Blyman's Cove

We left off last time with the characters in our Krevborna campaign on a beach, about to engage some soldiers, so we picked up with them on the beach, engaging said soldiers. We also got a reveal that actually took some of the players by surprise, which is gratifying because I worked hard to keep from spoiling it too early.

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

Willard Corn and Beebo, a farmer and a monkey

Events

We last left our heroes at Blyman's Cove, on a rocky ridge overlooking the beach were the fearsome pirate man o' war  Dawnrazor was careened and having its hull scraped clean of barnacles by the crew. The party had ventured here to find Captain Vanessa Laurant, who had the supernatural ability to track Pendleton Torst. Complicating the situation was the fact that Farrowhawk soldiers were hastily assembling a cannon on the ridge so that they could fire upon the vulnerable ship. Complicating matters even further was the fact that Aria had charged up to them and issued a challenge, earning the immediate ire of half of the soldiers.

Aria's plan worked in that four of the soldiers descended on her in a fury, but it didn't work as intended when the soldiers proved able to nearly fell her. As battle was joined, Garazi bound the soldiers still trying to get the cannon operational with magical chains. Beebo the monkey once again pulled a gun and began firing, much to everyone's continued astonishment. The group rallied and slew their foes--save for one officer who was grappled by Heck and bound in manacles by Panthalassa. 

The group marched their captive down to the beach, where they were met by a line of pirates pointing muskets at them in suspicion. Luckily, Dandy John, the quartermaster of the Dawnrazor, recognized Daytona from his time delivering messages between Vanessa and Catarina. (In fact, Dandy John referred to Daytona as "the Countess's mailman.") 

Since the arrival of more soldiers intent on massacring the pirates was immanent, Dandy John gave orders for the Dawnrazor to be made ready to sail with the arrival of the tide. There was one problem, though: the captain had led a number of pirates into the caves along the ridge, and Dandy John would not leave without her. (He surmised that the captain was busy killing potentially mutinous sailors in the caves since she had selected only disloyal pirates to accompany her.) Because time was of the essence, the group volunteered to venture into the cave to make the captain aware of what was going on outside.

The group quickly learned that Dandy John's supposition was correct when they found the first (of many) dead pirates just beyond the cave's entrance. Besides still-warm corpses, the group located several piratical shrines and a parrot flying around seeking an exit. When Panthalassa coaxed the parrot to land on her arm with some food, it said "The egg is in the seabird's next"--an uncanny echo of part of Viktoria Frankenstein's coded message to Panthalassa. 

Due to Garazi's keen powers of perception, the group was able to avoid tumbling into a pit trap. Beyond the trap they witnessed the captain executing one of her errant crew...except the "captain" wasn't the captain they were expecting: instead of Vanessa Laurant, they had located Thomasina, Vanessa's adopted ward, who was now the acting captain of the Dawnrazor. 

After explaining the situation unfolding outside to Thomasina, she told them she couldn't leave until she had accomplished a task that had been assigned to her. She led them to a strange stone chest in a  dead-end corridor. The chest was decorated with skulls and bones that were inlaid into its surfaces. The top of the chest had many indentations in it and at the front were four levers. Each lever ended into a knob that was etched with a symbol; from left to right there was a devil's face, an octopus, a bottle, and a parrot. A bucket at the side of the chest held a number of pirate figures carved from wood.

Garazi made short work of the puzzle by placing fifteen of the pirate figures into the holes at the top of the chest and then pulling the lever marked with a bottle. Fifteen men on a dead man's chest...yo ho ho and a bottle of rum, indeed.

Solving the puzzle caused some stone to shift in the corridor, revealing a crawlspace. Beyond the crawlspace were a number of caverns. The first featured a small alchemical laboratory and ten large steel caskets. The room beyond held a single casket, which proved to be the resting place of another body that exactly resembled Viktoria Frankenstein. Thomasina began loading her pistol and asked Panthalassa if she wanted to wait in the other cavern while she did what she had been sent to do: put two bullets in Viktoria's head. 

Back on the beach, the group boarded the Dawnrazor on Thomasina's invitation and convened to share information. Although she was sworn not to reveal the exact location, Thomasina divulged that Pendleton was safe on "the farm." The group initially thought "the farm" was a euphemism for a dirt nap, but she explained that Vanessa had an island farm where she was currently guarding Pendleton against the Frankenstein household's foes. 

