You must find out what it was doing there.
Not now.
Recall that I did not propose a demon of temptation to you as familiar, you went out into the abyss and found him on your own.
I said "not now."
"What was that?" The healer asked.
"Nothing. Barbara is... important, to the goblins. I need you to fix this."
The adventurer shook his head, "you were right to go beyond hobgoblins, but this is something that would require a sage. I'd try to get a hold on an elixir but... the curse will have reached her heart by sundown. There's nothing we can do other than ease her pain."
The baronet sunk back and covered his eyes with his hands. "I see... leave us."
"Will I still get paid? I-"
"Leave."
He shuffled out.
-
Having sat there for a few heartbeats, staring at the dying Barbara, Scratch cleared his throat. "Just come out."
A monstrous bat unhooked from the ceiling and landed on the dungeon floor a boy. "I should have been zhere to prevent zhis, I vere to occupied vith my research I..."
"I wasn't your responsibility. Tell me, can you turn her? Would that save her?"
"... Embrace zhe goblin broodmother vith vampirism? Zhat vould prevent her from dying, but..."
"So you can?"
"Zhe power of an undead is determined by zhe power of zheir body. A peasant taken by zhe blood is... just a mindless zhrall. I vouldn't really be her."
"Hmm." Scratch brought a finger to his lips and furrowed his brow.
"You are still considering it? Vhy?"
He got up and began to pace around in the sanctum. "Barbara is a nuisance. Proud, moody, requires constant placating. But I had to keep her around, she's the mother to half the dungeon... more than half. She's not insignificant in our relationship with the colonies either, and she IS the smuggling ring. Barbara is a key to power, I need her in place to keep people in my side."
"Is it true zhat you vere zhe hand zhat drove zhe knife?"
"Technically... yeah. And that makes it worse."
-
"Scratch!" As if out of thin air, Lydia was there. "Are you alright? It was Lacrima, wasn't it?"
"Of course it was Lacrima, what are people saying?"
She was inspecting his arms and all but stripping him of his clothing looking for injuries.
He pulled away.
"There's a lot of talk going on. Please do go speak to the crowd, before they get anything in their heads."
"They're outside?"
"At the mansion."
He sighed. "Okay. Keep these doors closed, we need a steady mana flow to keep her fighting death as long as possible. Noss, forget about what I just said, focus on Lacrima now, we need to stop her."
The two nodded.
If there's anything you can do, do it now.
I am.
----------------------------------------
"Scratch, tell me that it isn't true. If you say it isn't true I will believe you."
Scratch blinked twice. "Why are you up top?"
But Second didn't answer he just stared deeply imploringly into his eyes.
"...It's not true. I didn't kill Barbara, Lacrima did."
"Then come tell the others that. Tell them they have to hate Lacrima, not you."
Bashing on the doors and windows were tiny fists and child-like yelling. The goblins on the surface had already caught wind of her death and were desperate for something to lash out at.
"Where's my mike?"
Second handed him the voice amplifying spellrod.
"Ah, you had it."
----------------------------------------
"What's going on? A riot?" Aimone complained.
They were up to their waists in goblins, swarming the streets and ripping at the plaster on the walls. They were wailing all the time.
"The thief woman, Barbara. She is finito." His comrade said. "These are her brood."
"Managgia. This broodmother business has a downside after all, do we do something?"
"There's too many!"
The goblins were spurring each other on, and it increasingly seemed as if they were going to take out their anger on the mansion, when a voice echoed out over the town.
"I remember..." Scratch's raspy tone crackled through the dusty air. "I remember when my mother died."
He was sat on the windowsill of a second story window, looking out over the boys and they paused to listen to him.
"You know she had been a captive for a very long time at that point and she... she hadn't been much of a presence in my life for a long time. I'm sure many of you are now wishing you had visited your mother more often, thinking that now it's too late."
"It's your fault!" "You killed her!"
