Original Castles & Crusades Revolution - Prelude to Undeath - Session Report Five

Tonight our cleric was summoned by the spectral libararian & surprised to be greeted by a troup of desert wastlander barbarians within the underground ruins of the ghostly libarary. And this session picks right up from here. 

Rodney Mathews Trey of Swords used without permission

 In tonight's Castles & Crusades Zothique session the PC's encountered a party of desert barbarians.These were 2nd leve fighters who were on a mission to recruit our heroes for a slog down the wasteland dungeon or ruin known as the 'rabbit hole'. 

The rabbit hole itself is two hundred miles away from the party's current location. And the whole ruin is a spiral stair case warren of stairs & weird branching tunnels that run below the ruins of an ancient city. The rabbit hole itself has been disturbed by a black outlander wizard and his familar. The wizard is looking for an enchanted simitar dedicated to the 'lord of the seven hells'. And  barbarians are convinced that he's not on the trail of the legendary sword but something far worse. 

The ruined city was  actually dedicated to the sea god Basatan but he was overthrown when the cult of Alila "queen of perdition and goddess of all iniquities," The wasteland barbarians fear that an avitar of Alila may be a sleeping under that ruined city & will pay hansomely for the PC's to destroy the black wizard before she is awakened. The PC's ran across  Sabmon the anchorite  & the mighty sage had much to tell them;

" Sabmon, whose eyes were undimmed by age and astronomy and much poring over volumes of archaic ciphers, was pleased with Amalzain and found in the boy something of his mother's beauty. And for this reason he gave freely of his hoarded wisdom; and, after uttering many profound and pertinent maxims, he said to Amalzain:

"It is indeed well that you have come to me: for, innocent of the world's turpitude, you fare to a city of strange sins and strange witcheries and sorceries. There are numerous evils in Miraab. Its women are witches and harlots, and their beauty is a foulness wherein the young, the strong, the valiant, are limed and taken."" 

Clark Ashton Smith 'The Witchcraft of Ulua' 
 The PC's think that this avitar may be a dangerous vampire whose using the cult of Aila to cover its tracks within the ruined city & the  rabbithole. 

 

The next day the PC's aquired the services of a stuhać  elemental  witch & a vampire  hunter who joined their ranks. This two PC classes have been taken from Castles & Crusades Codex Slavorum By Brian Young but these classes fit the current campaign. And since our version of Zothique is a melting pot of the weird & damned its not uncommon to find others from far outside the sphere of the setting's influence within it. Now the PC's are riding with the desert barbarians to stop the black wizard from awakening this blight upon Zothique.