Headlines || Archive Index || Letters || Funny Page || Horoscope || Quiz || About the Bugle || Search || Madhouse
Archive
CASTLE OF CARNAGE!
Dateline: 2-
Dozens of the Kingdom’s finest adventurers have fallen prey to a co-
The adventurers were, it is reported, preparing to leave the Castle of Count Kainen, believing that with the Count himself destroyed the danger to the Kingdom was at an end, and perhaps wishing to put some distance between themselves and the threat of the ‘undead plague’ that the Count was believed to have been working on.
However their complacency was savagely punished when a horde of savage, bloodthirsty vampires fell on them from all sides. No survivor has emerged to tell of what happened, but the carnage was witnessed by a mage monitoring their progress on behalf of the Dei Vigilare by magical means.
According to reports, just before the attack started the air was split by a gale of horrible laughter that seemed to echo throughout the castle. This was followed by an audible click as the locks on all the doors of the upper floor simultaneously disengaged. Apparently of their own volition, all the doors swung eerily open, and the Broods formerly held at bay behind them came pouring out and slaughtered every mortal adventurer in the Castle.
The only ones believed to have escaped the massacre are the vampire Count Hellstromm and his aide, also a vampire. The only good news is that it is believed that Hellstromm has found and destroyed the carrier of Count Kainen’s ‘Final Solution’ plague, and the threat posed to Bereny by this has been removed, although this is by no means confirmed.
Many of those slain were members of the Dei Vigilare, and the order’s leader Baron Amdrel Gettleman reported to the King his belief that the Castle had been a deliberate trap to lure Bereny’s finest to their doom.
“In addition to offering prayers to The Gods of Light to shepherd the souls of our departed Dei Vigilare brothers and sisters into heaven, Dei Vigilare offers the same prayers on behalf of the souls of those not among Gods' Vigilant, who also met this same horrific fate this past day”, the Baron said.
A ring worn by members of the order causes their bodies to be consumed by holy fire after death, specifically to prevent them from returning as undead. Whether this is a risk for the others who perished is unknown, but from the description of the violence of their deaths it seems unlikely.