LogTorments of the Righteous-Jason-20

Game log for the 2019/07/21 session of AW: Torments of the Righteous, as taken by Jason

The Reverend gives Tendahl his condolences. Tendahl says, "I appreciate that, but FUCK YOU." Then he activates his holdout flamethrower. It works great until the nozzle melts, backpressure builds, and then it explodes and lights Tendahl on fire. He stops, drops, and rolls.

From outside, Archimandrix Hike sees the smoke and the light, and hears screaming from in the chapel. People are running everywhere. Nobody is in control.

Tendahl stops, drops, and rolls. Carl runs over to help him, trying to beat the flames out. Tendahl's trying to yank off the reservoir for the flamethrower as Carl tries to help him, but the reservoir bursts at the wrong time, and Carl ends up on fire. More yelling!

Hike looks at Archbishop Kreuzmann to see what he's thinking. The Archbishop is still calculating as cries of "demon" begin to come from the chapel.

Barbarossa hears the screams, gathers his weapons, and walks toward the chapel.

Outside the chapel, weapons are drawn. Hike tells her troops to stand down and avoid killing anyone, then orders a protective deployment around the Archbishop. She orders the Torchbearers to start helping people away from the church, but Jens starts yelling, "He's back! He's back! He's risen from the dead!" They have seen Barbarossa approaching the chapel. And then when Barbarossa gets within hearing distance, Jens asks what his orders are. Barbaorssa tells him that he's headed for the well, because this has to end, but that they should care for the people.

Kreuzmann asks, "Archimandrix, what is happening here?"

"I don't know."

Tendahl jumps out a window. Carl puts himself out, at the small expense of setting the church on fire. Carl starts trying to help people out.

The first flaming member of the Kingsguard staggers out of the building. Gerhardt administers the coup.

Hike asks Barbarossa why he isn't dead. He says it wasn't his time.

Tendahl runs for the well.

The doorway of the church is on fire, so everyone's headed for the windows. Carl's attempts to help result in him getting trampled. Ow. He steps out into the bright place and reappears at Tendahl's shack.

Kreuzmann asks Hike what Barbarossa means to do. She doesn't know, but he answers that he's going to kill something. Kreuzmann orders his troops to help but decides that he and the Archimandrix will go. She reads the Archbishop and calculates that he wants her as insurance against Barbarossa. The only way Kreuzmann will feel like he owes her, though, would be to demonstrate some willingness to sacrifice herself. She orders the half of her troop that still obeys to fall in.

Tendahl opens himself to the bright place and follows the safest path he can see to the well.

Barbarossa starts talking about his experience in the well, but Hike interrupts to scold him over all the dead Dammerung in his wake. Archbishop Kreuzmann interupts to ask if anyone can explain how a fire got set in the church. The Archbishop's scribe takes it all down for posterity.

Tendahl arrives before anyone else and takes a moment to do a little realignment. He hears the approaching guard before their torches become visible, and scrambles to the top of the hill, standing next to the well.

The Archbishop asks Barbarossa how he came to survive at the bottom of the well. He professes not to know, and says that Hike doesn't know either. He claims to have learned many things, including some things about himself that aren't pretty. Kreuzmann then drifts back to the Archimandrix and orders her not to let Barbarossa escape down the well this time.

Tendahl, from atop the hill by the well, cries out that the church needs to stop killing people and start working to re-align the standing stones and removing the curse upon this place. He seems so heartfelt that the Archbishop decides to wait and see if Tendahl's claim about this well being the source of demons might not be true. He declares that their party is going to wait and see what happens.

Tendahl explains his process and plans to Barbarossa, who's hoping that the Archbishop's scribe will write it all down. Kreuzmann asks Barbarossa about the form the demons take as they come through the well.

All the way back in Schwartzhoele, Inga sees that her place got drunk pretty well dry while under Torchbearer occupation. Danzinger and other staff return to work, along with Otto, whose use in the bar is less clear. She tries to look in the bright place to see what Otto's deal is, and in particular, why he spends all that place in a corner behind one of the tuns. She figures it's because he was locked up for so long that he's afraid of open spaces.

Next time he comes up, he tells Inga that there's a man in her cellar, a dangerous-looking man, possibly even crazy. She grabs her blade and goes down to look, Otto cowering behind her. She doesn't see anything, but eventually, she hears someone say, "Are you alone?"

"Are you alone? Who's speaking?"

"Pretty much," Jung answers, sword in hand. Seems he's decided to hide out there, because nobody would expect him to be there. He needs the key to her secret way out of the city. Sadly she doesn't have that key. She offers him temporary shelter in the basement while she finds someone to break the lock.

Carl, back in Tendahl's shack, hears a noise, and then sees people coming with torches and pitchforks. Then someone steps into a bear trap. Carl steps out and tells everyone that he already came to check and Tendahl's not there. They'll assume Carl's on their side if he helps them spot the traps. He identifies some, but not all. On the plus side, he's the one who finds the trap he didn't spot. It's a duplex trap, where avoiding the bear trap trips a swinging pick trap that goes right through his foot.

After about twenty minutes have passed, Hike shoulders her axe and tells Barbarossa that they can't just wait here to die. Barbarossa doesn't care if she leaves. She's pissed enough to start shoving Barbarossa, but he doesn't react. Tendahl reminds her that they're testing to see if demons will come - so does her fear mean she's vouching for their side? Barbarossa gets sick of being shoved and tries to kiss her right on the lips. She scans his brain and senses that he craves forgiveness for the healing he got from Sonja. Then she shoves him back, white as a sheet, calls him a fucking monster, and falls on her ass. Barbarossa walks up the hill.

