Storming the Castle

Episode mount in progress--Archivist.

Game Date: 05 Mar 2011
Present: Cindy, Kim, Maer, Andy, and Jim

Wednesday, September 11, 1867
Under the Chapel on island of Lake Bled
After midnight

We pause to lick our wounds and Josephine has to use all her powers of persuasion to convince the Dwarves, Kristoff and Giert, to carry the music box back to the boat and thence to the Castle when we leave. The party debates how to recompense the Dwarves from whose purse--the English Crown's or Flora's Dashwood inheritance.

We find the entrance to an underground cavern or passage and investigate the possibility it might lead to the castle on the oppposite shore. Josephine uses all her persuasion again to gets Kristoff to check it. She accompanies him into the cavern while his partner waits with the music box. He whistles and claps and determines it's 1000 feet long, going due west, and it's about 200 feet wide. It took a lot of work to make. "You can park a town down here," he says. It's not a little cold and not a little dank, down here. There is also dimly glimpsed overhead a wooden peaked ceiling and a system of joists that will allow it to open upward. Perhaps to dump the lake upon those below?

The Dwarves prefer land travel over water. We take the passage.

Beignet is able to see two guards in the passage coming toward us from the opposite direction. They are speaking in German. Beignet informs the rest of the party that he will light them up with magical Gas Light and we will shoot them. Katherine shoots first and hits the guard most in front, then Bertie. Bertie's aimed for the guard's partner but his shot misses him by a whisker. However, a miss is as good as a mile. Flora squeezes off a shot which finds its way into the foremost guard and Josephine's goes wide. The guard goes down pretty hard, alive but in a world of hurt. Han's shot hits the guard as well, inflicting yet more damage. Both guards are wearing heavy jackets, affording them some measure of protection.

The remaining guard is not pleased at all with this turn of events. His displeaure is short-lived however. Beignet snaps off two gunshots that put him on the cavern floor, dead. The wounded guard scrambles away, yelling the alarm. Katherine shoots but misses. Flora's shot goes wide as well. Josephine squeezes off a shot next and hits him as he runs. He staggers and falls.

Our party moves on and Josephine takes a moment to check the guards' bodies. The last to fall is still breathing, so she ties his hands behind him and gags him to prevent him sound the alarm or ambush us from behind. She has no time to do anything for his wounds and with a stab of her conscience, she moves on to catch up with her party.

Ahead, Katherine, Ezekiel and one of the Dwarves hears something coming for us ... from the air.

Ezekiel is touched by the Host and to those from beyond the Pale, he glows with a delicious light. Four blue-skinned flying imps dive down from above and attack him with Asagi spears. He dodges but he takes a spear. Ezekiel stagges but manages to pull it out. Bertie also suffers from the imps' tender mercies, taking a palpable hit as well. The spear is stuck inside him. The imp pauses to retrieve it ... or push it further into him. Beignet is attacked next and the Hobbit suffers wounds. Hans is hit by the last of the imps, but luckily it's a glancing blow. Good news for him, since of all the members of our party, Hans is the most injured and has little room to spare.

We scramble to close ranks, preparing for the next pass.

Katherine shoots for the one on Bertie. She misses. Damn. Beignet fires both his weapons next at two of the airborne imps. He unmloads a fair amount of damage on one and the other gets hit for a glancing wound. The imps wheel quickly around and aim for Beignet. Apparently Hobbit flesh is sweet to them and Beignet is a tasty target indeed. Beignet tries to dodge and nearly makes it but at the last second an imp's spear hits him. Bertie is meanwhile engaged with his own imp.

"Get this damned spear out of me," the man bellows as he engages in fisticuffs with the imp. Bertie is skilled at the pugilistic arts but the imp has the initiative. The imp twists his spear into the man a little bit deeper.

Another imp flies at Josephine and imparts a hard blow to her. She staggers but maintains her footing. She's hurting but she's still up and fighting. Kristoff the Dwarf is targeted next, and smacks one of the imps right out of the air with a giant ham fist. He's cursing up a storm in Swabian German and the air takes on a distinct flavor of blue around him.

Flora whacks at the imp on Bertie with her parasol but it's ineffectual. Ezekiel manages to deal some damage to it next but the damnable thing is still fighting. It maintains its grip on its spear, digging its heels in the ground, unwilling to give up its spear. Josephine shoots at the imp on her but she misses.

Katherine rallies and shoots before anyone else can move, friend or foe. Katherine hits the imp still airborne above Beignet. The imp collapses and Beignet has to dodge its falling body. Beignet is unsuccessful and the imp lands on the Hobbit and breathes its last. Beignet struggles to remove the impish carcass off him.

The imp on Bertie tries attacking him again. Of course, Bertie attacks it right back. They struggle but neither is able to gain and advantage and deal damage on his foe. The still-airborne imps swings at and misses our party. The last imp, the one smacked on the ground by Kristoff, shakes its head and scrambles to fight the Dwarf. The imp lands a lucky blow and hits Kristoff for a bit of damage. Kristoff is tough however. Ezekiel lands a fantastic blow with his sword on the imp fighting Bertie. Josephine takes aim on the one uninjured and airborne imp and shoots. She hits and delivers a nasty blow to it. Flora goes next, hitting the one on Bertie and it finally falls. Dead.

