Umbral Gaze 8: The Death Kiss
Having returned fresh out of battle to Waterdeep in the mid-afternoon, Almuth, Cleric of Eldath, seeks out the Unblinking Patrol, going corner to corner, shop to shop, asking around until he finds his answer. The joke Gottlob played earlier is hot in his mind, and he intends to ensure that the Paladin is disciplined for his indiscretion— nobody impersonates Eldath and gets away unpunished! At last, Almuth finds what he’s looking for: the Unblinking Patrol have their base in the lower Trades Ward, nestled above a lovely little potions shop. Their sigil emblazons the back door: an eye and morningstar.
At the door in question— a sturdy, crisply-painted affair— the Cleric knocks. A narrow sliding-port clacks open, well below his own eye-level, through which a single yellow eye peeps to greet him. A second such port lies a foot or two upward, but that one remains steadfastly shut as a gruff and slurring voice demands to know the Cleric’s business. On receiving a suitable answer regarding a member of the Patrol, the eye’s owner— a swaying, red-faced, far-off-looking dwarf— opens the door to herd Almuth hastily up a narrow flight of stairs and into the apartments-read-base of the Unblinking Patrol.
The sparsely furnished main room is clean but for some piled boots and half-full bottles. A rack’s worth of weapons hangs ready at one wall; at the other rests a sturdy lacquered table with chairs for ten, all empty for the moment. On toward the back, the room opens on a hallway as the rest of the headquarters disappears behind hanging curtains and oddly-angled walls on which placards of minor honors and images of former members are the only adornment. The dwarf— Hogar, as he introduces himself, presently acting captain of the Patrol— plops heftily into a rocking chair before he prompts the Cleric to continue, but when Almuth relates his story of Gottlob’s little joke, the dwarf flies into a half-coherent rage. Members of the Unblinking Patrol get along, in general, but Hogar and Gottlob were never on terribly companionable terms. Hogar produces some parchment and a quill, which he sets on the wide arm of his rocking chair, and an hour of ploddingly furious writing later, pages of scribbling amount to a chiding letter that the dwarf seals it in wax before handing to the Cleric— to be delivered upon his next encounter with their mutual acquaintance.
Some hours later, as the crescent moon rises over the city and the ocean’s mists roll in to replace the light of the setting sun, Gottlob makes his way to Patrol headquarters. It’s been too long since he visited, and an uneasy feeling in his gut gives the satyr an urge just to check that the place remains in one piece. Finding that back door with its ports and knocking out a code, the paladin is promptly admitted by a pale, stern looking human man whom he greets as “Arukil”. Hogar still sits in his corner and speaks up when Gottlob gives him a nod.
Hey, someone was around looking for you earlier. Something about a blasphemy or.. hic something…
An eyebrow raised, Gottlob wracks his brains for a moment before it comes to him: Almuth. A quick question confirms the suspicion— the cleric is still mad about that!? Impudent priest, trying to get him fired… Gottlob makes a quick round of the premises and, satisfied that all remains intact and present, wheels furiously out of the place with more unease on his mind than when he came in.
For the first time since Lord Silverhand inducted them to their beholder-ridden course, the party converse with the Xanathar. Laeral’s council chamber glows with its usual array of hanging lights, and on that long, low table again rests the orb from which the crime lord’s voice issues. The next beholder Laeral wishes them to subdue set it’s sights concerningly near to Waterdeep— very near, indeed, so that the Xanathar could not help but to have taken notice. He explains this now from his little floating avatar as it rises above the table, a conduit and tiny image of the beholder’s own vastly more intimidating sphericality.
The target is a death kiss, one of the lesser beholderkin, but dangerous all the same. Death kisses are flesh-made realizations of beholders’ vivid nightmares of losing blood. They take on characteristics vampires, as often so inspired, and drain the blood from their victims as in the dreams from which they sprang. An image of a rat’s corpse shriveled and twisted in rigor-mortis is projected from the Xanathar’s incarnation as a fine example of what death kiss victims can expect should they be so careless as to allow themselves to become ensnared. The party should be on lookout for any so-afflicted creatures as they track their prey.
Silverhand produces a map to the most beholder’s most recently verified location: an old castle of the Red Wizards1 nestled in the Forlorn Hills, the so-called “Bloodgate Keep”. Unlike any before, today’s mission has another aspect, one peculiar to the mode of its object’s discovery. A team of scouts and scholars sent to the castle some weeks ago failed to return by their appointed deadline. Concerned officials of Waterdeep ordered a search party dispatched, sending a pair of well-respected adventures in the city’s employ, but they failed in their mission. Only one member managed to return, at which he reported an ambush that saw his comrade drained of blood and left the original party— after whom they’d both been sent— still nowhere to be found. Under the sobering influence of an awareness that their mission is more likely to be “search and retrieval” than it is to be “rescue”, the party sets off in a wagon, southward, to meet their objective in two days and one night.
