Into the Depths of Vileness; or, A Hero's Faith, Tested

Our tenth session, in the driving early spring rains in Gar.
Tony: Rast The Amazing Spellcaster
Dave: Aldan The Righteous Deliverer
Giovanni: Gurgrock The Assassin
Gareth: Foliage The Warped (arrived later)

The day had been a long one. Just back from their journey back from the Outer Hold, triumphant with the Bronze Armband around the bicep of the restored Foliage, and the heroes had nary a night's sleep. This session began right where the last one ended:

From Sin, A Clue

Amidst the simmering human chaos in The Beetle, where the hallucinogenic effects of the Outer Hold rye bread and beer, potent and shameless, were gradually being replaced by long-term madness and symptoms of withdrawal, Aldan pounded his gauntlets on the table, in front of him the tiny chest with a lock of Tulia The Librarienne's red hair and a note scratched onto a shred of her coat ("we have the girl, now bring us the Armband"), demanding they act to find the kidnapper of his romantic charge (if one never to be consummated by even a kiss). Foliage rested, recovering from his inexplicable resurrection; Rast, always the anatomist and student of strange happenings, probed the open-but-miraculously-healed Spear wound in the Druid's chest; and Gurgrock mused how he got into this situation.

The comedy of the narcotics occasionally surging from the background into the faces of the herous, a drunk and fat merchant, on his first visit to The Beetle, a young starlet on his arm, rudely shoved past Aldan, simmering. The Paladin, angry, challenged the merchant, who pointed out the life-giving recently-hard-won Bronze Armband on Foliage's arm, laughing at how foolish it would be to display such an artifact in public. Certainly there were many parties who would covet it. No less than other people of means, or perhaps worse, the Skull.

Perhaps it was his rudeness, perhaps his implications through his interest in the Armband that he knew of the whereabouts of Tulia, the torment began. On their own turf and four against one (as the starlet was a totteringly tipsy as he), the heroes interrogated. Gurgrock as always intimidating, Rast conjured a heated spoon which he used to ensure only the Magician would be asking the questions. They learned from the merchant, clearly a customer of sinful exchanges, that there was talk of a tall redhead in the vile whorehouse the Oyster Shack, deep in the Canal Town slums; indeed, he had seen her.

Infuriated, and satisfied only when the fat merchant lost his continence, they shoved him on his way, limping and defeated, into the night. Foliage, in hawk-beast form, trailed overhead.

A Plead From The Rain

As Aldan was about to set out from The Beetle (the door off its hinges from some fit of madness) into the driving spring rain to seek out the girl, he nearly crashed right into the most petite lady, dressed impeccably in a coat despite the rain, giant spectacles on her nose, staring up from the entryway, stature barely reaching the towering Paladin's sternum.

In the doorway was tiny Beanie, another Librarienne, worried sick about her colleague Tulia. They brought her to the table, an invisible field of order around her repelling the late-night chaos, where she animatedly recounted that Tulia had not been seen for three days, missing from her desk at the Tome-Hall of the Towering Spires, last with a few dalliances with a plump dapper lad whose description, sketched by Markk The Seeker (having become a regular after his earlier mission with Gurgrock) on the inn's table, resembling none other than friendly Otto The Theoretician, one of Rast's indoors-inclined fellow students of the Arcane and deep-pocketed regular at the Red Veil Club in town.

Thaumaturgic Incantations

Rast entered the main room of the Red Veil, a party for an academic fraternity of some sort plying deep into the night, was passed a bottle of brandy at random, and found dear Otto resting on the upstairs balcony, a giant tome of Remote Thaumaturgy and Interfaces With the Lunar Cycle open on a table, his diagrams to one side. The Spellcaster and his patron chatted about scribe-rates, research, potential greedy rivals looking to steal the Armband, the Skull and his possible reasons for such interest; Rast eventually concluded aloud that his friend Otto was a friend of Tulia, indeed, as most learned men were, but did not seem to be able to have taken her, despite being the last to see her. He had heard of the Oyster Shack, to be sure, but only as a daredevil gourmand trying the latest varieties. Instead, with the very help of Otto and his tome, the two concocted an impromptu thaumaturgic incantation, with the Arcane Connection of Tulia's lock and coat-shred, which Rast read aloud (after correcting for Otto's imperfect grasp of middle-late Old Tongue), and determined that the girl was in fact still alive, in the direction of the filthy slums of Canal Town. The story did not entirely add up, but they had a destination.

Ritual Cleansing, Others' Transgressions

Meanwhile, Aldan, in need of a deep atonement from the past two weeks' transgressions, stopped by the Temple of the Searing Light for absolution. After dismissing demands from Valcan the Head Priest how he had returned from the Outer Hold, where he had been ordered to suppress a rebellion by himself, by lying and claiming success, he was blessed with the addition of another religious stricture, that he must offer his enemies one chance to repent and join the New Faith, before drawing his Back Talker and unleashing righteous damage. With this, the vein on Aldan's temple popped and throbbed, ever so slightly more.

With this, Aldan set out to receive ritual cleaning. As he was washed in the wooden tub by the alcolyte, the lad mentioned that he had "heard from a fellow disciple who knew someone" who saw that a certain platinum-haired Lars, a young disciple of the infamous Chamber of the Burning Sun sect, known for its even more strident ways and obsession with self-destructive missions and impeccable purity, had been just nights prior seen in the Canal Town, in the vicinity of the Oyster Shack and other places. The poor disciple, red-faced from even recounting the tale of a friend of a fellow friend, could hardly fathom why a Follower would visit such a vile place without burning it to the ground in cleansing flame.

