Hey there, [insert-clever-nickname-for-my-blog-followers]! I hope everyone had a pleasant holiday weekend, whichever holiday(s) you celebrate! We're back with another adventure with the crew of the Moonlight Maiden!
Sorry this is going up so late in the week. As much as I'd love to have some holiday-related excuse, quite frankly I just haven't used my time as efficiently as I could/should have. I'm not proud of that, but I'll own it.
But now, on with the show!
The next morning, the rain has stopped over the town of Dutan on the island of Dutan. (Look, there's just one settlement on the island, neither they nor I are gonna get cute with it.) It's overcast, everything's damp, but at least it's not storming. The Lunars wake up and look around, not seeing any sign of the manor house about which there've been conflicting reports.
Shango takes on bird form and does an aerial overview of the town. It's definitely abandoned. He can also see the remains of a foundation on a hill where the manor house used to be. Past it, on the far side of the island, is all overgrown farmland with a handful of structures.
He meets back up with the others and they get into a little bit of a debate about how careful they have to be around the smugglers, whose boat is still tied up at the dock. The general agreement is that the smugglers, not concerned about the law, are also not likely to go running to the authorities yelling about 'Anathema' if they realize they're briefly sharing the island with Lunars. Hǎifēng, however, is concerned that the smugglers (or at least the one they met, Hanga) seem decent enough and they're worried about freaking them out. Xương is considerably less-concerned, and there's some frustrated back-and-forth on the issue until they let it drop.[0]
So they head up to where Dutan Manor is supposed to be up on the hill, but all they can find is foundation and a basement half-filled in with crud and what might be some old tools that have been wrecked by the environment. From the hill they can see the overgrown fields, and in the distance there are some barns and a couple of other structures at the far end, one of which has a huge chimney. Given the condition of the rest of the town (even before getting into the possibility that the island is supernaturally protected from the worst storms), it's weird that the manor house has been wiped off the map. Sure, there are things in Creation that could do that, but this feels far more surgical than makes sense. Especially since Shango's pretty sure he saw it through the window at one point during the night.
Shango takes bird form again to do another sweep over the field area. He gets a much better look at what appear to be barns and livestock pens. He also gets a good look at what appears to be a mausoleum and a crematory. He flies back to the others and leads them past the overgrown fields and shrubbery, which seem to be a selection of fruits and vegetables but the vast majority is different varieties of peppers. The trio remarks that if this place winds up not being haunted after all, it might be a good spot to rebuild into a little base.
They investigate the mausoleum, which seems to consist of smaller containers about the size of a modern shoebox, each one with a name and the month and year of death. The assumption, partially due to the crematory next door, is that they contain the ashes of the Dutan family. They don't disturb them, though it does seem odd that someone would have left without taking them. Xương notices that there's a big clump of deaths towards the 'end' of the chambers. In particular, from right at the end of 518 through the middle of 520 -- 22 deaths in all.[1] The last one, with the name 'Parin' on it, is missing the month and only lists the year. They go over to the crematory and it all seems pretty standard, even if it hasn't been used in about two and a half centuries and has been ruined by salty air.
They come out of the crematory to find a new shape in the distance -- on the top of the hill in the middle of the island is a manor house, about three stories tall. Right where it's supposed to be. It looks like it's been abandoned for a few decades, so it's in better shape than the town further down the hill, but it still looks like it's ready to collapse. There's what appears to be an overgrown hedge maze around back, and an attached carriage house where the horses were prepared for the masters of the house. Xương wonders about the odds that if they go inside and it vanishes again, if they're going to be taken with it -- which isn't impossible, but none of the group knows enough about this particular situation to make a guess.
They go around front and without further spectacle Xương just goes inside into some sort of main hall with doors and hallways and a set of stairs leading up branching off of it. The house is dusty and dim but lit by enough sunlight coming in through windows and holes in the walls and celing. It also has a slightly spicy scent in the air, like someone's been cooking hot peppers wrong and aerosolized the oils. Xương suggests that the first course of action is to immediately split up. He volunteers to go look for a spooky attic, suggests someone else seek out the kitchen where all of the sharp knives are, and then the third should look for a ballroom full of creepy paintings.
Shango goes looking for the kitchen, and after a few trips through a looping hallway he doubles back and finds himself in the kitchen. The kitchen appears to be peacefully abandoned -- nobody vanished in the middle of preparing or eating food or anything like that. It's like someone just left and never came back. He checks other doors out of the room and discovers the carriage house, and stairs leading down to what's likely a wine cellar. He decides to venture into the darkness... and finds himself coming down the stairs in the main hall, the same stairs that Xương just went up a little while ago.
We then cut to Hǎifēng, who upon leaving the main hall winds up in some sort of drawing room. Not quite a ballroom but close enough, though there aren't any paintings on the walls. The room also has that 'people left and just didn't come back' vibe to it. They hear footsteps coming, two sets that aren't quite in sync -- two people running. Specifically, two people running into the room. They're surrounded by the sounds of gasps alongside a series of loud thuds followed by heavy breathing.
"No, no, you don't know what I found! No!" calls out an unseen voice moments before screaming over the sound of flesh meeting steel.
