Lost Loving Last
| Lost Loving Last | |
|---|---|
| Date | 5/27/2025 |
| Storyteller | Doug |
| Tier | Trainee |
| Player Characters | Quan, Sabelle Regalia, Samara Slitherslime, Ione Icesickle, Arumi |
| Rewards | 275exp, 35g (0gp for Sabelle) |
| Result | Success |
| Author | Arumi (Aru) |
| Downtime | 8 |
Associates attempt to help a cleric of Pharasma put her undead husband to rest.
(The following report is written cleanly and with crisp penmanship)
09:48:16 – Day 0
As the designated scribe for this investigation, I have arrived early at the designated meeting place – the city gates leading to the settlement we’ll be meeting the client at. I’ll provide a brief description of the associates as they arrive:
- Arumi – Civic wizard and record keeper. I’m mostly here to take notes.
- Sabelle Regalia – A human cleric of the Living God. He seems very secretive.
- Ione Icesickle – A stout dwarven animist. He has a very tenacious aura.
- Samara Slitherslime – An eccentric medusa alchemist with colorful, harmless candy for hair.
- Quan – An extremely tall and muscular half-elf martial artist. It seems like his training has been paying off recently.
Before departing, Sabelle offered to give the blessing of the Living God to those present. Having seen my brother accept it in the past with no strange effects, I elected to accept. Ione seemed suspicious, as I was the first time I met the eccentric cleric, and declined. Samara offered prayers to Lamashtu, to mixed reactions from those present.
10:06:32 – Day 0
After a short walk through scattered personal dwellings outside of the city, we have arrived at the home of one Lady Laura – a small, one-story wooden cottage with a small table and two chairs on the porch outside and a garden patch out front being carefully tended to by a strangely decomposing zombie in a fresh set of clothes – Lady Laura’s husband, Martin. The kindly old woman invited us inside as she saw us, and even after a cursory examination by Ione and Sabelle, her husband made no acknowledgement of any of us present as we walked past him.
At this stage in our investigation, Ione stated he believes Martin is a normal zombie – though he does have some irregularities; his head lolls to the side and the skin on his hands and face seem to be completely decomposing, as though Martin lacks any animating force that prevents him from falling apart. Sabelle noticed that he is performing extremely complex actions: he’s inspecting vegetables before placing them in a basket, and this seems too complicated for normal undead functions, also noting that the way the rest of the body is held up feels unnatural.
After these inspections, the associates entered the cottage, taking provided seating and some tea courtesy of Lady Laura. Her home is filled to the brim with symbols and iconography of Pharasma, including a small altar to the goddess above the fireplace. There are also several texts seemingly related to religion and divine rituals present in the room; it seems obvious she’s a skilled practitioner in such magics. When she addressed the group, she took some time to explain how the situation has progressed so far – I’ll provide a rough timeline as per her recollection.
12 Weeks Ago:
- Martin passed away; he was buried in her backyard.
8 Weeks Ago:
- Lady Laura is awakened by some noises in her yard that sounded like an animal digging. Casting light into the darkness, she saw Martin climbing out of his grave. When he emerged, he dusted himself off, walked to the house, opened the door, took off his shoes, and started sweeping the floors.
7 Weeks Ago:
- Lady Laura puts her husband to rest herself. The details are vague, but she states that she “cast the proper cantrips” and “double checked everything”. This time, Martin is buried in the graveyards alongside the wall of Onadbyr, where guards monitor for undead.
3 Weeks Ago:
- Martin returns to her home.
After recounting this timeline, she provided the following additional details: Martin has not spoken, he follows her directions despite her being unable to control the dead, if she doesn’t tell him to do anything, he stays in the house and cleans, he is able to remember rudimentary details from his life such as where the brooms are kept, and for some reason, he has started becoming aggressive to beautiful people – so far only young women.
It’s at this point she explained the reason for requesting associates – she intends to perform a divine ritual to conjure a psychopomp from the Boneyard to directly usher Martin’s soul to the afterlife, but expects lesser undead to emerge once the path is open. The associates are to accompany her to the church where she first married Martin, 4 days of travel away, and then defend her while she finishes the ritual to put him to rest.
Before departing, the associates decided to personally inspect some of the points of interest. The following is a brief summary of their efforts:
Martin:
- Samara attempts to communicate with him in Necril, the language of the dead. He does not respond.
- Sabelle requests everyone leave him alone with Martin. Despite my protests, I was unable to attend to take notes on what he did. When he returns, he states that the zombie’s hands have very small claws sticking out from them and believes the bones may be animated instead of the flesh because of its strange, clumsy movements.