"Now, anybody that has lost a loved one will try to externalize the pain and grief they have. But I must ask you all not to look outside, but inside yourselves. See grief as a wind passing through you, a foreign thing that leaves the true self un- Ah HEY!"
He was rudely interrupted as the goblins began to throw nuts and small rocks at him. Some were old enough to had learned how to use slings and were able to legitimately threaten him. The shouting was now becoming so loud and uniform that he could barely talk over it.
"Lacrima! Calm down, it was the witch, Lacrima!"
The violence calmed down.
"Quit yer yapping! The witch has been visiting here since long before any of you were born. I got too used to her, yes, that is my fault. But not anymore, tonight we go after her. In the meantime,
Barbara is alive. And you will be given the opportunity to give your last goodbyes, in an orderly manner."
-
"Does this affect our machinations?" The succubus purred.
"Nay, not in the slightest." Youthere said.
They were standing at the back of the square, where the two-story buildings cast a concealing shadow on the early morning light.
In their sights was the baronet, making excuses to the populace.
"It will provide another welcome opportunity for the baronet to embrace cruelty," the incubus said, "I do so encourage him to practice his sadism, in that it may grow larger in his heart. But he is wary of me, and quick to buckle out of discomfort."
"A weakness of spirit is also an avenue for evil." She said.
"All the same, we must awaken his appetite for pain. Revenge is the most common path."
They stood there a few moments more.
"I had expected a better demagogue." She complained.
"So you say... it may have been actions rather than words that have earned him his following."
"Dearest little brother, we must be prudent yet expeditious. Bring me before his majesty so I may be the conduit to darker powers."
"Yes yes, but not as you are. The Promise is still in service to a jealous kishin, do remember. A sibling of ours keeps a flock at a hot spring out west. An unpossessed dungeon. Seek shelter with her, feed, and prepare a disguise."
"A mortal guise?"
"The baronet is amenable to the desperate and ambitious. Mortal, yes."
"Then... without delay!"
They disappeared in the shadows.
But they had not been unobserved.
----------------------------------------
"The demon is planning something." Lydia told Scratch as he was packing to leave.
"When isn't he?"
"It is more serious this time, he brought a someone with him."
"Listen, we'll talk later, okay?" He jumped up on the side of the sled and kissed her. "I've got to deal with the hocus pocus."
She nodded. "The wind wolves have made a breach into her territory already, but we cannot fight off the fairy beasts forever."
"Take us as far in as you can okay?" He said patting the metal contraption Noss Fleder had heaved onto the sled. "We just need one clear shot."
She transformed and spoke the next words in the language of the wolves. "You are not known for caution, so I cannot bid it, but remember that you have a family. That we would like to see you return."
He stroked her nose absent-mindedly.
-
The hunting party was light. No hobgoblins, no trolls. Only the small folk and their wolves racing across the muddy paths.
The air was violent. It cut into their faces as they raced through the night. Straight through the farmlands, between the stumps of the stripped forest and over the river, into the witchwood.
Into the witchwood.
Which was green and verdant and more saturated in color on any day, but which had lost all color during the night, save for the penetrating redness of the moon.
The scenery whizzing by was a blur, but what could be seen of it was not very fairy-like at all.
The gray leaves cast stark shadows, and in the shadows crawled bug-eyed things, made up out of nakedness. Silent uncomprehending stares like owls.
It wasn't the revealing nature of darkness showing an other side of nature.
"Zhe blood moon ritual is taking shape!" Noss yelled over the screaming winds. "Zhe forest is changing."
-
They knew where to go. Lacrima's ritual site in the center of the dark woods.
Closing in on their destination, the path became more densely populated with enemies.
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Pixies that had shed their human shape, with many limbs and feelers like insects swarmed at the riders.
Guardians wielding staffs with the heads of owls and capes like wings tried to block the path of the wolves.
These would have been formidable foes in any other context, but the party wasn't there to fight. A brief opening from a fire bolt or raised earth gave the surefooted sled dogs everything they needed to leave the creatures far behind.
