Session Two
As the party stood at the top of the stairs, Mother Millian idly shuffled the illustrated cards, and, drawing the sign of The Star, was compelled to muse upon the subject of Destiny:
Millian reflected on the recent destruction of her tribe, of Jiv, of little Olivia, and her own mother Malta, slain by the wrath of a giant and smeared into ghost jelly. Though she had not wanted to continue, the ancestors’ will impelled her on. Perhaps her fate is to explore the nature of all beings’ will to live.
Slag remembered only fire. Fire, and a battle, and then he awoke in that strange glade where the party was first united. His fate, like his past, remains unknown.
Corwin Jones mused again on his simple ranching life before the abduction of his sister, and how, becoming aware of the flesh-eating undead, he could never return to such a bucolic existence.
Evžen listened to their stories with compassion, and joined the party as they descended the precipitous staircase to the basement of Moraru Manor. Hallways throughout the dungeon led to rude quarters containing pallets of straw. Among the possessions of those who once sojurned here, the party found a coin purse of human skin, gems wrapped in a black velvet cloth, an eyepatch bearing a red gem, and an ivory hairbrush with silver bristles. In a room with large dining tables, they found humanoid bones bearing the telltale marks of cannibalism. Coming upon crypts engraved with the names of the Moraru family, the party rolled away the stones to reveal their empty crypts - empty save for Elizaveta’s, from which a swarm of giant centipedes boiled into the hallway, though they were swiftly dispatched. In their crypts the adventurers interred the bodies of Thornton and Rosavelda Moraru, putting the children’s weary souls to rest.
Deeply moved by this act, and encouraged by several bottles of wine, Evžen made a confession to the party. In exchange for his life, he had entered into a compact with the house: to lead travelers deeper into its heart. But what lurked there, even he did not know, and he doubted the adventurers could overcome it. “All hearts bleed!” declared Mother Millian, and Evžen felt a stirring of hope: “the blood is the life, and that which bleeds can die.”
The party pressed on. In the narrow passages of the crypt, hideous corpses burst from the earth, attacking with teeth and claws! Slag with the ancestral Moraru longsword, Corwin with his flaming bolts, and Millian with her stealthy crossbow, returned them to their graves. In the hand of an ancient and smoothed wooden statue of a gaunt man, Slag found a crystal orb. Entranced, he touched it, and out streamed fell shades! Defeating them, they found a silver shortsword in a scabbard on the statue that they had not noticed before. Continuing their search, the party came upon a master bedroom. As they examined a chest inside, two more living corpses burst from the walls, one with a majestic moustache, the other adorned with expensive cosmetics. These corpses, too, they battled and defeated, and took as their prize spellbooks, alchemist’s fire, a cloak, and several other baubles.
As the party approached the staircase downward into the heart of the manor, the mysterious sounds surrounding them resolved into a chant: “He is the Ancient! He is the Land!” The staircase opened onto a room filled with bizarre relics. Of these the party claimed: bat guano, the shrunken head of a halfling, a frog impaled on a stick, a giant varnished eyeball, and an aspergillum of bone. Skeletons hung on the walls, shackled to the stone. As they searched, the party found a secret door leading into a sunken chamber.
Rising out of the filthy pool of water was a stone altar. Shades surrounded it, repeating their terrible chant: “He is the Ancient! He is the Land!” As Slag touched the altar, the words suddenly changed. “One must die! One must die!” Suspicious, Corwin fired his crossbow into a pile of refuse - which then reared up into a hideous creature of flesh and filth! At its head was a horrible tentacle culminating in the mangled head and one-armed torso of an infant child. Though it fought with hideous strength, the party fought bravely, bolstered by the courage of Milian’s old friend, the warrior Jif, summoned through the magic of the ancestors. They slew Walter and fled the inferno of the now-burning Manor, collapsing, exhausted, on the road, as the building smouldered behind them.