Session 41 - The Black Fort

General Summary

We’re headed to King Kymenon’s castle, Xanthos immediately takes out his jar of vampire smoke and releases it. It starts floating northward, allowing us to follow it to our destination but also probably making one more vampire for us to fight. Slight issue, Hiero wants to kill all the vampires but Xanthos wants to talk to them. Ionessa convinces him to let them talk while he sneaks up on them. Xanthos wants to know if he can be human again, and how to avoid becoming a full vampire. We shouldn’t look vampires in the eyes or they will hypnotize us.
We camp at the base of a mountain, there are wolves in the distance and bats in the air but nothing attacks us. We climb the mountain and see a stone fort built into its side, it’s relatively small with some lookout towers. We try to stealth our way up, but Kestor dissociates and feels completely confident he can take out anything inside the fort. He starts marching confidently towards it, Xanthos tries to stop him but Kestor knocks him back with a strength that is not his own. By the time he comes out of it, Kestor is staring up at the fort with the lookouts having spotted him. Luckily, Xanthos manages to bail him out and is granted audience because he shares the blood of the king.
The soldiers of the fort look pale and gaunt, like they are being used for blood. Xanthos asks about the king, but is told to talk to the king’s sons first, it seems like something is wrong with Kymenon. We are led to First Prince Albinus who dismisses his guards and asks Xanthos how he met Kymenon. Xanthos explains that he was given the elixir by someone else. Albinus doesn’t like this and tries to leave to get his brother, then he starts mind-controlling Ionessa and tries to do the same to Xanthos so we fight him. During the fight, Ionessa breaks free of the control! Neo resists and taunts him about his dead sister, brutal. Albinus begs for his “life” but Ionessa turns him to mist with a single strike of her sword.
Albinus turns into mist and leaves the room, Kestor disguises himself as Albinus and follows the mist down to a coffin underground lined with red silk. Albinus reforms there and Kestor paralyzes him with the blood sword. We find fine clothing, jewelry (rings), chalices, and inside the coffin is a short sword. We search the other nearby rooms and find one filled with mounted weaponry and tools of war, plus an empty coffin. Another room is covered in black sheets, inside the coffin here is a long line of ashes. Kestor meets a servant who was feeding blood from the captives to “his majesty”, so we head that way so Xanthos can talk to Kymenon. Inside his room, there is a huge pool of blood that is bubbling and boiling, steam blood fills the room.
A figure emerges from the pool (the godblood?), a frail humanoid with a horrid wound from their shoulder to their chest that glows bright orange as if constantly burning with flame. Kestor introduces Xanthos, who says he wants to know more about what he is. He has to wade into the awful boiling pool to talk further, which he does. Kestor gets yelled at for not calling him father. Xanthos asks if he can give back his vampirism, Kymenon says he thinks this is wise, the blood is a curse. “You want to get rid of it? Then pray to the dead god that he might have it back.” He hasn’t fully transformed yet so there might be hope. Kymenon fought the Fire Eater, he looked into the eyes of the wild fire and was punished for his arrogance. “Gods are not made equal, and that one was too much for me.” He bids his sons to fix his condition but they’re useless.
Xanthos asks about the dead god. Kymenon reveals it to him in private, asking everyone else to leave. “My son would have blood like yours, he is still disappointed that he has my blood instead. It allows me power over them, they must listen to me. The blood that courses in your veins comes from the source, the same blood that I and my compatriots fed upon. It came from the veins of a god, the dead god Mourionoss.”
How long ago did he feed on Mourionoss? “It has been centuries since the dead god lived. Centuries since we stormed heaven and cut him down and feasted upon his blood. I was not always like this, I was strong and powerful and wicked. Now I am cursed and feeble.”
Why did you do this? “Why does anyone do anything? Because we wanted something that he had. We wanted divinity, life everlasting, and we wanted to lay low a god.”
How can one pray to a dead god? “You wish to undo something that has happened centuries before your birth.”
Do I have to end your curse to end mine? “My curse stems from the corpse of a god, your curse stems from his blood. Do you think it would be so easy? I have told you what I know. We killed a god, we feasted upon his blood, and we became cursed. You wish to be free of the curse, perhaps you will find a way. You could seek the old priest, the one that brought us to his heaven. If you wish to seek them out, you need only sail south and you will find them.”
How many of you drank the blood? “Of those who stormed heaven there were three who drank the blood. They stayed in the southern lands, we brought back more of the blood. I know not what happened to it, though I kept some myself. They go by many names, they are of shifting form, names will do you little good to find them. It is a land of secrets and curses and masks, it is not as honest as these lands.”
How did they kill a god? “We killed the god with weapons steeped in curse given to us by the priests, old magic they used. Cursed gold weapons, you know a little of the southern lands I see. Gold is the element of want, it drives men to greed and so it drinks in curse. It is the perfect vessel for their dark magicks.”
Why is Xanthos not like him? “Because you still have a spark of life within you. Snuff it out and become like me. That’s when the curse will take hold.”
Would you like me to kill you? “I don’t want your mercy. As long as I live, my sons are chained to my side. I take comfort in that. A fool and a coward, they have failed me and if I were to die they would be free, and the world has enough fools and cowards.”
What if we kill your sons? “Do what you will with them. I am tired of family, I lost those who matter most. I am left with dregs.” :(
Xanthos has no more questions and takes his leave. We discuss what to do and decide that at least Kymenon and Albinus need to go, but we’ll check with the other brother first to make sure he’s also irredeemable. We find him in the armory, he’s HUGE and is beating the shit out of undead creations being made by a necromancer. His name is Exekias, he’s not the biological son of his father, he was sired with blood. Kymenos lost his real family in the wildfire. He does not know what happened with Nikaia, but he did see Azeus die. Father was cross with him for not helping him more, but he was not the warrior that Exekias is. Xanthos asks what he would do if he were free. He really just wants to do war. He likes fighting, it makes him feel alive. There are always wars, you just have to find them.
His mother is still alive? She’s here in her coffin and hasn’t left for several years. He wants to fight his enemies but he’s not allowed to leave the castle, and he doesn’t know who his enemies are. He seems pretty dumb but not malicious? We ask to meet his mother, so he takes us down to see her coffin. There’s a family portrait in her room, and she’s lying there unaging and unstaked, seemingly sleeping. There’s no magic on her, she was up and about before Kymenon lost his fight with the Fire Eater. She rode to battle with them, something happened to her in between that made her like this. We have trouble figuring out what’s going on.
Xanthos asks a servant for more information, the room is cleaned and blood is left there but never consumed. They paint her skin with blood so she remains young. Albinus conferred with the scholar Hekaline the necromancer about it, maybe they know something. She tells us that the mother is missing her heart! Albinus seems to have been intervening and preventing any solutions Hekaline proposed to get a replacement heart or an artificial one.
We regroup and discuss next steps. Basically we want to revive the mother, we think the jar of mist might contain her heart, and we’ll judge whether she is a good person afterwards. Exekias seems pretty redeemable, but the jury is out on Albinus. Kymenon definitely has to go. Neo says that if too much harm has come to his people, he’s gonna want to start killing, but we talk him down into letting us determine if any of them could be decent people outside of the thrall of Kymenon. We try to talk down Hiero but he’s pretty dead set on at least killing the mother just to make Kymenon suffer a little more before he’s dead, so we’ll probably have to put him down.
We head into the mother’s room and release the mist from the jar. It travels to the mother’s body and merges with his, and her eyes fly open!
The end.

Notes

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Report Date

28 Aug 2023