Aria, already under pressure due to revelations about her possibly otherworldly nature, became tired of the vagueness of the conversation and slammed a Vlaak cleaver into the captain's dinner table. Thomasina, though young, was still the captain of the vessel--in no uncertain terms, she reminded Aria of that fact. (They would later have a private talk in which Thomasina tried to pass on some advice for dealing with her rage and confusion.)

Later, Thomasina showed Daytona that she had kept all the wooden animals he had carved for her and let Panthalassa see that she still had the plants that she had sent along. She promised that there were more in her garden on the farm and plucked a rose, trimmed its thorns, and stuck it behind Panthalassa's ear. 

Daytona also finally received word from Catarina. Although the message was garbled, he could make out that the Widow and Viktoria's servants had arrived in Lachryma seeking shelter. They had been shepherded there by Kassidy Durango.

Thomasina ferried them to Piskaro, where they were due to meet Nightsong at the Six-Legged Pig as per their plan. They found Nightsong in the company of what was possibly the most beautiful woman they had ever seen; weirdly, despite the heat, she was wearing a fur-lined dress but did not appear to be sweating. There were six armored knights stationed around the table, obviously there as the woman's protection. (Although, she needs no protection.)

Daytona knew that these "people" were vampires, but even he was shocked when the woman introduced herself as Alcesta von Karlok, whom they knew to be the most powerful vampire in Krevborna. What followed was a lot of fear and confusion. The group wanted to get as far away from Alcesta as possible, and lied to Nightsong to pry her away. (Alcesta, of course, discerned the lie--she can probably distinguish everyone's heartbeat in a five-mile radius.) Nightsong resented being deceived and interpreted their actions as choosing to go to Catarina instead of continuing their agreed-upon plan to find Serafina and Viktoria.

Acrimony was building, but got smoothed over. Although who knows how and when that might erupt again. Nightsong was able to explain that the seer she had paid to scry Serafina's location indicated that she was in Veil. All they had to do was travel there and begin a more focused search. 

Next time, they arrive in the dangerous and ruined city of outlaws.

The Tomb of Ahkmosa and The Warren

Two Grail Tomb adventure locations.

The Tomb of Ahkmosa

In the far southwestern reaches of the Vespermark, the grasslands give way to an expanse of harsh desert and badlands called the Ash Barrens. The shifting sands of the Ash Barrens are dotted with an untold number of pyramids that are the burial sites for Vlaak nobles and members of the priestly caste. The largest of these pyramids is the resting place of Ahkmosa, a high priest of the Vlaakish cult of Dracula. 

    • Hidden with the pyramid’s internal maze is Ahkmosa’s gilded sarcophagus and the stone coffins of his immediate family, trusted retainers, and pets.

    • Desert nomads native to the region attempt to warn off any would-be trespassers who wish the breach the interiors of Ahkmosa’s pyramid, for a fearsome curse is said to descend on any who dare to rob his grave. 

    • The pyramid is also protected by both cunning mechanical and arcane traps—one of the traps will awaken Ahkmosa from his otherwise eternal slumber if triggered.

    • Once awakened, Ahkmosa will stalk the land as a mummy in search of his favorite concubine, whom he believes has been reincarnated as an innocent youth.

The Warren

A Grail Tomb beneath the streets of Creedhall has become the underground lair of a menagerie of bestial experiments who have escaped the laboratories of Creedhall University. These piteous humanoid creatures—which include scientifically and magically engineered mouselings and ratlings, as well as undefinable mongrels—have taken shelter within the Grail Tomb, renaming it “the Warren.”

    • Most of the creatures who dwell in the Warren merely want to avoid the people who populate the world above; they venture to the surface after nightfall to steal food and quickly return to their haven.

    • Reports of strange beastfolk prowling the town have so far been largely dismissed as the fevered imaginings of drunken students.

    • A vocal, and violent, minority within the Warren wish to strike back against the world that cruelly experimented upon them; they regard their feckless creators as monsters who must be punished, if not exterminated, for their hideous misdeeds. 

A Sacrifice to Baphomet

Want to make your players nervous? Just ask them to be very specific about the sleeping arrangements when they book a stay at an inn for the night.

