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.