The First Grave:
- Ione inspects the grave in the back yard, finding that it appears to be a normal burial by Pharasma standards, including magic to prevent undead; there’s runes and symbols carved into the coffin. However, he finds a piece of the coffin had been broken from the outside – the wood was bent inwards, implying something small in size broke its way into the coffin. At this, Samara notes she knows of undead that possess people – but it typically requires a living body.
The Second Grave:
- Ione inspects the second grave, looking for a similar entry point from the first coffin, but not finding one.
- I inspect the coffin and discover it’s made of peachwood – an exceptionally rare material that undead would be unable to break out of. In spite of this, there are small scratch marks from the inside of the coffin, as though something small very slowly broke its way out of it.
- Sabelle believes there might be a worm in the brain controlling it, or maybe some kind of fey.
- Samara attempts to communicate to Martin in Fey, with no response. She proposes a necromancer might be involved, or a different spirit might be controlling the body.
- Quan talks to the guards overlooking the graves, giving them workout tips. They seem amenable to the advice and explain that while some undead do pop up here, there’s a lot of security, also explaining that they got in some trouble over the incident with Martin and are upset that they don’t know what happened with his body.
Back at the cottage, the associates explain to Lady Laura that Martin may not actually be undead – something may just be controlling his body. She says she’s certain Martin is still in there somehow. To be sure, the associates decide to perform a more thorough examination of the body, though with the condition that they do not disassemble him as to not desecrate the body if his soul is still present.
Sabelle conjures a tent, and the associates take Martin inside to begin the examination. I’ve elected to remain outside to keep Lady Laura company for this alongside Quan, and so the following is a second hand accounting of the results afterwards:
Samara inspects under the eyepatch and finds a fairly damaged skull – including black stains on the bones of the eye socket, as though from an injury from a creature that has a diseased or poisoned touch. Nothing else seems out of the ordinary.
Sabelle and Ione inspect the body, finding again that much of the outer layer of it is falling apart; there seems to be no cohesion preventing the body from decaying, which is unusual for undead. However, they note the muscular and skeletal structures are intact and not decaying any further. They don’t manage to find any hole that could be an entry point for a small creature, though they do find a small patch of skin – about 4 inches in diameter – that is decaying but not as much as the surrounding flesh, as though it started dying more recently.
When asked about the strange injury under Martin’s eye socket, Lady Laura explained that in their youth, the two had occasional run-ins with monsters. In particular, they eventually ran into a powerful fiend as inexperienced clerics – a wrath demon referred to as a Vrock. [A small note written under this passage states: Sabelle is under the impression these are more correctly referred to as Vminerals.]
This powerful vulture-headed fiend was far too dangerous for the pair to fight off, and it managed to severely injure Martin, clawing out his eye before the two could escape. The injury was never able to be fully healed.
After finishing their examination, the associates clothed Martin and we set out to travel to the previously mentioned church with Lady Laura.
11:42:22 - Day 4
After several uneventful days of travel, we have arrived at the ruins of the church Lady Laura and Martin were married at. The building is severely damaged – several massive holes in the roofing are visible from the outside, and each wall is missing large sections. Despite this, the building does still stand, and so will be used as the site of the ritual.
After lengthy discussions on the road about what has been discovered and the nature of the ritual, Ione has decided to try one last experiment to determine the nature of Martin before we proceed with the ritual. After entering the church, he infused Martin with a small amount of positive energy, which elicited a strange, delayed response: his body began to shudder, the head leaning to the side as the body stretched out – this contortion continued for around 20 seconds before he returned to a normal posture, blood pooling around his feet.
Just to be certain, Ione then infused Martin’s body with negative energy. This time, the body made a slight aggressive posture, as though it intended to claw at Ione, though the other hand seemed to physically restrain this attacking hand, the body ultimately leaning forward into a gruesome hug, again for around 20 seconds, before returning to a normal posture, blood once again pooling around his feet.
After discussing these results for some time, it seems clear that Martin’s body is housing more than one entity, with his spirit possibly restraining whatever malicious entity is inside of the body. This would also explain how an undead could escape a peachwood coffin. We’ve arrived at three different possible approaches for dealing with both Martin and whatever is inside of the body.
- Plan One: Complete the ritual and destroy whatever is left afterwards. Martin’s soul will find peace and there’s no chance of desecrating his body before his soul is gone.
- Plan Two: Attempt to cut out whatever is inside of Martin’s body, desecrating him if his spirit is still inside, but potentially destroying whatever is inhabiting it without a fight.
