Drakkenheim Part 3: The Castle

The Castle

The plan to take back Drakkenheim was in motion.

The Silver Order tasked the party with bringing back a massive diamond they could use to resurrect the dragon Argonath. It could be found in the royal treasure vaults of Castle Drakken. While they were there, they were to search for the Shield of Saint Vitruvio—one of the relics needed to control the dragon once resurrected. Then the party went to the Inscrutable Tower, having been invited by Eldrick Runeweaver himself.

Behind closed doors, Runeweaver told the party that he wanted to get rid of the Edicts of Lumen—the agreement that says spellcasters can’t own land or claim noble titles. Since this was Quille’s goal, Runeweaver supported his quest to claim the throne. The only ones who could complain was the Silver Order, but in their weakened state, there was little they could do to oppose the Amethyst Academy and the new king. Unless, of course, they were to resurrect Argonath. Runeweaver made it clear that this must not happen under any circumstance. The party agreed.

After leaving the tower, the party came up with a plan to double-cross everyone yet again. They would resurrect Argonath. Then, they would seize all the relics of Saint Vitruvio and control the dragon themselves, Silver Order be damned. There was a slight problem with their plan, and that was that none of them could cast any resurrection spells—they’d need the Silver Order’s help with that. But that wasn’t a concern at the moment.

Before heading to the castle, they decided to visit Saint Selina’s Monastery, where Spellini had received the Sacrament of the Falling Fire. The group wasn’t welcome there anymore, what with Spellini having left the faith and excluding them from the future of Drakkenheim. But there was one thing they needed there: the Helm of Patron Saints, another relic of Saint Vitruvio. Once they had that and the shield, they’d be all set to command Argonath.

They made their way to the monastery, walking up to the guards at the outer gate with appropriately dramatic music. Magical explosions flew and daggers clashed as they engaged. Spellini took the opportunity to try out his new spell, reverse gravity. It sent all the enemies, as well as Snes and Melly, flying high into the air, only to plummet back down moments later.

Not having time to argue about the friendly fire that had just occured, the party rushed to the chapel as someone raised the alarm and rang the bells in the monastery’s tower. Spellini cast a spell to tear down one of the chapel’s walls, ignoring the doorway, and ended up collapsing the floor as well. Snes was standing closest, and fell down in the chapel’s crypt. Fortunately, that’s where the helm was. Less fortunately, it was also where the literal guardian angels were keeping watch. And they hit hard.

Many death saves later, Spellini saved the party by teleporting them outside the city walls with the helm. They could see the angels, swords ablaze, flying high above the misty city to look for them. The group bolted out of Drakkenheim and returned to Emberwood.

The next day, it was finally time to launch an expedition to the castle. After a quick stop at the Inscrutable Tower for magical supplies and a nap, the group decided to approach Castle Drakken on foot to avoid the flying stone dragons defending it from aerial attackers. They passed two gates on the way up the cliff where the castle perched, fighting off mutated stone creatures at the first one, and less mutated stone golems at the second one. Actually, the stone golems weren’t much of a fight—Spellini teleported through the gate’s portcullis and opened it from the inside, after which the rest of the group dashed right past the golems. Then they got attacked by the stone dragons.

Having had quite enough, Snes used his dragon potion and turned into a huge red dragon. He had the party climb onto his back, and promptly flew away, past the other dragons, landing in the thick delerium fog of the castle’s lower bailey. They fought a giant, red-skinned, bull-headed man with a flaming sword and a lightning whip, and took a quick rest in a tower.

After resting, fighting off a couch mimic, and waiting for Snes to turn back into a kobold, they went through a door in the tower’s basement that Melly had found. It seemed important, because it wouldn’t open to anyone not wearing a seal of Drakkenheim. When Melly tried it, it opened to a long stone corridor leading in the direction of the castle’s keep.

After walking through the corridor’s darkness for a few minutes, they heard shouting up ahead. They discovered that the corridor led to the servant’s areas in the castle’s basement, with the kitchen being the source of the shouting. Snes took a peek at the commotion, and found the undead husks of the castle’s former kitchen staff still going about their routines, albeit with rotten ingredients. The head chef was shouting something about lamb sauce¹. The party went the other way.

