Session 12: The Last of the Hekate, I hope.

We entered the ballroom to find a disturbing scene. There were two long tables with 15 seats at each table. The chairs were filled with desiccated corpses dressed in fine clothing. This unfortunately was not the worst thing in this room, it was the fine food set out on the tables. Yes, I said fine food, as in freshly prepared and warm food. Given this building and this room had seen better days and that the skulleria was unusable, where did this food come from? Needless to say none of us felt the desire to eat, but Yarn's curiosity got the best of him. He decided to push one of the corpses toward the plate of food in front of it. This proved to be a bad idea.
 
Immediately Yarn began to scream in terror and pulled out his rifle. He was screaming, "They're me, They're all me!" I touched his shoulder to steady him and asked him to explain what he meant. Apparently, upon touching the corpse, all the them appeared to be dead versions of himself at differing stages of his life. This vision was only given to him, much like the vision of the Dei-Phage in the mirror was only given to Arathus. It would appear that someone or something is messing with us more than I originally thought. Yarn's reaction was to shoot all the corpses, and I can't blame him much given what we've been through by this point. Braxton seemed uninterested in the tables as he discovered a door leading, somewhere. Where, we are not sure. He asked that we block the door with a table and come back to it later. Odd he tried to block a door that opened inward with a table, but we obliged and moved forward with our investigation.
 
The next room we wished to investigate was the Scholaria. This room appeared to be not as ravaged by time as the rest of the cathedral. This was most likely due to its window and door still being in tact. There was a place for a dictation servitor but only its Dictation Throne remained. The walls were lined with certificates and honorary accolades dating back several hundred years. The surprise to this is they were all given to Gustavus. There were also some papers on the desk and some plans that appeared to be for a secret room under the oven. Odd that Gustavus would leave this accessible for anyone to find, but then again he was just that bold. However, it does seem odd that Gustavus was a murdering heretic but had received so many accolades, but perhaps that mystery will reveal itself at a later time.
 
After investigating the Scholaria, we moved on to the Planetarium. This place looked barely touched by time. The ceiling was still closed and there were no windows to allow the elements to penetrate this space. Hanging from the ceiling was a model of the Barsapine system with the planets being represented by skulls wrapped in colored glass orbs. Constellations adorned the walls. A simple desk and bookcase were set within close distance of the golden telescope, a work space no doubt. It would appear that my calculations of where we might encounter Konorath, the last of the heretical Hekates, was incorrect. He did seem to have a thirst for knowledge, but his thirst seemed to revolve around the stars. Yarn found a book hidden in a compartment under the telescope that was basically a journal from Konorath. Given our experiences in this wretched place thus far, we decided to bring the book in the aptly named "backpack of heresy" and leave the planetarium alone for now and moved on to the Library.
 
The Library was not so fortunate as the Planetarium as the windows in the ceiling had been broken and allowed the elements to ravage all the books. The entire place was a loss save the clocks that seemed to be in good working order. Well they worked but didn't seem to keep time very well, except for one that appeared to be in sync with the clock that hid the cog -shaped key hole. Seeing that this most likely wasn't a coincidence, I and Braxton took a closer look and I found a secret shelf hidden just below the clocks location. Upon opening the compartment we discovered three books wrapped in chains locking them within the compartment: a green book with a planet and two interlocking rings on the cover, a book with bronze fittings and a book covered with cracked brown leather. This collection screamed heresy, so I wanted to proceed with caution. Braxton, on the other hand, decided to throw caution to the wind and grabbed the book with the cracked brown leather binding. His face became contorted as if he was overcome by rage, but he seemed to shake it off and replaced the book. Given Braxton didn't seem worse for the wear, I grabbed the book with bronze fittings. It was another journal from Koronath talking about celestial alignments of planets with one repeating theme, a double eclipse. Calculating quickly, we were able to determine that the event wasn't due to occur for another 5000 years or so, one less terrifying thing to worry about. But we did have one last book and Braxton and I decided to play rock, paper, scissors to see who grabbed the book.
 
Well at least that's what I thought the plan was. Apparently it was a distraction for him to grab the book without my interference. Again, for someone so frightened by the sight of heresy, he seems overly enamored with heretical objects, strange indeed, but I digress. What happened next terrified me, and that doesn't happen easily. Braxton's face was overcome with horror and he began frantically praying to the Emperor. Simultaneously, the book dissolved into a green goo that oozed out of the shelf. Luckily Braxton wasn't in the way of this ooze and we were all able to avoid it.
 