Tendahl, concerned that the situation is unstable, looks in the bright place to see what might hurry a demon up the well. He realizes that there's something that happens on the other side of the well that triggers things here, and he doesn't know what that is. He has seen that sometimes, something goes wrong and short-circuits the process, and when that happens, a coin falls into the void of the well. Tendahl calls down that their time seems limited lest they fall to murder amongst themselves, and jumps down the well. It doesn't go well. He drags himself into the cave with his hip broken. He is severely mangled at this point. He tosses a coin into the well.

Hike looks at Kreuzmann and Barbarossa and says, "This is insane, we need to leave." Barbaross says, "And now they will come."

Tendahl sees the coin spin through the water, shimmer, shine, go dark, and move toward the surface.

Hike says, "All that's happened is that someone got sacrificed anyay." Barbarossa assures Kreuzmann that Tendahl is alive. They hear the sound of a demon. Hike wants to run. Kreuzmann begins stepping away. They hear a squelching noise from down the well, laboring its way up.

Hike has her gang grab their lamp fuel and make a fireline between them and the well. Barbarossa begins shooting down the well, but it doesn't seem to do anything.

Barbarossa sees the walls of the well begin to pulsate, until he realizes it's the demon. It reaches a series of tiny hands over the edge to pull itself up, and eventually reveals itself to be a swawm of infants. Barbarossa opens fire. A few infants explode but the demon does not seem scathed. When he runs out of ammo, he switches to his broadsword, and then he begins retreating down the hill.

Hike sees the demon following Barbarossa down the hill and orders the flames lit. She and the rest of the people at the base of the hill can't really make it out, just a sort of mess of marbled grey and white goo. Hike and her Torchbearers run away. Barbarossa gets overrun before he gets to the base of the hill. He decides to fight back up the hill, and takes the fight to the demon. One of the "babies" gets onto his wrist and chews until he drops the sword. He shouts, "I told you so!," makes a backward swan dive down the well and dies.

Tendahl isn't able to grab Barbarossa's body as it sinks past.

The villagers help Carl out. When he has a chance, he tries to see where Tendahl might be, and figures that he's down the well and badly injured. He'll need to get the rope back to go down there, but he knows right where it is, over in the stone barn. He bandages his foot and goes over to the stone barn.

He sees that the church is still on fire as he goes. He gets the rope and realizes it's going to be hard for a kid to move two hundred feet of serious rope all the way out to the tor, so he tries to find Sonja.

Hike, Kreuzmann, and their party continue running back to town.

Carl tracks Sonja down, and she's open to helping. They both sneack back into the stone barn and steal the rope. Carl pops over there, through his special shortcut, bringing Sonja with him. He asks her if she's been to the well before, and she admits that she's been before, but this is different. She wonders what would happen if she let go of his hand while they travelled through the bright place, and he says that he doesn't know, but she'd probably be trapped there forever.

They arrive and find the place free of demons, for the moment, though Sonja shushes him and tries to listen for one, then admonishes him to be quick and quiet. He tells her to stay and keep an eye on the rope long enough for him to get down, but then she can leave, because he's not coming up the rope.

Going down with a rope to help you isn't too hard, so Carl gets to the bottom and starts calling for Tendahl. Tendahl calls out for help. Carl holds to the rope and continues under the water. He immediately discovers that this is not like normal water; he has no bouyancy, and has to cling to the rope to avoid sinking. As he descends, he can see the shimmer of the pocket/cave down and off to one side, but the rope won't go that far. Carl pisses in the well and swims for it. He gets close and Tendahl reaches out and drags him in. They talk briefly, and then Carl tries to take him out through the bright place. It doesn't work- Tendahl slips out of Carl's hand, and is left alone.

Hours later, the Archbishop, Hike, and their party return to town, panting and terrified. Once Hike has her breath, she takes stock of her gang, and realizes that a bunch of them still idolize Barbarossa. She screams wordlessly and punches Jens in the face, screaming, "He's dead, you idiots! He threw himself down the well" Jens yells that he has risen before, and how dare she abandon him? Now it's a fight between the Archimandrix and several members of her gang. The gang knocks her down, and since she's using her bare hands, she's not really able to hurt them through their armor, but she forces them to acknowledge her authority.

When it's all over, Kreuzmann says, "Masterfully done." When she asks him what to do, he says he has to pray.

Carl reappears with a sense that maybe he can't come and go from here. They try to swim out, Carl in the lead. They make it to the surface but Carl can't quite get his bearings in this new reality. The mother's heart seems closed to him. Tendahl climbs as best he can but he's lost too much blood to pull himself all the way, so he ties himself off and lets Carl and Sonja pull him up. It's not easy for them to lift him, but they do. Sonja says there's something she can do to help him, and sends Carl back to the village.

Tendahl asks what she's going to do. She says, "Wait," and whispers to Carl that Tendahl is very important, and may carry on Barbarossa's legacy, so she yanks out a couple of Carl's hairs, claiming that they will be useful. Then she whispers "sssshhhh" to him, and they have sex. He can read her using Things Speak at that point, and senses that she was made by her mother and her father, combined with a visitation her mother had from a dark shape. The most recent thing done with or to this was Barbarossa's healing. He tries to figure out what's wrong with her and how it might be fixed, and senses that she has a connection to something otherworldly, though maybe not demonic. He also senses the cost of his healing, though not who will pay the price.