SOTDL CAMPAIGN DIARY - SESSION 10: QUINTET - PART 1, 7/9/19

The Cast:
·         Brother Aron: Human priest/cleric of the New God
·         Calista: Ferren rogue/thief
·         Perry Flaxseed: Halfing Hunter/Fighter
·         Nikolai Petrechko: Human Veteran/Fighter

Upon leaving the living cave, the heroes decide to take their chances in the next closest city in the Confederacy: Nessus - the City of Decay.  They decide to take a train to this city rather than continue their overland travel and Unit One informs them that there is a station not far from their current location.

They pass a few settlements on their way to the town of Flenfeld, where the train station is located.  Many friendly farmer and passersby offer greeting to the

group, who are wary of becoming involved with any of these folk, as they seem to have a knack for finding settlements where there is trouble.  Flenfeld is no different, for when they arrive they find the town seemingly abandoned with only a group of a dozen or so children on the outskirts.  The children seem hungry and abandoned, and when the group approaches them, they seem afraid of them.

Calista approaches the oldest 3 of the children; Tom, Huck and Becky, and learns that the adults in town have been acting increasingly strange at the direction of the town's priest.  The town's church is dedicated to the New God and the priest had demanded more and more of the adult's time, finally calling them all to the temple on a stormy night, three days past.  The townfolk were locked in the church and have not exited since.  The children claim the church to be silent and a foul smell coming from within.

The heroes decide to investigate and when they get to the church, find the front doors chained from the outside.  Calista picks the locks and when they open the doors they find the townfolk dead, throats cut, and bodies stacked up against the walls.  With no apparent signs of struggle from any of them, the entire town seems to have allowed themselves to be ritualistically killed.  Brother Aron recognizes the ritual to be similar to one found in the holy book of the New God, where a crazed priest performed a similar ritual which called upon angels known as the "Quintet" to cleanse his town of a curse that had befallen it.  In that story, the angels Nulomos, Drosiphon, Veziel, Gidril and Sardael appeared and cleansed the souls of the sacrificed so that they may travel to the Underworld without being forced into the fiery pits of Hell to endure the tortures of the Devil before being reborn into the world, as the cycle of life demands.

The heroes remove the bodies from the church to burn.  Later, they take the children into the town's inn for the night and inform them of the fate of their parents and of all of the adults of Flenfeld.

The following day, the group return to the church and find a tunnel under the altar, which leads down into subterranean chambers.  They enter and begin exploring, first finding a chamber where gruesome work was done with bodies, and a pair of skeletal undead guarding the gory remains.  They dispatch the undead and proceed deeper into the complex, finding a pit full of ashes, where bodily remains were disposed of.  Calista finds controls which activate the pit, but upon turning it on and off, the pile of ashes within animates into a monstrous creature of ash, which flails at them with its tentacles.  They manage to fight off that monster as well and in the next chamber find a series of stairs leading down further into the earth.  Hearing no sounds from any of them, they pick one and descend.

The next level they find some bloody bodies that had apparently been involved in a fight, and are surprised when two of the bodies rise up and attack them.  They manage to kill one,  only to find that it rises up again to continue fighting.  They beat the two undead down and destroy the bodies to prevent them from rising again.

End of session.