Session 7: Just Past Sunset Pt 2
General Summary
After making his dire pronouncements, Nicodemous Fogg settled onto a barstool at the long bar tended by the Endfar Roadhouse's orcish owner, Seamus MacSeamus. When the vampire, Blood Rose, made HIS pronouncements from outside, astride his clockwork horse, Fogg barely moved. But when anyone approaches a door, he is quick to shout a warning to not let the intruder in.
Ignoring that warning, Trajinous unbarred the back door so that Dolan and Fallenbridge could get inside. They made it just in time, as Blood Rose's clockwork hounds strode around either corner of the inn.
Hoping to gain information, or perhaps just to release tension, Percy stands at a window and shouts insults at the vampire who, it appears, indeed cannot enter the inn unless invited to do so. But this grows old after a while, and Trajinous decides to take matters to her deity. However, to do so, she almost flings open the inn's front door, stopped only when Dolan fires an arrow into it right next to her head, accompanied by a look that seems to say, "Whazza hell?"
Taking her symbol of power to a window, instead, Trajinous invokes the power of her mysterious god and unleashes a torrent of holy energy into the night.
...but the vampire just levitates out of the fog and stares at her with blood-rimmed eyes, his face now sunken against his skull and etched with hate and disdain.
From another window, and atop Percy's shoulders, Kelpip uses the opportunity to examine the vampire's clockwork horse, while Ruhst grills Fogg for details on what happened and why the man led a freakin' vampire to an inn filled with people.
Kelpip realizes that the horse is the product of a gnome clan who had been placed in indentured servitude to a vampire coven some hundred or so years back and that, indeed, there have been rumors of a castle belonging to one of those coven here in these forests east of Etherian Elps. His examination also determines that, though much of the mechanism is mundane and mechanical, the heartfire powering the clockwork creatures is magical and volatile.
Ruhst's inquiries of Fogg confirm the parts about the coven. Fogg's steading was destroyed by vampires, and so he found training and weapons and eventually felt himself powerful enough to take the fight to them at Castle Corey, home of the vampire, Cordelia Corey. Fogg destroyed Cordelia and another of her spawn, but then dusk caught him and he was forced to flee from the other three. But Blood Rose pursued.
Apparently employing amplified vampiric hearing, Blood Rose disputes parts of this account, saying from outside that the steading was destroyed because they had killed one of the vampire clan, to which Fogg countered that they had done so because the vampires had been feeding on the stead holders, to which Blood Rose redirected that, yes, they fed upon them, but had killed none. And so the argument went, while the other travelers in the bar began to debate whether they should just throw Fogg out into the night and hope the vampire would honor his word.
But our heroic Temple Thieves decide that since Blood Rose couldn't enter unless invited, the best course would be to wait him out until sunrise.
Unable to get into the roadhouse himself, and unable to convince those inside to give Fogg over to him, Blood Rose withdraws from his cloak one of the precious scrolls he had retreieved from his mistress' library before setting out from Castle Corey. Calling upon dire forces of the night-dark, he chants the words as his mount rears.
Terrible energies lash the Roadhouse.
And upon their platters, the remnants of dinner rise up! Skeletal chickens and zombie pheasants cock their denuded skulls at those nearby, a horrible light burning within previously empty sockets, and half a giant boar begins to thrash upon the cutting block back in the kitchen, biting its apple in half and turning its undead sight on Missy MacSeamus, Seamus' wife.
But the undead fowl have already begun to eat those who had not long before eaten them! Chaos rules in the common room of the Endfar Roadhouse -- patrons panic and crash into tables and chairs as they attempt to flee, and screams and the clattering of platters and utensils echo back from the timbered ceiling.
Our heroes, though, cool-headed as always, leap into the fray! Percy grabs up a platter and smashes a skeletal chicken into bone fragments, Fallenbridge pelts out inspiring tales of outnumbered forces overcoming all odds, while Dolan pumps arrows into the giant boar, Kelpip summons up blasts of fiery energy, and Trajinous calls down spiritual fire from the heavens to smite her foes. Ruhst takes a moment to flirt with Little Sister before he runs off to help his friends against the worst of the threats, the boar, while the goddess picks up her beer mug, drains it, and starts swinging away.
One of the locals goes down under the onslaught of a zombie pheasant; the bird plucks out the Kenku farmer's eye, while nearby another buries its beak in the stomach of a half-elven sailor traveling to the coast to meet his commission.
In the back of the inn, the undead boar drags its remnants off of the butcher block and rips into Missy MacSeamus with its tusks. The woman barely has time to scream before she goes down in a tumble of crates and entrails and blood.
Ruhst draws the attention of the thing away from her, however, leaping atop the bar and firing arrows into it. The boar hauls itself up onto the bar after the rogue, pulling itself toward Ruhst slowly, but with malign intent.