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

Willard Corn and Beebo, a farmer and a monkey

Events

After the beating they took at the Taurus Inn, the party decided to retreat to Borza and book a night in a different inn for safety's sake. The inn they settled on was called The Primrose. Everyone but Heck (who bunked down in the adjacent stables) and King Beebo (who lit out to parts unknown) had rooms inside. Panthalassa and Garazi were both pretty upset over the death of Rudolpho the Magnificent.

However, they were awakened in the middle of the night when the inn's door slammed open and someone with heavy-footed steps began to ascend the stairs, heading toward their rooms. It didn't help that this interloper was bellowing "Where are they, Mire Knight? Where are they?"

Panthalassa and Garazi hatched a quick plan to exit their room through the window, but before they could escape the "man" kicked in their door. Except, he was less of a man and more of a stitched-together monstrosity made of mismatched limbs and ill-fitting flesh. 

Garazi sent her familiar to rouse Heck down in the stable. King Beebo also arrived on the scene, and he had a new friend in tow: enter the (possibly insane?) pitchfork-wielding farmer Willard Corn! Even with backup, the corpse golem proved to be a menace in combat; he backhanded Garazi so hard that she nearly died. However, Heck stepped up and demolished the creature with a powerful rending strike. 

Once the dust settled, it was determined that the stitchwork holding the creature together was much cruder than that practiced by Viktoria Frankenstein. 

Garazi went to check on Adrian Vergara, but at some point he had fled the Primrose during the night.

In the morning, the group returned to the Taurus Inn and resumed their exploration. Eschewing the untouched second floor (where all the good loot was), they determined which barrel in the wine cellar was blocking access to the further depths and ventured within. They beheld four figures, each cloaked in purple hooded robes, frantically taking notes as they faced a stone statue of Baphomet. 

When they group looked over their shoulders, they saw that the figures were all writing in Verbis Diablo, but their writings appeared to be the nonsensical scribblings of madmen. Daytona sneaked a peek under their cowls and observed that all four cultists had been transformed into rat-like creatures. When Garazi attempted to interrupt their writing to ask about the whereabouts of the Graymalk witches, she inadvertently stepped too close to the statue and promptly faded out of existence...only to fade back into being in a room in which five of the six Graymalk sisters were bound and clearly drugged into unconsciousness. 

After locating a spiral staircase that led further down into the depths of the Taurus Inn, the group found that they could hear the sound of someone chanting in the caverns below. At the bottom of the stairs, they saw that Lorelei Graymalk, nude and bound to a stone altar with chains, had massive slug that was covered with eyes and mouths slithering up her leg, moving toward her head. 

Standing before the altar was Markos Delarossa, who was intoning blasphemous words and occult phrases from a stitched-together strip of flesh emblazoned with a demonic ritual--he was again attempting the foul rite that had profaned the Taurus Inn in the first place!

Springing into action, Panthalassa used a necrotic bolt to blast the slug monster off of Lorelei. With that out of the way, the rest of the group made short work of Markos. When Lorelei was unshackled, she collapsed sobbing onto Garazi's shoulder. 

The group collected the rest of the Graymalk witches and began to usher everyone out of the Taurus Inn. (They also gave the Graymalks the crucial missing word from the ritual.) However, Nightsong had arrived, with a bottle of wine in hand, and was utterly perplexed by the group's urgency in wanting to discuss matters outside. 

After dragging Nightsong from the inn, Panthalassa described all the horrors they had encountered. Nightsong, in turn, explained that her detour into Chancel was for the purpose of making sure that everyone knew of their daring rescue of Coraline Graymalk from Kholograt Prison. She had even brought along copies of a wanted poster that had a picture of each participant, as well as their names. Nightsong was proud of her "promotional tour," but was dismayed that the group didn't share her enthusiasm for infamy. Aria, in fact, had to walk that one off as it probably meant that her standing with the Church was now destroyed.

However, Nightsong had brought along (stolen) horses for the party and turned the screws on Lorelei Graymalk on Garazi's behalf so that the Graymalks would not threaten Garazi's family in the future. Nightsong had also obtained a useful piece of information for the group: the Dawnrazor was spotted making for Tortaga Island, where it was supposed that Captain Laurant was planning on careening her ship. The group decided that would be their next destination. Nightsong was to travel with the Graymalks to Hemlock Hollow so that she might get someone to scry Serafina and Viktoria's location, but they planned to meet again at the Six-Legged Pig in Piskaro.

