Scene 13.1: The Brig
This is a cut-away scene. It happens simultaneously with the actions that take place in Scene 13. This is also a wall of text, so sorry about that. I will attempt to fill in several holes regarding what the new player-characters know and their current situation.
A ship, a rusting Golden Age vessel, sits in the dirt. Two or three days walk inland from the Gulf of Mexico and almost as far from the Rio Grande River, it has no business being there. The ship, a vessel from the second World War, had been discovered many times since the Great Cataclysm. It sheltered families who were escaping into the wilderness after cities fell to monsters. Then, it sheltered refugees from the rifts, debees trapped in a land which was hostile and alien to them. Then it sheltered humans again who fled from the encroaching territory of the Vampire Kingdoms. Most recently, it was claimed as a home for monsters, a pack of crafty and in particular deadly vampires.
Called the Hole in the Neck Gang by Reed's Rangers and the people of Fort Apache, the gang was a posse lead by a secondary vampire. Severance had in life been an orc, a renowned gun fighter, and a member of the Pecos Bandits. In unlife, he had been tasked with hunting and transforming those mortals who would be of most use to the Vampire Kingdoms due to their skill sets. The results were varied. They had even turned a kindly and wise druid (although a troll) into one of their own, but the result was a savage wild vampire lacking most of the knowledge and all of the restraint that the druid possessed in life. The distinctive trait of this vampire posse is that they all carried the random mutation of Severance, fangs on both their upper and lower jaws.
These vampires liked to use their claws and fangs, but they also collected useful bits of technology and other treasures. Among them were a set of fake rune weapons which carried syphon entities inside. Their greatest prize, however, had been the capture of a particular Atlantean.
The Atlantean was a tattoo master and ancient even by the standards of the nearly immortal race. He had traveled through the region several times throughout the Dark Ages, and had come to be known as a saint to the local populations. They called him Saint Angelo, patron saint against supernatural predators. The saint, known to True Atlanteans as Master Raja, had vanished years ago. At some point, the enlightened being became the treasure of Severance and his gang.
The Undead Slayer, Jason Damien, came seeking the fate of Master Raja. He traveled with an odd pair of adventurers he met at Fort Apache, Lucas Rowland and Na-Wa. Each came with their own motivations. Na-Wa carried a talking sword, named Bruce, and Bruce had taken a particular interest in Jason's story of Master Raja. Bruce believed the master to be the same entity who forged the sword long ago, so Bruce pressed Na-Wa to accompany the Atlantean undead slayer into the borderlands of the Vampire Kingdoms. Lucas, who had been a companion of Na-Wa and Bruce since the Tolkein Campaign, was a former member of the Tundra Rangers with a secret of his own. The young mountain man had spent considerable time with the Apache tribes. He had been asked to track a particular Apache woman who had gone missing and was suspected to have been abducted by vampires. At Fort Apache, he learned about the Hole in the Neck Gang, and he realized that the missing woman, a wilderness scout, met the profile of targets for this gang. Whether she was a prisoner for feeding or had been transformed into a vampire herself, he was determined to find the find the woman on behalf of the tribe which had done so much for him. The three realized that they were all searching the same region, so they agreed to work together at least until their paths diverged, but they held a dark suspicion that they were all tracking the same culprits.
This suspicion had been confirmed in the worst way imaginable. They managed to track the migrating pack of vampires to one of their favorite lairs. Na-Wa confirmed that a powerful magic entity was inside the old ship with the vampires. Jason had developed the strategy of hiding half their equipment nearby and purposefully becoming captured in order to find Master Raja inside. It sort of worked.
The master had been inside but not well. The vampires had kept the master alive for years and were slowly prying secrets out of him. They did not feed on his blood, but they did many times carve his tattoos away and watch them regrow. The vampire's body fixer had performed many experiments in grafting tattooed flesh or copying it in order to gift this same magic to vampiric soldiers. Flayed flesh covered the walls of the ship's old medical bay.
The vampires were more wary than expected of their new prisoners. The magic energy of the prisoners was continually kept sucked dry by unsleeping syphon entities. Na-Wa and Jason was frequently bleed as a source of nurishment, and he was separated from his oldest and closest companion, Bruce. Lucas was used as an experimental subject as they vampires made multiple failed attempts at installing magic tattoos into his flesh. Jason bided his time, waiting for a chance to escape his shackles. The ancient Atlantean, Master Raja, had been carried away with Bruce somewhere else as nervous about approaching strangers.
Deep in hull of a rusting Golden Age, three prisoners listened to the sounds of battle outside. The vampires had left them unattended for the first time in days. They even took their cursed weapons with them. Finding his first opportunity, Jason set about contorting his body to free himself from his shackles. As he worked, a strange fog began to creep into the room.