OttC Session 1: Interrogating Children

General Summary

As is DnD tradition, the party meets at a tavern. Specifically, The Drunken Mongoose. Krisi is leading discussion, alongside Jennevieve Lancaster, Yona, Cyrci, and Aerwynn. These last two are not formally members of The Window, but Krisi and company were nonetheless able to enlist their aid. Eesa catches them on the way out, expressing concern about the nature of their assignment, which is to investigate people sneaking in and out of the Temple of Bhaal.
Upon arrival, the party meets a peculiar halfling who introduces himself as Cornelius Humperdink. He has a large afro which doubles as a nest for his pigeon Larry, and is also pacing in circles, backwards. The fellow is highly suspicious, but claims he has not been involved in what appears to be recent activity in the temple. He has seen braziers being lit, chairs moved around, etc. between visits but claims he was just looking for "somewhere quiet". Upon further investigation and a bit of searching of his person, the party determines that Cornelius has been using a fungal drug known as Skein. The man is interrogated, but claims not to be selling or smuggling the substance. The party could technically arrest him simply for possession, but eventually decide the infraction is not important enough and let him go.
After he leaves, the party performs a more thorough investigation of the temple itself. The altar has a significant smattering of blood, which appears to have fanned outward from two points. A search for secret passages turns up nothing, but they did find a small bag of rubies hidden inside the horn of a large skull on the wall. Upstairs they find several small meeting rooms, one of which appears to have been used recently and even houses a mostly-empty keg of ale from the Gravelbrow Brewery. There is also a small sleeping quarters, but it appears to be unused.
Back downstairs, Cyrci investigates the altar again and discovers that the top slides away to reveal an old coffin. The coffin itself is very dusty on the inside, and contains the corpse of what appears to have been a vampire. It wears a fancy black suit with a faded bloodstain near a hole in its chest. Jennevieve Lancaster investigates the coffin further and finds a small spider, which she elects to keep

