Joseph Weaver

Player Introduction:

You’ve lived your entire life loathing Baron Magnus Keinzul. He rules with fear and cruelty, coming in the dead of night with no warning to whisk loved ones away to his ebony fortress. All villagers are viable targets. No one is safe.

However, hope remains. Miners from your village recently discovered a set of ancient scrolls, which chronicle an alignment of stars that weakens vampires and only happens once every few millennia. At some point, everyone in the village has lost a loved one to the Baron. Now, you have an opportunity to stop the cycle once and for all. No more children need to wake up an orphan, and no parent needs to fear losing their child to the creature that rules the night. The abductees taken last month may still live; if so, you can save them. You’ve made your vow. Either you kill the vampire lord who rules over you, or you die trying.

Tonight, the normally chalky white moon appears as a crimson light in the night sky, The Alignment transpiring as predicted. The time for you to take up arms and avenge your village for centuries of oppression is nigh. The Baron’s reckoning awaits.

General Features:

Unless otherwise noted, the interior of the castle is cool and dark. Baron Keinzul does not fear death, so only a few doors in the Baron’s Wing are locked. The Lower Levels have primarily gone untouched for various reasons, so many passages in that area are locked or sealed. Each of his “pets” has its own lair, so they do not leave their designated rooms.

Upper Castle 1-1: The Whispering Garden

You emerge from the mountain pass, stepping through an arch of black stone. The courtyard before you more resembles death than a garden. No grass grows here, instead replaced by dry, cracked earth. Dead trees line what appears to be a path from the archway to a crimson wooden door at the back of the keep. A dried-up pond sits off to your left. A cluster of wood snags jut skyward in the middle of the pond, a strange glow emitting from somewhere amongst them. From the courtyard layout, one can imagine how this may have once been a pleasant place to visit. Now, it serves as a cemetery for these lifeless shards.

A gust of cold wind blows, dust billowing up from the desolate landscape between you and the keep. The entire courtyard sits in shadow, the sheer size of the fortress blocking the moonlight. An otherworldly whisper suddenly drifts to your ear in a language that isn’t Common, constantly repeating itself. It comes from everywhere and nowhere at once. A sense of dread falls heavily on your shoulders. You take a deep breath and take a step forward.

If a PC steps into the pond bed, the soil suddenly softens. The PC must make a DC 18 Reflex Check. With a failure, tentacles fly from the quicksand-like dirt, dragging the person to their death. A success allows the PC to dodge clear of the pond. After the tentacle attack, the ground hardens and looks as if nothing happened once the sand consumes the PC. If more than one PC enters the pond bed, those that survive the attack must pass a Luck Check or become stuck in the pond. Those stuck PCs must repeat the process, starting on their next turn. When the original PCs who entered the pond are either dead or have escaped, the glow amongst the snags disappears, and two tree shards fall away from the cluster. These spears are retrievable with no further danger.

If a PC speaks Infernal (Demonic), they understand the whispering trees. If not, it sounds like garbled nonsense. The disembodied voices carry a warning, “Death sleeps beyond the Crimson Door. Speak the language of Death and command it to sleep for eternity. Thrice must you repeat the words, or your life is forfeit.” If a PC says “sleep for eternity” in Infernal, the skeleton guards in the first room do not awaken. If spoken in Common or any other language, only two awaken. The Crimson Door takes the party to Upper Castle 1-2.

To the far left of the area lies a steep rock cliff that leads down and around the castle. A passive INT 12 or higher allows the PC to see a gravel path winding through the boulders that populate the cliff. The rock trail leads to Upper Castle 1-1B (pg.15).

The hooded scavenger aimed Percy’s PL-1 pistol at the scout’s head.

“What the...what did we find? You have to see this!” the older scavenger exclaimed. “Come here! Look!”

“I’ll be right back,” spat the hooded man. He joined his friend halfway across the room to examine whatever the other man had discovered on the wrist monitor.

Shit! I have to get that back! Percy thought. The wrist monitors were multi-functional. Not only did they monitor vitals and function as chronos, but they were also connected to the Discount Depot/EconoBuy Alliance Satellite Network so that survival pods could find their way to other survival pods for trade and bartering. If the scavengers figured out how to use the network and became organized, countless pods across the nation would become raid targets. If only my ankles and wrists weren’t tied.

Suddenly, Percy remembered something. My ankles and wrists!

Percy had never had to use it, but his boots came with a hidden blade compartment. Sliding his right heel toward his hand, he could just touch the sole of his boot. He felt for a soft spot in the rubber and pressed as hard as he could. There was a low click, and the handle of something akin to a shiv popped out. Grabbing it, he immediately went to work, the razor-sharp, cutting edge slicing its way through his bindings.

“That’s amazing!” exclaimed the hooded scavenger. “What else is on there?” Whatever they were seeing, they could not be allowed to get that information to anyone else.

