Game 24: Phyla House

The Orb of Contravention is a +2 orb with the daily power Afterclap. Afterclap turns an enemy's successful save into a failure as a free action. Outside of an encounter, the orb is cloudy, almost metallic grey. During an encounter, the orb glows with a warm orange and hums quietly, but crackles loudly when the +2 or Afterclap is used. Or, Aeris can instead choose any magical orb from the PH up to level 10.

The party finds a vault with 4 dials, each with the numbers 1 to 5. Looking at the vault, Kasskar determines that each time you guess a combination and fail, you'll get two pieces of information:

You'll find out whether your guess is less than or greater than the correct combination. You'll find how many digits in your guess were correct.

For instance, if the correct combination is 1234, and you guess 1233, you'll find out that the correct combination is greater than your guess and that you have three digits right.

However, for each fail, the thief will also take 1d10 damage, which can be avoided on a DC 21 Thievery check - no taking a 10.

As they approach on the coast, they can see a cloud of bats flying inland, presumably to the guano cave. If they follow the bat cloud inland, the see that the bat entrance to the cave is a low hole in a grassy ridge. It seems like it's too small to enter there, especially with bats flying in and out, and furthermore doesn't seem to be the entrance that was used for mining. But, as you travel further inland, you come around a low hill about 500 feet away and find an entrance there with a weathered wooden door. It looks like at one time it was locked up with a padlock, but now the padlock is gone and the door just rattles and bangs in the wind.

The door opens into a narrow tunnel going down. There were some narrow stairs carved here that have been worn down by decades of use. After the stairs, you find a few bodies, which look like they were Welkin workers when this was a working mine. If the party examines the bodies, it looks they were killed in a fight. They have wounds from weapons and bites.

If they go there, they find an Inkeri dying of rabies (DC 20 Heal check to figure that out). He's incoherent and lethargic, his eyes are puffed up...and he has bite marks on his neck. He'll occasionally scream intensely, gripping his head with both hands and writhing on the ground. He's wearing the insignia of the Byrthing Clan, so this must be one of the guys Byrthing clan sent who didn't return.

There are other bodies here too, of people who have already died. Some others are also from Byrthing Clan, but also folks who are wearing more pedestrian clothes. Some are wearing black pants without shoes and clean white buttoned shirts, open down the chest. Others are wearing that but with gold-colored robes over them. They all have bites if you look at them.

After they see this, they notice the door has stopped rattling, and they're attacked by rabid vampires.

The characters at first are struck by the rancid ammonia smell, and the noisy and hectic activity from the bats. But, it's the time of day for the bats to be flying out, and as the bats empty out, the party sees a quiet figure dressed in Inkeri gear high above the cave on a ledge. He's looking at the characters and then he turns and goes into a tunnel.

The characters can find a ledge that goes up there, it looks like it's been used frequently because there's a track in the guano. When they get up there, the scene isn't actually radically different than the work room, with lethargic Inkeri and vampires there, some sick. A vampire dressed in black pants, an unbuttoned white shirt, and an open gold robe introduces himself as Desmod. He introduces himself as the leader of Phyla House. He says that bats coming in over the coast told him that they party was near.

He says that in the past the vampire houses have kept a low profile in the guano caves, letting the various houses mine there, but that a rabies epidemic has changed that. However, the rabies epidemic is going to burn itself out, and the vampire houses are still a strong force on Hilde. Desmod tentatively offers Beowolf an alliance to help recover the guano on Hilde for the Inkeri and otherwise help win the continent for him.

As the party is finishing up with the vampires, a desperate Inkeri warrior comes into the harem. He looks from person to person, then seeing Beowolf, rushes up to him and says breathlessly that he has important news. He says that Beowolf had brought 50 or so Inkeri warriors along to the guano cave, but now Leutwin has turned them against the party. In addition, he's marshaled warriors from the nearby Inkeri clans, the Snekke, Drekkar, and Skeid, and even some Welkin warriors from the nearby town of Albrecht. Altogether, about 500 men have assembled outside the cave, and now they're executing a manhunt for the party. They're at both the entrance and the bat hole, and they're preparing the send parties in and flush Beowolf out.

The messenger says a lot of Inkeri politics and leadership are determined by single combat, but that doesn't seem to be the model that Leutwin is following. It looks like it's 500 vs. the party.