When the flurry of preparation is underway and the party is well and truly underway, Almuth recalls the sealed envelope still burning a hole in his pocket. Facing Gottlob, he produces the letter and tenders an explanation of what it represents, but Gottlob expected this, and refuses to be undermined by his so-called comrade— in front of all the others, no less. Tearing the letter in half without so much as a glance downward, the satyr pockets two halves of parchments and moves with a huff to the wagon’s other corner. Some awkward looks are all the rest of the party offer in response.
Darkness threatens as our heroes stop to make camp— the glow of backlit brambles and jagged shadows of lonely conifers make a melancholy scene in orange and black. After dinner, Gottlob approaches Carmal with an indignant glare that preempts any greeting. He tosses Hogar’s letter into Almuth’s lap, which he read in private after the party disembarked, and bids the cleric look and see what pointless shit the dwarf wrote thereupon. It’s nothing but a string of drunken insults; Gottlob almost had to laugh when he saw it first. Though tensions are high, neither of the two wishes to be at the other’s throat— that makes for bad adventuring, in any case— and ultimately, reason prevails. Perhaps both of them overreacted, a bit. Neither meant to offend the other. Satisfied for the time being, with only the faintest glimmers of lingering resentment, each heads off to catch some much needed rest before the excitement that is no doubt to follow.
Early the next morning, their little procession winds across fields and thickets against a crisp breeze that hearkens autumn and turns against them at every bend— horses, wagon, centaur and llama. A cluster of dots among battered khaki triangles appears on the horizon, way off down the road. Party members are unsure what they see at first, but as the cluster grows nearer and its contents more resolved, Waterdhavian crests are plain are plain on the lids of abandoned luggage and flaps of wind-dashed tends, an unsettlingly familiar sight to behold. Drawing upon the thrashed encampment, our heroes conclude that they stand amidst the ruined tents of the original party sent to map and uncover the secrets of the old Red Wizards’ keep. All are a bit uneasy, but Gottlob more so than any, for as the wagon slows, he watches a gnarled, shadowy, half-incorporeal talon **** from the ground at the side of the wagon against which Almuth leans and make a clawing swipe at the Cleric’s armor. It seems to flutter for a moment in the chill wind before returning to the ground even faster than it emerged. All happens too fast for Gottlob to react, but as discomfiture overtakes his features, the satyr is puzzled to notice none of his company reacting in kind. Saw they nothing of the shadow?
A few seconds more, and their disengaged faces confirm his suspicions— only he noticed the claw. Unsettled, the portly paladin relates his strange experience to Almuth, and is glad to find the cleric doesn’t think him crazy. Such things smack of witchcraft and monsters, things with which the Cleric has had no small experience. Perhaps it is a sign as to what exactly befell the earlier party here. Rummaging through belongings left in the few standing tents, Carmal finds some books that might be salvageable— one, in particular, piques his interest for its weight and robust construction. With some assistance, the Bard manages to restore the book to a should-be-readable state by the power of “mending” and “prestidigitation”, but an opportunity to appreciate its words will have to wait. The party’s presence must have sounded some sort of alarm, for a death kiss chooses this moment to emerge, bobbing from some bend or nook just paces up the road.
At once, the party is thrown into action, but they are well prepared against this foe. For once, the briefing was remarkably complete, and the knowledge of death kisses the Xanathar imparted will serve the party well in this encounter. Two vampire spawn flank the ghastly aberration, but they are little fish by comparison; Almuth “turns” them with his holy symbol and a word. Free to engage their primary target without interference, Carmal and Louisa show no restraint. Each casts powerful magic upon the creature as it presses in among the party and tries to entangle all within its willowy, sucker-tipped tentacles. Carmal’s irresistible dance is a perfect match with Louisa’s mental prison, trapping the beholder in an imagined hellscape of blistering snow and blinding light as its tentacles beat out a rhythm in around it to no song in particular. The creature flails desperately, reaching out to escape, but its transgression into the snowy fields sets off Louisa’s magic, and the creature dies to a psychic flurry that shreds its mind from the inside out. One vampire died in the action, and the other flees across the open field. The party will chase him down when they’ve recovered the bodies; there’s nowhere for a vampire to disappear, out here.
Impressed with themselves that the beholder could do so little to resist their attacks, and feeling rather satisfied that they managed largely to avoid any injuries themselves, the party carries onward up the road toward— they assume— the abandoned keep of the red wizards. An abundance of caution leads Gottlob to perform the spell ofg telepathic binding gifted to the party by Tasha— who knows what they might find inside. Sure enough, a castle soon looms, and they head through its vaulted entryway with Gottlob to the fore. In a rear nook of the antechamber lie piled four corpses that the satyr wastes no time in “locating”; his gaze sweeps the area both for threats and for items of concern. In short order, he finds the former: at the wall of the next inward chamber, a gaunt figure clutches a meaty tome to his chest; a blood red cloak hangs limp about his shoulders in the lifeless air that surrounds him. The party stop just beyond a short passage letting on from the vestibule to confront this unsettling stranger, who speaks a warning in silky tones as they approach.
I have no interest in defeating you here. Stand down and allow me to leave in peace.
