Vhakizla – Chapter 5

"Summer of 67, Second Age. Vhak.
Had to be vampires. Sixty years we spent, cleaning up the filth they spread across an innocent earth. For they don’t simply drink blood. If that were all, silver and sunlight’d be plenty to put them down for good. No, a vampire drains life – from the land, from the people, from the body, the mind and the soul. They drink it all.
Worse still? What they put in its place. Poison.
They poison the body, the mind, the soul, the people, the nation, the very land itself – with a narcotic need. With hunger and thirst and death. They transform a healthy body in a starveling wretch and a healthy nation in a sycophantic state. Once they get their fangs in, it’s too late.
Sixty years we spent, seeking to restore the lands they stole. Sixty years we wasted. Vhakizla? It’s no different. This land belongs to vampires, as it ever shall.”
– Beholder's Log, Gnoson 17, 67 2A

Gathered in conference at Thariza Place, the Commander and her closest advisors debated which of their employer's tasks to undertake first. While Chimera – advised by Stirge wanted to hunt down Caliphar II first, she was successfully persuaded to allow the Tent an opportunity to root out the Sanguine in Izla first.
Taking both Stirge and a single unit of infantry with them, the Commander's Tent made the short river trip to Izla. Hierarch Oskamos accompanied them, acting as liason and tour guide along the way. During the boat trip, Umber helped "encourage" a seasick Pudding, whose delicate stomach wasn't suited to all the water travel.
After two days on the river, they arrived in the crumbled squalor of Izla, oldest city on the continent. As their troops made their bivouac at the enormous Temple of Vhakizla in Canalside, the mercenaries wasted no time in hunting down the Sanguine. Between the drug den, the worker's riot or the ritual murder, they chose the murder and headed to Izla Square.
A wight merchant hung from the mouth of the city's Sphinx – its head smashed in, its flesh scorched with holy water and an expression of abject terror on its face. With Stirge's help, they quickly deduced that the wight was turned by a cleric's divine magic and slain with a vial of holy water, a chief ingredient of which – sunlight – meant it must've been imported from outside Vhakizla.
From here, the mercenaries split. While Griffon and Mouse tracked the blood trail they found leading from the scene, Umber and Remorhaz compelled a confession from a local about a Sanguine member in her tenement. Both leads, however, came up with nothing. Griffon's trail went cold and Remorhaz's witness simply lied to settle a score. Umber threatened the entire tenement, claiming that if no one came forward about the Sanguine, they'd burn the place to the ground.
Sure enough, before nightfall, a lowly basket-weaver named Min approached the party at the Temple of Vhakizla. He told them what little he knew of the Sanguine – they were led by the Bride-To-Be, how they manufactured drugs in the catacombs, how Caliphar II himself walked the streets in mist form – but begged them to allow him to return before his absence was noted.
Armed with this information, the mercenaries resolved to break up one of the drug dens – and to catch the next killing in the act.

Campaign: The Menagerie
Game Date: Gnoson 17 – 20, 67 2A
Starting Point: Vhak
Player Characters:

• Griffon
• Mouse
• Remorhaz
• Umber