After a bit of uneventful travel, the group arrived at Blyman's Cove, a crescent-shaped beach secluded by a rocky ridge, on Tortaga Island. The Dawnrazor was on its side and pirates were busing scraping barnacles from her hull. The stone ridge appeared to be riddled with caves. Additionally, the group spotted a group of soldiers, each wearing a blue tabard bearing the symbol of a gray hawk, assembling a cannon so that they might fire on the Dawnrazor and her crew. 

Aria issued them a challenge; the soldiers drew their swords and...that's where we left things for the evening.

Sudden Death

Bad Books for Bad People, Episode 78: Sudden Death

Sex. Sacrilege. Murder. Tennis. This podcast is all about three out of those four things. Sudden Death, a 1978 novel by Peter Brennan (creator of TV shows Judge Judy and A Current Affair), marks the first time Jack and Kate are venturing into the world of sports thriller fiction. Buckle up, because underneath those tennis whites there’s a seething underbelly of drama and corruption. 

What could go wrong with a little nun-flavored sex work? Why does every character in this book have the most outrageous backstory ever? Will Jack and Kate learn anything about the sport central to this book? All these questions and more will be answered in this episode of Bad Books for Bad People. 

THE PLANET MOTHERFUCKER FILM FESTIVAL

One of the cool things about having a Discord is that you can do a film festival of the movies that inspired your game. This summer I did a PLANET MOTHERFUCKER FILM FESTIVAL to celebrate some of the fucked-up shit that birthed The Only Post-Apocalyptic Game That Matters. Here's what we watched:

Dead Hooker in a Trunk

The Lords of Salem

Machete

Terminal USA

Eaten Alive

The Doom Generation

Now that's a heady line-up! Also, this list is being recorded here for posterity and so that I make sure to show different movies in next year's PMF Film Fest.

A Beast in the Tower, a Girl in the Tree

This session had a dramatic arc even before we started playing: due to a big rain storm, my power was out until twenty minutes before we were scheduled to begin. Luckily, it came back just in the nick of time.

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.

The Cool Friend NPC

What do NPCs in an role-playing game do? To put it another way, what function do they have that justifies the time spent detailing a fictional person beyond "Uhh, yeah, the blacksmith's name is Johann and he says he'll fix your armor for 25 gold pieces"?

Some types of NPCs are fairly self-explanatory, like the "Quest Giver" or the "Nemesis." Those are useful, but I want to write a little bit about a type I haven't seen people talk about much that I really like putting into my campaigns: the "Cool Friend."

The function of the Cool Friend NPC is to make the players feel like their characters are Cool just by knowing the Cool Friend. 

A Cool Friend NPC doesn't have to be powerful to be Cool. Nightsong, the black metal bard from my current Krevborna campaign, is Cool because she's famous, people recognize her, and being pals with her nets the PCs respect; when people realize that the characters are friends with Nightsong, it changes how those people treat them, which in turn makes them feel Cool. They're in, they know somebody important, and a little of that swagger rubs off on them.

You can also use a Cool Friend NPC to shore up a deficiency that the party has, at least in the short term. In the previous campaign, the Widow (a sentient automaton NPC) stuck around because the party lacked any physically strong characters until more players joined the campaign. In the same campaign, Serafina (a grave robber) was a Cool Friend NPC who excelled at stealth, a skill nobody had overly invested in. Viktoria Frankenstein, from the same campaign, was a Cool Friend that the rest of the world feared and could provide medical aid unavailable elsewhere--as well as the use of her chateau as a base of operations.

If your players are smart (and why would you play with dummies?) they will realize that the Coolness of their Cool Friend can be used as a tool to get shit done. Coolness can obviously be leveraged in social situations; using their Cool Friend might open doors to them that would otherwise remain closed. As an example, in my current campaign the players used Nightsong's blasphemous, rage-filled musical performance to start a riot in a prison, and in the ensuing chaos they were able to bust an imprisoned witch out of jail. In this example, Nightsong's Coolness was something that enabled their Coolness--nobody in the setting had ever successfully staged a jailbreak from that prison, but now that group of characters has. 

