Casting Shadows

This week’s somewhat risqué seed is for All for One: Regime Diabolique, and pits the musketeers against distance, deceit, and damsels in order to aid a friend in need, before the sands of life run out.

The seed

One of the characters’ inexhaustible supply of childhood friends and acquaintances appears to the musketeers as they are out engaging in the steadfast pursuit of inebriation and debauchery. Quickly spoiling the mood with his ill health, concern for his life, and talk of curses, he recruits the stalwart heroes to his cause… the search for the Holy Harlot of Hagnicourt.

The Details

For the purposes of my own mild amusement, this seed will be written from the assumption that at least one of the characters grew up in Hagnicourt before coming into the service of the King. This is of course an entirely unnecessary requirement chosen mostly for the alliterative value. Your Holy Harlot can come from anywhere it is convenient for her so to do, from your campaign’s point of view.

Jean-Claude, the character(s)’ old, dear friend from childhood, has shown up in Paris(or wherever), sick and looking for help to save his soul. He fears the very Hounds of Hell will hound him wholly to Hell should he perish without ridding the world of the vile curse which has claimed him.

His story, which should make absolutely no sense and come in a jumbled order it will take the characters great effort to sift through and reorganize, is simply this. In Hagnicourt, where Jean-Claude still tends the fields, works hard, and goes to Church 4 or 5 times per week, a great darkness has beset the people. The local priest, an aged and boring fellow who served several other communities besides Hagnicourt, was caught with a Harlot on the Altar and rather than confess his sins he simply died. In an effort to cover up the shock and shame of it all, the locals held a lovely funeral for the man, and all saw him interred in a field by the side of the road, far from the church yard. The harlot slipped away in the confusion and was conveniently forgotten.

To the great surprise of the workers in the field the next day, the Priest rose up out of his grave and went in search of his hot little harlot, cackling like a horny school-boy and wasting no time getting his bony butt into bed.

To their greater surprise, the harlot was plying her trade in the local tavern rather than having run off to do so elsewhere, and the priest shoved his way to the front of the line, much to her obvious delight. Her cries of pleasure shook the inn, and after the whole debacle was over, she announced the truth, “Any man that partakes of her pleasures more than 100 times, shall be blessed among men, and shall not die.”

The queue formed immediately.

The priest, satisfied wandered off in the confusion, but was later found trying to feast on a small child. The farmhands who discovered him, hacked him apart, and buried him in the ditch beside the highway, covering the grave with big stones for good measure.

The next day, up popped the priest and made his way back into town to hijack the harlot from the handful of humpers holding court in the inn. He was made to wait his turn. When he proved to be unwilling to accept such a fate, he was cut down and stuffed in the pig sty.

The next morning he was back in line.

Eventually of course, killing and burying the priest got to be a habit, as did visiting the harlot and soon, all available funds for such pursuits were used up, long before the requisite number of rides had been purchased. Men, as men will, resorted to killing each other and stealing each others loot, widowing wives, and orphaning children in the process. Those who were strong enough, and the apparently immortal priest, of course, kept on with their pleasures, provided for by pilfered plunder, until just a few of them were left, and all available coin was clutched in sweaty palms, and an ever dwindling line.

Fields lay fallow, women wept, and children went hungry as the whole town turned itself inside out for a touch of mystery. However, as is true all over, the party could not last forever. The Church showed up in force with a lot of harsh language and acrimony, and the army.

It was at this point that Jean-Claude fled.

He thought he had escaped free and clear but now it seems he is growing weaker and weaker and feels as though he is growing older and older. “My friend(s)” he says, all sad and weak, and out of breath, “I only got to 99 before I had to flee… and now I think she is calling me back to her, to reclaim the virile vitality with which she had begun to instill me. I fear that unless she dies, or I lay with her one more time, I shall die. Help me!”

What is really going on

Unbelievably, most of Jean-Claude’s story is true, and he is guiltier of glossing over his crimes to obtain his entertainment funds than he is of fabricating details. If any of the characters are connected at all to the Church, they will perhaps hear rumours of a purge of a small community in the Champagne-Ardenne region.

More mundane reports come from travelers and merchants from the North, who tell strange tales of a monster which hunts the highways in a priest’s robe, seeking blood and coin from his victims.

Is there no end to the vitality of the priest? Can no one rid the community of his interference?

What of the Harlot…? Is her tale true? Is she a pawn, or is she a cunning succubus sent to manipulate and destroy our harmony here on Earth?

Will the characters care, or will they order another bottle of wine and encourage Jean-Claude not to tell such silly tales…?

That is, as they say, up to you~!

 Enjoy~