Session 61

* The Steward's Estate

**Previously...**

## And Now...

The heroes enter the Steward's Manor in shadow form, only to find it swarming with horrid, pulsing, vein-like tendrils and reeking of ynfernael sorcery. Vaelcum takes this opportunity to flee into the night, preferring to take his chances. The whole area has a palpably unsettling atmosphere, which Harper suggests is exacerbated by them remaining in Shadow Form. In response, they all, except Gar, assume their physical forms. As they proceed to explore the entryway, they hear voices from down a hall. Tovric's voice commands the gnome artificer to activate the machine, and before anyone can react, Nyarduke launches himself down the hallway, bursts through the door and goes headlong into the next room.

### An Abhorrent Manifestation and a Wave of Mutilation.

The party follow along in Nyarduke's wake, beholding, at the end of the hallway, what must once have been an elegant ballroom, with a marble floor, balconies on three sides, and two curved staircases leading upward to the next floor. All furniture has been cleared away to make room for 'The Machine', a monstrous, ynfernael construction looking like a cross between a huge, gnarled tree with branches and roots extending, tendril-like, in every direction, and an immense, pulsating heart. The Gnome machinist stands at the base of the machine, accompanied by four vampire thralls and a squat, treestump-shaped mechnical creature with a number of spidery limbs ending in strange and arcane tools.

Seeing the machine, Goldie launches a fireball at it, only to see the machine absorb the energy into itself. Aside from some scorch marks on the marble, it was as though the fire had never been there. Seeing this, and knowing that we need to act quickly, Leshrac produces a vial of Tovric's ichor and casts a spell to boil his vampiric blood, "Sanguine delight, oh, how trite. I cast you out... Inside out!"

The two of the vampire thralls boiled away to nothing from the inside out as the other two erupted into geysers of blood but, uncannily, remained conscious. One is shocked into a horrified stupour by the sight of an empty hole which once contained its heart, while the other is knocked to the floor, stunned and awash in gore. Tovric, however, is not in the room. His voice must have been projected from elsewhere. Leshrac's senses can detect that he's close, though, and hasn't entirely evaded the spell's effects. In his mind's eye, he sees him in an upstairs bedroom to the rear of the house. The effort of casting such a potent spell is not without cost, and Leshrac's vacant eye-socket pours forth a stream of blood around its gemstone occupant.

Reacting to the whole scene with abject horror, Harper is momentarily stunned into inactivity. Dandy enters the room from the hallway and pats him gently on the shoulder. She flashes him a broad smile like she's excited to be entering a circus tent rather than some monstrous abattoir. "Gross, huh?" she beams at him before launching a sling stone at the gnome machinist. It's a lucky shot, which catches him on the jawline, but meets surprisingly little resistance as it sinks deep within half, molten flesh dotted with boils and pustules. She turns back towards Harper, a moue of disgust turning into a wide smile on her face as writhing vines enwrap the gnome."Ewwww!" she says, delightedly.

### The Battle is Joined.

Shaken out of his reverie, Harper ducks behind one of the larger nearby root-like tendrils and surveys the landscape. At the base of the Machine, the gnome's form seems to writhe and shudder beneath his blood-matted coat as though seeking to repair itself. Nyarduke is halfway across the room, his spear in hand, charging towards the Gnome's machine assistant. Leshrac stands just inside the massive double-doors, blood still streaming down from his missing eye and smeared across his beard from his previous spell. One Vampire Thrall, towards the staircases at the rear of the room, is using the railings to haul himself painfully to his feet, while the other staggers around, seemingly randomly, gazing with fish-like incomprehension at the ragged cavity in its chest. Dandy seems to be moving gradually forward, moving from cover to cover. Gar, still in shadow form, though having assumed his draconic shape, is drifting, eerily silent, across the floor towards the gnome machinist and Goldie, frustrated that they've been deprived of their favourite weapon, appears deep in thought at their next course of action.

Harper shrugs and, readying his magic wand, launches a roaring blast of thunder at the machine, pummeling the meat-like outer surface, and rattling its interior workings. This briefly causes the machine to briefly shudder to a halt. As this happened, Gar reaches the Machinist just as he's stumbling to his feet and trying to shrug off the entangling vines. Gar launches a blistering series of seemingly lethal strikes with Fluffy. One hit strikes a football-sized cyst which bursts, spraying Gar with a torrent of vile liquid. Where it lands, weird jagged spikes erupt from Gar's shadowy-flesh.

Nyarduke surges past Gar, laying about him with furious and brutal attacks. In his initial foray, he reduces the machinist's mechanical assistant to a small pile of twisted and shattered metal, before continuing on to the machine itself. Methodically, he begins pummeling the fleshy, tree-like outer form of the machine, hacking away huge gobbets of meat, gristle, tendrils and cracking the weird bone-chitin mechanisms beneath. At one point, a particularly powerful strike reveals a receptacle containing a large gem-like stone, dark energy crackling and writhing about it and shuddering through the machine.