With Glamour-Disguise, Into the Shack of Ill Repute

The next morning, early, barely rested but for Gurgrock passed out in a rain-gutter behind a brewery, the three heroes set out for the Oyster Shack. Right on two short boat landing into one of the canals, some outdoor tables and a huge clam cauldron, still steaming from the night before. A single building, one floor with tiny windows, loomed. Gurgrock worked the door and they were in. Snoring in one room and an interior door kicked in, they set upon an old tanned clamdigger, asleep with two rubenesque women. But thanks to a bodily illusion by Rast, when the clamdigger awoke there were three more women, one tall and broad (Aldan, also unaware of the enchantment), one green-tinted and ugly (Gurgrock), and one matronly and urbane (Rast).

Through rough treatment of a lusty but harmless old man (which would have made Balto proud), the learned that Tulia had in fact been through here, as a woman working against her will, and had duly been picked up by "the slavers" (spoken in whispered tones), who passed through once a week on a canal boat, stopping at the Oyster Shack to pick up the latest meat for insatiable but unknown customers.

With the sound of the inevitable beatings against the outnumbered frail clamdigger, the dragon lady madam of the house emerged, was charmed by Gurgrock's mincing, and offered him, still under the glamour of Rast's spell, work with a wink. He would start tonight, with five long nights of unspeakable labors before their mission would begin.

The Chamber Demands Absolution

But first, with hours to spare before the evening, the heroes paid a visit to the Chamber of the Burning Sun, on the other edge of Canal Town, facing down the looming filth and gloom with the lidless eye of holy light. In the streets in front, fifteen young alcolytes were whipped by two priests, all parties howling in the muck, in a ritual of raw endurance.

Avoiding this, the heroes were the audience of Zar, the head Priest and madder than any of Aldan's sect, and eventually learned that Lars had set off two weeks prior, to rid Gar of the vile Rat Cult, operating in the Tanners and Butchers' District in the foulest corners of Canal Town. Surely, Zar cackled, he would singlehandedly clean out the Cult and return triumphant. Perhaps Aldan thought a while about the mission in the Outer Hold, which he was still entrusted to complete, now abandoned.

The Rat Cult Strips Clean the Bones of the Righteous Fallen

The heroes, Foliage having returned from his mission (with little to report, alas) marched through the rain-washed sludge to the Tanners and Butchers' District, and had no trouble finding the lair of the Rat Cult. In a corner so wretched even the flesh-handlers avoided it, where the rats quickly seemed to multiply in number and brazen behavior, they stumbled upon an awful old lady, crazy and picking at bones. Through a half-conversation with her and a druidic commune with the rats themselves, they marched right into the abandoned abbatoir.

There confronting them was a pile of carcasses and bones, beast and human, picked clean but under piles of rats and their refuse, underneath poking out an untarnished Holy Symbol of the Chamber of the Burning Sun, on top of a pile of bones and stained white silk, not fresh, and strands of platinum blond hair. Clearly, Lars the Follower had fallen here, ineffectual and then nothing more than meat for a ravenous horde, much longer ago than the mere days as noted by Aldan's guilty-sounding washing-boy at the Temple.

At that point the Rat Cult King, a cult of one, appeared, attired in unspeakable raiments crafted from the bodies of his minions. He cackled crazily, but his feeble powers were not enough to drive the rats against Foliage and his animal mastery, and he was cut down in a single swing by Back Talker.

Gurgrock, Converted

The heroes, with the relics of Lars in hand, returned to the Chamber of the Burning Sun. The fallen Follower honored and Gurgrock briefly initiated into the first, painful, circle of the Chamber's oblique teachings, the heroes scratched their heads about the two incongruous sightings at the Oyster Shack.

Assault on the Canal's Edge

The rest of the week passed and the day arrived when the slavers and their canal boat were to stop silently in the night at the Oyster Shack to pick up the latest shipment of stolen women. They would certainly lead the heroes to poor Tulia, no doubt in the shackles of misery.

The hour came. Rast recreated the illusion of femininity, if imperfect considering his subjects. The heroes were marched, under guard of local thugs, with three other girls a passageway under the floorboards, just over the canal surface, under the planks to a hidden platform on the dock. As the slave boat pulled up to the dock and they were about to emerge from the passageway, the heroes let loose a fury of violence, weapons barely hidden under their illusory garments, against the boat-borne slavers and the thugs on the docks.

Rast, magic Crystal in hand to empower his magic at the cost of his life-force, entrapped a dock full of thugs; Gurgrock, last in line, rushed the rearmost thug and forced his way out of the passageway; Foliage, in hawk form, dropped onto the slave boat; Aldan charged forward, Back Talker thirsty for the blood of the wicked, especially after throbbing at his waist during a dry spell of over a week without tasting righteous combat.

Such Violence Strains a Paladin's Faith

After several frenzied and bloody seconds of overcoming the captors and rescuing innocents having fallen into the canal, it was Aldan who was the last hero still battling, on the edge of the canal as he roped in the slavers' boat, a crossbow bolt in his back and two awful bleeding gashes from a slaver's sword. He swung madly and without mercy, at both foes still daring to face him and those who had already surrendered. Was it Back Talker finally taking the upper hand in the battle for Aldan's will? Or was it the Paladin had finally been overcome by his own frustrations and demands for revenge, that he abandoned, if temporarily, his Faith's requirements of forbearance and fairness?

The answer, and with it the fate of a holy hero, would not yet be known.... the heroes had won the slave barge and prepared to set upon the lair of the slavers, past the fork in the canal by the lamp post in the lone warehouse there, in earnest.