But the characters were not ready to give up just yet. They had been preparing for any opportunity of escape to present itself. James and Jerry had been racking their brains for any spells they might be able to cast, while James had also been trying to teach his "better half" (Mary) how to help him pick the lock to their cage.
Although they'd only had a day to observe the prison routine, it seemed to be taking an unusually long time for the guards to return to feed them. When the door finally opened and one of the prison roustabouts entered, he ignored the party completely. He went straight for Jane's cage, carrying a frilly white dress, towels, and a bucket of soapy water. He unlocked Jane’s cage, saying, “Time to get you cleaned up, little missy. Them upstairs are havin’ a party, and you’re the guest of honor. Need to look nice ‘n pretty for your party now, don’t ya?”
Escape suddenly took a back seat to saving poor Jane from the horrifying fate that Gondolfino and the clowns clearly had planned for her. Jerry still had a Dimension Door online, and he blinked out of his cage, positioning himself between the guard and the exit. Simultaneously, James hit him with a set of Magic Missiles. Before the poor guard could open his mouth to scream, Jerry spun around and blasted him with sticky webs out of his butt. Saying a silent prayer for it to work, Chuck bellowed out what he hoped was a Hold Person spell, and the guard stopped struggling - apparently God can understand Alligator.
Jerry got the keys from the guard's belt and quickly released the rest of the party. Unsure of what might be waiting on the other side of the door, Phil laid down and managed to flick his cobra's tongue beneath the ill-fitting door. He could sense people, animals, and things on the other side. Deciding their was no point in caution (as usual), the party flung open the door and rushed through.
They found themselves in a room crammed with circus wagons holding what remained of the circus menagerie, as well as the rest of the freaks from the freak show. A stairway led up out of the room, and there was a portcullis in one wall. There were also two roustabouts and the animal trainer sitting at a table playing cards. As soon as they spotted the party, the two roustabouts rushed them with daggers, while the animal trainer headed towards the wagons. Chuck stopped him in his tracks with another Hold Person and headed after him to ensure he didn't release any animals. Ice began pummeling one of the roustabouts, while Joe coiled himself around the other and began to squeeze.
Mary James tried to enter the fray, but quickly discovered that despite years of martial arts training, when you only control half of an out-of-shape fat man, you aren't a terribly effective fighter. Sometimes the Mary half of the body would do what he wanted, but other times the James half would get what she wanted. Either way, their weak punches did little damage. Chuck caught up to the animal trainer, snapped at him with his alligator jaws, and suddenly was seized by a primitive instinct to roll and spin with his victim. Jerry tried exercising more of his spider abilities, and discovered he could climb the walls; he quickly scampered across the ceiling to take up a position guarding the staircase. Phil struck out with his cobra head, and the roustabout in Joe's coils went into convulsions and died.
With the guards dispatched, the party examined the room. The dominant feature in the room, besides the circus wagons, was a glassy pillar that rose out of the floor and continued up through the ceiling. Its dark interior was filled with dancing patterns and flashes of light. The portcullis led to a tunnel, presumably to the outside to bring the wagons in and out. The staircase led to a trapdoor in the ceiling.
Taking the guards' daggers, the party crept up the stairs and pushed open the trapdoor. It opened into a large room. The strange lightning-charged pillar extended up through the floor, and continued through the ceiling. Several large chandeliers hung from the ceiling and once would have brightly lit the room, but they were now festooned with cobwebs. Tattered and faded tapestries hung crookedly from the walls. There were three long tables in the room, covered with dirty dishes and eating utensils, along with half-empty serving bowls of food. An equally filthy kitchen could be seen off one corner of the room.
There were several doors out of this room. Some led to small courtyards filled with trash and crude latrines, and another led to a heavy barred gate in the outer wall, apparently the entrance to the castle. Outdoors it was night and raining, with flashes of lightning illuminating the sky. Two of the doors led to bedrooms. One was empty, apparently belonging to to the squad who'd been on duty downstairs. The other held four more roustabouts, who awakened as soon as the door opened and rushed out to attack.
The party was ready for them. As soon as the first enemy hit the doorway, Jerry farted out another web to fill the door. The lead roustabout managed to leap clear of the web, but soon wished he hadn't. Ice beat the poor schmuck to within an inch of his life, and then the couple of HP damage from Phil's fangs killed him off before their poison even had a chance to take effect. This set the pattern for the other roustabouts once they cut their way through the web across the doorway: Ice-Phil, Ice-Phil, Ice, with a little Chuck thrown in for good measure.
The party picked up some more daggers, but found little else of use among the guards' possessions (unless you count pornographic playing cards and the unexplained set of women's undergarments hidden in the bottom of one guard's footlocker). They picked up a few gold and silver coins that they decided to give to young Jane for a sort of trust fund. (They'd brought Jane along with them, apparently figuring she hadn't seen enough murder and mayhem in her short life.)
Another staircase led up from this level, and the party ascended. This led up to another open room, albeit better maintained than the one below. The strange pillar continued through this level as well, although it seemed to be tapering, being noticeably thinner at the top than at the bottom. There were three doors out of this room as well. The first door they tried was locked. Mary James tried unsuccessfully to pick it, so Ice opened it the old fashioned way: hit it with an 800-pound gorilla. That worked. On the other side was a short hallway with rooms on either end. To the left was an ornate bedroom with a bed, dressing table, and a pair of armoires. One held fancy clothing, including Gondolfino's ringmaster uniform. The other held an odd assortment of white coveralls and gowns, leather aprons, and a pair of dark goggles.