Of course, acquiring a Cool Friend shouldn't come too easily. A Cool Friend NPC is a bit like a good piece of loot, in that sense. You gotta put in the time to earn that shit.

Just remember that a Cool Friend is there to add to the player characters' Coolness rather than upstaging them. Being the Cool Friend doesn't mean they're a protagonist.

Besides basking in the Coolness imparted by a Cool Friend, here's the other trick: if the players think their NPC buddy is Cool, it will light one fuck of a fire under them when their friend is endangered. You will never see your players so motivated; they will move heaven and earth to save their Cool Friend from peril. Trust me on that.

Jailbreak in Kholograt Prison

This Krevborna adventure picked up again where the last had ended: the characters had just finished exploring the Grail Tomb on an island in the middle of a lake and had returned to the ruined village of Vostok to make camp. 

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

In the morning, they talked the local blacksmith into making copies of the iron key they had found in the Grail Tomb because they knew that it would take four identical keys turned simultaneously to open the strange, oversized iron maiden they that discovered in one of the underground chambers. 

While they waited, Panthalassa called a meeting so the group could share information. Heck, it turned out, was dead, or more accurately, risen from the dead; since Panthalassa was a necromancer, and her father Raoul was the current "Black Prince" of necromancy, he had been looking for her in hopes of finding answers to his questions about being undead. 

Daytona and Nightsong both shared what they knew about the war raging in Hell: three demon lords had formed a confederacy to overthrow the Devil, and the war was likely to spill over into the Mortal Realm. 

Nightsong also told them that she had a rival, Grimescribe, whom she considered her arch-nemesis. 

Aria admitted to being an agent of the Church, but expressed doubts about the practice of burning witches. 

Garazi did not want to talk about why and how she had been captured by witchfinders. Rudolpho also had nothing he wanted to share.

Once the keys were fitted to the corresponding locks in the iron maiden's base, it rumbled and shook as the iron doors slowly opened. The interior was absolutely dark, but a howling wind blew out from the darkness; the wind carried snow into the chamber. Daytona volunteered to cross through the darkness. On the other side, he found that he had emerged from an identical iron maiden that was standing in a cavern. Six corpses in blue tabards displaying a gray hawk insignia lay dead on the cold ground. Once the room was deemed "safe," the others joined him in the cave. 

The bodies were examined and it was determined that they were frozen solid and had been killed by arrows made of magical ice; they realized this was the handiwork of the snow elves. When they looked out of the mouth of the cave, they saw a bone-white tower perched upon a tall mountain that they knew to be Eisengraz, home of the snow elves; across a valley they could see the ruins of an abbey, although what looked like smoke from a campfire rose into the air above it. Garazi sent her familiar to investigate. When her finch returned, she reported that a lone monk remained within. 

Exploring the caverns revealed a natural chamber where a number of treasure chests had been stored, but they now yawned open, empty. However, near the chests were a number of sacks that contained remnants of food--and the food was largely still fresh, so someone had been in there recently. 

In another cavern, they found a burial chamber, complete with a stone grave cover carved into the likeness of Saint Osteen and a number of incense burners that still perfumed the air. On top of the stone slab was a reliquary: the topmost portion of a skull, minus the lower jaw, floated within a reddish liquid held by a case of wood and glass. Nightsong was asked to identify if the reliquary was magical, but her attempt caused the reliquary to burst like a pustule, sending red fluid and skull fragments shooting from within it. 

When they looked around the grave, they found one of Serafina's shovels, although it was broken. Panthalassa and Daytona's friends had been here recently! Curious about the inhabitant of the grave, Heck, Aria, and Daytona pried the slab from the resting place and uncovered a skeleton dressed in rotted white robes, its skull missing. Piercing the skeleton's ribcage was a sword whose blade was formed of magical ice. Aria claimed the sword. 

Their time in Vostok now at an end, the group decided to head to Chancel with Nightsong in tow so they could obtain the magical word they had been tasked with retrieving from a Graymalk witch imprisoned within Kholograt prison. The group hatched a plan to pose as members of a touring religious ensemble and have Nightsong cause a riot with her music once inside to sow confusion and chaos. They managed to arrange a meeting with Martin Broadus, the warden of the Kholograt's northernmost complex. They made a convincing argument that their purpose was to uplift the fallen souls of the prisoners from their sordid lives of criminality and to turn their eyes to the light of the saints. To illustrate the kind of performance they were promising, Nightsong clambered onto the table and sang a beautiful hymn in a clear, moving voice--some members of the group began to suspect that, despite her deal with the Devil, she came from a religious background of some kind.

