Broom headed back outside to alert Des and Reine.
Broom peered once again into the gloom, but her eyes could not make out anything. The black 'tattoo' slid down from her neck, along her arm and into the palm of her hand where it oozed out into a puddle in her cupped hands. In a moment little white orbs bobbed to the surface and spindly legs sprouted out of the viscous ooze which quickly coalesced into Us.
"Sneak down there and see if you can see anything, but be quiet!" Broom knelt down and let Us loose.
Us' little whip like tail undulated happily for a moment before she skittered up the wall and along the roof of the tunnel, disappearing into the darkness.
Silent as a wraith, Us climbed down the tunnel into the cave below. It seemed to be a natural cave, illuminated by large floor lanterns, extending east to west, slightly sloping down into a pool of water to a raised shelf. The cave was much less interesting than the... things within it.
Nearly impossible to describe, completely inhuman, they were about the height of a man and shaped like an elongated barrel with ridges running from end to end. Something- a head?- rested on top, shaped like a starfish but with eyes at the tips of what would be a starfish's arms. In the middle of the five eye arm-tentacle-appendages were an opening surrounded by smaller tentacles (or perhaps... tubes?).
The barrel things squatted atop five long tentacles and a mass of smaller tendrils. Us was reminded of comb jellies- those transparent, luminescent creatures that lived in water and used tiny tendrils to propel themselves through the water. Unlike comb jellies, though, the body was wrapped in what looked like five sets of leathery wings.
As impossible as it was to predict exactly how these creatures perceived the world, they did not seem to notice Us. In fact, they didn't seem to be doing anything at all. Still as stones, the pair of things were so still they almost seemed dead. Or sleeping.
Us quickly skittered back to the rest of the group. Waving her little claws excitedly she screeched softly at everyone, even though Broom was the only one that could understand her.
Broom's eyes opened wide as she experienced a myriad of feelings. One part of her was equally thrilled and terrified at the prospect of meeting an Elder Thing while the other part was a subdued mix of curiosity and concern.
"The Elder Things are sleeping down there." she whispered "We wonder why they dug a hole to sleep in. They are very strange things. Maybe we shouldn't disturb them. It would be rude to wake them up and it might make them angry."
Broom headed up the stairs as quietly as she could so as not to disturb the slumbering Things in their hole.
Desdemona curbed her curiosity, with some effort, and followed Broom up.
"We shall have to speak at length on this matter," she told Broom once they were out. "I simply must know all there is to know about the... Elders."
Reine still didn't really know what these "Elder Things" were, but she could stand not knowing - for now. If they were bad enough to curb Broom's natural curiosity, Reine didn't feel the need to punch them in the nose.
Yet.
"Now what," she asked, softly.
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"Broom, would the Elders be disturbed by us exploring the rest of this area?" Desdemona asked, already turning toward the other building. "If you don't wish to disturb them, we shall not, but surely they have no ability to know what passes elsewhere?"
That, she was less sure of, but the manor beckoned.
The group made its way back across the garden, now free of hostile topiaries, to the closest set of doors. The double doors here were more decorative than secure, and the room beyond was furnished with a big table, eight chairs, and a glass-paned cupboard. The room smelled of smoke from the fireplace, and a few dirty dishes, an emptied wine bottle, and used cutlery sat in front of the three nondescript men who were just finishing up their meal.
They all jumped up and drew rapiers immediately upon seeing the interlopers.
"We don't know if they would mind. They didn't wake up when we came into this building so We don't think they would care if we went into any of the other buildings. Going to the main building sounds like a good idea."
...
Broom felt comfortable walking through the front door. After all, except for Lachem they had all worked for the Count and they were looking for their missing employer. Of course they were allowed in the manner. As far as Broom was concerned, Des and Rein were the rightful caretakers of the place in the Duke's absence.
Upon seeing the three men Broom smiled and waved "Hello! We are looking for... wait! What are you doing? Don't you recognize us? We work for the Duke!" she stammered in confusion at the sudden display of arms.