Hǎifēng takes a couple of steps back and processes what they just heard -- two people running into the room where there were other people. The pursuer bludgeoned their quarry with a blunt instrument, presumably killing them. And then someone, likely one or more guards, immediately cut the pursuer down without waiting for an explanation. They take a look around the room, figuring out the spot where the quarry fell and was killed, and... right there. Underneath a chair is a mask, as if momentum sent it skipping along the floor as its wearer fell. Never mind that the space under that chair was clearly empty a moment ago, or that there's no other actual debris in this room aside from bits of wood and dust from the degraded condition of the house.
They pick up the mask, which is a half-mask covering the top of the face, and only the right side has an eye hole. It's some sort of exotic black wood that they can't quite recognize. Hǎifēng puts on the mask and for a moment they find themselves in a dark, dusty room. A single shaft of sunlight coming from somewhere behind them illuminates a wall. They don't recognize the wall, but there's a pattern to the boards and how they're built that does seem distinctive and they're pretty sure they'd know if it they saw it again. They also pick up the faded scent of animals -- possibly a barn, or a stable?
Hǎifēng pulls the mask off, gasping for breath, and tucks the mask into a satchel.
At some point during all this[2], Xương wanders around on the second floor, looking for stairs leading up to the third. He hears Shango and Hǎifēng talking downstairs about how they have the mask now and they can leave him, but something about it doesn't sound quite right and Xương suspects the interference of whatever presence is haunting the manor. He finds the stairs and emerges into a hallway seemingly the length of the house, lined with doors. The first door, however, stands open, inviting him in.
He accepts the invitation and finds a one-room apartment that appears to belong to a servant. On a desk is an ancient sheet of paper. On that paper, above a list of names and dates, the servant wrote "7 Resplendent Earth -- Shipwreck?" and, in the margin "What has he done?" Beneath that is the list itself, which Xương recognizes as being the 'clump' of names and dates from the mausoleum, with one exception: The last death, Parin, isn't on this list. Each name is also accompanied by a cause of death... collapsed crates, animal attack, thrown from horses, and so on... all of them freak accidents.
As Xương watches, though, some unseen force adds to the list. Next to each cause of death is written, in what looks like blood (and definitely a different handwriting than the servant), some variation of "Left eye lost," or "Left eye torn out," or some such. The implication is that each one of these people lost their left eye in some horrific way as part of what killed them.
Xương inspects the rest of the room, finding a wardrobe full of fancy -- but not too fancy -- clothing, befitting a man who was likely a majordomo for the household. He also finds a case of ritual implements, the same sort found in the crematory. The impression he gets is that the Dutan family had some elaborate death rituals and this guy was trained to perform them at a moment's notice if need be.
Xương, experimentally, pricks his finger and bleeds a drop of blood onto the paper to see if anything happens -- and it does! The blood sizzles, possibly the Essence in his blood reacting with something... and then more blood draws from the cut in his finger, coming down onto the paper and writing in that same spidery hand: "Captain of the Ashen Umbra." Which is not a thing Xương has ever heard of before. The phrase on the paper glows until it actually bursts into flame, burning off part of the paper. The flame vanishes, and the phrase "Captain of the Ashen Umbra" has burned into the desk itself.
Xương goes to leave, but the hallway is endless now, extending forever in either direction. And each door leads back into that same one-room apartment. He goes to the room's one window and sees the hedge maze out back, and goes to force the window open. He tells whatever's in the house "If you insist on standing in my way, I have very little incentive not to bring this whole house down," as he forces the window open and climbs out onto what is now the front of the house. He carefully climbs down the wall to a second-story window, gets it open (much easier getting back in, he notices), and climbs into what appears to be another set of servants' quarters, but this one with bunk beds for a group -- likely lesser servants, as opposed to the quarters he found upstairs.
We now cut back to Shango, back in the main hall, who decides to go looking for Hǎifēng and goes through the door they went to... and comes out on a second floor balcony over the hedge maze. He tries to open the door to go back inside and it won't budge. He hears Xương inside telling him to stay out there, and that he knows why. Sensing something's up and in a moment of frustration and rage he shifts to his hybrid form and kicks the door in, and goes in to find himself in some sort of game room, alone.
Meanwhile, Hǎifēng leaves the drawing room to find themselves in what appears to be a basement. The only light comes from a door up above, shining down a flight of stairs. A dead body lays at the bottom, head at an unnatural angle, and the body's left eye is missing -- looking like it was dislodged in the fall, perhaps. They check the body and find a signet ring that identifies the figure as a member of the family.
A shadow appears at the top of the stairs. Hǎifēng can't make out the silhouette's shape, but they hear Shango's voice say "He deserved it" just before the door slams shut. Resisting whatever compulsion tries to stoke the passions within the Lunar, they pocket the signet ring just in case and run up the stairs to open the door. The light cast through the open door reveals that the body is gone (though the ring is still in Hǎifēng's pocket). They come out into... the game room, where Shango is. We have a "You son of bitch!"/"What did I do?" exchange.
And we left it there.
[0]-- For what it's worth, I did reassure my players that the smugglers aren't meant to be an issue in this regard, in an attempt to manage the tone of the session via communication.
[1]-- On a related note, if I haven't mentioned it yet, Creation has longer years than our world does. Creation's years are 420 days (15 months of 28 days each), not counting Calibration. I'm not establishing exact dates to keep track of here, but rough ballpark this averages out to one a month, all from the same family.
[2]-- I'm deliberately keeping the timeline a little blurry on these events when possible, but for the most part you can assume roughly the same amount of time passes for everyone in the grand scheme of things.
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