Vhakizla – Chapter 6

"Summer of 67, Second Age. Vhak.
The Night of Twenty Moons, they called it. A night that lasted three years and a siege that lasted as long as the night. An allied army of dwarves, elves, orcs and mercenaries besieging Aos, the last vampire stronghold in Auros. An army of thirty thousand or more. An army under one command – Chimera’s. Only she wasn’t called Chimera then.
I was there. Few enough of us left in the company can claim the same. I remember every miserable moment of that three-year-hell, a darkness so deep neither sunlight nor light spirit could dispel it. Only silver and stake proved the task.
Those were the good days. When we need only gaze up at her dark tower to know where the vampire dwelled. When we need only meet the bloodsuckers on the field and feed them our steel like honest soldiers.
Down there? In that deathly city? The vampire must be uprooted like a weed, even if it means overturning all the cobbles to find them. And that task falls to the Commander’s tent.
Pity the poor bastards."
– Beholder's Log, Gnoson 20, 67 2A

It took some coordination but the Menagerie in Izla managed to coordinate a series of watches, spreading their twenty-five mercenaries thin across the city. Watching for any sign of Sanguine activity, they were told not to engage – unless they're discovered or overwhelmed, in which case they're meant to shoot a flare into the sky. Meanwhile, their officers are busy elsewhere.
Armed with a pack of ghouls, the Commander's Tent raids a slaver den. Mouse scouts the location – an abandoned manor house on Drahir Canal – first and gives the all-clear. Umber forces the doors open. Griffon barks orders and threats. Remorhaz leaps onto the table and demands to see the person in charge.
From there, however, the raid quickly went south. Masked Sanguine leapt at the mercenaries with clubs and slaver douses, fighting nearly to the death. Much of the evidence was smashed or stashed, unable to be examined by the mercenaries after the fact. Worst of all, a terrifying screech from overhead heralded the arrival of a dreadful vampiric bat-beast – a brucoloc.
Combat quickly ensued. The brucaloc stooped into the manor's courtyard and sank its fangs into Remorhaz's shoulder, pumping them full of poison and bearing their lifeless body into the air. Mouse leapt after them, clinging to the brucaloc's hairy hide but, despite how many times they stabbed the beast, its wounds continued to close and close. Umber scrambled to revive the dying Remorhaz and, no sooner had he done so, than he leapt for the circling brucolac and bearing it to the ground. It was Griffon who dealt the killing blow, tapping into his lycanthropy to slash the creature into mist with his claws.
The mercenaries, battered and broken, took a moment to recover. They inspected the heinous wounds on Remorhaz's shoulder and resolved that they could do very little at the moment. They interrogated a captured Sanguine, who only laughed in their face and gave them no information. They contemplated the well in the courtyard's center, leading down into the catacombs below. With dawn four hours distant, they decided to risk it and climbed into the undercity, hoping to track the rebel back to his den.

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

• Griffon
• Mouse
• Remorhaz
• Umber