- Plan Three: Cremate the body against the wishes of Lady Laura, possibly destroying the body and creature inside without desecrating it.
The associates were very conflicted about these choices, but ultimately decided to proceed with the ritual, believing it to be the right thing morally.
12:09:46 - Day 4
The associates have gathered around Martin in the church while Lady Laura commences the ritual. It will take 10 minutes to complete, and so everyone is making their own preparations, expecting a fight. I’ve positioned myself alongside Quan eastwards of Martin’s body, nearest to Lady Laura at the altar, ready to lend him what power I can. Sabelle is to our north and plans to sanctify himself. Samara is to the south, and seems to be readying some vials. Ione has positioned himself on the west, to the other side of Martin.
We’ve made ourselves as ready as we can be.
12:20:12: Day 4
[The following section has a small blood stain on the bottom of it]
- Battle Report:
- Casualties:
- One Quasit – killed by a powerful kick from Quan
- One Quasit – pierced by several volleys of arcane missiles conjured by Arumi
- One Quasit – destroyed by an alchemical bomb thrown by Samara
- One Wolf-Transformed Quasit – crushed by falling rubble loosed by Sabelle
- One Worm Demon (Vermlek) – Thoroughly crushed to death by Quan’s martial arts
- One Astrally Projected Vrock – Status unknown
- Injuries:
- Quan – extensive injuries including quasit claw wounds and wolf bites, with minor alchemical burns
- Samara Slitherslime – several shallow cuts from quasit claws
- Sabelle Regalia – extensive claw injuries from quasit claws, appears to have been poisoned
- Arumi – one small cut from a quasit claw
- Ione Icesickle – Extensive bite marks from both a wolf and worm demon; extensive, difficult-to-describe injuries around the mouth related to the vermlek attempting to burrow inside of his body. He was knocked unconscious twice – once by the wolf-quasit, once by the vermlek – but was kept alive by both his own and Sabelle’s healing magic.
Lady Laura remains uninjured, though exhausted from the ritual.
- Summary:
When the ritual was finished, Martin’s body seized up and a worm demon burst forth from his chest. At the same time, four quasits emerged and began attacking the party, one of which turned itself into a wolf. Finally, the ethereal form of a vrock appeared in the center of the church, wearing a strange necklace with Martin’s missing eye visible in the center. This vrock was tethered to four lodestones located in the intercardinal corners of the church, and seemed unable to interact with anyone or anything present in the room, clawing out with impotence and glaring at everyone that got too close.
The vermlek spent the entire battle attempting to burrow into Ione’s mouth, and both him and Quan sustained great injuries attempting to deal with the fiends congregating around them. Sabelle focused his efforts on keeping Ione safe, while Samara and I tried to deal with the quasits that made it past the front line to defend Lady Laura. The majority of the fighting was concluded well before a minute had passed.
It was at this point that the party arranged themselves in the corners of the church and, with coordination, destroyed the chains tethering the wrath demon, causing him to fade away, noiselessly screaming in rage, without being able to harm anyone. After the vrock was dealt with, Martin’s body finally collapsed, a spectral form of him standing in place as he gave his wife a final goodbye before disappearing as well, hopefully now at rest.
After the battle, the associates established a general idea of what had happened to Martin. The vrock that he and his wife had escaped from presumably held a grudge, and sought to make Lady Laura’s life miserable by reanimating his corpse after he died. However, Martin’s spirit lingered, fighting against the possession, leaving the worm demon with limited control over him. It seemed as though the worm demon was attempting to slowly change Martin’s body into an abricandalu – a fiend which loathes beauty – which is why he was beginning to show signs of aggression towards beautiful people. With the fiends destroyed, the body would now be safe against such changes.
After some resting and treating the injured, we are beginning the journey back to Onadbyr.
12:02:14 - Day 8
We have arrived back at Lady Laura’s cottage outside of town after four days of safe, uneventful travel. There were no further incidents to report.
After some heartfelt thanks, she has given us an assortment of valuables she collected during her time as an adventurer.
- 140 gold pieces – split into 35 gold pieces for each associate except Sabelle Regalia
- A Stone of Encouragement – awarded to Quan
- An Aeon Stone (Pearly White Spindle) – awarded to Sabelle Regalia
- A Scroll of Celestial Accord – awarded to Ione Icesickle
- A Scroll of Purifying Icicle – awarded to Sabelle Regalia
- A Peachwood Talisman – awarded to Ione
With that, this expedition has been concluded.
- Arumi, Civic Wizard.