Session — Beneath the Church of the Beauty
Slaves, sludge, and the thing that answered the fire.
They went down anyway.
Behind the billowing curtain in the crypt of the Church of the Beauty (Temple), the The Blades of Strangeways slipped into a passage that shouldn’t exist—stone older than the church above, damp air thick with rot, and walls softly lit by bioluminescent moss and fungus. Corwin Thorne moved first, silent and watchful. Zel Cunningham crept ahead to scout. Leda Gebhart’s senses combed the dark for magic. Mol Potts searched for anything the others missed.
The tunnel opened into a cavernous undercity: puddles pooled in the broken stone, the architecture shifting from familiar church masonry to darker, older blocks—ancient, oppressive, and undeniably Elvish. Far off, massive iron doors loomed like a promise.
Tracks crossed the floor—fresh. Corwin called the change: he’d follow the trail while Zel shifted from scouting to investigating. Leda confirmed the glowing growths weren’t magical, just stubborn life clinging to the dead.
At the first door, old runes crawled across the frame. Corwin leaned close and deciphered the warning:
“DANGER, HOSTILE SLAVES AHEAD.”
Leda’s stomach turned. A prison, maybe. Mol quietly scraped up a sample of the luminous moss, because of course he did. Then Corwin eased the door open as “quietly” as Corwin ever does—by slamming it wide with all the grace of a falling bookshelf.
The Sludge Pool
The chamber beyond was sickly.
A pool of green radiance sat in the center like a wound. Above it, a grate leaked viscous sludge that dripped and gurgled into the water. Two archways flanked the pool, each carved with more Elvish script—warnings layered atop warnings. Mol studied the pool and concluded it had once been clean water, corrupted over time by whatever the grate fed into it.
Then the filth moved.
Ooze rose from the poisoned pool, swelling into shape as Mol approached. Zel struck first—frostbite—but the thing shrugged off the cold like it was nothing. Mol retreated and answered with fire. The ooze surged forward and exhaled a cloud of toxin and acid; Zel took the worst of it, gagging and splattered in foulness while the others fought through the burn.
And then the room got worse.
From the grate, a small undead hand scuttled out—fast as a spider, hungry as a rat. It lunged for Mol, missed once, then latched onto his throat with dead strength. A second hand burst free and seized Zel.
Panic hit hard and fast. Zel slashed and kicked her way out, tearing one hand away and helping finish the other. Mol’s bag—ever helpful, ever cursed—fed him flasks at the exact wrong moment. Acid splashed Corwin. Fire splashed Corwin again. Corwin didn’t say much about it, but his glare could’ve peeled paint.
Then Corwin did what Corwin does when he’s tired of nonsense: he struck true. The ooze went down under a brutal critical hit, and the remaining hand followed a heartbeat later.
They breathed. They cleaned acid off boots and dignity off the floor. Leda and Corwin patched the party up while Mol examined the pool again and discovered something unsettling: the sludge wasn’t just collecting—it was draining, down a deep funnel at the bottom, twenty feet into the dark.
Whatever this place was… it wasn’t finished with them.
The Prison Bones
They went left. Because they always go left.
The next door resisted them—stuck hard. Leda failed to force it open. Corwin tried and, stubbornly, succeeded. Beyond was a pillared room in decay: six crumbling columns, a pool of green water, rusted chains collapsed in the center, and—worst of all—a mound of bones piled against the far wall.
Leda moved first, defensive, then knelt and confirmed what everyone already knew in their gut.
Human bones. Ancient. Hundreds of years old.
Slaves.
No magic lingered here—only the quiet evidence of a long-dead cruelty.
Another iron door waited. This one punished curiosity: Corwin inspected it and nearly ate a discharge of lightning for the effort, only barely dodging the blast. Past it, the moss glowed yellow instead of green—as if the dungeon itself changed moods.
Mol found a secret door. Corwin declared it “safe,” which is not a guarantee anyone should trust, and opened it before Leda could finish warning him about the magic she’d detected beyond.
Defiled Beauty
The new chamber felt like a chapel that had been strangled.