The Vault

After finding a secret path in the wine cellar, looking through the steward’s tower, chatting up gargoyles, walking through the hall of heroes, and running past two stone golems, the party finally made their way to the royal treasure vault. Their seals of Drakkenheim opened the door, and they found themselves surrounded by gold, gemstones, jewelry, priceless artwork, deeds, and scrolls. But one piece of treasure stood out above the rest: sitting atop a pile of rubies and emeralds was an enormous, perfectly cut diamond, sparkling in the dim torchlight. They had found the diamond they needed, but there was no sign of the shield. They’d have to check the castle’s chapel. But first, they grabbed everything they could carry.

The group had been hearing faint whispers in the air when they first set foot inside the castle. Whatever it was, it seemed to want them to go to the crypt, because that’s all it said. The crypt just so happened to be right next to the treasure vault, so that was their next stop.

The crypt was a massive chamber filled with rows of columns, all with niches containing statues of former rulers and their families. The floor was covered in pink knee-deep delerium sludge, bubbling and sputtering. On one side of the room was a large, round pillar—the castle’s foundation pillar, powering all its magic. After getting a fly-spell cast on him, Snes flew over to the pillar to discover that there was a man of stone stuck to the face of the pillar, seemingly having melted halfway through it, arms extended behind him as if trying to hold the pillar together. Snes also noticed a floating sphere of eyes and contorted faces, with dozens of arms holding lanterns extending from its central mass. It was not friendly, and it fired beams of deadly magic from its lanterns.

The party attacked the awful creature. It was powerful, firing rays of anti-magic, contamination, and other nasty things. The stone man on the pillar seemed to shift ever so slightly, and the creature was suddenly trapped inside a magical force field. Even so, the party wasn’t winning the fight, and decided to run away. They were tired and low on spells. On they way out, they met Elias Drexel and his strike team of Hooded Lanterns. He was there to save the king, if he was still alive, before the Prophets could get to him and accidentally kill him or something. Elias hadn’t made it to the throne room due to a force field blocking it. He and the party agreed to a temporary truce, and to return tomorrow to beat up the crypt monster, talk to the pillar man, and find out more about the force fields.

After leaving the castle, they decided to swing by the chapel in the upper bailey to look for the Shield of Saint Vitruvio. Unfortunately, they caught the attention of the castle’s gargantuan guard dragon, perched atop a tower, driven mad by contamination. The group managed to hide inside the chapel, but found only a note saying that the king wanted to keep the shield on his mantelpiece until the chapel had finished construction, which it never had. So the party rushed outside, chased away from the castle grounds by an ancient bronze dragon.

The Gravekeeper

The party returned the next day, flying on griffins given to them by the Silver Order. They headed straight for the crypt, which was easy after Elias Drexel had showed them a few more secret entrances the day before. This time, they decided to do away with the stone golems for good, which didn’t take long. Standing by the entrance to the crypt, they realized they’d forgotten to bring Elias Drexel and his men. Fortunately, he wasn’t far behind them.

The floating blob of arms, eyes, and faces was a tough opponent, largely because they couldn’t stand on the ground in the crypt for more than a few seconds without taking damage and becoming contaminated from the delerium sludge. Luckily, Spellini had a solution to this. Eldrick Runeweaver had lent him his Inscrutable Staff of the Archmage for the expedition to the castle, which let him cast the spell Tenser’s Floating Disc without expending a spell slot. Spellini used this to conjure fifteen invisible floating platforms that would follow him around. Then the gang hopped on.

The creature blasted them with its lanterns while Spellini and Snes threw fireball after fireball at it. Animal clung on to the niche of one of the pillars and leaned out to fire arrows from cover. Melly dashed through the delerium sludge to get near the monster, jumping up and clinging to a pillar while swinging her axe wildly. The force from a lantern blast knocked her back into the sludge.

Elias Drexel’s rallying cry boosted the team’s morale while Quille was struggling to free himself from grasping tentacles that had erupted from the wall. Eventually, the fireballs did the trick, and the monster sank into the sludge, all its faces screaming in terrible dissonance. Following Spellini and his platforms, now more than twenty, the group made their way to the stone statue and the man fused to it.

He said his name was Johann Eisner, and he was the royal steward of Castle Drakken. After the meteor struck, he’d reached the foundation pillar just as he was overcome with contamination, and was fused to it as a result. He said that the king was gone, absorbed by a hideous mass of flesh in the throne room. It had gotten there through a dimensional rift opened as a consequence of the meteor. Eisner was using the pillar’s magic to keep the rift from tearing the castle apart. They had to put a new monarch on the throne and use the crown’s magic to close it. Alternatively, they could give the seals of Drakkenheim to Eisner, and he could try to use their power to keep the rift closed. The group opted for the former option, which was their plan all along. Elias Drexel reluctantly agreed to put Quille on the throne. He wasn’t to keen on Melly, the only other one in the group with royal blood, since she had previously directed a string of insults at him for no discernible reason.

