This is a story post, based around a thing that happened in our session today, so if you’re not interested in reading about other people’s games, I invite you to check out now.
So we killed Lord Scurlock today.
We didn’t want to, but it turned out that our Whisper’s backstory was a lie fabricated by Scurlock to free himself of Setarra’s influence one way or another, and you know, when your Whisper is so mind-fucked that your Spider has to become the back-up Whisper to unfuck his brain, something needs to be done.
Anyway, it was the culmination of a looong series of events, we took time to plan it, figured out what it would take to draw him to our lair, and then triggered our traps. For reference, we are Tier 2, all but one of us has some level of Attune and we planned carefully 1. the right bait that would draw him out of his place of power, and 2. the means to keep him there until we destroyed him.
It went down like this:
It’s late, we’re waiting for Lord Scurlock to appear. The waiting is always the worst thing when going to war.
Hours pass, and then…
A heavy thud resonates on the metal outer skin of the observatory and through the narrow occupied by the huge ancient telescope, a large eldritch creature can be seen. Enormous taloned wings and huge musculature arms tear open a hole in the metal, allowing the creature to force its way in. It drops heavily on the gantry causing bolts pop and the metal structure to creak and moan.
Its terrifying drooling visage is too horrific to behold. It is Lord Scurlock.
“Give me what is mine!” the creature shouts.
“Take it from me,” Dawson/Glass screams.
Scurlock plunges from the gantry, dropping into the room. He moves to grab Dawson with his monstrous fist.
“Give me what is mine.”
From the gallery, Viktor flips a switch electrifying the outer shell of the observatory, rarifying the air and triggering the first stage of the crew’s trap.
Scurlock pauses his murderous intent, realising that something about the atmosphere of the room has changed as Dawson grabs his talon, blocking his attack for the moment and dragging Zralock, the demon gauntlet, across Scurlock’s knuckles.
At that moment, Jack cuts the line connecting him to the ceiling. He falls in a straight line from the centre of the observatory dome, plungling like a needle, and as he falls, he fires, his bullet blowing a lump of flesh out of Scurlock’s shoulder, close to his neck. The electroplasmic ammo burns the edges of the wound.
Scurlock screams, and flicks Jack off his back. Jack twists in mid air, landing roughly, but his thick leathers cushion the blow.
On the gantry, Fletcher completes his ritual, screaming the final words into the air. The tendrils of blood oozing from Scurlock’s wounds are pulled to the floor which lights up with a complex sigil, a magical circle designed to thicken the vampire’s blood and draw it forcefully out of his body, diminishing his unearthly strength.
Near the broken telescope, Viktor takes aim with his anti-Hull weapon, the Penetrator, a long chain links the shell to a winch tied to VIktor.
The weapon fires, hits Scurlock, but fails to penetrate his body.
It doesn’t even detonate. The beast lazily grasps the shell, and pulls. The winch groans as the chain is spooled out against the engine’s design, the chain snaps, but not before Viktor is caught up in it and Scurlock uses it to fling him into a heavy workshop table, badly injuring him.
Scurlock chants the words of a ritual in Hadrathi. His words have weight. Everyone in the room feels suddenly as though they shouldn’t be fighting. Like a voice speaking from the soul, commanding the flesh.
Stealing himself against this supernatural assault, Fletcher shrugs off the mental attack. Jack is momentarily dazed, and Viktor too caught up with his injuries.
Dawson, unsurprisingly, is not affected. So Scurlock tries to crush him, but Dawson roars and pulls him off his feet with a sudden burst of superhuman strength, throwing Scurlock into the electrified wall. The vampire explodes into a horde of swarming maggots, reforming again in moments but shedding some of his size.
Screaming defiance, the wounded vampire does something that causes the reality of the room to crack. The ghost veil peels back inside the observatory, revealing the other lurking about the room. Among them, Mary Droz, Jack’s mother, who has always looked after the Crew, and the ghosts of the children they had freed, who protected them from arcane interference.
And Scurlock eats them.
Jack screams, and scrambles for the closest weapon nearby, the magical blade they had stolen from Lord Strangford when they robbed his ship.
Viktor, meanwhile, is desperately fiddling with the controls of the cage to drop a blast of electroplasm onto the Vampire, something he has never done before and is totally making it up as he goes along.
Dawson screams “Look at me! Look at me, you fuck.” He pulls Setarra’s contract from his shirt and begins to tear it methodically, muttering in between his shouts, tearing not just the ancient paper of the contract, but also the magical wards protecting the old vampire’s flesh.
Scurlock’s eyes widen, and for a moment in his monstrous expression, there is delight. He begins to laugh, and it is not a human laugh, but a terrible, bestial sound. Just for a moment he stretches out, unfurling his wings.
“I’m free!” he cries, and immediately decides the fight is over and moves to leave. He can crush us later, he’s got what he wanted out of Dawson. He hurls his bulk at the door and…
That’s when Viktor sends the electrified observatory skin into overdrive. With the ghost veil there/not there/different, there is no arc of electroplasm, instead the edges of the bright net curling into tendrils of electroplasmic force, drawing tightly around the beast. Scurlock is dragged back into the room, thrashing like a wounded tiger, flailing and snapping at the electrified cage that binds him.
His wounds where the net cuts him bleed copiously, a viscous stuff, as thick as tar, Fletchers ritual pulling him to the glowing sigil on the floor with ropes of his own blood and flesh, and…
That’s when Jack strikes.
Tears screaming down his face Jack throws himself upon the beast in a rage, slicing down with the arcing electroplasmic blade. Arcane runes glowing on its surface. It shivers against Scurlock’s neck, metal striking something harder than metal, but then the blade catches and is drawn into his flesh, slowly, inexorably, in a sawing motion until it shudders to a stop and can sink no further.
Scurlock screams and throws Jack away, sending him sprawling.
By now, Scurlock has shrunk, his shape has diminished, fallen in upon itself. From the wreckage of the eldritch creature crawls a naked, emaciated, mortally wounded middle-aged man. He is thin, his hair grey and thick, his eyes are Scurlock’s eyes, though none of us but Dawson have ever seen this face this old.
Scurlock gasps for air and collapses, spent.
“One day you’ll be the monster,” he says to Dawson.
“This story, Scurlock,” Dawson says, taking the vampire’s head in his hands, “could have had a different ending.”
He twists hard, breaking the vampire’s neck.
His power spent, Scurlock is no more.
**
Have you ever dealt a deathblow to someone who is a big part of the setting? Have you offed Scurlock? Did you batter Bazso? Did you redline the Red Sashes? If so, how did it go down? I wanna hear your stories.