Brain, What Brain?

On the next morning, Captain Farawell already has new orders for us.

New targets have arisen in the city, as the city enters a deeper chaos. Fire, plagues and various transformations of people have occurred in the aftermath of the portal opening.

The city watch does not have the members or resources to protect the whole city, so of course, it is up to us again, even as we are under deeper scrutiny from the nobles of the city.

Errant creatures have been tracked to a noble's house. Not much is known about the noble, Darkwell, other than he dabbles in merchanting, and he has a fondness of magic items. The area has been pretty much been locked down, and they have been locked behind a stasis field.

Captain Farawell gives us a rod and a stone. The stone will melt a stasis field once the command word has been given, and the rod will fill the area with amber. Once the rod has been activated, move quickly, as anything left behind will be trapped.

We hurry to the noble's house.

The streets are eerily silent, and many houses are boarded up. Other have arches guarding from the roof tops and balconies.

The amber stasis field easily identifies the house we are trying to find. We can even see a bird trapped mid-flight within.

Men in the colors of Waterdeep colors block the way. We tell him we're going in, and he demands we provide a code word to confirmed we are uncompromised when we returned. We provide one.

We dactivate the amber, and enter the house. It melts, and we hear screaming coming from within.

The three story house is grand, and made of stone. A tower in the center of it looks like an observation tower.

Deavon kicks the door open, and we go in, closing the door behind us.

The butler inside asks if we are here to see the lord. Well, yes, we suppose we would like to talk to him.

The butler cautions us that the top floor has been barred, as the lady of the house appears to have gone quite insane, which he apologizes for. The lord of the house is on the second floor, which is off limits to most of the staff.

We identify ourselves, and ask for keys. He says they are in the storage room, and we have him gather all the servants into the sitting room.

We get the keys from the storage room, and seeing a desk in the room as well, Kate picks it and finds documentation about financials and various artifacts that have been bid on. Not especially interesting.

We look around a little. In a meeting room we find some clever contraption the lord would probably use to impress guests. We also find the kitchen, with two very pale butchers cutting meat in it. We tell them to go to the sitting room.

We find also that the privy is occupied. We ask the occupant to leave, and she does so reluctantly, an awful smell wafting out as she does so. She alludes to being with her lord's child.

We gather a few more servants up in the sitting room, and then head to the next floor up.

As we pass through a barrier leading up, a silent alarm goes off.

A pale man appears, who is very well dressed.

We introduce ourselves, saying there is a magical threat, and he agrees, and says his lord is dealing with it at the moment, and right on cue we hear a scream and a clash. The lord and the lady are having a disagreement, it seems.

Deavon says we must intervene, and we go up, and see them standing across from each other, arguing. The lord seems to be convinced the lady is possessed by a foul creature.

Half the lord's face is missing, but even more bizarrely, the lady's leg is gone, but it doesn't seem to bother her any.

The lord isn't happy that his "internal matter" has been made known to others, but he does tells us a creature attacked his wife, and she's been acting strange ever since.

Deavon and Andelo try to help restrain the wife while the lord does a ritual, but suddenly she goes limp. Deavon turns to Andelo, attack him. We try to restrain Deavon, but he fights us with fury.

The lord stops his chanting, and shadows crawl from the wall. Two of them rake their claws through him, but they seem to do little.

Suddenly, as Deavon is about to be knocked out, he goes limp too.

And then I lose my mind.

Literally.

Having your brain devoured isn't all that, let me tell you.

Apparently I gave a spirited fight against against my companions, until the lady of the house suddenly got up, produced a wand, and charmed me...the creature? with it.

Vampires, huh.

It turns out their true nature was known by a few, but they stuck to animal blood, so it was largely ignored.

Oh, and yeah, we all got our brains back. Turns out you can regenerate them like any other organ.