Tattered banners hung in tatters. A crumbled altar sat to the west. Broken ceiling stones littered the floor. Stairs led deeper along the southern wall—down toward purple-lit darkness.
Leda stepped forward—
—and two undead rose from behind the altar.
They weren’t mindless zombies. They were Herexen: elven dead wearing defiled symbols of the The Beauty like trophies. One spoke with magic, and the first spell dropped Zel into unnatural sleep—unconscious, helpless—before the second Herexen closed on Leda with a knife.
The fight was brutal and messy. The Herexen healed each other, ducked behind the altar, and pulsed waves of foul energy that hurt the living and sustained the dead. Corwin identified the real danger: when these things died, they would burst with one last hateful surge.
Mol hauled Zel back to wakefulness. Zel answered with crackling arcs of lightning. Leda fought like a wall—shield up, gouging claw tearing into dead flesh, then a healing pulse that mended her friends while scorching the undead at the same time.
One Herexen fell—its death burst ripping through the room. They survived. Barely.
The second kept coming. It charged Leda, drove her down, and for a moment it looked like the altar would claim another body. Mol slapped life back into her with hurried alchemy. Corwin lunged in and finished it—
—and the death burst hit anyway.
They lived through it, coughing and shaking, and then spent a long, quiet hour tending wounds like survivors after a storm.
When Zel examined the corpses, the truth turned the knife: these were elves, carrying corrupted Beauty symbols. Among their belongings, one vial proved to be a potion of mending, and other items remained unidentified. Mol confirmed the altar wasn’t merely ruined—it was profane, deliberately twisted.
Then they went down the stairs.
Purple Moss and a Familiar Face
Below, the air changed again. Chains. Piles of bones. Purple moss glowing along sandstone walls. The place felt older than hatred—like it had been built for it.
They found a locked side door and failed to crack it—Corwin couldn’t pick it, even with help. Zel tried brute magic. Leda marked Corwin with a sigil. Zel “anointed” him like this was suddenly a holy mission. The lock still refused.
So they pushed deeper.
A grand chamber opened ahead: eight square pillars, intricate tiles forming a sigil in the center, three cracked statues watching from the walls, and two short staircases rising to sealed doors.
And then the temperature dropped.
A ghost appeared.
A woman’s shape—burned, wrong, familiar. The executed witch from the square above. The one they’d watched die in fire and screaming.
Behind her, looming in the dim like a shadow that had learned to breathe, stood the outline of something bull-headed.
Gan smiled like a bargain.
She invited them in.
They entered.
Gan offered a deal: retrieve an item held by the followers of the Beauty—something “here”—and she would give them something in return. She wouldn’t name the item. She couldn’t… or wouldn’t. Corwin measured her with a careful, unreadable stare. Leda tried to recall anything useful and failed. Zel studied the magic that bound Gan to the room. Mol pressed for the limits and loopholes of the bargain.
Zel asked what Gan remembered after the execution.
Gan’s answer landed like ice:
She remembered being teleported down below.
When they refused her offer, her voice sharpened. The room felt smaller. The bull-headed presence behind her felt closer.
Gan turned aggressive.
The Ghost Hunt Begins
The fight wasn’t like the others.
Leda shoved holy water to Mol as the ghost struck—an ethereal hit that shattered her shield and then vanished into the walls like smoke through cracks. Corwin melted into a corner. Zel slid aside and hid. The party realized quickly: this wasn’t a creature you boxed in. This was a thing you survived while you figured out how to kill it.
Gan emerged again—out of stone, out of nowhere—hit Leda, and slipped back into the wall before anyone could pin her down. Mol retreated out of the room to avoid being caught alone. Zel cast Detect Magic and finally found something to grab onto:
Magic was here. Something in this chamber mattered.
Something anchored Gan.
And whatever that anchor was… was still hidden.
Next Session Reminders
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What is anchoring Gan Porter’s spirit in this chamber?
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What “item” is she demanding, and why is it tied to the Beauty?
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The locked side door and what lies beyond it
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The deep iron doors seen earlier—and what the sludge drain feeds