Percy’s wrists came free of each other. He quickly did the same with his ankles, putting more muscle into the blade. The rope split, but he pulled it tight, holding it in place. He would only get one shot at this.

“I don’t know. There’s too much here,” the old scavenger admitted, looking at Percy. “Finish killing him, and we can go through this later.”

The hooded scavenger nodded and walked back to Percy, his eyes smiling the entire time. Percy watched as the muzzle of his pistol again pointed at his face. Do not wait for him to gloat! Surprise is critical!

Knocking the gun upward, Percy used his leg strength to propel himself into his assailant’s torso. The scavenger pulled the trigger, but the shot went high. Moving with speed only a trained professional can possess, Percy stabbed the shiv into the man’s right arm. The scavenger screamed in pain, his grip on the pistol loosening, as Percy wrestled the weapon away and fired three rounds into the man’s chest, sending him falling back onto the table.

The older scavenger ran by Percy, having overcome his initial shock, yelling in fear as he did so. Grabbing his mask from the table and placing it on his face, the scout took off after him. Percy caught the older man easily, tackling him to the ground. Percy’s wrist monitor slid across the floor as the scavenger rolled over to face the young man and received the pommel of Percy’s pistol to his nose. Percy put his knee on the attacker’s chest and pointed the PL-1 at the older man’s pale, grimy face.

“Wait!” cried the scavenger, putting his hands up. The blood from his broken nose began to run down his cheeks. The dark circles under his eyes looked as deep as dried lake beds. “I’ve been gathering for weeks! Take what you want! Just don’t kill me!”

Percy recognized they were back in front of the room where he had made his initial stand-off and looked inside. Everything had happened so fast before that he hadn’t realized what was on the large oval table.

That’s not possible.

Slowly standing, Percy just stared. Canned goods covered the table from edge to edge: beans, hash, vegetables; it was all there. Where had this scrawny man got all of this? Percy had passed this hotel multiple times in the past month and had never seen any indication of a presence. He shook his head and clenched his jaw, looking back at the man lying on the floor.

“What is your name?” Percy asked, the mask's synthesizer making his voice sound sinister.

“James,” the scavenger replied.

“Thank you, James. I’m sorry,” stated the scout and pulled the trigger. The muted sound of the plasma-coated round didn’t echo. No other scavengers had come to Jame’s rescue, which only meant one thing. Percy was, once again, alone. He let out a heavy sigh. Damn it.

The Major piloted the craft to within 500 meters of the anomaly, its roiling orange and red surface encompassing the Raven cockpit’s entire view. “Frequency is still consistent,” Hera said, her AI hologram appearing in the co-pilot’s chair.

“Alright,” John said, “now just go through the data as it comes in, and we’ll go from there. I’m initiating the sensor cluster.” John pressed a button on the console between them, and the sound of moving mechanical parts could be heard throughout the ship.

A door slid open on the craft’s exterior, and a cluster of hex-shaped sensor plates began rising out of its dorsal, containing bay. Stopping a meter above the ship, it unfolded like a bird spreading its wings until it equaled the same size as one of the Raven’s forward-swept wings. The middle of the cluster contained a small titanium sphere where the array’s advanced sensors were located. The hex plates that cradled the orb and made up the “wings” of the array amplified its scanning power and assisted in data collection.

“Scanning sequence initiated,” Hera said. After a moment, the AI furrowed her brow. “John, it’s getting stronger.”

“What’s getting stronger, the frequency?” came John’s inquiry.

“Yes,” she responded, “as soon as we initiated scanning, it doubled in strength.”

John’s eyes went wide as his mind began to race. “You’re saying it responded to us?” he asked. The Major wanted to clarify this for any field recordings the computer made.

Hera looked over at her pilot, and there was something in her eyes. Was that fear? “I honestly don’t know, John,” she responded. “We’ve never encountered anything like this.”

John was about to speak when suddenly Hera’s head snapped back to the displays in front of her. “No…no…that’s not right! Where did it go?” she demanded.

“What’s not right?” John asked.

“It’s gone,” the AI replied. “It just disappeared! One second, the frequency was there, and then it just stopped!”

“That’s it. We’re done here,” John decided, pressing the button for the sensor cluster to begin the stowing process.

The ship suddenly rocked.

“Oh my god…,” Hera whispered, her eyes distant, lost in the data she was observing. “John, get us out of here. It’s building.”

“What’s building? What do you see?” he asked, impatiently watching for the sensor cluster’s ‘secure’ indicator light to come on. If the cluster didn’t return to its bay, they could lose it if he punched the thrusters.

Before she could respond, the craft lurched and began moving toward the anomaly. Now disengaged from the sensor cluster, Hera was much more animated when she said, “Get us out of here!”

John punched the reverse thrusters, which stopped the craft from moving forward but nothing more. There was a metallic clunk as the door securing the sensor cluster closed. “Hera?” he asked.

