Thirty-second Session (21 page pdf) – “Old Flames, False Promises” – The Teeth of Araska returns for a second raid on Staufendorf Island. But the locals there remember them… Perhaps over-fondly.
OK buckle in because this one’s a humdinger. You may remember the harrowing tale of Staufendorf Island and the Staufen family from way back – starting in our eleventh session summary of this campaign, from back in 2010! “Let’s go back there and hassle them,” thinks the pirate crew. Mmmmwah hah ha ha haaaaaaaaaaa!!!!!!!!!
Sorry. Anyway, the old Green Ronin module Mansion of Shadows was the original source for this. The Staufen family were all “sin-touched,” being unnaturally aligned with the seven deadly sins. The PCs killed everyone except for the anorexic and envy-aligned Amalinda Staufen, in at least some part because Sindawe had sex with her in the family tomb. They had sealed her and the father’s four aasimar sex-slaves in the tomb to protect them from the pirates’ depredations. Then they looted manor and town and left. A year later, they reckon they might be able to double dip, since they’re so familiar with the place.
They plan their assault. The first hint that there’s something wrong here is when Sindawe’s wendo goddess Mama Watanna visits him for sex and cryptic plot hints as she is prone to. But…
Watanna listens for a while then interrupts, “Never mind, boy. Give mama some sugar.”
Sindawe complies. Then it occurs to him, “The walls aren’t bleeding. What the hell?” The walls always bleed when he lies with Mama Watanna. The sex is that good. Sindawe throws himself clear of the woman, demanding, “Who the hell are you?”
Mama Watanna seems confused and hurt. Sindawe’s attitude doesn’t change. The woman’s attitude changes to scorn. She says, “Too bad.” A third eye of red opens on her forehead. Sindawe screams and screams.
But when people respond to his screams, he remembers nothing…
Cut to, the infiltration and assault. We had a… miscommunication… among the PCs that led to some humor but also some hurt feelings. Ed’s character Mitabu was supposed to do the scouting – his character is really not very good in combat, but a scout and trapsetter. But Paul (Serpent), who has a reasonably short attention span for listening to attack plans, heard that he was doing that so he swims ashore, kidnaps a halfling, and hoofs it all the way to Staufen Manor while his puzzled and consternated crewmates stand on the deck of their ship wondering WTF he’s doing. While he’s doing this,
Serpent hears a noise and glances up to see a woman stepping out of the darkness. It is Samaritha. She says, “Oh, what a tasty looking halfling.”
Serpent says, “What are you doing?”
Samaritha answers, “Sindawe sent me. To help.”
Serpent decides, “I don’t believe you. I was listening the whole time. He didn’t say anything about you flying ashore.”
Samaritha replies, “Oh, don’t worry. I’ll fly us back to the ship.” Serpent backs away and points his staff at her. She says, “Calm down…” A third eye of red opens in her forehead.
Serpent is dazed as the figure disappears, but retains some memory of this and animal-messages it back to the ship. Lil and Tommy decide to bring out their succubus mistress (lest we forget, they have accepted the profane gift of Seyanna the succubus and are Nocticula worshippers) to help. She identifies the witchy creature as an erodaemon, the tempters of Abbadon, who tempt you with the person you desire the most. They offer up crewman Pirro’s “services” in recompense for this info. Back to the invasion! They go ashore and approach the keep, Mitabu going ahead.
Of course the fun thing about this crew is that “knowing doesn’t help…” As Mitabu infiltrates the keep he sees his lost love Marissa being mauled by a guardsman! He kills the guard and sneaks off with her. We (I can’t remember if it was Mitabu or someone else) ad-libbed that she had been a singer in a Chelaxian tavern called the “Pit Friend” whose sign bears a pit fiend in a two-thumbs-up “Buddy Christ” kind of pose. This provided hours of entertainment for us and is now canon as far as we’re concerned.
Amalinda Staufen
The keep is unguarded and seemingly unoccupied which leads to a lot of tension as they wander through it… And this leads to coming upon a “Rocky Horror” style human-meat formal dinner with Amalinda Staufen, four aasimars with iron masks welded to their faces, Mitabu, Serpent’s long lost mother, and other craziness! Here’s my visual aids for Amalinda and the aasimar women.
Amalinda is still all anorexic but now more strangely attractive. The aasimars are still hot but with the masks now. It’s all extra extra disturbing. What happens at dinner? You’ll just have to read the summary…
Iron-Masked Aasimar
To be able to run the erodaemon, when the session began I asked the PCs to write on a note card “who they desired most.” For Sindawe it was Mama Watanna, for Mitabu it was some waitress he’d known, and for Serpent it was a split between his wife and his unknown mom. They were pretty game about it, though Serpent did metagame hard when Samaritha showed up in the forest. He got into the spirit more when his “mom” showed up though.
Geek Related 