By the man’s side, a second death kiss levitates, and by his garb, his build, and his comportment, the party can only surmise that a red wizard stands before them. As is common with their ilk, he bears the unmistakable traits of a vampire: pale skin, unblinking eyes, unnatural height and grace, and pointed teeth that peek from behind his lips with every placating smile. Not inclined to let such creatures live, but eager for information all the same, party members play along, trying to keep their newfound target talking. They learn that the vampire— “Red Fang Ororon”, he’s called— acts on the orders of Szass Tam2 himself, chief of the Red Wizard’s cult, to retrieve the very tome in his grasp, but Almuth makes a bold gambit— a false offer of servitude— that betrays the party’s intentions, and the vampire attacks.
The second death kiss surges forward, walloping3 the Cleric with all its might, as though to settle a score on its master’s behalf. Almuth takes it standing, but his vitality is dangerously depleted. The vampire grapples Carmal, fangs at his neck, who polymorphs himself into a Tyrannosaur to escape the undead clutches, and Gottlob’s aura of protection makes returning the bard to his natural form an insurmountable prospect for the Red Wizard. Psychically reaching out to his wounded comrade, not to let their earlier spat get in the way of a good plan, the paladin engages Almuth for his amulet of the planes. A plan has sprung into Gottlob’s mind that he just can’t let go. Almuth passes him the artifact, and though he tries it several times, the satyr can’t seem to work the device— his plan to drop the whole scene smack into the river4 Arran remains a figment of hope.
Not even a vampire can hope to compete with a Tyrannosaurus Rex in a contest of strength. The wizard transforms into misty darkness to escape the dinosaur’s gnashing teeth, teeth that put his own meager fangs to shame, but Almuth spots the incorporeal form as it breaks for the exit, and a beam of radiance from the holy symbol around his neck burns away the ____ fog like a new dawn’s light. The cloaked figure appears once more, dumped unceremoniously back into corporeality upon slate tiles near the door, but Almuth has yet another trick up his sleeve. Reaching out with his mind and magic toward the second death kiss, he makes it an offer: fight us and die, or help us and live. His words bear an unusual rhythm and force, and the simple cogency of the Cleric’s proposition is undeniable to the aberration. Disengaging from the party at once, it redirects its tentacles and its attention toward the Vampire by the door. The creature’s reach is immense, and in moments the vampire is completely ensured, rooted in place, trussed and bound jst waiting to be slaughtered. By the party’s good fortune alone, the death kiss’s tentacles carry him within reach of Gottlob’s sword, and a radiant strike of his rapier cleaves the creature nearly in half— but Gottlob is careful not to wound him too badly; interrogation is in more than order.
As the Vampire falls, Carmal notices something lying on the floor just beneath his gargantuan jaw: the wizard’s tome, dropped there as he fled into nonsolidity. Dropping his dino form to scoop the book into his arms, the bard casts “greater invisibility” and, seeing no harm in redundancy, ducks around a corner out of sight. He aims to identify the book in secret and to prevent its recovery by the Vampire should things from here go wildly awry. The psychic link Gottlob set earlier assures party members that their friend is still nearby.
Almuth and Gottlob set to determining Ororon’s truthfulness in their earlier conversation as it becomes clear that no further threat is about to appear. The pair expend great energy in repeated attempts to create a “zone of truth”, but ultimately it is Almuth’s “geas”5 that compels the undead magician to candor. He indeed told the truth before; Szass Tam charged him with the recovery of the tome. No, he hasn’t read it; no, he doesn’t know what it’s about. The party have only so much time and patience for interrogation in the ghoulish atmosphere of the Wizards’ castle, and in any case are far from masters in this sort of questioning, so the Vampire goes in Almuth’s portable hole to be catechized upon return to Waterdeep by Silverhand’s professionals. Perhaps they can glean something of what Szass Tam intends, or some useful information besides.
Vampire stowed, the precariousness of the death kiss situation presents itself. On the one hand, Almuth made a promise that he intends to keep, to spare the beholder in return for its aid in defeating Red Fang Ororon, but, on the other, the party at large has no intention to let the evil vampiric orb go unhindered into the world to wreak bloody havoc. Between themselves, party members strike a compromise, and as they explain their plan to the death kiss it finds the judgement tolerable. Gottlob returns to Almuth his amulet, and with a pop and a flash of light, the creature hurtles off to the Beastlands6 across the interplanar skein, the subject of a “plane shift” spell.
Having “identified” the book he recovered so surreptitiously, and knowing that the danger has passed, Carmal returns to the land of the visible, stashing the party’s prize in his pack for the moment. Gottlob shows his companions where he found the corpses of the scouting party as they entered Bloodgate Keep, and together they load three burlap-wrapped bodies into the wagon. They strike out toward the encampment where the body of the dead thrall still lies to recover all that they can, and Clementine’s keen tracker’s sense makes finding and dispatching the one that fled no more than a minor detour. Finally with five recovered corpses, a dead death kiss’s hulk, and a vampire’s upp half in Almuth’s hole, the party return to Waterdeep— in the wake of today’s many surprises, they look forward to a quiet day of journeying make plans to do something fun when at last they return to Waterdeep. All could use a bit of a break.