The Wreck of the Bellerophon

Savage Krevborna: The Wreck of the Bellerophon

 

Julian Leclair- A mage from a family of Monster Hunters 

Barry Aguila- An antiquarian with a dangerous streak of curiousity.

Moira Quinn- A witch of serpentine affinities. 

 

Some time after our last write up, Julian and Barry have booked passage on the Rocinante, a barge headed down the river to Piskaro, following a desperate suggestion from Tabitha Manderlay, the noblewoman who they half-rescued half-captured they captured at a cult ritual, that they might be able to find some discrediting information on the Inquisitor who has now assumed control of her case. While still not trusting Tabitha, they've decided that if this information does exist, theirs are the safest hands for it.

 A few days into the voyage, Captain Gabriel calls them up on deck, pointing out another ship drifting up against a cliff face. This is the Bellerophon, and since there have been no response to his signals, Captain Gabriel intends to take a rowboat over to investigate, and invites the party to join him. The party readily agrees, and the party rows across to the other boat. They find what initially appears to be a set of five coffins bobbing in the water, attached by grappling hooks to the deck of the Bellerophon. Closer inspection proved that these were agile little watercraft that, for some person, had been made-up to resemble coffins.

 Boarding the derelict barge they find the corpses of several bargemen, most of them cut down with some sort of blades, but one desiccated and withered like a mummified corpse. At Gabriel's suggestion, they make for the Captain's cabin. The captain is there, the flesh peeled back from his skull and gathered around his neck like a grotesque collar. He didn't die without a fight however- there's a woman's corpse pinned to the wall by a cutlass.

 Barry recognizes the woman's close-fitting black clothing and elaborate skull face-paint as typical of the Danse Macabre, a highly formalized set of dance with religious connotations, but is unable to explain her presence here. Examining the captain's log in hopes of gaining some clue they find that a page has been torn out. Identifying from the surrounding entries that the missing page concerns a fairly narrow set of cargo berths, the party heads for the cargo hold. On their way across the deck, however, Julian spots two interesting things- one, the mouth of a cave in the cliff face, nearly invisible except from just below, where the Bellerophon happened to have drifted, and the second, a tiny bootprint, outlined in blood.

Descending into the cargo hold, the party hears the sounds of frenzied combat- rushing to the suspect cargo berths they find another dancer, wielding a sickle, in combat with a seven foot tall armored humanoid figure with the smoking skull of a goat. The bodies of two more dancers lay sprawled on the ground.

Making a snap decision, the party attack the goat-demon, which is quickly vanquished, disappearing in a cloud of sulfurous smoke, leaving only a scrap of bone with a length of goat hair tied about it. The dancer compliments them on their prowess, and then asks "So, now we fight, or what?"

When she frankly admits that she and her compatriots are engaged in piracy and theft, Barry attacks her, and a brief but brutal struggle leaves the dancer dead and Barry badly wounded. Julian pries open the crate the dancers were evidently trying to access, revealing an interior divided into several compartments, making up a comfortable set of living quarters- provided that the inhabitant were no more than six inches tall.

Returning to the deck, Captain Gabriel announces that, with the death of the Bellerophon's captain and crew accounted for, he's satisfied. Julian and Barry, however, wish to explore the cave. Gabriel is able to patch up Barry's wounds and then they climb the cliff.

Inscriptions inside the cave reveal that it is the resting place of a relatively minor Vlaak functionary. Following the most recent disturbances in the ancient dust, Julian and Barry head deeper into the tomb, fortunately spotting and managing to avoid a sigil drawn on the ground, centered around another piece of bone wrapped in goat hair. Before the sarcophagus of the tomb's inhabitant they find four more dancers, three of them armed with sickles, and the fourth holding a large hourglass and a book, facing off with two more goat headed demons, and the six inch tall porcelain doll cowering behind the towering demons.

The dancer with the book offers Julian and Barry the chance to walk away, announcing that they'll surely die some die, but it's unimportant to her if it's today. When the miniature porcelain woman begs for help, though, Barry brandishes his rapier and the fight is on.

The dancer with the book casts a spell and a spectral music fills the chamber, the other dancers falling into step with it and moving with eerie synchronicity as they attack the devils. Focused on her own safety first, the doll casts a spell that encases her in a crystalline cocoon, and then begins opening up vents of hellfire beneath the feet of the dancers. Julian attacks with magic while Barry plies his rapier and, while the devils prove surprisingly outmatched and are soon failed by their deathly-countenanced opponents, Julian and Barry are in turn able to cut down the dancers, though not before Barry is, again, badly wounded.

 As soon as the last dancer drops the porcelain doll throws up her hands, begging the victorious duo "Please don't hurt me, I'm only very small." Having witnessed firsthand her considerable magic abilities, Julian is dubious, but ultimately accepts that she was only trying to defend herself. Introducing herself as Miss Madeline Harker, she is uncertain as to the identity of her would-be abductors, but supposes that it was motivated by her status as one of Krevborna's leading experts on diabolical magics and exorcism- she views such attempts as something of an occupational hazard, which is why she travels in secret, disguised as cargo.

 Julian and Barry offer to secure her passage on the Rocinante, and debate the wisdom of spending more time exploring the tomb complex...