Nomen Infernale XXXVI: Thou Shalt Not Suffer a Necromancer to Live
General Summary
Having learned at least some lessons from intruding on a room full of foul-smelling trogolodytes, Alex listens at the door past the shrine to Magna Larva, but hears nothing of note. Riven also listens but she can only hear the soft whistling of air through the reedy tendons marring one side of Kegho's face. Theo begins chanting in liturgical Rexan and glows softly as he charges forward through the door before Alex or Riven have a chance to check it for traps. He finds the badly wounded trogolodyte who had crawled through his own gore to the next door, but had been locked out. The necromancer cares little for his minions and Theo caves in its skull in an act he will later justify as a mercy killing. La Compagnia jockies for position along a hallway with the stone double doors of a mausoleum set in the center. Alex begins checking to make sure the necromancer has not trapped this last doorway. As he stands up to tell the party that the door is definitely, probably not trapped--a gelatinous form oozes from under the doorway. It is the color of a day-old bruise and the membrane looks like plasma, clear but yellowed, just before it crusts when exposed to air. Before Alex can retreat his throat is wrapped in its pseudopod. The sickly sweet smell of gangrene fills his nostrils before he is flung against a nearby wall. Asbjørn slashes at the extended pseudopod with Lullaby.
As they are distracted by the ooze, a large man—in fetid robes which were not dissimilar to Theo's, and bound by chitinous or maybe bone-like armor and wielding a sickle in one hand and a cracked femur weeping pus in the other—moves to the doorway. He breathes in deeply and spews maggots from his mouth at Alex, Riven and Asbjørn. Alex and Riven are sickened by the experience, and all three feel the maggots begin to burrow under their skin. Theo calls forth a Vision of Ourana to call this wayward priest to repentance, but in the priest's degraded state he is able to resist the call of heaven. Alex begins taunting the mad priest for being a pale imitation of the true evils of the world, but the ooze strikes out at him again bringing him to the edge of death.
Teleptyon looses a bolt of Ar at the fallen priest, drawing his ire. Asbjørn strikes at the necromancer as maggots continue to burrow into his skin. Kegho shoots the ooze and finally ends it.
Elissa manages to escape to the surface with the boy they had found on the altar while the battle continues below.
The priest spoke of death and justice while waving the bone wand in Teleptyon's and Riven's direction as it begins to glow in a sickly green light. Alex attempts to attack him, but in his dazed state misses. Alex makes a rude gesture at the priest after failing to strike. The priest is undeterred and blast of green energy narrowly misses Teleptyon. The priest's hand begins to glow and Alex skips backward, narrowly escaping whatever evil the priest had planned. While the priest tried to recover his balance from throwing his weight behind the downward swing, Alex loosed a sling bullet into his currently eye-level eye. The priest crumpled and did not get back up.
As they checked themselves over Alex realizes that some of his flesh had grown gangrenous. Kegho chuckled "it's not so bad, friend," and Theo rushed to heal him, but while the grace of Lamos knit some of Alex's grievous wounds back together, the rotting flesh did not improve.
In between liturgical lines, Theo instructs the party to remove the wayward priest's head and hands and to separate them from the body. They set about stripping him of possessions and dismembering him, remembering that things rarely stay dead in the ancient lands of Khemia and burn the corpse for good measure. Alex takes the sickle and Kegho hands Teleptyon a gourd filled with an unknown fluid, the bone wand which he regards with revulsion and intellectual interest. Kegho takes a bronze key which had been around the necromancer's neck before his head had been severed.
Asbjørn moves into a small room to the north of the shrine and begins riffling through the desk and bedding of the priest. He finds gold candlesticks adorned with the imagery of maggots and he hastily smashes the pliable gold to deface it. He also finds a silver necklace with the links each shaped in the likeness of maggots which he beats until misshapen. The bedding is surprisingly fine and touching it as little as possible he stuffs the furs and linens in a sack. He also pockets four flasks of oil.
Theo approaches a marble statue of Nexra surrounded by candles and snuffs them out. He lustrates the statue of Nexra and re-sanctifies the space of the altar.
Kegho finds the door to the south locked and fits the brass key to it. He opens the door and finds four biers each laid with a corpse of a young Khemian woman in simple funerary linens, each in a state of rigor mortis and in positions that imply they were treated poorly after death. Theo follows in afterward and does his best to restore the corpses to honorable resting positions and provide them with appropriate rites. Riven and Alex examine a chest at the far wall of the room and Kegho tests the key on it as well. The chest opens to find an astonishing amount of coin.
Some in the party continued searching the chambers and Theo and Teleptyon moved into a small library in an alcove and began searching for ways to open the warded trap door. As they search they find fragments of journal entries explaining the priest—Ubicus' growing fascination with death and decay as the final justice, and how he became convinced that this justice was more equitable than the law of Ator. Theo found a scroll which Teleptyon was sure would open the sealed hatch and also found a ledger detailing the child sacrifices and who they benefited. Theo began to quake with righteous anger and called Alex's particular attention to the last name on the list: Senator Nicolaio Bascio, whose election had entailed the sacrifice of ten children.
It became clear where all of the coin had come from.
Theo was prepared to charge back to the streets and whip up a mob, but the party reminded him that children needed rescuing and if they did not rest they may not be able to accomplish that task. They stumbled to the surface and into the middle of a band of the eunuch priests of Zer careening through the streets in ecstasy. Alex hoped to get their attention and receive attention for his disease, but they were too swept up in their revelry.
