Session 0: "Deader"

Written by Inominatus

General Summary

The Nameless One awoke on a slab in a mortuary. The only other nearby movement and sound came from a flying and talking skull, who introduced himself as Morte. Morte seemed obsessed with the female zombies roaming the halls beyond this room of awakening.
My body was covered in Tattoos, and with Morte’s help I learned the ones on my back said:
‘I know you feel like you’ve been drinking a few kegs of Styx wash, but you need to CENTRE yourself. Among your possessions is a JOURNAL that’ll shed some light on the dark of the matter. Pharod can fill you in on the rest of the chant, if he’s not in the dead-book already.’ ‘Don’t lose the journal or we’ll be up the Styx again. And whatever you do, DO NOT tell anyone WHO you are or WHAT happens to you, or they’ll put you on a quick pilgrimage to the crematorium. Do what I tell you: READ the journal, then Find Pharod.’
The door exiting this mortuary room was locked and needed a key. One of the zombies working in the room has it. I killed it with scalpel and used the key to unlock the door. Zombies are people whom sold themselves to The Dustmen when alive for use after death, and are called Contracted.
Another zombie has a book on mortuary procedures, The Receiving Room Logbook, which TNO reads.
Dhall: I meet Dhall, a scribe writing in a huge book. He calls me 'Restless One', he says I have been here before, and that I cannot achieve True Death (non-existence). I am living a Shadow Life that exists after Death but before True Death. Being unable to achieve True Death makes my existence unacceptable to the Dustmen. Some would have me cremated, but others say it is for me to give up the Shadow Life by my own choice.
Dhall informs me that others who previously travelled with me are also here. One is a woman interred in Northwest Memorial Hall one floor below his room, and her name would be on one of the plaques there.
Dhall tells me of Pharod, and said he is a collector of the dead. He likely stole anything I possessed, and tells me he likely can be found beyond The Mortuary gates in The Hive.
As I leave he tells me that I will again return.

Ei-Vene: In the next room there a corpse on a slab, chest cavity split open but organs still intact. A young Tiefling woman stood by the slab with earth-bronze hair and grey robes. She had not noticed me. She seemed quite mad. Her hands had talons with which she was dissecting the body.
Her name was Ei-Vene.
I went to leave and she noticed me, but sent me for thread and embalming juice. Bringing these back to her I saw her peeling off strips of skin and muscle.
This triggers a vision of me opening and placing something inside a corpse’s (with a ‘42’ stitched on its forehead) chest, something I might find useful later. I had also faked the paperwork so the corpse would be taken in by the dustmen. Moving my arms seems to move the arms of the corpse also.
I asked her for an Embalming Key, and she gives me one. The key accessed a stairway, that goes upwards, despite Morte’s prompts to go down, I go up to the 3rd floor as I feel I left something up there.

Worker #42: The 3rd floor had a crematorium fire within a Grand Chamber. I was challenged by a Dustman, asking if I was lost. I claimed I was looking for another ceremony and he directed me to speak with one of the guides at the front gate.
Further rooms contained further bodies and Dustmen. To the South was a library and a storeroom. Within this storeroom we found a few crystallised drops of blood, a rag, and a wrinkled old report describing Worker #42.
An adjacent room was where I found worker #42, walking in circles. When I spoke, it straightened and crossed its arms over its chest. I mimicked the gesture and its arms straightened and the leather straps holding it together broke and its rib-cage opened. Reaching in revealed an extra-dimensional space, and something hard. Pulling removed the object but propelled the skeleton backwards, smashing it.
The object looked like a lump of iron, but then it crumbled to reveal a strange weapon, a handful of coins, and 2 more crystallised drops of blood ( clot charms – life force in solid form)

Deionarra: I decided it was time to leave, and did so, then descended the stairway by two levels towards the smell of a musty tomb.
There was a possible flicker of blue from a side chamber, one of the memorial halls. Reading the plaques, one said here lies Deionarra, and a phantasm of a woman appeared. She was from my dream just before I awoke in the mortuary. She recognised me and accused me of coming to witness the misery I had caused. She also referred to me as ‘her love’.
She says I cannot die, and have been here many times. She says that ‘those that die near me carry a trace of themselves that I can bring forth’. I gained Deionarra’s Blessing, allowing me to cast Raise Dead three times per day at will.
She said she is on the other side of the Eternal Boundary.
I asked her for help in avoiding danger and she tells me:

• this place holds many doors shrouded from mortal eyes. Perhaps you could use one of these portals as a means of escape.

• Portals are holes in existence, leading to destinations in the inner and outer planes... if you could find the proper key, you could escape through one of them

• Portals will reveal themselves when you have the proper ‘key.’

• Keys can be almost anything ... an emotion, a piece of wood, a dagger of silvered glass, a scrap of cloth, a tune you hum to yourself

• The Dustmen are the only ones who would know the keys you could use to leave their halls

She also tells me she remembers much that I have forgotten, and can see what lies ahead. She makes me swear to return, to either save or join her before she tells me more:

• I will face three enemies – good, evil, and neutral, given life and twisted by the Laws of the Planes.

• I will find a prison built of regrets and sorrow, where the shadows have gone mad.

• This is a place where I must die, to be Immortal no longer.

• I must find that which was taken from me and travel to the lands of the dead.

She says she awaits me in Deaths Halls.

Soego: Soego is a dustman I stumbled into in the memorials. He said I was not allowed in the Mortuary ‘after 9 bells’ and led me to the exit of the front gate, opening it with a copper key. His eyes were red, he claimed from poor sleep resulting from a recent illness.
Asking him of Pharod he showed he despised that Collector. Said he lived in the slums called ‘The Hive’ outside of the the mortuary.
Morte and I leave the mortuary – I learned that my tattoos also tell me ‘Don’t trust the Skull’.

Cant Dictionary

Report Date

04 Feb 2023

Primary Location

The Mortuary

• Quests - Sigil
  • Find The Nameless One's Journal
  • Help Reekwind
  • Ignis - Return him to life
  • Unlock the Unbroken Circle of Zerthimon
  • Obtain Decanter's Password
• Completed Quests - Sigil
  • Find Pharod
  • Find and Bring Pharod to Justice
  • Help Ingress
  • Kill Starved Dogs Barking
  • Find Craddock
  • Clear the Mausoleum
  • Purchase the Eye
  • Free Angyar from the Dustman Contract
  • Iron Nall's Secret
  • Free Esmae from Moridors box
  • Find Former Drunk Companion of TNO
  • Find Eliath
  • Who is Killing the Barmys
  • Return the Prayer Beads to Porphiron
  • Convince Nestor to Leave
  • Find Pharod's source of bodies
  • Find Amarysse
  • Learn Magic
  • Return his Name
  • Retrieve Knife
  • Find Necklace
  • Kill Rotten William
  • Kill or Drive off Blackrose
  • Bring His Body to the Surface
  • Retrieve Bronze Sphere
  • Obtain the Decanter from Drowned Nations
  • Discover where Annah found The Nameless One