The Bethlen Workshop and Doctor Gunther’s Descent

Session Summary: 07/30/2023

Ahhhh, SCIENCE corrupted by obsession! A workshop connected to the Bethlen family had supposedly been closed after an internal explosion, but the heroes found the front office occupied by Dragos, a research assistant who was quite determinedly undead despite wearing clothes and sitting at a desk and attempting to conduct a normal conversation. Mutu's ability to detect such things left no ambiguity: Dragos was a walking corpse held together by whatever purpose had been poured into him. He tried to convince them to leave. Violence ensued, as it tends to when undead bureaucrats are involved.

With Dragos destroyed and his journals examined, they descended. Stairs cut deep into the earth, far deeper than the building above warranted. The underground laboratory had suffered a catastrophic explosion at some point, its research apparatus blown apart and its clockwork staff wandering the debris on automated routines that no longer made sense. They fought through mechanical guardians and crawling undead hands, each room revealing more of a story that grew more disturbing with every page.

They found Doctor Gunther at his desk, writing with an obsidian pen that gleamed in the lamplight with the tell-tale depth of something made from Morpheus' Tears. His journals, written in twin pens shared with Dragos, documented three weeks of transformation: a mediocre researcher at the start, brilliant in the middle, and at the end, barely coherent in the scrambled handwriting of a mind coming apart at its foundations. The cause? A gift received at the Bone House from a cloaked, halfling-sized woman who had played cards with him one evening and offered him the pen and her cooperation. The final legible entry was a ritual for a protective circle drawn with iron dust, and the note that he had completed it around his desk before something came for him.

After they defeated Gunther, that very something appeared: a creature of shadow and nightmare and pure Fey malice that prowled around the iron-dust circle demanding the obsidian pen. It could not cross. It waited. It threatened. It insulted. After an hour it left. The heroes remained in the circle and found Voleta von Teleki ensnared in another ten-pointed star nearby. They freed her, triggering a black energy explosion, and carried her to Dr. Ritalsin's care, learning only afterward that opening Andreii's cell door would have simply broken the ward around him. Sometimes heroism is EMBARRASSINGLY simple!