The Final Battle(s)

Wanting to rest up before the ultimate confrontation, the party flew back to Emberwood to rest. The next day, they found that Theodore Marshall of the Silver Order had come to join them in the battle. Also in Emberwood was River, having come to wish them luck and give them some potions. They set off on their griffins for the last time, heading straight for the throne room. The forcefield previously barring their entry turned into a golden wall of fog. They stepped through.

Delerium crystals were growing out of the marble floor. Shards of glass were floating in the air, the broken windows revealing a disorienting landscape of swirling eldritch colors beyond. The throne of iron and velvet stood on a tiered platform, flanked by skeletal dragon wings and a dragon skull atop it. Before the throne, in the center of the room, was a massive, writhing mass of flesh, eyes, and distorted faces. Its fleshy tendrils were reaching out to the pillars lining the room, keeping it suspended in the air. From one of its tendrils hung the crown.

The party charged forth. Snes and Animal dealt with a group of haze husks, the undead remains of the king’s royal servants. Theodore Marshal, Elias Drexel, and Quille cleared the room of the amalgamation’s fleshy minion blobs that were scattered across the room. Spellini threw spells at the thing, and Melly buried her axe in it over and over again. It retaliated by lashing out with its tentacles, grabbing Quille and Melly. Then it shrieked, and emitted wave after wave of nauseating contamination. Snes accidentally created a fog cloud with her wild magic, leaving Quille unable to teleport out of the creature’s grasp because he couldn’t see. Then the thing telepathically spoke terrible truths to Theodore Marshal, driving him mad. He stopped swinging his sword and just stared into the terrifying lands beyond the windows.

Melly tried to hack away at its tentacle, but wasn’t fast enough. It swallowed her whole with one of its crooked mouths. Animal rained arrows on it. Spellini bombarded it with fireball after fireball, as did Snes. Elias Drexel hacked away at it with his sword. Quille was eventually able to slip out of the tendril’s grip and joined in with a sword of his own, aflame with magical energy. And just like that, the creature dropped from where it was hanging and splatted down on the ground, dead. The group hurried to pull Melly out of its belly while Quille cast a spell to restore the sanity of Theodore Marshall. The crown was on the marble floor, free of the creature’s grasp. All they had to do was complete the coronation ceremony and Drakkenheim would be saved.

Unfortunately, the throne was cursed with the fell magic of delerium. Quille sat down on it, and Elias Drexel placed the crown on his head. The bearers of the seals of Drakkenheim would have to pledge their allegiance to Quille and make some difficult skill checks. They began doing so, and right from the start, it was clear that things were about to go south. Every failed roll caused the purple mists of contamination to swirl around the throne and surge through Quille. When Animal got down on one knee to pledge his service as spymaster of Drakkenheim, Quille was overcome with the haze and began turning into another blob of flesh, which the party quickly hacked to death, but not before it could severely injure Spellini.

With no time to mourn their fallen comrade, Melly sat down on the throne to try the same procedure. Well, you can guess how that went. She turned into a blobby monster too. Snes drank his dragon potion, but the monster pulled the same trick the first one had used on Theodore Marshall, driving Snes mad. And with no Quille to cast the spell to restore him, the party was rightfully and truly fucked.

The Disastrous Aftermath

After the untimely demise of all the Prophets of the Rat God—as well as the leaders of the Silver Order and the Hooded Lanterns—the Amethyst Academy did their best to prevent the spread of delerium by constructing a giant magical dome of force around the whole city, harnessing the power of the haze and researching the properties of the delerium crystals within its mist. Their efforts were sabotaged by Lucretia Matthias (who had been mysteriously absent for the third act of the story) and the Followers of the Falling fire, who destroyed the magical barrier and flooded the world in octarine haze. Who knows, perhaps her prophecy of the Age of Heroes would come true?

Doing the math, actually completing the coronation ceremony was nearly impossible. I guess it’s fitting that you can’t get a happily ever after in a cosmic horror campaign. Although this one ended up with more comedy than horror. Well, we had fun, at least. After all that, it’s finally time for me to be a player again. Yay!

The end.