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 beer and scenery for a few days. 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.

On the far side of the ridge line west of here is an artificial forest with very uniform trees. Locals avoid it.

At some point we notice a lady as fine as cream gravy. We ask folk 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 looking the place over.

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 to you?". 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 party. I find that the graaf's line survives and operates Tawn & Tux, a merchant house that sell secure mail services. Their manor is north-east of here.

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

Trial at the Flesh Forest
We make tramping preparations and head out into the northern woods. We decide that 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 from the stuff, 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 ability to aim. We sneak up to it and determine the glowing thing is 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 enough. 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 had a pistol, it would be bigger than mine.

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 stepped into a shadow and back to Bower's house in Italy.

Return to Tawn & Tusk
We rest and recover, kicking ourselves that we had to mess with the eye. But we break it down for its 15 points of fire or smoke and make preparations for going back.

We go in quietly this time, using Bower's shadows, and find the manner of the graaf and his house, Tawn & Tux. 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. We manage to sneak past them and on to the roof where we see emanations from a conjuring, apparently from the top level which is heavily curtained.

Bower checks one of the outer windows for traps and wards and since it opens from the inside, I drift through the glass. I go to open the window and it has one of those damn casement stays that you have to lift and push through. I make a meal of it.

She was getting impatient with him. Yes he was an accomplished summoner but the Medeanite sorcerer grew tired of his pedantic routine. A bang came from behind a curtain on the other side of the devil they were negotiating with. "What was that?" she asked. "What was what?" replied the graaf who was focusing on the devil. "Go over and have a look," she said. "I am not 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!" cries the graff nervously. This irritates the sorceress as she and her bound spirits unleash fury on the intruders. The charming-roguish fellow avoided most of the fire and said a few quick words to the devil at that point and it nodded. The graaf saw the gunfighter's sizeable pistol and pulled out his own, enormous elephant gun. The gunfighter looked hurt at the sight of it and gets shot squarely.

The sorceress was feeling better. The western-looking fellow was almost dead and, in return, they didn't manage to get through their ward or free the devil. The graff was about to release a torrent of souls which will certainly finish them off.

A bottle came flying in and broke harmlessly off the ward and fell to the ground. It had dark liquid inside which started spreading. The sorceress hardly gave it a second thought until she saw it was consuming the floor, their ward and the very space. The ward fell and the darkness was upon them. They ceased to exist.

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

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 threatened Bower but he was able to avoid the damage. He then forms a shadow and secures the remaining substance without form before it can get away on us.

Death is a Doorway
A torrent of souls erupts from below flowing into the room. They are the Holocaust dead, bound by the graaf, and their numbers are beyond us.

As they swarmed us, Bower looked at me as though this is my cue. But I can't do anything. I'm can't improvise like an Immortal and I have no spells or items to deal with this. Death and doubt took me but I stood up at the last and said, "My children, let me guide you from the darkness!" As I died I took the role of a psychopomp and lead them into the afterlife.

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

The Book of Shadows
We loot the house, finding various letters, a book of stamps and a Book of Shadows. The book has only every second page written, evidently one of a pair.

Back at Ingarathon's house we puzzle out that the content of the letters at first glance are subterfuge. There's another message encoded in them. Ingarathon is normally good at this kind of thing but is unable to get any headway. He decides that the ink must have black lead in it.

Since I'm not yet Immortal, I get taught cryptanalysis by Ingarathon 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.

We figure the trail leads to Westover where Bower can pick up the scent.

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 pain 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.