"Cease that nonsense immediately," Desdemona snapped icily on seeing them, her tone much more harsh than Broom's. The manor might or might not be hers to claim, but she certainly wasn't going to cede it to riffraff. "Don't you know who I am?"
Behind her, the doorway darkened as her shadow loomed large on the wall.
The trio of armed men don't seem intimdated by Desdemona (or her shadow) or mollified by Broom's invocation of the Duke.
The three men rushed Lachen and Reine at the door, focusing on the dangerous-looking Lachen.
They were good; 2 managed to pierce Lachen's defenses with their flashing blades.
Oh, you wanna play rough with your tiny, pointy di... swords? So lets play rough. But I play in the big leagues, boys.
Lachen smirks and strikes at the first attacker who dared to draw the first blood
I think that hammers my point?
Broom cringed at the brutality of Lachen's strike, but the men were warned and they did strike first after all. The sorceress looked on with a little indecision as the doorway was filled with friends in the way.
Seeing Lachen's wound jolted her into action. Instinctively she pulled her wand of healing from her pack and took a step forward. Us quickly oozed out of Broom's skin and skittered up along her arm to stand on her hand, waving her little claws and making the little screechy sounds to remind Broom what happened last time she had healed Lachen.
Confused and flustered about what to do, she did the next thing that came to mind. Letting Us grab the wand and skitter back up to her shoulder Broom used her newly empty hand to conjure up a small puddle of black liquid and simply tossed it into the room trying to avoid her allies.
Lachen's target turned out to not just be good with a blade but as graceful as a dancer. He bent like a reed to avoid the powerful fighter's blow, springing back into fighting position with a smirk on his own lips. "Perhaps zese big leagues of yours are full of slow, dull witted thugs such as yourself, mon amis. You vill have to be quicker zan zat to get past me."
The smirk was immediately wiped off the Galtan duelist's face, though, as Broom hit him with a glob of burning black goo. "Eugh, mon dieu! Zis is ridiculous!"
Desdemona was boiling mad. How dare these common thugs attack her and her companions?! She, too, reflexively flung out an arm... but rather than an acidic black glob, shadows flocked to her arm from all around.
Eyes widening, she screamed, and jerked her arm back - but the battle was joined. All the shadows, including her own, were sucked toward the trio in their way.
lmao
Her shadow tried to wrap about the middle man's sword arm, but he drew back too quickly!
Defense:
20% miss chance in bright light, 50% miss in any other lower level of light. Immunity to death effects, disease, and poison. Evasion. Cold/electric resistance 10.
Offense:
Slam reach 10', bite reach 5', 2 claws reach 5', increased by 5' each when Large. Melee attacks affect incorporeal creatures as if it had the ghost touch weapon property. All attacks are treated as magic. Combat reflexes (4 AOOs).
Defense:
50% miss in any other lower level of light than normal bright light. Cold/electric resistance 5. Disguise self 1/day (Sp). Darkvision 60'.
Current AC: 20 (within reach of eidolon)
Desdemona's hungry shadows took a hunk of wood out of the door frame as they sped toward the duelist blocking the door. He screamed and tried to parry the stream of biting darkness but his blade couldn't do anything against the magical attack.
Reine swiped at the duelist holding the door, her face set in a terrifying expression.
She brushed the swordsman's arm and he screamed, recoiling in sudden pain with one dead arm and turning to run after the briefest of looks at the horrifying specter in the doorway.
His fellows looked shocked at the vehemence of their friend's reaction and concentrated on Reine, clearly the more dangerous target.
One struck home but the other missed.
Lachen gallantly tries to smash Reine's attacker in the ground, after trying to hit the running fencer
Panicked as he might be, the duelist was still wary and nimble and he dodged out of the way of Lachen's hammer as he fled, disappearing up the stairs.
Lachen made up for his missed attack with a massive slam straight into the next swordsman's chest, nearly dropping the man on the spot. He wheezed and cringed away from the hammer, looking ready to run himself.