To the right was a study. A large desk sat in front of a fireplace with an elaborately carved mantel; a fire burned in the fireplace. Bookcases lined the walls. Many of the books were in languages the party didn't recognize, but others had titles like like “On the Art and Science of Reanimation”, “Undeath and Dying – The Five Stages of Death”, “Phantasmal and Spectral Forces”, “Neither Dead Nor Undead – The Ones Between”, and “Possession – A Primer”. Searching the desk, Mary James found a secret compartment containing a wand, a spellbook full of illusionist spells, and the Gatestone.
Heartened by the discovery of the Gatestone, the party tried another door. When opened, a stench of decay washed out. The room inside was decorated like a nightmarish playroom. Distorted toys littered the floor: a brightly colored ball studded with spikes; a rocking horse whose seat was covered with broken glass; a jump rope with a hangman’s noose at each end; a baby bottle filled with yellow curdled milk; a stuffed bear with dagger-like claws. Dead puppies and kittens in various stages of decay lay about the floor. The walls were decorated with brightly colored pictures, childishly drawn in crayon, but the subjects of the drawings were so disturbing they had to look away. Luckily, they'd left young Jane downstairs.
The third door was also locked, but Mary James had better luck with this one. As it was opened, a blast of cold air hit the party. Inside, the windows in the south and west walls had been smashed, allowing the cold mountain air to sweep through the room. On the floor were several rows of coffins and a large iron chest.
Apparently forgetting they were in Ravenloft, the characters were eager to start opening coffins. (Let's see - a remote castle on a stormy night, a room full of coffins with the windows smashed to allow things to fly in and out - what possible danger could there be? The DM resisted the urge to put a couple of vampires in them just to teach the party humility.) The first several coffins contained strangers they'd never seen before, but then they hit paydirt - their own bodies, cold, naked, and staring blankly into space. Chuck picked his up and began carrying it around, apparently hoping that physical contact would make everything right again. The party also noticed that Joe's left arm and upper legs were criss-crossed with scars.
Meanwhile Chuck had decided to check out the iron chest, which contained all the party's clothing and belongings. To the best of their new abilities, the party tried to equip themselves with weapons, kevlar vests, etc. Jerry and James took their spellbooks and spent as much time as they dared relearning some spells. Then they headed up yet another flight of stairs.
These opened up into a dark hallway, illuminated by flashes of lightning from rooms at either end. The smell of blood and harsh chemicals filled the air. One room was a workshop of some sort, full of electrical apparatus. The other was a grisly operating theater. A large table was in the center of the room, covered in blood. The remains of a woman lay on the floor beside the table, pools of blood congealing beside her. The party recognized her as one of the acrobats from the circus. It appeared that her reproductive organs had been removed, and from the spray of blood on the ceiling and walls, it is apparent that the victim was alive during at least part of the surgery.A trail of blood led down the hall to the east.
Continuing around the perimeter of the level, the party found two more corner rooms. The first contained a pair of large glass vats of bubbling liquid. Floating in the liquid were a variety of body parts. Along the back wall were rows of shelves containing jars, bottles, beakers, and small boxes of foul-smelling liquids, ointments, and powders. The fourth room was empty.
That left a large space in the center of the castle unexplored. Doors led into it from the north and south; the trail of blood led to the south door. Unsure whether the space inside was one large room or multiple rooms, the party split up; Mary James remained at the north door, conferring among themself on a plan of attack, while the rest of the party went to the south door.
As previously agreed, Mary James opened the north door first. As the door opened, they were momentarily blinded by the transition from darkness into bright light. As their eyes adjusted, they were drawn first to the electrical display before them. The strange spire that had been piercing each level of the castle split into two arms, which continuee up through the roof above. Great arcs of electricity jumped and spit between them. As thunder cracked outside, the entire spire glowed brightly, and the lightning bolts between the horns grew even more intense.
They took this all in in an instant, and then their eyes were pulled to a horrifying tableau. In front of the spire were two wooden tables, sloping at a 45o angle. One was empty, save for leather straps positioned to restrain the wrists and ankles of a young child. On the other was one of the clowns. Or what was one of the clowns. It had been transformed into a horrible travesty of a woman. Bright yellow hair hung in ringlets from its scalp. Bright red lips in a kewpie doll pout. Enormous breasts that hung almost to its waist. And it had … female genitalia. And fresh bloody sutures on its abdomen. A metal cap was tied to its head with a leather strap, and coils of copper wire led to one arm of the spire. Identical coils led to a metal cap lying on the empty table.
Focused as they were on their own activities at the south end of the room, none of them noticed the north door open, and Mary James was able to cast a Fireball into their midst. The sound of the explosion inside was the cue for those at the south door to fling it open, and the battle was on. The clowns immediately tried to induce Fear of Clowns in the party, but this time it had no effect (perhaps waking up in the body of a freak of nature makes clowns not so scary anymore).
Gondolfino immediately cast Mirror Image on himself, and the party found themselves confronting seven versions of him. James and Jerry used Magic Missiles to quickly whittle those down, but then Gondolfino disappeared. Phil discovered that neither the multiple images nor the invisibility fooled his snake senses; he was able to track the real Gondolfino. Unfortunately, he wasn't able to hit worth a darn. Chuck cast a Prayer, and then seeing Phil striking at something invisible, tried to get into position to toss a bag of flour he'd taken earlier from the kitchen downstairs. Ice waded into battle with the clowns, wielding his sword, but the clowns fought back, one with a bucket and one with a three-legged stool: apparently anything is a weapon in the hands of a clown. However, Blotto soon went down. Jerry cast another set of Magic Missiles at Flatto, and found that he was no longer a man attached to the body of a giant spider - now he was a tiny man attached to the body of a regular-sized spider.
We ran out of time with the battle still raging but appearing to tilt in the party's favor. We're at Leo's again next week.
It was Chuck that was cayying his body around. Ice put his items in the box with his body.
ReplyDeleteFixed - thanks!
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