Session #39: Another Long Encounter

Had Traver missing for much of the first part of this session.

The session started with the party waking to the words of a priest dressed in robes made from human flesh. The priest, referring to the characters as "lost sheep", requested that they surrender themselves to the ghoul hordes and join them. He claimed their flesh was sacred, whether it be used to feed the ghouls, or converted and made one of them. He had an army of ghouls with him to enforce his will if he so desired, but he did not. Instead he offered the party a peaceful chance to surrender to them. When they did not respond, he took is as a refusal, and stated that this would be his last peaceful offer. He withdrew his ghouls, and the party set out again.

First they went to the Harwicks' home; it didn't take them long to find Beth Harwick, converted to a raging ghoul and locked in the home's cellar. Down there with her was a doomspinner spider she referred to as her "child"; the party did not find out about this until Deckard was knocked down into the cellar. The encounter started out simply enough, but eventually Beth managed to get Deckard, Vorgym & Shivra down into the cellar, while ghouls above ravaged Cyrus & Amnon. The party was victorious in the end, but not without taking a beating. This encounter proved to be quite long.

The party managed to recover some valuables from Beth Harwick, including a wedding ring by which she could likely be identified; they took it and then decided they should go back to the western side of Hampstead and check for clues. In the west, they headed to the wizard's tower they'd seen, arriving without much incident. They recovered a chess set on the first floor, then headed to the second, where they found a rune-inscribed cloth robe, a potion of healing, and an intricate golden sphere. The sphere turned out to be an arcane recording device of some sort; it activated while they investigated it, and the loud volume of the sphere drew a number of ghouls, including a very large, hulking, green-skinned ghoul who droned out a cry for meat which made the party feel as if their skin were being "tenderized". The ghouls moved to attack, and we stopped here, just as the encounter was beginning.

Hope everyone enjoyed the session, see you all next week.