WDotMM: L1E3 - Vampire (the Masquerade) Report

General Summary

Inkus Shawarum and Muni quickly begin rummaging through the vampire bodies at their feet. They spend some time examining the two that turned blue (and naked!) when they fell to the ground. Eventually a memory jogs for Muni and she mentions that these are some kind of shapeshifter that she has encountered before.   Around this time, Rag Dal notices what he thinks must be a bite mark from one of the vampires and gets quick concerned about the chance of infection. He quickly excuses himself to return to the surface and find a healer (without even consider poor Zander's feelings at not being asked if he could provide divine aid).   As Inkus rummages through pockets for coins, Muni makes her way over the one vampire that tried to flee. As she is examining the corpse she thinks to check for fangs. Grabbing at the monster's cheeks she forces its lips to open. Squishy squish. Squishy squish. Open, closed. Open, closed. "Oh man this is weirdly satisfying," she thought to herself. Coming out of her distracted state, she reaches into his mouth and sees the fangs. Except...they seem off somehow...like they don't properly come out of the gum line; rather they seem to sit overtop of it. She gives a tug and they pop out of his mouth with a sucking noise. Inkus arrives to see Muni is once again playing with the corpse's cheeks. She motions him over and asks if he thinks the skin of this undead feels strangely warm (for an undead). Taking a closer look, the Dragonborn agrees; he has seen many corpses of living things in the arenas, and his fair share of undead that have met their final death, and this is definitely the corpse of someone who was recently living.   Muni pockets the fangs as the two adventurers return to the other bodies and check them. Sure enough, all had prosthetic fangs (which now all reside in Muni 's pouches).   The party next moves into the northern room from whence came the second group of "vampires". They find a card table that was hastily vacated, as well as the many coins and a silver "dick" ring that had been in the pot. Divvying up this loot, they then take not of the full wall fresco on the northern wall. It depicts a mountain and a series of halls carved out of it. There are many dwarven figures carved into it as well. Below the fresco, sunk into the floor, lies a stone tub. The tub, it turns out, has been used to store some adventuring gear. Muni  helps herself to some supplies as she hadn't fully stocked up before departing on this journey. While she does so Inkus investigates the fresco more closely and discovers a stone key embedded in the fresco (it's head being one of the dwarven figures). He searches for somewhere to use this key, but comes up empty so he pockets it for now.   The group similarly explores the southern room, but finds nothing of interest and eventually it just gives Inkus Shawarum a headache (after he walks face first into a dead end). Moving on they return to the room with the statues and investigate these again. Muni  acquires some more bones, and with the aid of her Dragonborn companion affixes the Kenku skull to herself as a sort of shoulder pad. She also pockets the broken, white staff in hopes of having it mended when they return to Waterdeep next.   Exploring the corridors that offshoot from this room Buffy eventually finds a secret door and Inkus Shawarum opens it only to have a huge stack of ceramic plates fall on top of him and set off an AWFUL racket that would have surely alerted the occupants of the adjoining rooms if they had not already been dispatched. In disgust, the party continues north.   Turning west at a t-intersection that came to a dead end along its northern route, Muni  begins to use a strategy of running her left hand along the left wall while traversing the corridors. Her hope is to discover secret doors and/or avoid further headlong collisions with dead ends. The corridor soon ends at a closed door. Buffy detects nothing behind the door and finds that it opens easily onto a throne room of sorts. In the middles of the room lie the bones of a wyvern, intermixed with small crystal fragments. Along the south end of the room, where the party has entered, is a raised dais that is dominated by a large throne made entirely out of bones and whose arms have been fashioned from bone to resemble large snakes. Muni  calls dibs on both the wyvern skull and the throne. Inkus Shawarum investigates the shards of crystal but cannot discern much beyond the fact that it seems to be something that has broken and that the shards all have a certain curvature to them.   Abandoning the idea of carrying the throne with them, the party moves on and has a listen at the door on the western side of the dais. At first all seems to be quiet, but eventually Inkus Shawarum catches the faint whisper of a ... snore?! Briefly contemplating moving north and ignoring whatever is behind door number one, the party then decides leaving something at their backs may not be wise so they quietly enter the room. As they come to a bend in the corridor Inkus catches sight of some kind of frankenstein-esque monster. Unfortunately, it catches sight of him as well.   Muni  gets the upper hand as the combat unfolds and quickly looses three arrows that dig deeply into the miss-matched fleshy bits of this monster. While the impact of the arrows visibly affects the creature, it seems to shrug off a large portion of the damage and close the distance to Buffy while slamming him with a power double-armed blow. The speed of its attacks bely its size and apparent awkwardness. It hits Buffy a second time and nearly ends the hapless rogue. The party exchanges blows with the monster again, Zander lending some healing to Buffy who had disengaged temporarily, and then another vampire joins the fray from behind the golem. Thankfully, Inkus' cursed sword seems to have full effect on the golem and it eventually topples. After the creature is dealt with the vampire is made short work of.   A brief exploration of this room turns up very little of value, but confirms that this vampire is yet again not what it seems. She didn't even have any fangs. The party is quite drained after this battle and decides to take a short reprieve in these sleeping chambers where they can barricade the door.

Rewards Granted

Some coin, a key, many (MANY) bones.

Missions/Quests Completed

So far, other than a cursed sword that Inkus Shawarum cannot seem to put down, our adventurers have come up dry when it comes to magic items they could sell to Obaya Uday.