The party arrives at the Emerald Outpost only to find it in ruins and infested with undead. They unexpectedly encounter a clan of vampires and their leader in the evening.
September 7th
The party ventures forth toward the Emerald Outpost. The only real obstacle on the way is crossing the Emerald River. Luckily the party had nearly 100 feet of rope that they could use to make a makeshift rope bridge to cross the river. It's mostly successful except for
Ellie dropping one of their treasured crushbone orc belts they salvaged from their encounter the previous day. Without missing a beat, she drops from the rope to recover the belt and swims back to shore. They spend the rest of day's light heading toward the Emerald Outpost.
They reach the outpost an hour after dark, and it is pitch black. The party notices the lack of light, but
Carlos specifically notices a dead body at the edge of his lantern's light. Worried,
Yarver casts Pass Without a Trace on the party and
Carlos covers his lantern. Lead by
Ellie and
Arya, the party approaches the corpse in the dark to investigate. It looks like it was attacked by a beast and partially exsanguinated. Worried for the rest of the guards in the outpost, the party sneaks toward the front gate only to find it has been ripped off its hinges. From inside the battlements,
Ellie hears an uncomfortable bone crunching sound.
The party discovers the inside of the fort is infested with undead and launches a successful surprise attack. The undead are numerous but not troublesome, until they are confronted by a
vampiric entity that is significantly stronger than the others. It unleashes devastating attacks with its claws and fangs and the wounds it receives seem to close after they are inflicted, but it shows noticeable weakness to
Yarver and
Roswyn's radiant damage. Before they can defeat it, it shrieks and calls two more
Vampires to its aid.
Roswyn uses her holy powers to turn all of the undead as well as the tide of the battle. Realizing the battle is lost, two of the
Vampires retreat and the party captures the other.
The party discusses their knowledge of
Vampires, and
Ellie mentions that her studies of the continent included a good amount of information on
Vampires. She mentions something called the Coterie of the Eternal Night as a sort of cult that many
Vampires on
Luclin belong to.
Roswyn mentions that she has several holy powers that can turn evil creatures like them and both her and
Yarver have forms of radiant energy that can burn them.
Carlos informs them that holy water and radiant energy inhibit their ability to regenerate and running water causes direct damage and immense pain to them.
Worn and uneasy, the party tightly secures their captive before inspecting the ruins of the fort. They notice it has been ransacked in a way that they would expect from the
Orcs, but they don't see any obvious other signs of
Orcs. They also see many corpses in various states of decay, some killed quickly, some partially or fully consumed. The investigate the fort as best they can and look to discover what the hell went on here before they arrived. Ultimately, they don't find anything too important, but
Ellie collects as many documents as she can from the command rule, or what's left of it. The mostly pertain to notes about the
Orcs' movements and information about the garrison.
The party finds the most intact building and barricades themselves inside for the evening to get out of the weather and feel some semblance of security. The ruins of the outpost have a heavy smell of blood and death that make it difficult for
Ellie to sleep, so her and
Carlos take first watch. After their uneventful watch,
Roswyn sits next to Barkimedes and pets him repeatedly for emotional support. As she goes to wake
Arya for her watch, they are set upon by over a dozen
Vampires standing motionless just outside their door. They hurriedly wake the others, except
Ellie who was noticeably disturbed by the
Vampires, and stare outside in fear of their audience.
One in particular stands in obvious command of the others. He tells the party that they have something of his.
Carlos, recognizing this creature whose reputation precedes him, hastily complies and puts on his best face to hide his fear. The
Vampire leader motions for the captured spawn to come towards him and it does as if enthralled. The moment it reaches the rest of them, it is brutally ripped apart until nothing is left.
Carlos tries to play off their intersection with him as a plan to parley with him about the
Orcs and the trouble they are causing. The
Vampire expresses no concern for either the party or the
Orcs. Just as quickly as he arrived, he vanishes into a bloody mist that evaporates into the night. His spawn scurry out of the ruins like a nest of spiders recently disturbed.
Arya notices that two of them carry something off out of the commander's office of the fort, but cannot make out what.
