User:Jasons

Summary

GM: Jim Arona
Night: Wednesday

Party

• Bower, the Knave of Shadows - Ed Douglas
• Bishop, a warrior-priest from the Old West - Jason Stevens

Chapter 1. Book of Shadows

A man can find his calling in someone's death, but not usually his own.

Introductions
Name's Bishop. I'm a haunted drifter I suppose, I want the dead to find peace wherever they might fall. I've partnered with Bower, the Knave of Shadows, who's a likeable bloke. In fact he has a roguish charm that I'm sure is weaponised. But he's someone you can ride the river with and that's what counts.

Our story starts in Berchtesgaden on Reich, a lake-side holiday town in the Bavarian Alps, not far from the Black Forrest and where the infamous Eagle's Nest is perched.

The Eagle's Nest
We arrive late evening and soak up the scenery with a beer. The Eagles Nest is a manor house on the side of a cliff. There's a dirigible parked at a tower there, various gun emplacements and fortifications. Oddly, while the dirigible is sometimes there and sometimes not, we never see it come or go.

West of here past the manor is an artificial forest with very uniform trees. People avoid it and either don't know much or are quiet about it.

At some point we notice a lady as fine as cream gravy. We ask around and find she's a high-tone and fancy in these parts. Stays at the manor house they say. Goes by the name of Eva Braun. Has a prick of a husband.

We stay at a two-bit inn, beneath the attention of the high-nosed, and spend a few days getting to know the place.

Spirited Research
Bower's a bit of librarian so we hit the library to do some research. He cut's swells with the head librarian and before long they disappear into a room.

I wander around on my own. It's an old World War 2 bunker and I soon find that there are unquiet dead in here playing havoc with the lights. I explain to them it's no disco and as one they crowd me, reaching and wailing. I see many young eyes looking at me from among the dead, these brief candles crying for someone to avenge them. "Children," I say, "what happened?". They tell me of a bad man who did bad things, the graaf around here.

Bower emerges from his vigorous reading and would like to continue his research the next day. He ends up spending a few weeks. During this time I go on some hunting excursions and chew cud with others in the hunting parties. I find that the graaf's line operates Thurn and Taxis, a merchant house that sells secure mail services. Their manor is north-east of here.

Exhausted from his research, Bower finally emerges with a book about Coriander, due back in a week.

Trial at the Flesh Forest
We make tramping preparations and head out into the northern woods. We decide to have a quick look at the western forest - if folk avoid it then that's reason enough to unavoid it. We head over the ridge.

There are soldiers on patrol there and skirting the wood is a small rail car that goes into a tunnel at the north. We sneak into the forest and find that the rows of trees have sample parchments in a glass case beneath them. The trees are regular in east-west rows and have branches growing in cardinal directions only. The wood itself seems to be flesh-like, as though vellum could be made or parchment that would count as being made of flesh.

We sneak up to a radio hut and beyond to the roof of a larger military complex built into the ridge. We see various gun emplacements but one in particular has a crystal-like barrel with a glow at its base. It's pointing south with no apparent turret or aiming ability. We sneak up to it and determine the glow is coming from the eye of a balrog. We decide that we need the eye, so we dismantle the barrel and Bower carefully decouples the eye from the base. In doing so, he cuts through what seems to be, judging by the rumbling now coming from below, the balrog's optic nerve.

We are already sprinting back towards the forest as we hear the first few men run onto the roof. I feel a stinging smack in my back. Feels a bit like a jacketed 9mm with modified ogive. The indignity of being shot in the back and then by a lurger is too much. I turn to compare pistol sizes when I see an enormous fiery hand erupt onto the roof, a shoulder not far behind. If that thing has a pistol then admittedly it would be bigger than mine, so I keep running.

We manage to get over the ridge and head north at pace with Bower's spell. We see a dirigible rise up in front of us, mortars at the ready.

We're in over our heads so we step into a shadow and back to Bower's house in Italy.

Return to Thurn and Taxis
We rest and recover, kicking ourselves that we had to mess with the eye. But we break it down for power and make preparations for going back.