Impressed with their pitch, and slightly desirous of Garazi, Broadus agreed to their proposal. The only issue was where in the prison they would perform, but they settled on using the prison's enclosed courtyard and repurposing the gallows as a stage. The gallows would, Nightsong said, remind the prisoners of their dwindling mortality and the need for repentance.

Once inside the prison, Garazi sneakily released her finch familiar and set her to finding where Coraline Graymalk was being held. Coraline was not among the prisoners being ushered into the courtyard; the woman, her head shaved, her arms and neck covered in tattoos written in the Verbis Diablo, sat cuffed and leg-ironed in her cell. They now knew where their objective lay.

Back in the courtyard, Rudolpho and his monkey performed as the opening act. At first, the prisoners were unsure why they were being forced to watch an organ grinder and his pet, but when Rudolpho lit his beard on fire at the close of the performance they were cheering and clapping at the lunacy. Nightsong took the stage next. For the first five songs, Nighstong played it straight--religious songs sung in a heartfelt way. But she began inserting blasphemous phrases and ideas as things progressed until, without warning she let loose a hellish growl and her strumming took on a frantic tremolo pace. 

A rage had built within the crowd, and it now erupted into violence. The guards scrambled to get it until control but a riot broke out in the courtyard. Beebo took the opportunity to steal a ring of keys from a guard who was running past, and he let the group out of the courtyard unseen by the now-occupied guards. Panthalassa exited by melding with the earth and reappearing on the other side of the door.

The group managed to avoid the panoptic gaze of the guard tower at the center of the cell block as they made their way to Caroline Graymalk's cell. Since they had the keys already, Heck was able to unlock her cell door but he did not have keys for her manacles--which he noticed were made of witchiron to prevent her from casting spells. 

Unfortunately, Heck's extraction attempt was frustrated when a dozen guards spotted him and ran to intercept. The rest of the group risked being spotted and rushed to Heck's aid. With a sense of horror, the group realized that all of the guards on patrol numbered among the walking dead. Heck was injured in the ensuing fight, and this caused him to go berserk and become terrifying deadly to his foes; he took down a third of their foes on his own. Garazi was able to conjure chains that kept the guards locked down and made them easier to hit. The group was shocked when Beebo drew a pistol from his waistcoat and began firing at their foes. Despite being diminished from his time in Hell, Daytona still knew how to put down an enemy with his six-shooter. Aria quickly learned that her new ice sword was capable of freezing a foe solid; everyone else learned that Aria's eyes changed color and strange things happened when she got into the thick of it.

Once the guards were dispatched, Heck slung Caroline Graymalk over his shoulder and they made for the exit. The witch began to scream, since she had no idea who these folks abducting her were, but Garazi silenced her with magic. At the gate, they realized they had no idea how to get the iron door to raise. Aria chose correctly, kicked a door open, and located the leaver.

They ran into the woods near Kholograt and followed the sound of Nightsong's mandore until they found her. She had a black eye and a split lip from the riot, but otherwise she had fled through a back door without incident. 

They explained who they were and why they had rescued her to Coraline; unfortunately, the arcane word they were after was one of Coraline's tattoos, and it could not simply be written down as the ink of the "word" squirmed, shifted, and changed moment to moment, so the woman bit down on a stick while Aria carved it from her body. Aria also healed the bleeding wound once the gruesome task was complete. Coraline told them that they could find her sisters in the town of Borza, just north of Chancel. She summoned her broom and flew off toward Hemlock Hollow. 

Their next destination was Borza. While on the road north, they were approached by a courier who belonged to the Rooks; he had a message for Panthalassa and let slip that he was the third messenger that had been sent to deliver the missive. All of the others had been found "mangled," he said. Breaking the seal, Panthalassa read the following:

The HOLY TRINITY is on the move. The EGG is in the SEA BIRD’S NEST. The TIN SOLDIER marches to the PALACE OF TEARS. Do NOT attempt to find us–danger abounds.

V.F.