The Recruiters

Following the vampire thrall through the streets, the group found themselves moving deeper into Narthal's Downedge district, away from the bright lights and into the shadows. Downedge bordered on the merchant district on one side, and it was this section that their guide led them towards.

Warehouses and other commercial buildings, once occupied by the goods and offices of successful traders, now stood for the most part derelict and abandoned, home to rats and other, more sentient vermin.

A couple of streets into Edgetown, Sack halted, and by gestures indicated that having delivered Surya and Hildraft to the thrall, his job was done, and he'd like paying "as agreed". Surya picked up his intention immediately, and the pair made a very credible job of haggling over and then settling the payment, before Sack turned and walked back the way they'd come. As soon as he was around the corner, however, he sprang up the nearest wall to the rooftops and doubled back, picking up the trail of the others without difficulty.

The three-storey building the thrall finally stopped at was conspicuously surrounded by empty properties, and had its' windows very thoroughly boarded over. After checking carefully that they were not observed, he opened a small door and ushered them inside.

Above, Sack became aware that a small bat kept flitting around the chimneys near him. He glared at it, and realized that what he was looking at was not a real bat, but a vampire in bat form.

Keeping an eye on it, he made the leap from the building he was on to the one his friends had just entered, and dodged behind a chimney stack to hide. The bat whirled around, searching, and flittered off into the night. Sack started to peel up roof-tiles.

Inside the door, Surya and Hildraft found themselves in a small office, dusty and clearly abandoned, with a single door exiting at the far side. The vampire thrall carefully closed and latched the outer door, then crossed to the inner one. Once his back was turned, Surya surreptitiously flipped the outer latch open again, in case Sack should seek to follow them in at ground level. He also quietly touched his brooch and the ring he wore, invoking the magic of Cat's Grace and Bull's Strength.

Beyond the second door was the warehouse proper. Comprising a single open three-storey area, it was a vast space, ringed with a sagging catwalk a third of the way up, and dotted with stacks of dusty crates and boxes. Vast skeins of dirt-clogged cobweb dangled from the ceiling in many places, and the visitors had to thread their way through the obstacles as they crossed the floor.

At the far end, several crates the same size had been pushed together to form a stage, and standing on that was a single figure. Tall and threatening, encased and visored in black plate armour, and with a huge greatsword strapped across its' back, it bore the unmistakable taint of the vampire to the companions' attuned senses - though, again, the detection was diffuse, distant, as if somehow interfered with.

As they reached the area directly in front of it, it tipped its' head so that its' unseen eyes gazed down at Surya and Hildraft. "So." it intoned in a flat voice, "You have come to join my army. I am Tolkalloth."

Above, Sack had lowered himself carefully down into the roofspace, and looked around him. He could hear voices, and see a glimmer of dim light, from a trapdoor near the centre of the ceiling. Stealthily, he crept over to it and looked down, just in time to hear the armoured figure identify itself. He strung his bow, and chose out some of his notorious home-made bowel-raker arrows.

Below, Surya turned to the thrall who'd guided them here. "This doesn't feel right..." he started to say, and then trailed off, startled. As he swung around, his view of the dingy warehouse and cobwebby boxes was suddenly overlaid by another, completely different view. He saw far fewer boxes, and almost no skeins of cobweb; instead, a surreal panorama of sights chased themselves across his vision; slender, pale, evil humanoids slouched across what boxes remained, more normal-appearing humans sprawled in their laps with blood leaking from their throats; mockingly elegant vampiric dancers twirling in slow pirouettes across the floor; an eldritch "band" of dead bodies, magically animated, aping the playing of music on rotting instruments. Surya was bewildered; he couldn't tell which was reality and which was illusion. Fury built up within him; who cared which was real, with a foe to smite? He shook his head, and drew his sword. The ring of steel alerted Tolkalloth, and he began to reach over his shoulder for the mighty sword sheathed there.

With an epic bound, Surya made a standing leap from the warehouse floor to the top of the crates Tolkalloth was standing on, and struck hard and true with Tormentor, muttering as he did so. The damnéd blade smashed into the side of the anonymous helm, dealing an incredible amount of damage - far more than it should have - crushing it in, and the armoured shape of Tolkalloth dropped without a sound.

