The tower begins to shake and down on the lake side Kasper sees the water starting to recede. Little Alexander immediately looks around for Anatoli but Big Alexander confronts Asig, asking him why he looks so pleased at this turn of events. Asig snarls and opens a secret compartment in the desk revealing a black steel staff holding two bright green crystals. He gestures towards Big Alexander and the floor below the priest's feet gives way dropping him to the floor below surprising Anatoli who jumps into the window space. All around them the building is shaking, stone is falling and the temporary wooden scaffolding has collapsed.
Wielding his staff Asig turns to confront Little Alexander and they fight. The falling stones seem to fall around Asig without hitting him but even with this advantage he quickly finds himself at the mercy of Little Alexander's imposing strength and size. As the tower begins to fall apart he chooses to leap from the crumbling masonry into the lake below. With few other choices Little and Big Alexander do the same. Looking down Anatoli sees that the lake is actually shimmering and occasionally blasts of gas rise from the bottom. He decides instead to transform into a bird and fly away from the tower. Little does he realise that Kasper (who had been running up from the lake to the tower) can see him and is horrified to witness this unnatural transformation.
Little Alexander looks around for Asig in the water but he has disappeared and instead he settles for rescuing the floundering Big Alexander. Behind them the tower gives one final shudder and then collapses into a pile of rubble. Kasper, who is closed also sees that the shepherd's huts have collapsed, trapping or killing those inside.
The three (and Anatoli returned to human form and protected from harm by Ravanna) reconvene at the destroyed tower and are determined to enter the ruined structure and descend to the cellars that were previously inaccessible. With Little Alexander to clear the way they soon find a passage in the old cellars that leads via a winding tunnel into a natural chamber within the rock below.
The chamber is illuminated by a steady green glow emanating from veins of green crystal that run through the chamber and in their light the group can see row upon row of witch marks. There is a brief conference and Big Alexander makes the decision that the witch marks must be destroyed. The group set to removing the marks through simply scratching them out with stones taken from the chamber floor. As the first mark is obliterated there is a cry of anger and despair and Asig once again appears charging towards the group. Little Alexander turns to face him and two once again square off. This time however Little Alexander notices that his blows seem to glance off Asig as if he was wearing armour under his robes.
As the fighting continues Kasper and Big Alexander continue to try and destroy the witchmarks while Anatoli considers once again cutting himself and letting blood flow onto the marks to see what might happen. Big Alexander notices Anatoli cutting himself and shouts at Kasper to kill Anatoli before he can do any more harm.
Kasper quickly notches an arrow and shoots, missing in his haste. He aims another which nicks Anatoli, he aims another at Anatoli's heart and fires. The arrow strikes Ravanna instead, as she leaps in front of Anatoli. The arrow pierces her slight frame completely and she falls against the wall of the chamber. As she does so a trickle of blood flows along the arrow protruding from her back and meets the marks on the wall. As it does so the marks flare with a brilliant green light and each one in turn illuminates (including the few that had already been erased or damaged). Ravanna begins to twist and scream as the light surrounds her and she starts to burn with green fire.
Asig, shouts again and pushes Little Alexander aside, ignoring any blows he suffers. He runs to Ravanna and pulls her away from the wall. The heatless fire surrounds them both and as Asig starts to burn there is a terrible screeching sound and the chamber begins to shake and split.
Everyone leaves the chamber in a panic, Anatoli is the last and as he turns to look back he sees the floor of the chamber open up and the burning Asig and Ravanna fall into the cleft, disappearing from view. Green fire burns up from the floor of the chamber in their wake and everyone has to run for the surface as quickly as they can.
At the top the ground is once more shaking and swaying, Big Alexander and Kasper run for safety but Little Alexander turns and faces up to Anatoli as he scrambles for the ground. Anatoli sees that Little Alexander is determined to have a final reckoning but aware of the rushing green fire behind him he decides to run at the priest and transforms himself into a bird at this last minute, nimbly dodging the vengeful priest's stave.
Little Alexander turns to watch the disappearing witch, snarling as he does so. Behind him tendrils of green fire erupt from the ground and there is a moment of silence before the rubble of the tower is blown into the air and the priest is knocked into the air by the blast and covered with rubble.
1 comment:
Little Alexander spent a Doom Point to survive the explosion at the end of the session. Anatoli spent one to survive Kasper's attack and then another to survive the tower explosion and Little Alexander's attack. This pretty much Doomed the character, since the player was leaving London for South Korea this pretty much the last we'll see of Anatoli for a while.
Anatoli paid six Destiny for the ability to transform into a bird as a Witchblood power but this was the first time his use of the power was noticed by any of the other players.
Little Alexander spent a Destiny Point to make Asig an evil cultist. This is in the nature of the game but resulted in the final scene being somewhat confusing. As a GM I found it hard to keep in mind what Asig would want to achieve here. I figured that stopping the group from destroying the witch marks was a safe bet.
Originally Asig was meant to be a relatively sympathetic character who, while being an occult practitioner was not a raving loony and who might be able to offer help and advice about the witch chambers.
It was not too hard to switch the character around but it means I need to consider whether there needs to be a replacement ally character and whether some of the characters the PCs might meet later are in fact a bit too similar to Asig as his now portrayed. Since Conspiracy of Shadows is meant to be a conspiracy there may be no harm in the various occupiers of the castles being relatively similar.
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