Author’s note: I’ve recently started a PF2 stream with a few friends on the Twitch channel Roll the Role. The premise: A crew of dhampirs with the same ‘sire’ have banded together to make coin, a name for themselves, and sort out their complicated past and future. This takes place after session session 4.
[ < Study Hall ] [ Lenore’s Shopping Spree > ]
After wishing her siblings good night, Anna returned to her room with no intention of sleeping. Instead, she opened her notebook and started to write. A journey to another world, filled with dangers but few explanations. Perhaps it was the fey? But it seemed almost too orderly for the wild folk. And the gifts they had found were of the Material world. A magical tattoo. A feast for the undead. Instructions on creating a revenant. Deadly weapons…
Almost as if someone wants them tested and armed.
She found herself flipping through journals, looking for signs of a benefactor. Enemies they had, but friends…
She stops on a page towards the front of one book. It contains one thing: A list, carefully copied from a previous journal, which itself had been copied from an even older journal. It contained only four items. She’d long ago lost track of how often she’d rewritten it, but even so, not a single item had been ticked off…
✱✱✱
She didn’t go home.
She did send word back, once she found an inn, that they were to close up the wings and admit no guests. She gave leave to the family’s butler to pull from a special fund of reserves to keep the estate standing, but otherwise, the manor would be kept silent and still, like a tomb.
She also sent the driver back, hiring a new one. After all, the man had family he wouldn’t want to leave for weeks on end. Also, he was older. She wanted someone hale, who could endure longer roads and harder climes, and… well. Just in case.
Food didn’t really satisfy Anna. Not completely.
So a Kellid, far from home, was hired. A woman, to keep tongues from wagging, but still able to move her luggage around with one arm and crack the skull of anyone who might give them trouble. She also didn’t ask questions, as long as the coin kept coming. In fact, she didn’t seem perturbed that Anna’s only instruction had been to vaguely wave east when asked where they were to go. “Give a shout when you want to stop.”
Anna stared out at the road from within her carriage. She didn’t have a plan. A plan, though, was useless if you didn’t know your goal… or what threatened you. And it was clear that the vultures were coming. Her cousin had been warned off easily enough, but could she keep everyone at bay? Her particular line of the family was small (just her, in fact), but several generations back, it branched out and spread through Golarion. Word would spread about a part of the estate being up for grabs, and it wouldn’t take long for a cousin with more guile and desperation to come calling.
She took out a journal and began to make a list of things that could secure the LeClerche estate in her name without question:
- A marriage of good standing
- A writ from the Emperor of Taldor
- A legitimate birth
She stared at that last one, then scratched a deep line through it. That could take centuries. Betting on that sort of luck was for fools and halflings.
The shadows stirred across from her, and her fingers tightened on her pen, leaving her white knuckled. She forced her face into a placid mask and looked up. “Ah, good. I was hoping we might talk.”
She had been hoping for nothing of the sort. The spirit dredged up uncomfortable emotions in her. It had saved her, twice, possibly thrice. It had answered her call.
It killed her father.
The spirit’s form was of a woman, of an age that was neither young nor old. Her eyes were void-filled pits of shadow, and her skin so pale it was practically see through. Her clothes, dark, were tattered beyond recognition. Her hands were unnaturally bony and long, with ragged nails. The aura around the creature screamed malevolence, both pinning Anna to the spot and daring her to flee.
Anna, however, was a monster as well. She didn’t scare easily.
“Thank you,” she said, “For playing along back at the house. Cousin Preston would have been an enormous headache.”
The void studied her.
“And, of course, your help with the solicitor.” She’d already forgotten his name, again. It wasn’t important. He’d drawn a weapon on Anna, after all. He’d lost the right to a name. “And his body.”
The face floating across from her remained impassive. Time to press.
“Was that the first time you helped me?”
She braced herself, ready for her fears to be confirmed. The spirit spoke, its voice caught somewhere between a hiss and a gurgle. [Of course, mistress. We have helped before. The servant.]
Anna blinked. “Servant?”
[You were small. So small. Your mother, she had just passed. The woman, the servant, she was a lady-in-waiting, and followed the Lady of Graves. She said you were wrong. That you should be made right.]
Anna thought back. A story, told in whispers in the back hallways, caught only in bits and pieces, came to her. Yes, something had happened to her mother’s maid… “What did you do?”
[She went to fetch water. Deep wells hold many secrets.]
“Ah. Well. Thank you, for that. Good help and all that.” She barely noticed the words tumbling out of her. Her father had always called her a ‘creative’ child, when she talked about seeing things in the shadows. All this time, she had a guardian angel…
The spirit had not stopped talking. [–wanted to take you, kidnap you, ransom you. A fire took him. The parson who carried Daemon’s Touch meant no harm, but could not be allowed upstairs. His heart gave out in the parlor. A grey hound who took offense to you–]
A rather enthusiastic guardian angel. Anna held up a finger, and the spirit stopped. She had to ask.
“And my father?”
The spirit was silent for a heartbeat. [He did not mean you harm.]
“So, you didn’t kill him?”
Another silence that stretched. [Mistress, he was marked. I did not like it, but he bore the mark.]
The death was fresh in Anna’s heart. Her father was only a few weeks gone. With her research, she knew exactly what state his body would be in by this time. The worms crawl in, the worms crawl out… Technically larvae, but that doesn’t scan as well. She blinked back tears that she could not let herself cry here.
“What mark, praytell?”
[The one that draws me. The one they bear when the time has come.]
“And me. I suppose I’ll bear the mark?”
The spirit cocked its head to the side, dark caverns regarding her curiously. [Mistress, only the living can bear the mark.]
Interesting. “Did my mother bear it?”
[She might have, in time. But another took her away. Something rotten in her veins sapped her strength. I would have regretted that one, as well. Most, I have regretted.]
Something rotten in her veins. Anna ran a tongue over her cuspids, too sharp for comfort. They drove her, sometimes, to do things she didn’t wish to do. And a mark that appears… that sounded rather like something with some logic behind it, rather than mere bad luck. And this poor creature had been bound to it for who knew how long.
Rather than hate it, he felt a growing kinship with this wisp of a soul.
“Do you have a name, spirit?” It shook its head no. “Well, that won’t do. You’ll need one for the task ahead.” She added an item to the list: Revenge.
“We shall call you Lucia. Our enemies will need something to use in their laments.”
Katie Plays Games 