The chaos of the melee continued to swirl around the front of the doors. Broom searched desperately for another opening that she might be able to exploit, but became ever more concerned about the possibility of hitting her friends.
She rushed over to Rein's side of the battle. Both Rene and Lachen could be very scary, each in their own way. Reine with her cold air of menace and Lachen with his threat of violence. If Broom accidentally hit someone in the door she felt that Reine might be more forgiving.
Bringing the thoughts of the deep place to mind, she let the purple sparks dance and flow about her fingers before thrusting her arm forward. It still felt strange and looked even more alarming, but the sorceress was becoming more accustom to it as the thin black tendril whipped from her wrist, sparks dancing about it and struck at the duelist in the doorway.
Desdemona's scream strangled down into a curdled yelp as she tried to draw back - but her shadow anchored her. Yet when it reached out again, it wasn't toward her, as her panicked mind insisted, but at the soldiers in the doorway...
And sank into one of their shadows.
It seemed at first that nothing else would happen, but then the soldier's own shadow began to creep up his body toward his arms, pulling at his limbs, slowing him.
Desdemona croaked a low protest as her own shadow followed suit, running along her outstretched arms, held in lock, to leap off at the soldier as well.
Defense:
20% miss chance in bright light, 50% miss in any other lower level of light. Immunity to death effects, disease, and poison. Evasion. Cold/electric resistance 10.
Offense:
Slam reach 10', bite reach 5', 2 claws reach 5', increased by 5' each when Large. Melee attacks affect incorporeal creatures as if it had the ghost touch weapon property. All attacks are treated as magic. Combat reflexes (4 AOOs).
Defense:
50% miss in any other lower level of light than normal bright light. Cold/electric resistance 5. Disguise self 1/day (Sp). Darkvision 60'.
Current AC: 20 (within reach of eidolon)
Broom's tendril whipped past Reine's shoulder to crack into the swordsman's neck and he screamed in fear even before the purple lightning coursed down it, making him twitch and jump like some terrible marionette. He went down, eyes burned black, smoke spiraling from his head, and the flesh of his face cooked blood red from the electricity.
The last remaining duelist bravely, futilely, continued to try to hold the door. He grinned at the invaders, his face locked into a mad grin. "Let my blood be a sacrifice to the Nameless King!" His foot flinched away from Desdemona's shadow as it stretched toward him but he couldn't avoid it pulling at his shadow's sword arm. The distraction also made him vulnerable to Desdemona's own hungry shadows and he yelled in pain as they took little bites out of his exposed skin.
Reine, her face a mask of terror to anyone who faced her, swiped at him.
Her mere touch was enough to cause pain but he didn't run, perhaps bolstered by his mad invocation of faith. In fact, he reached up to slice his own palm open, splashing blood at Reine and Lachen. "Feel the power of the great beyond!"
Broom winced at her own results. She knew she had to help protect her friends, but that didn't soften the impact of seeing the gruesome consequences of her own attack.
She also cringed as the duellist cut his own hand, but the following pain resulting from the dark energy washing over her suddenly made her angry, how dare he hurt them by splashing blood on them!
Her flash of anger was short lived however as a part of her reflected on the fact that flicking black liquid was what she did to her opponents all the time. How could she get upset about the mess the enemy was flinging at them when Broom herself engaged in the same behaviour?
Somewhat reluctantly she conjured up a cupped hand of black liquid and pondered it for a moment before tossing it with a pang of shame at the remaining opponent.
Broom's burning black goo missed the nimble warrior.
Can't you stop moving? I don't mean you no harm. I just want to kill you.
Desdemona gasped in shock as she was struck by stinging droplets of blood! Even the shadow briefly pulled away from where they struck the floor it stretched across. Pulling back her sleeve, she regarded the blackening spots on her skin with none of the qualms Broom felt.
Darkness flooded her vision, and in a familiar icy tone, she whispered in a voice that somehow carried, "You'll wish you hadn't done that."
Defense:
20% miss chance in bright light, 50% miss in any other lower level of light. Immunity to death effects, disease, and poison. Evasion. Cold/electric resistance 10.
