Session 67b: Lost and Found

Talsil 2nd - Talsil 11th
Through the Southern Dawnspears to the Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth

Three vampire nobles set out from Haven under cover of darkness, having decided upon a very indirect route back to Saspien. If the wedding crashers proved anything (especially the assassin covered in cake), the precaution was quite necessary. Their path would take them through the southern Dawnspears, down into the Holy Nors Empire and across the breadth of the Black Forest. After scaling the 'Western Wall', they'd circle the Saspish Vale and quietly enter the capital. They'd travel at night, when the advantage was theirs, especially while in Nors lands.

It was an ambitious undertaking, but Diana, Renato and Isabella knew well life's cruelties and the hardships of the road (whether it crossed Othyr, the Wild or Cadavera). Their first protection from them was to put aside their old names in favor of traveling personae, and Diana became Caprica, Renato Leonardo, and Isabella had some time ago decided upon Raven.

What sounded daunting plotted out on a map, proved nearly impossible in practice. Three nights of scrambling up and down slopes, avoiding ravines too wide to cross and peaks to shear or treacherous to climb, suffering the cold and wind, they began to doubt. The blisters and the scrapes and the constant backtracking began to take their toll.

Two Roads
On the fourth night, Raven sought answers in her spell book, coming upon the 'Speak with Nature' ritual. Invoking Hecate, she garnered the attention of a flurry of rats and a wheeling crow. She'd only two questions at her disposal, posing the first to the rats and asking by what means could she and her friends safely traverse the mountains headed south. They offered two paths, a dark road and a high road. The dark road would take them through the Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth, a network that wound beneath much of the southern Dawnspears. The high road was a hidden causeway paved by stone giants in time immemorial, spanning the Dawnspear and the Dormud.

Raven had read of the Lost Caverns during a summer in Ravenloft, recalling a powerful archmage by the name of Iggwilv interred her greatest treasure within the dungeon bowels, and otherwise kept the caverns as one of her many centers of power. Archmages come and go, but the caverns endured, taking on all manner of strange creature and challenging all manner of greedy, bold and foolish soul looking to rob the former Witch Queen of Rakados, who in her day was known as a terrible demon-conjurer. Yet the tastiest tidbit about the Lost Caverns was scribbled in the margin by what Izzy could only assume her grandfather, that the greatest treasure was in fact Iggwilv's sleeping daughter, a dhampir named Drelzna von Zarovich.

Caprica was all but convinced with the notion of a long-lost relative, but Leonardo would have still chosen their intended route if not for the other morsel of knowledge Raven stirred up, that within Tsojcanth were likely several crossings into other planes. She was certain one would lead back to Cadavera. Of course, she was just as certain another would lead to the infinite layers of the Abyss. But what were the odds of confusing those two?

Once in Cadavera, it'd be a simple matter to return to Ravenloft, as which point they could use the wardrobe to pass into Raven's own room in Castle Saspien. And so the way was decided, Raven asking the crow in which direction to head. She aimed her peak toward the Heartwood, a distant taiga forest that stood between the southern Dawnspears and the vast Roam, and said to find the 'Broken Door'. She tried asking what dangers were in store, but the magic was spent, and the beasts scattered.

Hunted
Two nights on a southwestern bent, guided by the steadily growing Heartwood, saw much of the same blisters, scrapes and muddying. Despite knowing what to find, they had no idea how to find it. A broken door in a mountain chain might as well have been a copper piece or a hairpin.

Matters were made worse on the third night, when Leonardo noticed movement out the corner of his eye. He circled back, but could find nothing. In the days that followed, as they rested, occasionally dust rained from ledges above their shelters, or they heard animal cries not quite animal enough. By the fourth night, the vampires were convinced they were being hunted, though not once did they spot by what. Rather stealthy themselves, they clung to the shadows between rocks, and it seemed, for the moment, their pursuers couldn't quite find them either.

Then about noon the fifth day, the vampires were woken by guttural, broken Nors. Their hunters had perched literally right above them, talking back and forth on their difficult quarry, and how angry the laird would be if he found out trespassers walked his mountains. They were very good trackers, having determined two women and a lithe man were in their numbers, and made assumptions based off strands of hair, tatters of clothing and faint perfume.

The girls recognized 'laird' was the title of a lord of earth fey, a land owner, be it a rock gnome, korred or the like. These were his vassals, and he sounded an exacting master. But they were no closer to the Broken Door and time, Raven hoped, was still a factor in foiling the potential coup.