Until we need to turn back. Scratch thought to himself. Until we need to stop at all.
----------------------------------------
Lacrima's crude pagan temple had been almost completely stripped of its ritual components, but she had made it work.
The clearing looked like the surface of the bloodmoon itself, all red. It would be mere moments before the celestial body would perfectly align with the sky-window of the temple and she stood waiting expectingly underneath.
The effects were already taking place. The grass swelling with water underneath her feet, absorbing the qualities of a bog from her goddess' celestial realm. It was becoming more... witch-y.
Lacrima had already released the form of the fairy queen and returned to her painfully mortal body.
It was now time for the fairies to adjust to her. And soon, permanently. That was the power of the red sun.
She could already hear the invaders cut through her swelling ground before she could see them.
Scratch, who she had used before to gain control over the witchwood, had now come to claim it for himself.
"Well, don't just stand there!" She said. "Defend me."
And the ent came to life.
-
A lumbering splinterous tree unfurled from the nearby architecture.
Its trunk split open to create a screaming maw and it planted a mighty wooden leg into the deforming bog land between them.
"Zhe monster stands in zhe way!" Noss exclaimed, "I do not have line of sight."
Scratch jumped off the sled. "Circle around, we'll draw away the big guy."
He had barely pronounced the plan as the ent bounded into their personal space and barreled through another sled of goblins, killing them instantly.
"Motherf-" Scratch patted himself in search of a spellrod but he had to dive into the mud to avoid a living tree trunk intimating him with it even more closely.
This wasn't a poison ent, it was a man-shaped thing of dry leaveless timber. Like the nightmare envisioned by a young child, whose lively imagination makes monsters out of dead trees in a dark forest.
It uprighted itself and moved its body to scan for the Baronet with a real and purposeful intelligence.
Before being detected Scratch took out the flame rod and aimed it at the ent's leg.
A powerful flame shot towards the wood and certainly charred something, but did not seem to bother it much.
Embers and all, the creature raised its arm to crush him.
Typical of goblin physiology, fear gripped him only now, when it was too late to make him reconsider.
He tried to jump away but slipped in the mud and got his leg trapped under the crushing timber.
"Nng-" He suppressed a pained yell and curled up small in the muck to avoid further attention.
-
Meanwhile, Noss' wolf had found him a position facing Lacrima.
He pulled off the tarp from his device and exposed the crudely welded brass to the humid air.
The giant spellrod from the wagon had received a number of rushed modifications. Newly inscribed crystal, a sturdier shell, and a whole lot more energy-ingesting-and-excreting magnosilican artificial manabladders.
When he activated it, it did not produce a spear of elemental metal but a beam of light, a tether of magic that flailed in the air and lurched for the witch.
Her eyes flared from the light just before it hit her and she turned to be blasted with the cruelest of magic.
Form changing magic overtook her, but without form to enforce. A transformation into the base materials of existence, not even matter but ideas. She could feel it trying to un-create her. The moment it would break through her defenses she would be disintegrated on a conceptual level.
"NNOOO!" In sheer panic she raked her magic across the ground, commanding the worms and insects in the grass to fly in the way of the weapon.
A grasshopper took the brunt of it and sputtered out like a candle light.
"Vile thing!" She cussed at the vampire and, with a more measured spell, turned him to stone. "Unholy pest!"
The wall of insects shrunk away as her control over them faded, wolves were circling around her now.
Lacrima raised her arms and pulled them towards herself. And as she did, the swarms and swarms of transformed monsters that had been guarding the outside of the clearing and been locked in combat with the wind wolves came rushing in.
Pixie creatures filled the air and owlmen encircled the shrine.
-
Other goblins had taken over from Scratch in distracting the ent. More tactically this time.
Long spears and rope helped them keep distance while it wildly flailed at all of them.
Until Lydia jumped from the treeline and took on human form mid-air.
