Session 39: Danse Macabre
General Summary
With the blanket thrown over our vampire buddy, he turns into a gas to flee, but quickly realizes that in itself is an impossible task when several people around him can prevent that. We shackle him up and begin to haul him off to the guards, but luckily they’re already waiting outside for us and ready to take us all in. Understandable considering we blew up a house, but we explain the situation and they’re kind enough not to shackle us up. Elathera thinks they’re very upset with the destroyed property and fixes it with magic and then gets herself arrested for tampering with evidence.
Which means our party has two criminals now. A literal serial killer and now Elathera with her absolutely explosive record. Even with her questionable life choice, we all think she’s the bomb. Anyways, we’re interrogated and eventually we’re all set free, including Elathera. She cures the vampire with polymorph and the dude will likely die the next morning considering he’s been a serial killer far longer than he’s been a vampire, so it sucks to be him. Elathera really does have a record now which she’ll have to get expunged at some point, but for now, there’s more important things to deal with, like moving onto the next shrine.
It’s a giant lighthouse on an island in the ocean with no way to get to it but by boat. After an uncomfortable chat with an innkeeper who really loves catfolk and has the audacity to give me flowers that included catnip, we also learn the island is off limits because there’s a sea monster terrorizing the ships that try to come near the island and village. The next day, we head out to speak with the guards who let us know it’s a sea serpent, so Elathera concocts a plan to deal with it. She’ll conjure a decoy ship and crew to distract the serpent and we’ll move in to attack. Unfortunately, like all plans, it doesn’t pan out quite like it should and the serpent immediately attacks our ship instead.
It’s an undead, plague ridden serpent by the way. With Industria’s help, we’re all able to walk on water so dealing with this serpent is no issue for some of us. Ilyana, who was the first to unleash her holy fury on this thing and ends up getting fucked up. Trapped within its jaws, Elathera, me, and one of Elathera’s summons try to free her. Industria jumps into the fray to save her daughter, but misses every swing for the creature’s eyes so Elathera solves this simply. She traps the serpent in a maze in another dimension, giving Industria time to drag Ilyana out of danger. The serpent’s smart though and escapes, but is immediately fucked over as I tear into it and with that, the sea monster is slain.
With all of us brought back to the boat, we decide to head to the island anyways despite our injuries and need for rest. Even despite the concerning rumors of the island being haunted. As we step onto the island, it’s teeming with life. It’s quite beautiful, but as we trek on, the flowers and what not are wilting and dying. We’re then surrounded by mist that forms into figures that are dancing endlessly. Industria, Rikius, and Lucky hear a song as they’re pulled into the trap and get stuck going ham to these macabre jams. This leaves me, Elathera, and Ilyana to deal with this. Now if you have kept up with these posts, you know very well that me and Elathera handling anything usually ends in disaster. Ilyana is our holy wrecking ball and MVP in this bullshit because after seeing an image of death appear before us, me and Elathera are a little rattled.
You could say it nearly scared us…to death. (cue loud booing because yet another pun, Frankie? really?)
We try to free our allies, but Elathera can’t seem to get a grip on Industria to pull her from the literal circle of death. But with some magic and the brute strength of pregnancy, I manage to get Rikius out of the dance. Lucky is knocked out of the dance as well, but Industria still remains dancing for the entire fight because nobody managed to free her. Oops! After a few more rounds of Ilyana channeling the fuck out of the posivibes on it and some arrows from Rikius, the Freaky Island Shuffle ends and we’re chastised by Industria for our totally excellent work in slaying the nightmare. The creature was a “danse macabre”, an undead, incorporeal creature that embodies an inevitable death. Ilyana knows that if we don’t consecrate the land, the creature will return in only a few short days to continue it’s reign of terror.
With that taken care of quickly because nobody wants that thing to come back ever, we eventually find ourselves inside of the actual lighthouse and speaking with survivors who were nearly caught in that trap themselves. Some of their friends unfortunately met their ends to it, but they alert us to the fact that there’s yet another ghost on the island. An angry, crying woman who lingers on top of the lighthouse at night. So we leave Ilyana, Lucky, and Virhea to watch over the survivors for the night while the rest of us camp out at the top of the lighthouse because of course we fucking do. As we rest up, we hear a loud wailing inside of the lighthouse, winding up the stairway and coming towards us.
We see the ghost and talk with her because thankfully, she’s not immediately hostile. After learning a smidgen about her and some stuff about her husband, we also learn he died at sea and she’s stuck mourning him, unable to rest without him. And so she wants other wives to suffer as she had, but Industria talks her down from that and reassures her that we’ll find something left of her husband and bury him alongside her so that her soul will finally be at peace. With that, we make our way down the stairs to keep our word to the grieving ghost, who made sure to angrily remind us that if we didn’t keep our word, she’d find us.
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Report Date
03 May 2021
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