to explore a different chamber. As they investigated, they found a shaft where a metal spiral staircase had torn away from the wall. They directed the Widow to hold a rope so they could safely descend into the bowels of the convent.
The bottom of the shaft was a muddy sinkhole; human remains could be seen poking up out of the muck. There seemed to be no other exits to the shaft, but there was a large boulder made of black volcanic glass. Raoul examined it and found that it was covered in runes warning anyone not versed in the arts of necromancy from touching it. The boulder also radiated an intense cold.
Unfortunately, while the Widow was holding their rope she was attacked by the wolfwoman. She managed to throw the wolfen woman down the shaft to her death, but when the group went back up to check on the Widow they found her badly injured. Pendleton's magic was unable to heal her, but the Widow insisted she could soldier on.
(Catarina found a dagger carved from a human femur. At one point the dagger, or a voice speaking in Catarina's head through the dagger, urged her to kill her compatriots.)
Eventually the group found themselves in a chamber with a statue of Petra Ivanova, one of the four champions who had liberated Valekia. The chamber also featured four iron doors that were impossible to open. However, upon further investigation the statue proved to be movable; it could be swiveled so that Petra's outstretched hand could be pointed at any of the iron doors. When it was pointed at one of the doors, the door swung open, revealing the crypt of Jireal, an elven sorceress who had been part of Petra's band of freedom fighters.
From the look of things, Jiriel's final resting place had been ruptured from within, which made the group consider the possibility than a now-undead Jiriel was stalking the crypts. They also found Jiriel's personal grimoire and a black bow with 13 ebony arrows. The group conjectured that perhaps a reanimate Jiriel had been responsible for the smoke at assaulted the convent, and that perhaps the wolf-like creature was a returned Nenika--after all, she was also called "Wolfblood."
Returning to the central chamber, they pointed Petra Ivanova at another chamber door, which also swung open. Beyond it lay...well, we'll find out in the next session.