She landed on top of the tree and held remarkable balance while unhooking a gauntlet from her belt and placing her hand inside.
An instant later elemental lighting shot from the head of the creature all throughout its body and to the ground, instantly setting it ablaze.
She jumped down to gain oversight, but her whole vision was filled with chaos. Corrupted pixies filling every inch of open space, pulling hair and gouging eyes. Crackling magic seeping into the earth and deforming the ground. Ents, deer, and gnomes creeping in from the dark forest beyond.
"Where's Scratch!?" She yelled out in panic.
In fact she was standing on him.
She removed her foot from his arm and crouched down next to him. "We must retreat, I have the hobgoblins following us. In a few hours..."
"We don't have a few hours. We barely have a few minutes." He groaned in pain.
The ent was back, being fully engulfed in flame did not slow it down one bit and it barreled down a home's worth of firewood on the both of them.
Lydia spun around to kick the side of it, so the scorching death buried into the mud beside them.
Scratch flinched.
"We can't fight all of this with only a mobile force, we need backup."
"We don't need to fight all of this. As soon as we get Noss' beam onto Lacrima back there it all goes away."
The ent had already lifted up the arm for another attack. There were no goblins roping it in now that it was made up out of burning death.
"The dungeon master may very well settle that himself then." She said.
"I can't walk I-"
The next moment he was flying through the air, having been thrown out of the range of the ent by Lydia and towards Noss' sled.
-
He was airborne long enough to notice, and consciously experience the great horizontal fall for a few seconds before knocking headfirst into the brass.
"Agh, lost some IQ points there. Hey, boy genius, wake up."
Noss had shed the petrification already, but with the stress he had died again.
Scratch hopped over on leg and slapped him in the face.
"Fa-! Is zhe battle over?"
"If it were we'd be dead," Scratch slapped at the pixies biting into his face, "your heart again?"
Noss looked up. "I did not zhink I vould regenerate so quickly, perhaps it is zhe bloodmoon?"
"Don't break your head over it, shoot her again."
"I've lost line of sight. It's over."
"It were over we'd be dead. Hand me that branch over there."
-
Using a crooked branch as a crutch, Scratch hopped over to the temple.
He was able to keep the corrupted animals at bay for the most part using the fire spellrod, but he was rapidly losing blood.
"Lacrima!" He yelled hoarsely over the sound of omnipresent violence. "Lacrimaaa!"
One of the owlmen raised a staff, and its end began to glow. A glowing barrier appeared between them.
"What's your plan Lacrima!? Even if you can claim the grove for yourself, or your goddess or whatever. You can't keep it."
He began to circle around the place, and each owlman threw up a magical defense, possibly overestimating his power due to his status.
But in-between the shoulders of the monsters he could get a brief glance of Lacrima, standing in the center of countless magical circles beaming down from the sky. From the moon.
"By the bloodmoon, the transformation is permanent. The witchwood will finally earn its moniker. And it will be forever." She said, her arms held up and soaking in the power.
"But magic can not defeat power," he rattled, "all the surrounding lands will belong to your enemy. Even when you kill my children, I will still control the Promise, and Eston, and all the indentured bandit cities in Reddington. I will come down on this backwater lady, with all the fire and fury of a modern industrial complex. I will-"
"Then you will die!" Drunk with power, she formed a curse spontaneously in her hands and lobbed it at him. A nasty living spell that loosened the earth below him and began to drag him in like quicksand.
He was quickly stuck up to his ankles and it was not slowing down.
"What do you know of power!?" She yelled out, readying another spell. "Magic is power!"
The circles around her were ready to evoke some elemental magic in the form of a targeted blast.
No time to read its exact details he stuck out the wand and redirected it.
-
Lacrima had anticipated her attack being returned and held up her hands to absorb the elemental poison for the next volley, but it did not arrive.
Instead, he attack smashed into half of the owlmen to her side.