• Vulmon
• Devdan
• Jhaan
• Vulluin

When Cyrci explains what is going on, Jane expresses skepticism. She thinks the MO does not sound like something an actual follower of Bhaal would be doing, and no other deity would accept a sacrifice on Bhaal's altar. Cyrci theorizes that perhaps someone wants to be the new Bhaal, and this actually does seem possible to Jane. She resolves to do some research. Yona also intuits Jane may also have a history with Skein, based on her reaction when they tell her about it. They also check Jane's copy of the Tikipedia, but don't find any Hands in Sigil who are blatantly associated with murder.
Back at the church, those staking out the area all make terrible perception rolls. Some more rolls happen in the background, but the time passes uneventfully until Cyrci and Yona return. Shortly after everyone regroups within the Temple of Bhaal, the doors close behind them and are barred. Yona busts through an upstairs window and flies outside to undo the barricade. As the party emerges, Yona and Jennevieve Lancaster spot a set of four young elves fleeing the scene together, laughing.
As the ruffians flee, Jennevieve Lancaster fires her sling, cleanly nailing one in the back of the head (which they later learn is Devdan) despite the significant distance. This does not slow the group down, but it does provoke more laughter. Yona flies in front and attempts to force them to slow down without success. Cyrci finally cows them into stopping by conjuring a gun and making a very strong intimidation check.
As the party catches up and begins inspecting the youngsters, they not-so-subtly close ranks around one of their own, which they later identify as Jhaan. The children continuously insist that they aren't doing anything illegal and that their shenanigans are "none of your business", but the party disregards this. Cyrci keeps them distracted while Yona gets a hold of the one in the back. Jhaan removes a large scarf from around his neck, revealing what appears to be a fresh vampiric bite mark.
On the way back to The Window, the kids all express similar sentiments: "he" is a good guy. "He" doesn't deserve any trouble. Upon arrival the ruffians are immediately taken to the medical ward, where Jhaan and Devdan's wounds are treated. Upon closer inspection, another member of their group, Vulluin, appears to have some old bite scars as well.
The first one to be interrogated is Vulmon, age 50, based on an insight check from Yona. Both Yona and Krisi take him into a room alone for a private conversation. Vulmon is open about some things, which will later turn out to be running themes. No name is given for the vampire, but "he" is their friend. "He" is a nice guy. They are only trying to help "him". They hang out at the Temple of Bhaal for a while, meet up with "him", then provide what "he" needs and go on their way. While it is not outright stated, there is an obvious implication that they were expecting to meet up with their "friend" tonight. Vulmon claims not to know much about their mutual friend. Apparently they were "introduced" by Jhaan.
Meanwhile, Jennevieve Lancaster and Aerwynn are interrogating Devdan, the one with a fresh head wound from Jennevieve's sling. The youth is immediately confrontational, providing very little detail. During the course of interrogation, Devdan proves to be highly resistant to all forms of intimidation. When asked if they were on drugs, Devdan claims to be surprised that there were any around the temple, saying he "missed out on that one".
Yona and Krisi move on to interrogating the 63-year old Jhaan, the one with the fresh bite wound, who has been missing for a couple weeks. He refuses to say exactly where he has been staying, but it is some abandoned house somewhere. Jhaan also claims that he left because his father was beating him and his mother was dead. He knew their "friend" for a long time before this, but only found out about the vampirism just recently. Krisi tries to convince the youth that the best way to protect his "friend" is to turn him in, but Jhaan insists this is not the case, saying that "he" has a violent history with The Window. Further questioning around this topic goes nowhere. When asked about his wellbeing, Jhaan insists that he and his friends are doing fine. They have been getting money to live off of from their vampire "friend". Krisi once again insists that the party has good intentions. Jhaan does not believe it, but once again insists that their friend "doesn't deserve anything you people have done to him".
Yona, Krisi, and Cyrci regroup elsewhere and decide that they could turn Jhaan loose and follow him to the vampire. Cyrci thinks that, given time, she could invent a magical means to track the youth.
Back with Devdan, Jennevieve and Aerwynn are still unsuccessfully attempting to cow the youth into talking. Cyrci is brought in to make another attempt, but threatening him with a gun does not work either, and even a warning shot from Cyrci only elicits calls for help. Krisi comes in to calm the situation, praising the youth for his bravery. This does get Devdan to open up a little, but he is still just echoing what Vulmon and Jhaan have been saying. They do ask him about the vampire corpse found in the altar, but Devdan claims not to have known anything about that.
The last to be interrogated is Vulluin, missing for about two weeks, starting at the exact same time as Jhaan. With a little encouragement and bardic inspiration from Krisi, Aerwynn leads the interrogation. Yona comes as well, but later slips out to do some research. He is relative open about basic details, such as what it feels like to be bitten (painful at first, then oddly relaxing), but completely closed off regarding others, like the name of their "friend". He claims not to have known about the vampire's past history with The Window. The feeding happens maybe once a week or so, and Vulluin claims "not to have thought about" how long they would keep doing this. He does not see a reason why they would stop. Vulluin does insist that their vampire "friend" does not enjoy what he does, but refuses to provide further details. He was "warned about" The Window, and refuses to be tricked into providing unnecessary detail.
The party regroups, expressing concern about how creepy all of this sounds, and discusses Yona's findings regarding past confrontations with vampires. There is not much on this subject, but they do find a report about an encounter with Isaac, a vampire that was over 500 years old at the time, that a Window expedition had encountered about three months before the doors closed. Most members of that party are now retired, deceased, or trapped outside of Sigil, but Eesa was among the group so there is still one living witness. The actual written reports are all in complete disarray. Of the five Doormen present, each one told a totally different story. Some claim that one of their own struck first. Others claim Isaac struck first. Eesa himself claimed to have seen an "angry yellow cloud" which started the conflict. They do all agree on one point, however, which is that Isaac was dead and the corpse was not taken back to Sigil. Psychiatric evaluations were conducted on the survivors, but the paper trail stops there. It does not even provide the results of said evaluations.
There is no record of the vampire corpse found in the Temple of Bhaal, and in fact there is very little information about the temple at all. By the time The Window was serving as a governing body Bhaal had already died, and so they had little cause to collect information regarding his church. Yona does, however, find record of another vampire, Edward DuThane, which has openly reported himself to The Window. He works at the Vigrid Embassy in the Embassy District, and is a member of the Einherjar, dedicated to help protect The multiverse from the gods and The World of Forms. He is on good terms with The Window, though, and Eesa in particular.
The party returns to The Drunken Mongoose to discuss these things with Eesa. He thinks it is possible Isaac is still alive, since his party was so uncertain about anything that was happening to begin with. When told about the corpse in the Temple of Bhaal, Eesa is able to invoke his conduit power to invoke his conduit power to identify the body as belonging to Edward DuThane, the same vampire that Yona read about earlier. Eesa is adamant that Edward would not be dangerous, though, claiming to be a friend of his.
Eesa claims that everything seemed fine for a long time when his party was talking to Isaac 20 years ago. He thought the party was vampire hunters, but he didn't believe their story when they spoke of Sigil, so they managed to convince him they were just random tourists. They were coming to an arrangement where they would feed him a safe amount of blood in exchange for assistance returning through the door that had brought them, when something strange happened. Everyone began to see things, Isaac realized that the Doormen were lying to him, and combat ensued. Isaac was slain, and then the next clear memory Eesa has is talking to the clerics back at The Window medical ward.
With some very high arcana rolls, Yona and Cyrci believe that those events could be explained by a 9th level spell called Weird:

Drawing on the deepest fears of a group of creatures, you create illusory creatures in their minds, visible only to them. Each creature in a 30-foot-radius sphere centered on a point of your choice within range must make a Wisdom saving throw. On a failed save, a creature becomes frightened for the duration. The illusion calls on the creature's deepest fears, manifesting its worst nightmares as an implacable threat. At the end of each of the frightened creature's turns, it must succeed on a Wisdom saving throw or take 4d10 psychic damage. On a successful save, the spell ends for that creature.

When questioned about his worst fear, Eesa says that his worst fear is the doors never opening again. At the time of the incident, however, his greatest fear would have been chemical warfare. This would explain the "angry yellow cloud", at least to some extent. The session ends there.

Report Date

03 Oct 2020