Offense:
Slam reach 10', bite reach 5', 2 claws reach 5', increased by 5' each when Large. Melee attacks affect incorporeal creatures as if it had the ghost touch weapon property. All attacks are treated as magic. Combat reflexes (4 AOOs).
Defense:
50% miss in any other lower level of light than normal bright light. Cold/electric resistance 5. Disguise self 1/day (Sp). Darkvision 60'.
Current AC: 20 (within reach of eidolon)
The duelist, nimble as a dancer, evaded Lachen's powerful strikes. He laughed as he evaded blow after blow. "The end is nigh! For me and for you!"
I think the group also encountered and identified the Yellow Sign (the symbol of Hastur) in Briarstone Asylum. And Ulver Zandalus was drawing pictures of Carcosa, the alien city associated with Hastur.
Lachen is too caught in the fight to care about a soon to be dying dancer mad ramblings
The little screeching from Us caught broom's attention, distracting her from the dilemma of whether she should keep using the black liquid or not.
Broom looked up at the remaining opponent in alarm "What have you done with the Count? Why does the Nameless King's cult want him?
The cultist swordsman grinned manically. "I know nothing about your Count! Maybe he already went under the knife, like you!" He lunged in Broom's direction but Desdemona's shadow had other ideas. Already pinning the man's shadow to the ground, it reached up and grabbed the duelist's shadow by the throat. The man started to choke, then gasp, then his face went red, then purple. His eyes bulged from his head and he dropped his sword shortly before falling to his knees. In a few seconds he was dead.
Desdemona slowly lowered her arm, but her eyes didn't fade back to their normal stormy gray for some time.
In a detached tone, she said, "That chain shirt might be of use to me, once it's been properly cleaned... but I shan't object if someone else prefers to deal with it."
But where her attention truly lay was with the symbols of Hastur. She gingerly lifted them in a cloth, and wrapped them, before securing them among her belongings. "I should rather like to converse with you and... Us, about that symbol, when the chance arises, Doctor," she told Broom.
A look of concern crossed Broom's face, something about what the cultist had said didn't sit well with her. "What do you suppose he meant by 'going under the knife like you'? Did he just mean getting stabbed like he was trying to do to us?"
Her pondering were immediately forgotten the moment Des suggested a displeasure at the mess. The odd sorceress put down her pack and began the process of moving the corpses to one side of the room and arranging them in a respectful manner after removing items of interest. She waited until everyone had picked anything that they wanted immediately, giving a quick clean and polish with spell and cloth to anything that was dirty. The rest she wrapped carefully in sheets she had acquired from the asylum so that the sharp items didn't damage anything else in her pack and the dirty items didn't soil anything else until she had time to clean them properly.
I'm all in to finish the job with the duelist, if you don't have any objection. I don't like my foes to stay alive, cause you don't know if they won't strike back again.
"Thank you, Broom." Desdemona regarded the duelist dispassionately. "The fellow seemed quite disturbed. The rantings of a madman, no doubt."
But she didn't sound certain.
In her mind, the darkness slithered about. Listening.
Ignoring it, she nodded slightly to Lachen. "Regardless, they seem far too disturbed to have running about. I have no objections to ending that threat. Do be a gentleman and keep facing him for one moment, Lachen."
She shrugged out of her old chain shirt and into the one Broom had cleaned. It was more comfortable than the old one, and she nodded in satisfaction. "Hardly haute couture, but it will do for this purpose," she said with a tiny moue of distaste.
"Shall we move on?"
LMAO. So, +2?
Des's eyes were sharp and the shadow slithered under the table and chairs but neither of them found anything of interest beyond the things on the bodies and the remains of the meal on the table. Something in the back of her mind told her the silver dishes and cutlery were quite valuable- she didn't quite remember being there when they were purchased but maybe she had looked at an inventory list before.
Following in the duelist's footsteps the group hurried up the stairs to the second floor. A door at the top had been hastily thrown open. Beyond was a room with a large fireplace and a round table with stuffed, high-backed chairs around it. The walls were decorated with patterned wallpaper and small paintings of the surrounding landscape. Against the walls were three large mahogany sideboards with brass candleholders.