As if forewarned, Noss' beam shot at that exact moment, through their crumbling ash and knocked her out from under the the temple's sky window.
Just then, the bloodmoon lined up perfectly.
A red flash rung through the temple and traveled outward through the entire forest.
But the witch wasn't there to use it.
The witch wasn't anywhere.
----------------------------------------
Pixies hung slightly dazed in the air. They had returned to the shape of a girl.
Fairy beasts had returned to normality and their magical glow, and wandered off to their bestial ignorance.
Moss was turning back into grass.
And in the grass, lay a fairy queen.
She startled awake and swung her arm to defend herself, but became stunned looking at her own hand. "I am..."
"Permanent transformation." Scratch said, "Noss can explain it better than I can. Basically, it's a compromise. You don't poison our ground, but you still get to add the forest to your moon cult.
Permanent control, as long as you stay within its borders."
His goblins had been digging his sunken lower body out of the dried up earth and had carried him towards her with his feet still encased.
"Zhe idea came to me from zhe synzhesis of vulcanized rubber," Noss said. "A transformed entity vill tend back to its natural form because its body remembers its shape, just as zhe tensiles of an elastic. My new spell melts zhe building blocks of existence completely, so zhat zhey are fluid and may settle into any new form ve assign."
The fairy woman's large green eyes took in his words, like new eyes, with a certain innocence. She didn't speak
Scratch cleared his throat. "Ahem...I understand that it would have been easier to kill you-"
"Oh much easier, zhis magic must overcome all defenses against magic. Blessing, inherent divinity, and so on, in order to fully unmake a person. Vith such a capture on zheir essence ve could simple neglect to assign a form and let zhem disappear into nozhing."
"Nevertheless. I have spoken to Guth, which you have neglected to do for weeks now, and we came to an understanding. I figure having one goddess as a mortal enemy at a time is enough."
"Lacrima." Noss closed in and took her hand to help her to her feet. "Your struggles are over. You have been rewarded. Could you have dreamed zhat you vould be allowed to live forever as fairy queen, and zhat zhe goddess of magic vould give her blessing?"
She rose to her full, fairy queen length, which was several times larger than a man. The form of a beautiful young woman, as she had taken on before with the use of minor dungeons. "And all I need to do in return is bend the knee to Scratch, king over this forest, is that it?"
Scratch frowned, "if it's not too much goddamn trouble."
She fought with her pride for a moment. "Know at least that I serve my goddess first."
"Yeah I... excuse me, can we get her some clothes?" Scratch yelled over his shoulder, as she stood naked like a newborn above them.
The goblins, wolves and Lydia were standing by in silence. Half in deference to the sensitivity of the exchange, the other half gaping at her body.
Of course, a giant dress wasn't immediately forthcoming.
Lacrima flipped her hair and gave a slight smirk. "Really though... thank you, Scratch." She bend down to touch the vampire's chin and nodded at the Baronet. Then she flew up, gathering pixies and owls in a cloud around herself. "Leave these woods before sunrise, lest I mistake you for an intruder."
-
It wasn't before the new fairy queen had disappeared from sight completely that Lydia dared raise her voice.
"That was... was that really the old hag?"
Scratch looked down at his cousins working away at the rest of the dirt. "Yeah, there's a whole history there. We didn't rush in here just because Barbara died, one of the other dungeon masters warned me about something nasty she was going to do with the red moon. But we cleared it up between us."
She put her hands through her hair and briefly exhaled in frustration, but he picked up on it.
"So? It worked out. Barely anyone died. Anyone of note I mean."
"Nobles exact justice Scratch. They don't reward criminals that kill their courtiers."
"You know I don't believe in justice."
"But your people do. Look at them."
The boys working on his legs averted their faces, not only to hide their tears, but also because they couldn't stand the sight of his face at the moment.
"It's not some great indoctrination that makes people seek retribution." Lydia said. "I know you believe that. But even the goblins you raised know intrinsically. That good must be rewarded and evil must be punished."