Your Best Demon Impression
Raven peeled away her shadow and sent it into a nearby tree. There it questioned the hunters of their intentions. They screamed like apes and threw stones and stone-tipped spears, which only made the shadow laugh. It warned them of hellish consequences for crossing it, and some of the hunters outright fled. Those that stayed wanted the trespassers brought out into the open so they might be questioned, and the shadow stated it spoke for them.

It was honest enough, explaining three travelers were heading south for Nors lands. However they needed a guide. The lot of them refused, uttering they didn't go into blue-eye lands. When questioned about their laird, they banged their weapons and howled, and when the shadow spoke of the Lost Caverns of Tsojcanth, they screamed of demons and trolls and all but one fled.

She alone leaped down off her perch and cowered as the shadow explained the travelers only wanted to get home, and the hunter assumed it meant to Tsojcanth, making these travelers demons. Terrified beyond understanding, she cowered and agreed to take them if they'd spare her soul. Raven was quite pleased with herself, turning toward an equally-pleased Caprica and dismissive Leonardo. "Maybe..." he said in regards to her soul's ultimate fate.

The hunter wasn't a gnome or fey at all, like they might have expected, but a human woman, painted in gray mud all dried and crackled, in hides with bone adornment, carrying flint weaponry. And yet she spoke a crude Nors, like imperials that time forgot, literally stone-age.

The three vampires revealed themselves and their guide, never looking them in the eye, for the eyes were the windows to the soul, danced forward, sometimes on all fours, or on two, like a monkey. She was quite good at it, often leaving the demons behind her struggling to catch up, though like a good guide stopped often. Leonardo's menace never left her tarrying long, though, as they descended for hours.

The Broken Door
Maybe an hour before sunset, the monkey woman stopped suddenly before a ledge and pointed down. Over it gaped the Broken Door, built into the cliff side they couldn't quite see, overlooking a hundred foot drop onto stony teeth. Leo's eyes widened hungrily at all the shinies stuck in those teeth, weapons and coin on picked bones. A plan was drawn, in which Caprica would scout the cliff side down one rope, Leonardo would forage the jagged rocks below (all three of them were currently cut off from their trust funds after all), and Raven would watch the ropes. That left the monkey woman, though, who Leo took by the scruff and swore to kill and rape if she tried anything. The moment was so horrifying, she passed out of fright and defecated herself, drawing a long look from Caprica.

Leonardo managed to recover quite a few coins and a few items, while Diana found a narrow, crumbling ledge leading to the massive doorway built into the cliff. It seeped a horrid, sour-sweet wreak...

Commotion eventually drew both Leo and Caprica's eyes upward, watching Raven back away slowly before a swarm of mountain people. They'd come back to rescue their brave, lone warrior and found her lying in her own shit, perhaps wounded. They flung rocks and spears at Raven, some which hit, and she fell off the edge with a terrible scream. Caprica's eyes widened, and Leonardo scrambled up the rope in some heroic and futile effort to catch her, but nearly twenty feet down she vanished in a wisp of black and materialized giggling next to her friend on the ledge. Leonardo sighed, grumbled, then climbed up to meet them, getting a blown kiss for the effort.

The mountain people were entirely convinced of their victory and celebrated with raucous cheers. Short-lived cheers, though, which quickly turned to shrieks as something whose footsteps were as thunder and quake attacked. Sounds of squishing and scattering commenced.

Inching their way across the crumbling ledge, the vampires came at last to the Broken Door, a slab of stone some forty feet high and five feet thick, slouched and shattered inward the cliff side, revealing a tremendous staircase of carved mountain spiraling down. Minute etchings covered the door, but nothing the vampires could read, same too for the much cruder blood symbols smeared over it and cavern walls. It wreaked of rotten meat within, the air jarringly hot and humid in contrast to the cold, windy mountains.

Six Heads Cavern
After sixteen turns around the giant staircase, the group emptied into a wide, low natural cavern riddled with brackish puddles and dripping cave sweat and fat spiders. The largely granite walls were carved in the likeness of six ugly faces, with floppy ears, hanging jowls, tusks, pig noses and toad eyes. Each warded a tunnel, six in all, all seemingly as natural as the cavern. And on each of their tongues, gems glistened.