Instantly, the companions' vision cleared. The empty warehouse vanished, and they saw it as it truly was; alive with vampires and their thralls, feeding, dancing, talking, and watching the mortals who looked so alone in their midst. Surya was suddenly no longer alone on the stage; apart from the blasphemous band, three other vampires stood around him. One was garbed as a Red Dust nomad in the traditional robe and burnouse, and had drawn a scimitar prepratory to engaging the Tellaran. Another was a dwarf; armed in black glass armour and bearing twin black glass battleaxes, he bore many symbols of Kord - all inverted or otherwise defaced. Hildraft was horrified - this creature was a walking desecration of everything the Kordic faith stood for; every moment of his existence was a blasphemous prayer. The third vampire on the stage was a woman, and unlike the others she wore no armour, being rather dressed in tight-fitting leathers which empahsized her flowing curves. Her face, though, was twisted with malice, marring its' beauty, and trails of fresh blood ran down from her mouth. Her hands were already moving in the beginnings of a spell.

Hildraft lifted his axe in defiance and uttered a Word of Holy Power. The consecrated sound radiated out like a shockwave, shattering the lesser creatures around him and staggering the more powerful ones. The sacreligious band clattered and wheezed into silence.

With a snarl, the vampiric dwarf lunged towards the edge of the stage and hurled himself off, straight towards Hildraft. As he hurtled through the air, Sack sent shaft after barbed shaft singing down from his vantage point, tearing the monster's undead flesh. The dwarf landed heavily, but upright, and hefted his twin axes, but before he could reach Hildraft, Sack cut him down with a second volley.

On the stage, Surya was exchanging blows with the nomad vampire, blocking and dodging as the cirved blade whistled towards him. Despite his obvious skill, the nomad was no match for the Tellaran and was soon felled.

Hildraft whirled away from the stage and began to cut a swathe through the surviving lesser vampires and their thralls. Foe after foe fell to his relentless assault.

Sack turned his attention to the female vampire, attempting to deflect her spellcasting with arrow fire, to no avail. She aimed a finger at him and intoned "Stop!". Sack, however, shrugged the effects off and continued to fire at her, only to be greeted with the sight of her suddenly splitting into nine as she cast a Mirror Image.

As Surya and Hildraft continued to cut a swathe through the lesser creatures of the night, Sack rained arrows on the spellcaster, each one dissipating an illusiory inmage with a faint pop. Finally, there was only one left, and he and Surya struck simultaneously. With a scream she fell.

Below, the beleaugured Hildraft spoke again the Word of Power, and the last remaining spawn and thralls erupted into dust.

Sack lowered himself down as Surya vaulted from the stage to take prisoner the two surviving lesser vampires, still blinded and helpless from the Holy Word. They despoiled the corpses of what magical equipment they had (Hildraft appeared powerfully drawn to the black glass armour and axes). As Surya turned over the remains of Tolkalloth, he received a nasty shock - the face was familiar. Even through the terrible damage his attacks had wrought, he recognized the features of Caradoc, Grand Master of the Renders of the Dark! Paling, he called Sack to look.

The half-orc grunted. This explained a great deal; why an obvious inadequate such as Dagnar was in charge of the Renders, and why so many were scattered uselessly away from Stryre. With a single blow, he chopped off the incriminating head, and bagged it. Then they left, firing the building as they did so.

Immediately they made quick tracks over to the Renders, and made their way in. Of course, every alarm in the place went off when they tried to walk in with two live vampires, and the guards at the door were very quick to suggest that the creatures be ensconsed in the cells without delay.

Surya accompanied them down to the cells, leaving Sack and Hildraft to go and speak with Dagnar. Half-way there, Sack had a thought, and quickly Teleported into the Thieves' Guild. A little persuasion was required to get the Gamekeeper into the Bag of Holding, but that done, he was easily brought into the Renders' Motherhouse, and the three then walked into the Grand Master's office.

Dagnar was leaning his head on his hands, surrounded by seas of paper, utterly lost in trying to do Caradoc's job; so the appearance of his Order's traditional foe, the Gamekeeper in his office was something of a shock, but not as much as the one he receieved when Sack dumped the head of his Grand Master on the desk in front of him, fangs clearly visible and clearly reeking of vampirism.