Now there is only the Dwarf-smacked imp and the airborne imp left. Hans takes aim and lands a massive bone-crunching blow on the grounded imp with the butt of his rifle.

Ezekiel attacks the imp on the ground and practically liquidates him. Ezekiel flicks the icor off his blade and put his eye on the airborne imp. "Come down and face the steel of the Host! My sword sings for your blood, imp!"

"I shall give you all the imp blood you desire, monsieur, if you would get this godforsaken body off me!" yells Beignet, still trapped under the body of the imp he's killed. He loses consciousness an instant later.

The remaining imp flies away at top speed, knowing it's been outclassed. Katherine and Josephine both fire at its retreating form. Katherine's shot goes wide, as does Josephine's. There being no stopping it, we turn our attention to our wounded. Katherine immediately goes to Bertie's side, to expend her power to heal him.

"Ezekiel, darling, could you be so kind as to remove the imp off Niecey?" Katherine looks up and implores. "He's stopped squeaking."

"Monsieur, monsieur," the Chartist calls. "We have a Countess to end. Get up."

Ezekiel kicks the body off the Hobbit and Beignet revives. He scuttles off to change his bloodied jacket.

We take a moment to get ourselves to right and press on. In little time we reach the far end of the passage.

There is a very large wooden framework and Selene Dashwood hangs from a scaffold nearby. Strips of her skin have been sliced away to be affixed to the framework. She is another portal in the making. That is horrific enough but those with a good eye for geometry will realize that the framework is bigger than her flesh can possibly satisfy for the gate. For those of a forensic mind, they notice that Selene is still in the state she was found in Paris--magically frozen, unmoving and impossibly unbleeding. The implements and tools strewn about are thaumaturgically inimical. Bertie immediately turns Flora's face away from the horrid sight. Beignet begins to run screaming away from the scene but Katherine nimbly catches him. Josephine grimaces but holds her ground and starts looking around for something to get Selene down from her scaffold.

Ezekiel eyes the implements--there are sacrificial daggers and such, just the things needed to make demonic gates. Beignet looks things over as well and comprehension for such a task blossoms inside his head. All it would require would be Beignet's immortal soul and three live magicians.

Katherine and Josephine cut Selene down from her scaffold. Selene is stiff and frozen in that spell cast on her in Paris. We realize we cannot release her from the spell without forcing her body to suffer the extent of her injuries. It's an unexpected bonus from the spell holding her prisoner--so long as it is active, she cannot die of her injuries. Beignet realizes that the poor woman is nude and we find a sheet to wrap her in.

We gently put her to the side and continue through a massive set of double doors into the Castle. The music box is cranked and playing now, and Katherine passes one of the rifles she's been carrying to Flora.

We are in the dungeons beneath the castle. There are cells and in them we find two other poor souls frozen as Selene has been but unlike her, they are as yet unflayed. Astonishingly enough, Beignet recognizes one of them as a member of the London Thaumaturgical Guild. Ezekiel hustles us onward. We cannot dally. The Countess awaits. We must stay focused.

We smell the smoke from the firebombing of the castle. We press on, the Ave Maria from the music box lending us strength.

Ezekiel is at the front of our party and he gets to the steps leading upward first. After all, we are at the base of a castle on a cliff. As he climbs, he walks into an extreme cold patch and steps onto an icy stair tread. He manages not to fall but the atmosphere is decidedly colder and quickly becomes punishingly cold. Apparently, Rembecki has put out the fires above with the cold ice.

We trail upward, Ezekiel to the fore and the rest of the party trailing behind on the great spiraling staircase. Our breath hangs in the air. The music box plays and we press on.

We hear a high keening voice in Old High German. Josephine can recognize it as an archaic German tongue calling down the powers of ice and cold. Immediately hail rains down on Ezekiel's head. The music box protects Ezekiel, however, and the hail does no damage. The effort to call down the spell, however, drains its caster. Which would be the Countess herself.

Ezekiel might not be harmed but others still get hit by the hail as well. We all have to watch our step to avoid slipping on the icy steps. The cold and the dark are finally too much for Flora and she starts to panic. Hans grapples her to keep her from running away. They both slip on the icy steps and fall but do not slide far. A few steps at most.

The sight of her friend reduced to panic and shivering is too much for Katherine. Katherine has reached the end of her patience--the Countess is going to die, die, die, and not honorably. Not if Katherine has anything to say about it.

She is not the only one so inscensed. Beignet crawls up the icy steps between the legs of the people ahead of him, armed with is pistol and damned dangerous. He sees a figure further up the stairs. He aims and squeezes off two shots. They hit their target and do some damage but the Countess, of course, is still standing.

Katherine tries to look around Ezekiel. She manages a glimpse of a human shape and shoots in its direction. She whispers an apology to Ezekiel, for the sake of his ears, before she squeezes off the shot. He replies that he does not need to hear in order to stab our adversary. Katherine's shot misses.

((3:14:45))

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