Previously - another recap.
Previously on Shard of the Sun.
The rescue of Avram from the undercity went “according to plan” but you were left with more teethy puncture wounds than you would prefer. Your gypsy pal Cschka had left Turen to recuperate from her own vampire encounters in the quaint village of Bostone (where her Gypsy family was based) and it seemed like a good plan.
You spend a week or two there in the idyllic countryside, before encountering Trapper Hag – a once proud warrior lycantrope now in his dotage and racked with arthritis. He was coincidentally on holiday in Bostone and you ambushed and murdered him before he could even raise his weak, near-blind ancient eyes to the sky in prayer.
Taking the death of this harmless old man as a sign, you fled lest any of his other SAGA holiday chums were around and made your way back to the city of Turen. Cschka wisely took a different route and went off with her family to stay on the road a while.
Arriving back at Turen you act upon a letter from your long dead friend Exposition MacGuffin, sorry - I meant Preston Elliot, and go to the Turen museum of Antiquities to try and track down a Herring Hall Marvin which is vital to any vampire hunt! The museum contains an ELLIOT WING which amongst the tat has 2 large paintings that seem potentially like magical doorways out of the “notoriously difficult to leave” Turen. One is a portrait of Preston himself standing in your home town of Ashwell. The other painting is of the Herring Hall Marvin (which turns out to be a Safe) in an office library, which you stepped through into the office, and opened.
“Armed” with the contents of the safe – a clay flask of ancient wine – you decide to accept an invitation to the Saines family home, Saines being the ruling vampire clan of Turen and one of the many mafia like families that “run” the upper levels.
The visit goes as well as expected. No weapons can be brought or used due to the muting spells of the Saines family necromancer. On arriving it becomes obvious that they already want you dead and have little interest in your diplomacy – then they bring out a surprise dinner guest, Aston Deagh, chained to a chair. He channels Hayden for a while but once the family resemblance between him and Caedes Saines is apparent the party suddenly seems a bit shit so you decide to leave, it all kicks off.
Clay vase is broken, mystic knuckle dusters revealed and in use and suddenly it’s a pointy teeth bloodbath. Once the necromancer is killed your weapons are available and the team cut a mighty swathe through them: only pretty Cruor survives, spared by Scrylash as he has a bit of a thing for her and now fancies his chances as he assumes, since she’s a vamp, killing both her brother and husband will act as an aphrodisiac.
Fleeing the dark house on one of the very highest levels of the city you leap into a carriage with the now freed and only slightly insane Aston Deagh and make a break for the lower levels.
It’s a long way down through the city, long streets of opulent finery and danger, ducking and weaving the guards and using all the wiles and magics at your disposal. Utilising the help of horse-healing Aston “cut him some slack and regret it later” Deagh where you need them you manage for once to not leave a trail of blood and make it down to the 6th level park. Here you avoid all but one of the men in grey (them again!) and learn that Hayden Deagh has a home here in Turen (an observatory no less) overlooking the park - you enter the pipe-room (NOTE! Scry using Sanguines hands to pick the lock! EUREKA!) and finally make it down to the safety of Avrams on L4.
Inconceivable that this last tiny paragraph could take 8+ hours of game play, and yet somehow it did.
This round will start with breakfast at Avrams after a long much needed sleep. You were all a little vampire-bit but nothing that Astons healing hadn’t taken care of: Avram being lycanthropic is sensitive to vampire infection – he detects none, except in Sanguine who he declares “rotten to the core with stinking undead poison – nothing personal!”
Aston is determined to hand himself over to the judgement / protection of the Caldbeck Rise, but has agreed to some questioning from Avram first.