Of more immediate interest was the dead cultist on the floor just a few feet inside the room, out of sight from the stairs, and the... thing that was feeding on it. The mass of writhing tentacles pulsed red as the horrid creature gulped blood out of the dead duelist's body through palm-sized suckers. And it was... laughing? Not quite laughter, it was tittering quietly to itself as it drained the life out of the recently vibrant warrior.
Whatever it was, the main body seemed to be concentrated up near the ceiling over the table.
Don't mind us, really, and enjoy your meal.
Lachen waits until the girls are out of the room and closes the door, quite hastily.
Well, the good news are the duelist didn't call for help.
Desdemona nodded, but her curiosity was nearly enough to drag her back into the room. As it was, Lachen had to all but drag her out of it.
Eyes shining with fascination, she turned to Broom. "Broom? Do you *know* what that was?!" She seemed nigh-giddy with glee. The research potential alone!
kn dungeoneering: 1d20 + 9 ⇒ (11) + 9 = 20
Broom grimaced at the mess that was being made, but was still excited at seeing yet another denizen of the dark above.
"It is a yogfm'l lllln'gha gn'th'bthnk" broom frowned as she struggled to find a suitable translation. "A star... blood eater?" The literal translation didn't feel right, but her face lit up suddenly when she found the right word "Vampire! Star Vampire. They come from the dark above like the Elder Things."
"Yes!" Des all but squealed. She had to clutch her hands together to avoid clapping with joy. "I wonder if we could dissect it..." she sighed dreamily. Turning away from her inner thoughts, she looked hopefully at the others. "Do you believe it might dessicate if we killed it? Or would there be enough left to study?"
The question started out earnest, but became rhetorical by the end, as she beamed in the direction of the horrid thing. She reached out to open the door and peek through again. "Maybe it's possible to simply immobilize it..." she murmured, starry-eyed.
The star vampire seemed fully occupied with its current meal. Its tentacles pulsed a deeper red as gobbets of blood pumped up into its main mass. It didn't seem to obey any laws of physics as it floated up near the ceiling, perhaps evidence of its origins in the dark beyond the stars.
Broom looked a little perplexed "There isn't any reason to disturb it, is there? It isn't doing anything... well it did kill that guard, but we might have done that anyway. If we don't have to go through that room, maybe just leave it?"
Come on girls, lets move your as...sets. I don't want to find out if this thing wants a second course, and I want to be on the menu today. Not like that anyway.
Lachen tries to get the women moving out
It is far more common for a star vampire to show up on a world after being conjured from the depths of space via certain rare spells or rituals. Many of these rites are deliberately ambiguous promises of the aid of a powerful spirit from the depths of space—designed to serve up the unsuspecting occultist as a hungry star vampire’s inaugural meal on the new world. The source of these dangerous rituals is unclear, for it is unlike the alien mind of a star vampire to conceive of such tactics. Likely, these treacherous spells were inflicted upon the world by a misanthropic lunatic eager to bring pain and doom upon those foolish enough to attempt to contact alien beings.
The strange noises issued by a star vampire seem to serve no purpose, although they tend to sound like mocking laughter at times. These creatures can speak if they wish (in Aklo), but their voices are wet and slobbery and do not prevent the tittering sounds they constantly emit.
Ancient beyond most worlds, whatever realm first spawned these interstellar predators is long gone, vanished even from the memories of the star vampires themselves, along with any culture or name for themselves they may have once had. Yet, the star vampires do not mourn this loss. They have no need for companionship, no desire to leave a legacy, and no drive to colonize new worlds, for their minds and motivations are as alien as their strange shapes to most planet-bound societies.
Broom nodded and went back down the stairs. "They can talk if they want to, but they don't talk very much. If we really want to try we can come back later. We don't think it would agree to being cut open though."
Once again at the bottom floor Broom went to the remaining door and once everyone was present proceeded to open it.