Fallenbridge leaps down from the stairs where he had been speaking inspirations next to Dolan and the ranger's wolf, landing on a table and moving quickly to aid a traveler beset upon by a hideously unliving-but-mobile supper.
Kelpip, meanwhile, attempts to impede an attacker by covering it in gravy with the judicious use of a phantasmal magical hand, but winds up falling down himself, finding himself eye to beak with the horror. Fortunately, Percy is there and hits the thing with her platter, but the beast is stout and withstands the blows.
Hoping to finish off the boar, and impress Little Sister at the same time, Ruhst does a forward flip over the creature, slashing it open with his blades as he does so, finishing with a solid landing on the floor behind the bar.
Unfortunately, though he does catch the eye of the goddess (and a renewed inspiration point), he doesn't slay the pig and it turns and tears into him, sending him reeling back against the wall. Trajinous hurries to him, stepping over the still breathing but moments-from-dead Missy, and heals some of the rogue's wounds, channeling divine power to do so.
Dolan, meanwhile, leaps down the stairs, taking the steps three at a time, in the hopes of making it to Missy in time to save her.
Fallenbridge and Little Sister finish off all of the undead on that side fo the room, leaving only the boar and the pheasant attacking Kelpip. Percy returns that one to death by plunging a fork through it (Dolan taking a moment to yell, "Don't you have weapons?"), and Ruhst, Kelpip, and Trajinous finish off the board with magic and sharp steel.
Dolan makes it to Missy mere seconds (six of them, to be precise) before her wounds would have overcome her strong spirit, and saves her with his own magics.
And silence fills the tavern, broken only by the sobs of the patrons and the cries of pain from the injured.
Two are dead. But it could have been much worse.
Yet ... this long night is not over.
Settling in for the long haul, the locals (who still whisper among themselves about giving Fogg to the vampire outside) and the Temple Thieves bind their wounds and catch what sleep they can. But Blood Rose isn't done with them yet. His clockwork hounds make their way to the second floor of the inn and break in through the larger windows there. Hearing this -- and the tell-tale whirring of their clockwork parts, Percy leaps to action, drawing her weapons, realizing that the mechanical dogs pose a much greater threat than undead chickens ("No more fun-and-games; I'm getting angry now"), and running up the stairs.
As she does so, a hound leaps from the second-floor wraparound balcony, crashes through the staircase railing, and slams Percy into the wall before righting itself and growling at her with malevelance. The second hound also leaps from the balcony, crushing a table in the common room beneath its weight as it lands.
That second one advances and attacks Trajinous with a long, razor-sharp metal tongue that whips out and tries to trip her up, but the dwarf's center of gravity is too solid and she resists. She and Kelpip begin assaulting the creature of gears and magic with their own signature metaphysical bolts of destruction, catching part of the inn on fire in the process. A second whip from the tongue destroys parts of the bar. All while Dolan and Ruhst fire arrows one after another into the unnatural dogs and Fallenbridge and Little Sister try to get the Endfar patrons to relative safety at the back of the room.
Percy, too close to her attacker to effectively use her weapons, throws her arms around it in a desperate grapple, instead and both go tumbling off the stairs to land in the wreckage of tables down below. Dolan shifts his fire and puts an arrow into the hound, which finds a path to the magical membrane holding its heart-fire stable. The resulting explosion pelts the walls of the inn with gearworks, and sends Percy flying.
But the barbarian isn't out of the game yet. She leaps up and throws herself into battle with the last of the clockwork hounds, even as it bites into the bar next to the nimble dwarf, getting its mouth locked on the splintered wood and tearing off its lower jaw in the process.
From outside, Blood Rose whistles to bring his remaining dog back to his side, but it's too late -- arrows and swords and magic pummel the beast, and one of Trajinous' bolts of holy light pierces the hound's heart-fire core. Another explosion tears into architecture and Percy.
But the night has been won. Blood Rose admits his defeat, and vows his vengeance ... and then rides off into the night.
The next morning, the patrons and heroes of the Roadhouse make their way outside and bask in the sunlight. Seamus MacSeamus thanks them all profusely for having protected them all and "saving" (sort of) his bar, and as a reward gives them the money Fogg had given him back when all of this started -- a bag filled with gold. For Dolan, his thanks are even more profuse, but less material.
As for Nicodemus Fogg ... sometimes after dawn, THAT worthy slank off to parts unknown.
And now the adventurers must decide: on to the Whispering Grasslands to try and make their way through the clans of gnoll nomads? Or a side trek to investigate the ruins of Castle Corey and see what treasures may remain?
Rewards Granted
180 gp offered to the party by Seamus MacSeamus for 'saving' his wife and his inn.
Character(s) interacted with
Nicodemus Fogg, vampire hunter; Blood Rose, vampire; Seamus and Miss MacSeamus, proprietors of the Endfar Roadhouse and Inn
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