Vampire Under Glass

Our 5e Land of Azurth game continued this past Sunday with the wizard turned manticore, Mortzengersturm, giving the party a tour of his palace—really a series of caverns carved into the crystalline Geegaw Mountain. What Mortzengersturm has devoted his energies to is impressive, if a bit disturbing. He’s made a lot of hippogriffs (an “impossible animal” he keeps telling the PCs, since griffins like to eat horses) and other stuff like a horsefly (exactly what you think) and an ant-lion (that too). He’s also managed to “civilize” a goblinic slime pit to make proper goblin servants (blue, as a consequence).

Some of the party are a bit angered by slavery, even of goblins, but they’ve got a job to do. They need to capture some of the light from his wild magic crystal (“The Whim-Wham Stone,” he calls it) to repair the laterna magica they found a week or so ago.

Mortzengersturm without his cigarettes and magic hands

With the tour over, Mortzengersturm agrees to help, but instead springs a trapdoor. Nimble and suspicious Shae the Ranger evades it, but the rest are caught. She fights the manticore alone while the party tries to find a way out of a sheer, crystal-walled pit. It seems being a manticore has given the former wizard a powerful hunger for human flesh, and he wants the party on the menu. Then he throws a cloudkill at them! A well placed arrow spoils his concentration and ends the spell, but takes several tries before anyone gets out of the pit.

Ultimately, Mortzengersturm is taken down by force of numbers—about the time some of his loyal hippogriffs show up. Wounded and low on spells, the party retreats to a handy, hard to notice passage, too small for a hippogriff or Mortzengersturm. They’re too glad to be out of danger to question that.

After a little bit of healing, they decide to explore the rest of the tunnel. They find it leads out to an opening in the cliff face on the side of the mountain, about 40 ft. below the plateau where their flying swan boats (and only means of escape) are. They backtrack in the tunnel and take a passage to the left. There they find a velvet curtain and hear odd sounds beyond. A peek inside reveals a woman that they soon discover is a vampire when she drains Kairon the Warlock to unconsciousness.

Driving her back with lucky rolls and a bardic ability (shocking!), they manage to retreat into the sunlight. Climbing looks like a better option, now. Erkose climbs up and sneaks past the hippogriffs to retrieve one boat. Not wanting to press their luck, they all cram into that one and take off for Rivertown. Luckly, Waylon the Frogling had snagged the Whim-Wham Stone in their escape, so mission accomplished but no extra treasure.