A Dread Mist: Session Three

A Dread Mist: Session Three

Lofty timbers, the walls around are bare, echoing to our laughter as though the dead were there...
Quaff a cup to the dead already, hooray for the next to die..
                                -Bram Stoker, “Dracula”

Guided by the ghosts of Rose and Thorn, the neglected children of Gustav and Elisabeth Durst, you found yourselves at the bottom of a cramped twisting stairwell deep beneath the manor home. Staring into the airless dark ahead, you return to the main house above – completeness is indeed the better part of valor.

Following a steady plink of water drops, led you to an upstairs bedroom moldy and empty. A curious Zenbis peered into the bathing tub and was assaulted by a decaying woman’s corpse from above – only to have it pass harmlessly like an echo.

In the Durst’s master suite – once ornate and festooned with images of their beloved windmill, but now choked with cobwebs and dust, you found a filigreed jewelry box that yielded a few long-forgotten possessions: three gold rings and a pendant necklace. A letter from Lady Durst, described her intent to perform a ceremony without Lord Durst present upon an innocent subject related to the harlot who had cared for her own children.

The manor’s magnificent dining hall divulged a sumptuous feast, but only the tableware drew your interested and ended up in your possession. Your inspection of the nearby larder produced a paltry clutch of old nuts and curious jerky – a snack for a later hunger.

Buoyed by a new atmosphere of quiescence, you pulled open the hidden door and descended into the tight musty maw of the secret stairs leading below. Cold and haunting chanting of hollow voices echoed and grew as you descended.

Stepping into the basement black, you found six crypts – empty except for swarms of biting centipedes. Inside sarcophagi labeled Rosevalda and Thornwald, you put the bones of the children to rest at last. Their spirits at peace, their ghostly forms abandoned you in the dank underground. The remaining nameplates read Gustav, Elisabeth, and Walter.

Your torchlight sunk into the shadows of the squalid dorms where the Durst cult’s initiates must’ve slinked away to suffer sleep undoubtedly troubled by their troubling deeds. When Delron passed too close to a foul smelling well the bloated hands of undead ghouls reached out and sought to drag you to your doom. Gibbering madly “Beautiful! Nothing can hurt us! We are perfect!” you ended their unlife with sword and bow.

Other than a deck of fortune telling cards, the cult’s only entertainment seemed to be keeping a logbook replete with pages upon pages of entries detailing the torture and death of their victims. Inside a pouch made of human skin you found a handful of gemstones. In one alcove, a silvered sword was hidden underneath rotting bedsheets.

A behemoth spider its body teeming with hungry spiderlings attacked you in the vile basement larder. More ghouls assaulted you from hiding places in the hallways. Down a slime-slick stairway the chanting beckoned and forewarned.

Ahead, the chill pallid light from a shimmering orb drew you into the next room. Skeletons chained mercilessly to the wall were forever forced to stare at the orb, held high in the hand of a statue of a handsome, cruel man – a faithful marble wolf at his side. Astonished, you watched as your own shadows cast in the light of the orb peeled from the very walls and attacked. In hard combat you annihilated the shades and smashed the shimmering orb.

Deeper in the dungeon you met the Dursts – bursting from the earthen walls of their secret subterranean den, long yellow claws and lifeless eyes snarling and bloodthirsty. Putting the foul beasts to the sword, you claimed a spellbook, a magical cloak, thieves’ tools, and a handful of other items obviously looted from the cult’s victims – many, it seems, were adventurers not unlike yourselves.

No choices left, you descend another dark stone stairway into the deafening cacophony of chanting voices. A gaping reliquary greeted you, but the interminable intonations drew you to a nearby portcullis keeping you from a enormous chamber filled with dark spectral figures rhythmically swaying in front of a blood stained altar above inky black water. Voices crashing in relentless waves on your ears, their words are now clear: “He is the Ancient. He is the Land. By blood and soil.”

Unable to lift the portcullis from the outside you uncovered a secret passage through the nearby cells where sacrifices were held prior to use.

While the rest of you prepared for battle, Zenbis charged into the room, leapt onto the dais, and let loose a thunderwave. The blast dissipated the ghostly cultists, but awakened a shambling mound of foul carrion and bones in an alcove. It congeals into an enormous, teeming mass of rotting flesh, clattering bones, and decay.

As the party battled the creature, it engulfed Shera. Inside the beast, with arrows and magic thudding against it, she found a swaddled infant imprisoned by pulsing tendrils of filth. Blow by blow she snapped each one, spewing gore and bile. But, when she broke the last one, the creature erupted in a towering cascade of decay and fell still.

Durst Manor, though, now denied the sacrifice of the party, shuddered in rage. Stone, brick, and timber cracked and snapped in hatred. You raced to exit and burst out of the structure onto the mud outside at last.

As you caught your breath, a little mechanical creature unlike anything you’d ever seen picked up a beam of wood on the ground nearby. With a whirr, it planted the sign firmly in the ground: “Death House! Do Not Speak to The Children!”