I did my best to calm Braxton and bring him out of whatever trance he had put himself in, but it took a bit of time. Yarn was surprised that a book dissolving frightened me. I tried to explain that it was not the book, but the fact that Braxton was praying fervently to the Emperor. Why would this scare me you may ask? Simply put, Braxton NEVER prayed to the Emperor in front of us and it was completely outside of his character. And while I find his character brash and annoying, it has been consistent, until now. Whatever is coming after us is trying to drive us mad, of that I'm certain, but I will do everything in my power to prevent that from happening even to the likes of Braxton. I will not allow this Dei-Phage to turn my compatriots away from the Emperor's light nor will I let this darkness persist. We must end this and end it soon. But there was at least one more room we were curious about before we entered the Planetarium once more.
 
On our way back to the ballroom, we noticed that one of the front pews was now occupied by two corpses, two familiar corpses. The desiccated bodies of Nikea and Gustavus Hekate were propped up next to each other on the pew. Given that we watched these exact corpses disintegrate into dust, this was an uneasy sight. As a precaution, we asked that Braxton put an explosive under the pew so that if something happened, we could react quickly and hopefully eliminate the threat in one shot.
 
Entering the ballroom, nothing unusual had happened and everything was as we left it. We removed the table blocking the door and Arathus deftly opened the door. It's good to see he picked up some useful skills while hanging out in the underhives of Scintilla, but again I digress. Upon opening the door we discovered a stone spiral staircase leading up. Cautiously we followed the stairs up and discovered a room with a table and five seats. There was another immaculate feast laid out and there were servitors prepared to bring the next course when ready. I was very uneasy at this sight and wished to leave. Then I noticed that there were place cards at each plate with our birth names emblazoned on them.
 
I used this as an opportunity to try and convince everyone to leave as my name was not on the cards, and that was true, my name Marya was not on the cards. But as I was trying to plead my case to leave, Braxton and Veck began to enter the room to sit at the table. Arathus quickly acted and tackled Braxton to the floor. Yarn attempted to stop Veck, but his mechanical enhancements proved problematic for him. I joined him and reminded Veck that this was not the Omnissiah's plan for him and he was needed elsewhere. He seemed easier to guide away from the table at that point as though he was fighting whatever thrall was drawing him near. We managed to get out of the room. Yarn quickly threw in a grenade to destroy the place and we all ran down the stairs to safety.
 
I was glad we had destroyed that room; however, the room was not destroyed before they all saw a piece of the odd place card on the table. The name on the card was du Languille. That name will not stop haunting me. I tried to convince them that I know nothing about why that name was there, but I was so caught off guard that I don't think I was very convincing. Luckily we were able to table the issue since we still had a heretical apparition to best.
 
We made the decision to leave the Sanitorium alone and to return to the Planetarium. Using the book as a guide, we asked Veck to set up the double eclipse on the model of the Barsapine system. Just as we had surmised, Koronath came forth, but he wasn't angry, more anxious than angry. I thought that perhaps I could talk to him and maybe get some answers as to what he was doing and why. Apparently I was the only person that saw this as an opportunity givenVeck, Yarn and Arathus immediately opened fire on Koronath's apparition before I could gather any information and with that, he was bested. I can't be too mad at them given our experiences in this place thus far. And as expected, the Apparition left behind a corpse with the final piece of the key and he disintegrated into dust as the other two had done.
 
Now that we were all on hyper alert status, we decided to use Nielson to check to see if Koronath had joined Gustavus and Nikae. And as sure as the Emperor's light shines over the Imperium of man, he was there on that pew with the other two. With that news, Braxton detonated the charge and turned the Naive into a gore covered mess. Better that then us having to deal with them again I suppose. But now we have a key, which is not completely assembled but can be. We must make a decision to move forward or to leave. I for one wish to banish this evil from the world and allow the Emperor's light to once again shine down upon his people. I will do whatever it takes to prevent the Dei-Phage from corrupting anyone else, even if that means sacrificing my life to do so. I am truly grateful that Goldie has been by my side this entire time. I don't think I would have the strength to face these horrors without him.