Café de Nuit

"Good evening, Miss...?"

"You may call me Mary, if you like, Professor van Rijn. Are all your meetings so theatrically staged as this one?"

"At present, I'm afraid they are. Wartime conditions, you might say."

"Yes, I had heard of your-- exciting --departure from your former comrades. You seem to ...

...forced conjunctions...Shroud...hm. It would be easier to begin again, but...

Skeletal fingers riffle the pages of the book and tap gently at the blueprint placed next to it, then flick it aside to reveal a different arcane apparatus.

That's the other option, of course. In fact...

The ...

From a hilltop some distance from the Manoir Erik van Rijn looked over the shattered ruin of the Manoir de Penombre. With him stood Jeffrey Terrence and the wolfwere Janus, and those of the invaders who had succeeded in exiting the structure before Terrence's departure had triggered the explosion ...

He walked boldly into the hall. Now, for the first time in years his body no longer ached and pained him. His master’s undead beat a path to the door and slowly entered the building.

The Entry Hall was blackened but no longer burning. Instead the rats had spread the flames across the Manoir ...

Deep in the wine cellar van Rijn allowed himself to re-materialized for the second time. Damn all this climbing of stairs, he thinks angrily. For a man in my condition...

But all of that is about to end. Van Rijn stares down at the vial laid on the table--a vial filled with a strange oily liquid ...

Jeffery Terrence obeyed his employer. He stood down the hallway from Entry Hall, the flames already spreading inward towards the Wine Cellar and the Kitchen. From behind him the bewitched kitchen staff clenched their knives and cleavers and gnashed their teeth expectantly. The couple remaining ...

From outside the Manoir they came. Wave after wave, moving forward to the home atop the hill. Not the rats. They followed the rats. They shambled and moaned, the stench of their rotting flesh filled the air.

Every cemetery in the city had raped, graves torn asunder like ripe fruit, the contents ...

The rats surged forward, an almost endless wave of furred rodents. The group of defenders clustered together reading spells and steel. The enraged vermin suicidal charged forward, many blackened and insane from pain from charging through the blaze in the Entry Hall, others still on fire. The ...

Seated in the wine cellar, van Rijn allows himself to take corporeal form. "How are the troops, Janus?" he asks the alpha wolfwere in Old Kartakan.

The wolfwere shrugs, his slitted eyes flickering across the room. "They are well. A little demoralized after seeing Lukas and Jacob go down without ...

The ghostly form of van Rijn floats through the wine cellar while the injured wolfweres bind their cuts and scrapes. The largest of the them, this pack's alpha, snarls a few words of encouragemnet.

Watching the pathetic shamblings of the zombie Donovan van Rijn smiles an evil smile. His phantom ...

I wouldn't worry about the Sunday arrivals having enough to do, Rotipher. Let's just say, the party's hardly started.

Half of the Invaders move swifty into the Wine Cellar while the others ensorcer the staff. Van Rijn guides him minions from the ghosty plan he currently exists in.

“It is defensible while we prepare for our next assault. They will be vulnerable while coming down the stairs. The reinforcements ...

Desperately Gertrude continued her wrestling with the webbing, thankful even for the few feet which took her a little farther from the zombies. Break free, break free, was a mantra running through her mind as she continued her turtle?s-pace race towards the staircase and the sanctuary above.

She ...

OOC: Gertrude is partially entangled but may move only 5 feet in this round.

The front ranks of van Rijn's troops push forward, stabbing and slashing at those entangled by the web . As their ranks are shattered by the lightning bolt, van Rijn snarls and gestures. A fireball explodes among the back ...

Donovan looks up to see van Rijn staring at him, his eyes cold as steel. The traitor gestures, and a heavyset man carrying a mace steps forward. The flash of the torches on the mace's metal head is the last thing Donovan sees.

***

"One down," van Rijn mutters. "Keep it up, lads."

***

Donovan ...