Orhan 3 Day 31 TE 6062

We start examining the crypts one at a time. We burst into a crypt and start slaying. That goes well, so we open some more crypts.

Let's be methodical. We kill a ghost (crypt 4) after the embarassing fear incident. We attack a spectre (crypt 7). It dies. We get some treasure 3k gold. In crypt number 21 we find a banshee. She has gold too. We move on to crypt 39, which has Bucephalus the wonder horse within. It contains a Nightmare. We kill it. It has no loot. Done with the small crypts, we move towards the master crypts (N, E, and S).

We head near the Northern crypt, behing a closed portculus, and the morningstar doesn't really want anything in there. So we check the East crypt, which has steps heading down and a strange curtain of light. We check the south crypt, and as soon as Haeraan approaches it, he drops his morningstar which turns into a wight. The wight attacks Alynna. She dodges. Imre examines the spell effect and determines nothing that he was teleport switched.

Oathar casts finding and leads people back to crypt 14. Inside seems larger than inside. There are 15 stone coffins in there. One of them contains Haeraan! Whoa!

Now that we in the crypt, Haeraan determines there are 14 more wights. We kill a wight. Then all the other lids start opening. We cast a death cloud and retreat. when we come back, there seem to be 10 wights left. We head around to the otherside.

Heading back to the south, we shortdoor past the teleport trap, and then check out the portcullus for traps. Finding none, we head down. It's a black velvet lined coffin with a nice pillow, and is cushy and well-maintained. Otherwise, empty though. Very suspicious.

We go to check out the North crypt. We open the portcullus and head in. In the crypt is a peaceful stillness amid the calm. In the center of the tomb is a white marble slab with a coffin. Beautifully carved statues stand in the three alcoves praying. Religion lore indicates they are probably praying for the person buried there. The marble slab says "Sergei von Zarovitch". Imre finds something shoved behind the statue in the hope alcove. It's bound in black leather with brass hinges. It's neither cursed nor evil. We restore the manuscript and read it. It's the tail of Sergei's brother. He killed Sergei to get Tatiana's love. It didn't work. So, lah, he turned into a vampire instead.

Some intuition rolls later...Oathar is convinced the chalice does not in fact appear as a chalice. Alynna thinks the whole place is more of a set piece construct rather than any real evolving place. As such the solution to everything is to solve the set piece. Meanwhile, Imre thinks that Irina is Tatiana reborn.

Fretting for a while, we head back to the beginning (main entrance) and start again.... We head in. We are greeted by the vampire. He's Strad von Zorovitch. The bad guy. We sit down to dinner with the vampire. It's very sad to be him, as he is stuck in a rut it seems. We talk for a bit and then he flies off. We find a secret door. It's only our second ever we think.

We follow it to the outer walls and start checking out the towers...

One of the towers has a large glowing heart at the top. It's red and glass apparently. Sadly, the tower shakes as we approach the top. We decide to head back down and figure out what to do from there rather than shake the tower apart.

We get ambushed by shadow demons. Next time, we fight!