The party arrived in Cedoria, capital of the kingdom of Ulyiax, after two days on the train. Leaving the station, they found a hired carriage waiting to take them the last leg of their trip to Istust. After nearly a days ride through the rain and mist, they came upon the town at dusk. The rain finally let up as the carriage reached the top of the road leading down in the the cut between the cliffs that make up the bulk of the town.
As the carriage reached the outskirts of town, passing the Ravenscrest Cemetery, it was ambushed by a small group of humanish men. Using a steam cannon that the party would come to know and love, the carriage was knocked off its wheels, killing both horse and driver. The party quickly defended themselves and beat down the men, though it was perhaps a closer fight then they would have liked.
Seeing drag marks heading back in to the cemetery, the party guessed the cannon had been stored there and there may be more information to be found within. Heading in, they came upon a old fountain with a smooth black obelisk placed in the center. The grass surrounding the fountain was withered and dead, while the grass throughout the rest of the cemetery was overgrown. Renwick used some arcane skills to determine that this was some kind of magical trap and disarmed it, at a small cost to himself.
Following the drag marks, the party found three more of the men gathering some equipment and preparing for something. Renwick charmed two of the men, making them see him as a trustworthy old friend. The third saw through this cheap parlor trick but was unable to stop his superior from telling the party their orders. They were to assist in the ambush of the Bureau group and bring any survivors to the Manor while any bodies were to be taken to the Cannery. Combat quickly followed as the party descended on the trio.
After sorting through the contents of the dead mens chest, the party decided there was enough restless dead in the world and thought better of opening any of the crypts.
Continuing in to town, they opted not to follow the road up the cliff side to the cathedral and instead in to the town proper. Gas lamps lit their way as houses began to line the road. These first ones were boarded up tightly, with no sign of any life. No smoke from the chimneys or light in any cracks of the shutters. Eventually the party came to the old vineyard of the Volévont Manor, which appeared to have been turned in to a proving ground for these steam cannons. Two cannons were set up with logs all around and various targets blasted to pieces. The ruined vineyard also contained two of the black obelisks the party had seen in the graveyard, although these two appeared to be activated. Green lighting arced from the top, scorching a twenty foot radius around the stone, leaving strange ectoplasmic human shapes rising up in its wake. The shapes wandered and oozed back in to the earth, only to reappear as the lightning came again.
The party came to a small shed in the back corner of the yard, though the windows of which they saw another group of three men. Two of the men were being dressed down by the third, for what the party couldn’t hear but it sounded serious. Renwick created an vision of the leader of the other group of men the party had dispatched in the graveyard, in hopes that since that man was in charge there, he may have been in charge here as well. The three men immediately yielded to the vision and gave all the information they had, mostly the same as the other group with added orders to be on the lookout for the Bureau agent that had been in the city already. They hadn’t seen him in days but his whereabouts were unknown. Renwick had the trio light a fire in one of the cannons and head up the road to ‘assist’ in the ambush.
The party then used the cannon to blast the everloving shit out of the two obelisks, after which they loaded the boiler fire with as much wood as they could and closed all the release valves on the boiler for the cannon. The party headed further in to town.
The trio of goons returned just in time to be next to the cannon when it exploded.
The party followed the road, looking at the high white stone wall of the manor that rose to their right. Eventually they came to an intersection, with streets branching off in a few directions. To their right, the road followed the wall toward what appeared to be the main gate of the manor. The party could see half a dozen men milling around the gate, about three hundred feet away. None of them saw the party as they were focused on a horse drawn cart coming though the gate. It contained three more men as well as a pile of what appeared to be linen wrapped corpses and a small group of humans. Two adults and a child, presumably a family, the man looked badly beaten and the woman was covered in some kind of burns. The man suddenly kicked one of the men off the cart and tossed the boy as far as he could away from the group, yelling for him to run. He was swiftly killed by the other man in the back of the cart. The boy managed to make it to where a number of streets intersected in front of the gate before he met with another man and a large bronze construct. The boy attempted to flee in another direction but the construct used a net gun mounted on its shoulder to capture the boy, moving to the net and crushing him with a heavy fist.
The party decided that shit was real fucked up here in Istust.
Heading down the street directly in front of them, they came to the Cods Tail Inn. This was where they were supposed to meet with their contact, David Jones. The place was a mess, stinking of garbage and rotted meat. They spoke with the innkeeper, finding that Jones hadn’t been seen in three days and that ‘The Countess’ men had been around looking for him but had been unable to enter his room’
She rented the party rooms and told them she didn’t have anything to offer for food as the countess’ men had cleaned her out of everything she had and that the morning market was no longer happening every day as there were so few people with anything to sell.
Reith made short work of the lock on Jones’ door, leading the party to find that the door was also barred from the inside. Thrakal proceeded to bash the door open, hitting it hard enough to rip it from its hinges and send it over the chair that was propped up against it.
The room was a mess, covered in blood and pieces of what the party determined to be Jones based on some of the larger parts they found. The walls had marks on them, strange ripples a foot across that were everywhere. Under the bed, they found a footlocker with a minor talisman and some vials of fluid, marked ‘Oil of Attraction’, two labeled Undead and two labeled Aberation.
The party also discovered that the post at the end of the bed was hollow, containing a small mythril tube with Jones’ report to the Bureau in it. It spoke of disappearances of whole families, night time abductions off the streets, bodies and people taken to the Cannery with little indication of what became of them there, the men seen on the streets at night were some kind of hybrid that made them stronger, if not smarter.
His last note was that the Fishermens Guild Hall was the only safe place in Istust.
The party headed there in the morning, finding that the streets were clear of the hybrids in the daylight. A gray mist hung over the town, depressing the shit out of the party. They found the guildhall with the gate blocked with a barricade. Reith decided to climb over and almost took a crossbow bolt in the head for his trouble. He held up his Bureau badge and called out that the group was there to help. Eight guild members appeared from various places and the party was escorted in to the hall.
The main hall was dotted with various magic wards, made from a variety of materials. There they met with Duncan, the dwarven leader of the guild as well as our good friend David Jones, alive and well. Turns out our rogue on the inside had received an experimental alchemical device from the Bureaus Master Alchemist that allowed him to grow a clone over a series of days that he could then control with a circlet that would project his consciousness to the duplicate. He had grown it in his room at the Cods Tail Inn while scouting around Istust only for it to be killed the first night he tried to use it. While controlling it for the first time, hybrids attempted to enter his room. He blocked the door, only to then hear a strange, discordant sound, like someone banging on an out of tune harpsichord. At that moment, rifts started to open in the walls, through which horrifying tenticles reached through and tore the clone to pieces.
Having his consciousness in the clone as it was ripped apart was very damaging to Jones, he was unconscious for two days and only awoke the morning the party arrived.
After a bit more discussion on the state of the town, the party has begun its preparations to head to the Cannery. This is where we pick up.
Early Frost Warning 