When they approached the faces, hoping to glean which path was best, the stonework contorted and each construct began to shout, "TURN BACK! THIS IS NOT THE WAY!" Each voice was painful in the caves, and reverberated back up the stairs and down each of the halls. Caprica nervously tried to engage them, but they all seemed programmed to say the same thing, which only changed when she questioned which was the right way. To this they all shouted, "I AM THE RIGHT WAY!" No help, of course, though as Raven receded to the center of the chamber and covered her ears, trying to think amidst the cacophony, Leo and Caprica spotted a sixth face only mouthing words. The way its eyes rolled and tongue flopped, it looked to be choking instead of speaking. The other faces warned, "LEAVE HIM ALONE!" but soon Renato was deftly jabbing the butt of his glaive into its yawning maw (no one trusted putting their hand in) and dislodging a huge diamond.

Unfortunately, the huge diamond shrunk once out of the huge mouth, becoming a measly pea that clattered at Raven's feet. She picked it up curiously, eventually determining (and quite tempted to slip it in her mouth) that it had the amazing property to mute anyone whose mouth it was shoved in. More so, it prevented them from expressing anything other than panic and a need for help. With a sly grin, the girl tucked it away for some undoubtedly perfect time.

The face, painted in bloody symbols like the door and walls (by the same huge fingers), excitedly thanked Leo over and over again. He had an overbearing way about him, though in his defense he was a man-sized face, with an over-sized voice that sounded like some stereotypical dwarf with a heavy accent. He quieted the other constructs down, and Caprica proceeded to ask him some questions about the caverns.

Dungeon Politics
He informed them rumors of the two crossings were true, one to a dark place, and another to a place that made the dark look like a fancy picnic. They were both of them in the bowels of the dungeon, but in order to reach them, they'd need to pass through one of two territories. Drelzna the Treasured ruled one lobe of the Greater Caverns, and the other the Troll King. They'd been warring each other for close to seven years, since the demon vampire had awoken and laid claim to her mother's property. The trolls, however, weren't giving it up, especially after having settled it for so long.

Caprica with visions of alliances in her head turned to Raven, wondering if their ancestor could be trusted as an ally. Leonardo was quick to remind the girls their only allegiance was to the three vampires in this cave and their mission, and to Hell with the rest.

I Hate Trusting Things
Because the face owed them so much, he opened up a section of his tunnel's flooring, revealing a narrow crawlspace that stunk of something other than rot (bitter, bug-ridden muck). It would bypass much of the Lesser Caverns, and bring them to a crossroads. Left would take them toward Drelzna's defenses, right would lead them to the troll city.

Offered a path too good to ignore, however much the risk, Raven, Leonardo and Caprica climbed hands-and-knees into the slime and worms. With Leo's grim sentiment, "I hate trusting things," they proceeded to crawl down the oppressive, black chute. Behind them, the face offered a half-spoken 'good luck' before sealing the entrance again.

As they slipped and squished on, covered in filth, there was no real way of telling where they were heading. Leo could only wonder what those symbols meant painted on the face's cheeks and forehead. In the pit of his gut, he suspected 'Liar'.


Experience: 1000 xp each (31, 928 total)
Finding Tsojcanth, 2400
The Sixth Head of Tsojcanth, 600
Magic: The Diamond Chip (Isabella)
Money: - 80gp (Izzy, Speak with Nature components), +466gp each
Loot: Steel helm, steel buckler, tattered purple cloak, ornate longsword scabbard with orange teardrop gems (worth approximately 900 gp)

New NPCs
The Mountain People (race): A stone-age version of the Nors, kept simple and humble by a rock fey lord known as "laird". They're filthy, groveling, but they know their mountains intimately. They fear the imperials as "blue-eyes".

"Monkey Woman": A she-hunter of the Mountain People brave and stupid enough to face Isabella's shadow. She found herself in the vampires' service, taking them to the broken door of the Lost Caverns. Renato named her for the apish way in which she climbed. She was 'rescued' by other hunters, or so Izzy led them to believe with her staged fall, but they were then attacked by something bigger, a giant perhaps. Whereabouts unknown.

The Sixth Head of Tsojcanth: The only stone face willing to actually hold a conversation in the initial 'six heads' cavern, once Renato dislodged a magic diamond chip gagging the poor construct. It spoke loud and boisterous, like some dwarven stereotype, in a decided accent, explaining the current politics of the caverns before offering a secret passage to a crossroads, heading either to the dhampir or the troll city. He was painted up in bloody symbols likely drawn by giants or trolls, though none in the group could decipher their meaning. Renato feared they meant 'Liar'.

New Hooks
Laird of the Mountain People
Who is the fey lord ruling the cave people?

Some Forgotten Auntie
Is Drelzna a potential ally? Or a typical von Zarovich? Why was she interred in Tsojcanth?

Choosing Sides
Whose side will you join to find the shadow crossing? Drelzna's? The Troll King's? Play both?