Goldie and Harper both immediately spot it and recognize it as a powerful Runestone, but before they can act, Leshrac cries out, "I can seal it!" and rushes towards it. Hurriedly, he claws the stone, crackling with dreadful energies and shoves it deeply within an opulent-looking purse. He snatches his hand back out quickly and commands the bag to "Eat!" whereupon, it shudders with an oddly organic movement and a guttural voice emerges from within its depths, "More!" It is a voice everyone recognizes from earlier (Session 60). With the removal of the stone, the machine continues to operate, but seems no longer to be infused with ynfernael power.

Everyone is momentarily distracted by this, except for Dandy, who finds something else to distract her. The Vampire Spawn with the gaping hole in its chest has managed to get close to her, so she attempts to defuse the situation by calming him down and reassuring him before giving him something new he can use instead of his missing heart, placing it gently within the spawn's chest cavity. She than immediately hits the deck after activating the fireworks shard and blowing the upper half of the vampire into a fine, red mist.

As this is happening, the gnome machinist has managed to regenerate once more, and is crawling back to his feet. Across the room, the other Vampire Spawn has almost completely recovered and, startled by the sight and sound of the other vampire exploding, races up the stairs to get reinforcements.

### Enter, the Lord of Bilehall!

With a Thunderous Crash of Doors being flung wide, Tovric, and three more vampire spawn enter the room!

As his eyes sweep across the vista before him, Tovric gathers his foul energies and sends out a spell. Leshrac is able to counter it, but the spell goes wild, and tears into the machine throwing horrid chunks everywhere. As the Lord of Bilehall reels back, Nyarduke lets out a battlecry and launches himself up the stairs at the Vampire. He throws his spear, but Tovric effortlessly bats it aside and grabs hold of Nyarduke, who begins to rain powerful punches and strikes down upon him with no apparent effect.

Tovric laughs, scornfully, "Have you come to wrestle me again, little kitty?" he mocks, but in doing so, he has fallen for Nyarduke's trap. With the vampire's mouth open, Nyarduke shoves the potion Goldie and Leshrac had brewed earlier (Session 53) into his throat, crushing the vial. Tovric recoils, horrified and drops Nyarduke, "What have you done to me?"

Nyarduke's voice echoes through the room, "I've de-villainized you, you evil fuck!"

Seeing the Vampires distracted by Nyarduke and Leshrac, Goldie and Harper begin trying to disable the machine. Dandy joins them, having scooped up a bunch of the machinist's equipment, and salvaged some of the mechanical assistant's limbs. Goldie makes a stray comment that Leshrac's bag appears to be growing larger. All three agree that that is indeed odd, but decide to focus on trying to cripple the machine. Goldie makes some headway, but Dandy does little other than jam a whole mess of the tools in amongst the device's moving parts... though that still may prove helpful.

As Goldie and Dandy continue work on the machine, the others ready themselves for the inevitable onslaught from Tovric. Harper remove himself to a more tactical distance, takes cover and readies his crossbow. Gar advances and manages to cleave one of the vampires in half with Fluffy, but not before taking considerable damage in turn. Leshrac conjures a sphere of annihilation with which to blasts the vampires...

### The Turning of the Tides.

Unable to target Tovric and one minion without hitting Nyarduke, Leshrac attempts to hit the three engaged with Gar, but is having trouble not hitting Gar. Eventually, Gar on the verge of being overwhelmed, yells, "Do it! I can take it!" True to his word, grits his teeth and is able to resist the sphere, while the other three vampires take considerable, but not fatal damage, their outer layers of skin being disintegrated before the magical barrage. Nevertheless, one vampire is still able to score a grievous wound on Gar as he attempts to withdraw. Tovric rallies his followers and they surge forwards. The Vampire Lord of Bilehall appears to have replaced his lost ancestral blade with a magical gauntlet designed to focus his sorcerous abilities.

Separated from his allies by Tovric's vampire thralls, Nyarduke takes a glancing blow from Tovric's gauntlet. While the blow's effects seemed minor, Nyarduke's eyes seemed glazed as he regained his feet, and his face was a mask of grim, tormented despair. Seeing this, Leshrac attempted to counter the effects of Tovric's influence, but this distraction proved fatal as one of Tovric's minions was able to land a seemingly mortal blow, impaling him through the abdomen from behind.

Leshrac's seemingly lifeless and bloody corpse hits the marble floor, but immediately begins to spasm unnaturally. The skin tears and rips, as an immense, bestial form claws its way forth from the bloodied husk of Leshrac's human form. A deep, guttural snarl rumbles forth from its throat as it takes in the scene around it momentarily, before springing into the Vampire Minion, tearing away at it savagely with teeth and claws. In the wake of this display, a stunned silence falls over the hall as everyone pauses.

This silence is broken by a small voice saying, "Hey, Gar! Looks like it's just you and me that aren't cats now!"

Tovric turns towards the source of the voice behind the Machine and, exulting in his power, begins to move, steadily and inexorably onward. Nyarduke, his mind clouded in eldritch delusion, has recovered the Sword of Severing and assumed a defensive posture as he prepares to defend Tovric... whom he sees as his brother, from any attacker... who, also, seem to resemble his brother...

Leshrac, his body wracked by his sudden, involuntary transformation, attempts to gather his strength together...

Dandy and Goldie, still frantically drying to disable the machine, hear a warning from Harper and turn to see the machinist, who once again, has managed to pull himself together and is advancing on the pair with a mingled look of dismay and rage...