“Re-routing additional power to thrusters,” she stated.

The Raven began to back away toward the Cetus when suddenly it stopped again. “What is happening, Hera?” John asked, his voice agitated.

“The anomaly is matching our thruster power,” she responded. “I don’t like this, John. The last thing I saw was something the frequency had masked. I’m not sure what it was, but it was gathering energy and starting to build strength.”

“Was it sentient?”

“No, I don’t think so,” Hera responded. “I think it’s part of the anomaly. However, we’re close enough that our energy signature would suffice as fuel for it, and if we don’t get away, we’re going to be sucked into it.”

Sure… ‘Let’s go for a jaunt,’ I say. Now, I’m in a full-swing combat situation. Great job, Collins, he thought. Then, something occurred to him. “Not today,” John said. “Hera, on my mark, I want you to switch reverse thrusters to forward thrusters.

“Are you crazy?” the AI responded. “What are you going to do?”

“The forward thrusters are stronger than the reverse thrusters. Maybe if we change the variables for the anomaly, we can buy ourselves enough time to get turned around and escape,” John responded. He knew it was a long shot. Their current distance of about 600 meters was not very far for a full-thrust evasive maneuver, but it was better than being slowly dragged into whatever this thing was.

“That won’t work,” Hera said, her voice timid. She had already done the math.

John looked at his AI. “Probably not, but we have to try,” he said with resignation.

The light of the sun shone through the cell window, illuminating the cot and stirring Luc from his brief slumber. He instinctively scrambled for his hat and sword but quickly remembered where he was and lay back down. Hats and rapiers weren’t allowed inside jail cells. However, Luc did know some port constabularies who would bend the rules with the right amount of coin. One acquires such knowledge after spending some time as a pirate.

Pirate. Luc despised the word. It was associated with debauchery and lawbreakers, and it left a bad taste in the Frenchman’s mouth anytime it rolled off his tongue. Captain Coker had once told Luc the story of when he had decided to stop being a privateer. He had said the Crown regularly overstepped its bounds, and when it asked him to commit an act of absolute evil, he could look away no more. “Greed can drive a man to do many things,” Coker had said, “but the difference between an animal and a man is giving mercy when it is deserved.” That had been something that stuck with Luc during his time as a member of Coker’s crew, and it was something he carried with him now.

The stench coming from the cell next to him indicated to the Frenchman that it was still occupied. The damp sea air only made the smell worse. He looked to the window, silently cursing the night for not lasting longer. The young man had not slept much, though it wasn’t the stench that had kept him awake. The blabbering drunk that stench emanated from was the source of his suffering. For hours upon hours, the fellow prisoner alternated between singing random tavern songs and asking bizarre questions.

Luc had been detained the night before for insulting a guard outside the jail. When they attempted to apprehend him, he put up a little fight to make it seem authentic, and the guards had no sooner locked the door when he had heard, “Did you know God loves rum?” come from a voice in the adjacent cell.

Knowing it would probably be a mistake, Luc had acknowledged the source of the voice with simply a look.

“It’s true,” the prisoner had said, with a vigorous shaking of his head and a wide, toothy grin. “Would you like to know why?”

“No,” Luc had responded and was subsequently bombarded by a seemingly endless barrage of nonsense.

Luc hadn’t planned on spending the entire night in a cell, having planted his coat and hat on an unconscious drunk down a side street. However, the patrol here apparently took little notice of drunks in side alleys unless they were causing trouble. Surely that English plantation owner he had bumped into at the inn noticed his coin purse was missing, and Luc had made sure to be seen by the planter’s female slave and the wench serving drinks. The young man had done this with his coat collar up and head down to limit the profile one could make of him. If everything had gone according to plan, the night patrol would have discovered the drunk wearing Luc’s clothes, and his “voluntary” incarceration would have ridden him of blame.

When his situation had not changed after a couple of hours, Luc had accepted the fact that the night watch was inefficient at best and that he would likely be there until morning. Though Barbados was under King Charles II’s rule, it appeared that lawmen here had become somewhat lax in their duties. Barbados was a long way from England. For that matter, it was a long way from anything other than more islands. Thankfully, the drunkard in the adjacent cell had finally passed out about four hours before sunrise, allowing Luc to get a few hours of uncomfortable sleep. Now, he waited for his grogginess to wear off and the changing of the guard to take place.

Just then, the sound of protest came from outside as two guards dragged the drunk wearing Luc’s coat and hat into the constable’s office. The man was quite unhappy about his predicament, claiming his innocence and stating there was nothing wrong with having a few drinks. One guard removed the coat and hat, setting them on the desk. Meanwhile, the other opened Luc’s cell and tossed the man in. Luc stood, forcibly shaking off any exhaustion that lingered. This was it.

“Frenchman, you can leave,” the guard said, but the young man had other plans.