The Making of an Undead Muse

Session Summary: 05/05/2024

Ahhhh, the operation continues in DARKNESS! Gregor Pendergrast was defeated, his dream-working dismantled, his underground manor cleaned out. The heroes had considered this sufficient. They were wrong to have considered it sufficient, because in the weeks following Gregor's fall they discovered that the process of creating undead muses had not ended with its most visible practitioner. Someone else knew how to do it. Someone else was still doing it.

They found the active working in a rented basement off an unremarkable street in Lepidstadt's commercial district: an otherworldly entity in the process of transforming a living woman into one of those terrible singers. The woman was still conscious, still aware of what was happening to her, her terror contained by a binding that kept her from calling for help while the process she was experiencing did its methodical worst. Her dreams were being drained, her flesh desiccating by degrees, and a musical note was being carved into her forehead with the careful precision of someone following established instructions.

The heroes attacked without deliberation. This was not a situation that required tactical assessment; it required the immediate application of every capability they possessed to stop something HORRIBLE from reaching its conclusion. The entity fought back. It had confidence in its ability to complete its work and defend itself simultaneously, a confidence that had presumably been justified in previous situations that had not included these particular heroes.

It was not justified here. They destroyed it before the transformation could be completed, and the woman's condition stabilized and then, slowly, began to improve. She would recover, her dreams would return, and the note that had been partially carved into her forehead would scar but not define her.

The discovery that this knowledge and this capability had outlasted Gregor meant that the information had been transferred. The Toymaker was still at large. Agatha had sold her ritual knowledge widely. Someone among the Withering Man's network was continuing the muse-creation program, and that someone needed to be found before they could complete what they had started on this woman on any of the others they might have TARGETED!