We go in quietly this time, using Bower's shadows, and find the graaf's manner house. It's a large building, unfortified, but has packs of dogs that patrol in that way dogs don't. They are cybernetic with pneumatic necks - once they bite down on you, they shake like a paint-mixer. Bower gets us past them and we climb to the roof where we see, with spirit sight, emanations from a conjuring. They seem to come from the top level which is heavily curtained.

Bower checks one of the outer windows for traps and wards. It opens from the inside so I drift through the glass. The window has one of those damn casement stays that you have to lift and push through. I try to do it quietly but make a meal of it.

Something about him irritated her. Maybe it was his pedantic ways or his long blonde hair she wasn't sure, but he's an accomplished summoner she granted, and this boon will be useful. A bang came from behind a curtain, on the far side of the devil the pair were negotiating with. "What was that?" asked the Medeanite sorceress. "What was what?" replied the graaf who was focusing intently on the devil. "Go over and have a look," she said. "There is no way I am leaving the ward!" exclaimed the graaf.

She started casting as a man in a leather duster strode out from behind the curtain, pistol blazing. Not far behind was a dashing figure who skirted the devil for a better angle. Her heartbeat quickened.

"Here are two souls as payment for your boon!" cried the graff nervously. This annoyed the sorceress more as she and her bound spirits unleashed fury on the intruders. The first man, who seemed to be taken aback by the size of the devil's penis, was badly hurt. The charming-roguish fellow avoided most of the damage and at the same time spoke a few quick words to the devil, and it nodded. The graaf's attention was on the intruders now, the gunfighter in particular and his large pistol. He pulled out an elephant gun. The gunfighter looked hurt at the sight of it and was shot squarely.

The sorceress was feeling better. The western-looking fellow was almost dead and neither of them managed to breach their ward or compromise the summoning. And now the graaf was about to release a torrent of souls on them, so they will certainly be finished off.

A bottle broke harmlessly off their ward and fell to the ground. It had dark liquid inside which started spreading. The sorceress didn't give it a second thought until she saw it was consuming the floor, the ward markings and the very space. The ward failed and before she had time to be pissed off, the darkness was upon them. They winked out of existence.

The substance without form is working a little too well. The nothingness spreads, frees Aim and threatens to eat everything within the outer ward we find ourselves trapped in.

Bower distracts the devil with a range of bargaining options while I hit it with an amorphous water balloon. The devil is destroyed and the sudden change in temperature threatens Bower but he's able to flicker out of the way. He then forms a shadow and secures the remaining substance without form before it can get away on us.

Crossing the Threshold
A torrent of souls erupts from below. They are the Holocaust dead, bound by the graaf, and their numbers are beyond us.

Bower looks at me as they swarm us. But I can't do anything. I can't improvise magic like an Immortal, I can't help these souls. As doubt and death take me I refuse, "My children, let me guide you from the darkness!" The dead gather and, as I die, I lead them to the afterlife as a psychopomp.

My extra life triggers and at once I am reborn as an undying questor, one step closer to becoming an Immortal.

The Book of Shadows
We loot the house, finding various letters, a stamp book and a Book of Shadows. The letters look ordinary, the stamps have small black towers about the size of a pin, the Book of Shadows has only every second page written, evidently one of a pair.

Back at Ingarathon's house we puzzle out that the apparent content of the letters are subterfuge. There's another message encoded in them. Ingarathon is normally good at this kind of thing but can't gain headway. He suggests that the ink must have black lead in it and indeed we find a dark star dotting one of the i's.

Since I'm not Immortal and so not affected by black lead, I learn cryptanalysis and decode the letters. The message says that to complete the next stage they will hire some witch hunters to find the second Book of Shadows. So the trail is likely to pick up at Westover, where there are witches, witch hunters and the Dark Star.

Otherwise we just have this book of stamps to discern, and Bower, an overdue library book.

Other Events

• We started on Westover and the only thing out of the ordinary was there were fewer witches, them being in hot demand at the moment.
• We travelled to the Library of Leng on Reich to talk to the Elder Things. It was deserted from what we could see although three Shoggoths came out of the crevasse to say hello. The way to get there is via a plane in the Himalayas. The books in the library are dangerous to read. There are four windows at the top of the library: long valley with a grassy plane, green meadow & wood, dark grey tower in a desert and a storm-tossed sea.