Monday, 9 December 2019

Diversity Hires, part 12: Vampire Visit

We last saw the team dealing with a slight cultist problem. Despite the fact they had a plague bearer with them, we were victorious.

Gildiril and Frida missed the next encounter with the vampires, due to having a quick nap, but the rest of the team encountered the vampires again and put in a good word for Frida.

We needed to get to Wolfenburg, and with no river or carriage available we had to walk. The journey was proving fairly uneventful until a snotling carrying a rattly stick and a kettle jumped out at us.

The initial snotling proved easily flattenable, but his one hundred friends took a little more effort. Gildiril let loose with his magic, giving himself a nosebleed and causing unsettling cold drafts with the magical fallout as he set fire to multiple snotlings. Burlok squashed many of them with his pick while Armando skewered them on his sword. Frida largely missed with her flail, despite the target rich environment, but did annihilate them when she actually made contact.

Then one of the snotlings actually survived a hit from Mormacar, and while the others bowed down to worship him, he climbed up Mormacar and prepared to do obscene things to his face. Mormacar responded by biting the snotling's penis off.

(At this point there was a brief OC discussion about whether Mormacar could use his Mighty Blow ability on this particular attack, with the final conclusion being that Mighty Blowjob was sufficiently funny to be allowed. I swear we are all adults.)

At last the final snotling was splattered into mush, and we continued on our way, stopping off briefly for a wash in a river. Unfortunately, these lands were heavily tainted by the chaos war and the river water gave several of us green pox. Not that any of us know that yet.

We made it to Wolfenburg and headed straight for the pub as usual. We were in search of somewhere described as a 'plague temple' and the Hahn house a few miles out of town seemed like the best place to look for it. Once again the vampires were present, and Lady Sophia Margrave joined us in the pub. She mentioned something about pet humans, and one of us asked her if she'd ever have a pet halfling. She had not. Frida asked her if she'd like one.
 
Having decided that we would be visiting the Hahn house at night, the better to catch evil cultists doing their evil cult stuff, Frida invited Sophia to join us. Rather embarrassed, she explained that she would have to ask her mum.

We set out after some food, assuming that Sophia would have no trouble catching us up. An hour or so of walking (perhaps a little more at dwarf speed) brought us to the Hahn house. It was not a pretty sight. Overgrown, with clouds of flies buzzing around, but clearly recently in use given the wheel ruts leading towards the wrecked gates. The whole building seemed to be coated in some kind of oil, unpleasant gases emerged from the ground, and a feeling of general malaise seemed to hang over the whole estate.

Sophia, who'd caught up with us by this point, thought it was great.

We ignored the suspicious maze and dread gazebo and headed straight for the manor itself. We entered through the double doors, ornamented with the symbol of Handrich, god of commerce, and found ourselves in a building covered in mould and hornets. Some muddy tracks lead us into the main hall.

From there we explored the house. In the dining room was a ghost, rather unhelpfully telling us to 'kill the killer' without offering any guidance on who that might actually be. Fortunately the ghost in the wine cellar proved a little more forthcoming, and told us about his sons, one of whom had been a great disappointment. He also had a giant beetle on his back, which we disposed of in our usual style.

Upstairs we found a room with a small girl crying, a disturbed looking adventurer, a mutilated dead woman, and a horrifying mass of inchoate flesh that appeared to be made of two people fused together into a tentacled monstrosity covered in flies.

We attacked the flesh monster, which promptly responded by paralysing Frida (and incidentally giving her a case of nurglish rot). Mormacar picked her up and took her out of the fight, delivering her into the waiting arms of Sophia, while the others flattened the monster.

We'd had enough of the manor. There was no sign of any plague temple here, just a lot of goo and spoiled wine. We decide to investigate outside instead.

Will the team discover the plague temple in the hedge maze or the gazebo? How long will it take for everyone's diseases to manifest? Has Frida succumbed to Sophia's vampiric embrace? Find out next time on Diversity Hires!

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