The vampire piped up. "Zhe woman is not some monster, under zhe circumstances, ve have been very civil."
"Shut up." She pushed him away. "What are you going to tell all the boys at the wake now, Scratch? About their mother's killer?"
"I tell them the threat is gone, Lacrima is no longer-"
"They weren't afraid! You know goblins are never afraid. They were angry. They were looking at you to sate their anger for them!"
He pursed his lips and looked away.
"Why is this such an issue for you?" She pleaded. "Why do you hate justice?"
----------------------------------------
The hot spring was a honeypot designed to keep in the adventurer Laurus and his followers.
The heady steam and forbidden dungeon magic kept them in a state of constant lustful indulgence from which there was no escape.
But now the corruption had seeped through so deeply that the succubus saw fit to let them out for a few hours a day, explore the surroundings, without common decency setting in.
So when she gave her sister a tour around the forest, Barbara was there with them.
And Laurus, on a leash.
He tugged at the rope attached to his collar, but his soft and supple skin hurt against the rough fabric.
Margaret idly yanked him, without really looking, and he wanted to cry. She had once looked up to him.
The sisters were a few paces away, talking amongst themselves.
From where he stood they didn't look much like each other. Rubelle was a tall, full-figured elf, who could have been a relative of Sylphie, while this other woman looked more like a southern human.
But of course they weren't women, both of them demons.
"And many more around the region!" Rubelle said as she gestured grandiosely, "coveted treasure for Kishin of course."
"And the Baronet wields these?"
"Oh no, very reticent, does not want to set the stage for Malsidious' return. Naturally."
Rubelle turned around and gestured at Margaret to come hither.
She did, taking Laurus along.
"But for an ally of our cause, we must be sure to establish an exception." She said, placing her hand on Margaret's abdomen, above the uterus.
"What are you doing?" Laurus asked, finding a bit of defiance within himself to speak out loud.
The sister smirked and grabbed him by his face, although she had the strength of a peasant woman it felt like a steel trap around his cheeks.
"Pathetic male. How would you like to be reunited with your strength? You may see all of it in the form of our goddess, Eriad."
Rubelle gently put her hand on hers to make her let go. "Though that is but one of her names... the evil god of indulgence having five heads."
The sister smirked. "The heads of indulgence have been steadfast companions to the family of temptation. If any creature on hell or earth can immerse your Baronet into the rush of evil, it's them."
----------------------------------------
Special Event: Slaying the Vampire Duchess
The blood moon has awakened duchess Sanguineaux from her eternal sleep, and Rosethorn castle has once again sprung to life. The entire county must be evacuated, adventurers are implored upon to aid from all over the continent.
Please follow directions from your guild staff in how to travel to the Sanguineaux region in southern Blurich.
Thrall Suppression
Cities and villages that have already fallen to the vampire's curse must be cleansed of undead. While the army escorts the peasantry, adventurers travel into surrounding settlements to fight the enemy and prevent any possible ambush.
This mission requires parties of rank D and lower to travel in larger multi-party groups. Adventurers may encounter hordes of vampire thralls, vampire knights, and vampire bats. Rewards will be handed out with proof of kill as normal, but only after the special event has ended.
Dawn Breaking
The sky is cast in eternal night due to the spellcraft of countess Fleder. Sunlight must be returned to give the fleeing populace a chance of escaping and to quell any further ambitions of the duchess to spread her territory even further.
Adventurers must aid princess Linda in her efforts to dispel the evil magic by climbing the Sanguineaux peak and finding or destroying the totems strewn about the mountain.
In this effort, adventurers will have to scale dangerous cliffs while attacked by greats swarms of vampire bats and may come to face countess Fleder in her flying carriage. There is a 20 gold reward for every new totem an adventurer can accurately on the map, with an additional 80 gold reward for destroying one. The families of adventurers that die on the mountain will be paid a mourning sum.