Session 04

Waking the prisoners they soon realised that the Blue Duke was regenerating as they spoke, so they decided to take him and knock him unconscious again and speak to him later. They questioned Adrick first and he managed to convince them that he was not involved and that he was merely here to listen to what Lady Thifirane had to say, thinking he could make some money out of the situation. He claimed he had no idea that she and her friends were going to open a gate to hell and wanted nothing to do with it. He bargained for his freedom telling the party he would put his considerably resources at their disposal to help in fighting the evil which threatened the city. They agreed to release him on those grounds.   Next they spoke to Lady Thifirane. She refused to tell them anything they did not already know and with diplomacy clearly not going to work on her, and with Morgan refusing to let anyone torture her (and by telling her that, removing any possibility of any threats of torture being taken seriously), the group were unable to get her to talk. As such Harley resignedly slit her throat when she would not co-orperate.   The group then woke up the Blue Duke, using the alive Adrick and dead Lady Thifirane to prove what happened if you helped them and what happened if you did not. The Blue Duke was not really able to give any extra information and in fact was unaware that Vhalantru was a beholder. He was convinced to leave the island of Mochica and to take his mercenaries with him. The group gave him 24 hours to be gone. Adrick and the Blue Duke then left the building and the party quickly burnt the remaining bodies, mostly to remove any chance of them being raised by the Cagewrights.   Magma Force now had a quick discussion on where to go next. It was clear thy needed to find out how to get to the Fiery Sanctum, and quick, but they had no real leads. The only real option seemed to be to go and see if they could find anything of significance in Vhalantru's manor. So they went there and did a quick scout around, finding many statues of adventurers in the beholder's back garden. Guessing where they had come from the party decided to teleport into the first floor and so Camero used his wizard sight to look into a room there. He found a well stocked library, seemingly empty of people and so opened a portal straight into that location. The group stepped in and were inside House Vhalantru.   The library was full of booked on elven culture and the group surmised that Vhalantru used them to learn the sorts of things he would know were he truly the half elf that he pretended to be. They made their way out on to a landing and a shout went up from below. Two orc guards shouted up at them and the party unleashed a magical barrage on them. Then Gotrek rushed in, taunting the two orcs up the staircase to meet him. Harley and Morgan joined the attack and soon the two orcs were dead. The group decided to continue to search this level before going down the stairs and so fanned out across the landing. they opened a few doors, finding bedrooms, bathrooms and studys. All were well appointed but not recently used.   Across the hall from the landing they found a door and as they approached it Harley took a slight detour and stumbled into a room where he found a beholder floating there! The group rushed to Harley's aid and Braken was surprised to note that the beholder was in fact undead. No one recalled the Orbious they had encountered way back on their initial arrival in the city as being undead so this confused everyone. Gotrek steamed in and with one mighty cleave split the foul beast in two! This pretty much confirmed that this creature could not be the dangerous Orbious but some sort of undead beholder minions perhaps.   The whole of the first floor explored the group moved up a staircase to the top floor. There they found more luxurious but unused bedrooms and bathrooms. Then behind one door they heard some sort of whispering. Kicking in the door they found an alien humanoid lying on a large bed. Harley rushed in and attacked but suddenly the creature changed shape to look just like Harley! Camero ran in and asked a clever question that only the real Harley would know but the stunned rogue took a while to answer, thus stopping Camero unleashing his full powers. However he was able to tell the others which was which and the doppelganger was quickly dropped unconscious by the combined might of Magma Force.   So, who was this doppelganger? Was it the assassin who had pretended to be Terri a few days earlier? What did it know and what was it doing in Vhalantru's house...?