Curse of the Crimson Throne Recap # 57 [RPG]

 [Toilday, 14 Erastus 4708 A.R. continued]

The Harrowed Heroes are in trouble!  Their raid on Deathhead Vault to strike a blow for the resistance has come up against the self-described Mother of Thorns, a terrifying creature with magicks so potent she’s mentally dominated The Reckoner and forced Goldcape and Rocky to flee the complex entirely.  With only Anorak left to carry on the fight, the situation seems dire indeed.  But help comes from the most unexpected direction: above!  A thin, hand-sized card wafts down from the ceiling—and then another, and another, until suddenly there are hundreds of cards swirling around the room.  And from the vortex, a woman wearing the brightly-coloured skirts, scarves, and gauzy veil of a Varisian fortune-teller steps out: it’s the Harrower!  “I had a premonition you needed a hand,” she says to Anorak.  The Mother of Thorns shouts for The Reckoner to attack the newcomer, but with an immense act of will, he breaks free of her control!  As The Harrower hurls cards that turn into unerring bolts of magic to weaken the fiend, The Reckoner draws an earthbreaker crackling with freezing magic and starts swinging.  In seconds, yet another fearsome foe is laid low by his awesome onslaught.

Although the immediate battle is won, The Harrower says there’s no time to rest—the fighting here has surely been heard and reinforcements will be on the way.  Intriguingly, she adds that in her last Harrowing, she intuited that someone is hiding or hidden in Deathhead Vault, and if they can be found, it will do much to aid the city.  Despite her advice, the other two spend several precious seconds searching for treasure and identifying magic items worn by the Mother of Thorns.  An adjacent room is revealed to be a filing office.
 
The Reckoner leads the way back to the corridor and smashes down a door to reveal a long hallway with cells on one side, each containing a badly beaten and nearly unconscious “recruit” for the Gray Maidens.  Unable to pick the locks, The Reckoner resorts to smashing down more doors with his hammer—a process that frees the recruits but surely carries yet more proof that intruders are present.  Magical wands heal the tortured women’s physical wounds but can’t do anything for their emotional trauma.  The Harrower volunteers to lead the small group to safety, promising to return as soon as she can.  Meanwhile, The Reckoner scouts to where the corridor turns north and sees an even longer hallway, with several more cells on one side and two pairs of double-doors on the other. 
 
Using a wand to turn himself invisible, he tries to pick the lock on the first set of double-doors, but can’t manage it and has to break it down.  On the other side, he sees a sort of “reception” room for Deathhead Vault—doors lead off it, but more importantly, a staircase leads up to the Longacre Building where dozens of Gray Maidens must be stationed, especially since Kroft’s surface raid must have already ended some time ago.  The guards here are ready for a fight, but The Reckoner’s sudden appearance after being invisible is enough to terrify a pair of them.  Anorak follows, but even working together, they can’t silence the guards fast enough to keep the shouts from alerting nearby reinforcements:.  More Gray Maidens begin pouring down the stairs, while one knocks on the northern door and shouts “Commander Destaid, they’re here!” The fighting continues, with Gray Maiden after Gray Maiden falling.  “Don’t get overconfident,” shouts The Harrower, arriving like last time in a swirling vortex of cards.  “There’s a legion up there!”  The Reckoner shouts that they need to get to the commander, so Anorak uses his dwindling magical reserves to blindly teleport himself and The Reckoner to the north, while The Harrower stays behind and conjures illusions to distract the reinforcements.
 
Anorak and The Reckoner find themselves in a large torture chamber that has been outfitted with all manner of pain-inducing implements.  Three hapless and obviously-tormented prisoners are in cages, while a full contingent of five Gray Maidens stand in the center of the room.  Behind a barred portion of the room secured with a strong iron gate, an imposing woman wearing a bright-red dress and a Gray Maiden commander stand ready.  Anorak recognises the imposing woman as Zenobia Zenderholm, a well-respected senior arbiter who went missing months ago.  The Gray Maiden next to her speaks: “I am Kordaitra Destaid, Second-in-Command of the Gray Maidens.  In the name of the Queen, stand down.  Your execution will be swift and merciful.”  No one really expects a surrender, and no one is surprised as the battle starts.  The Reckoner skilfully evades the rank-and-file Gray Maidens to reach the iron bars.  As he starts to wail away at the gate, Kordaitra directs her soldiers to surround Anorak.  The dwarf is alarmed as, one by one, his illusory duplicates are destroyed, and he decides to use an even more powerful illusion to disappear from sight completely!  For her part, Zenobia Zenderholm reveals herself as a cleric of the Pallid Princess.  A deathly glow surrounds her hand, a glow whose merest touch would kill The Reckoner—but even this is impossible!  With an array of magical protections drawn from his mastery of wands, The Reckoner manages to avoid Zenobia’s touch, batter down the gate, and slay the two leaders.  The Harrower appears just as the last defenders in the room are dispatched.

 
Despite a delayed start, the Harrowed Heroes have pushed deep into the subterranean bastion of the Gray Maidens and won a tremendous victory.  Will they play it safe and retreat, or tempt fate and press on?
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GM Commentary

The appearance of The Harrower at the beginning of this session looks like a total deus ex machina, but it's really a stylish way I chose to portray one of the players cashing in their one-time sort of "get out of jail free card" boon I gave them (it might have been as a Christmas gift; I don't quite remember, the perils of writing these commentaries a couple of years later!).  Because I had established that The Harrower and Blackjack were occasional crimefighting companions in the past, I wanted to show The Harrower here in her full street-level super hero glory as she swirled around, flung Harrow cards (that had the effect of magic missiles), and disoriented foes with her spinning scarves and such.  It played well in my head at least, and I was happy at how I portrayed her.  At this point, the players still don't know that she's dead and that her spirit is using its dwindling time on the Material Plane to aid them.

The Harrower's reference to someone hiding or hidden whose rescue would do much to aid the city was a hint about Sable Company Commander Marcus Endrin being held captive in a secret cell.  Unfortunately, the PCs didn't find him and (if I recall correctly) it was later established that he died.
As the timing of the underground raid and the surface raid ended up not being coordinated, I had the surface levels swarming with Grey Maidens; I used the Troop rules to represent this.  I think we see more of this next session, but the fact that Troops do automatic damage to creatures around them was very vexing to The Reckoner's player, who was used to relying on super-high AC and multiple buffs to fight most creatures with impunity.