Of Ghouls

Season 01 - Episode 05.

Reports of bodies stolen from graveyards leads Alaric in pursuit of a ghoul.

 

Credits:

• Alaric Von Beller - George Ledoux

 

Website: http://DeadhausSonata.com

Discord: https://discord.gg/XjUXa4v

Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/DeadhausGame

Created by Apocalypse Studios

 

 

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Fourth of Attor, in the year 218 after Deadhaus
Today, I write of a great victory in
my crusade against Deadhaus. After
months of fruitless searching, after
losing men under my command, narrowly
escaping with my life and risking

(00:21):
execution if my research was ever
discovered, I have at last found what I
was looking for. Word was sent from a
small township in the Eastern Reaches
that a grave had been plundered, the
remains taken. I set out at once. While
common thieves may sometimes take from
the dead, they typically leave the body

(00:42):
behind. Upon reaching the cemetery, I
found the gravesite
unearthed and the coffin shredded.
By the claw marks on what remained of the
dead and the strength required to
accomplish such a task. I knew I was
dealing with a ghoul.
It is known that ghouls are one to feed

(01:03):
upon corpses and often ransack cemeteries
for this very purpose.
As luck would have it, they ever know
other towns for many miles. And being so
far within Thacian territory, these
graves would be the ghoul's best source
of sustenance. It is here
that I would lay my trap.

(01:24):
Knowing that a ghoul would stay hidden
away from the village by day, I used that
time to prepare for its arrival the
following night. At first, I set a series
of rudimentary bear traps along every
entrance to the cemetery.
Night came and passed, yet the following
morning none of the traps were sprung and

(01:46):
a second grave was plundered.
Did it notice my traps? Did it somehow
recognize what they were and purposely
avoid them? All accounts I've read on
ghoul behavior suggest that they are
purely instinctual creatures, driven only
by a voracious hunger for flesh. Surely

(02:06):
someone would have noticed
if they were intelligent.
Perhaps it was not entering by the same
path a human would. Perhaps it was
climbing over the walls.
The next day, I repositioned my traps
directly above each
grave in the cemetery.
Anything trying to dig there would
inevitably be snared, but just to be

(02:28):
absolutely sure, I covered
them all with a layer of leaves.
Night fell, dawn broke, and not a single
trap was sprung, but another grave was
emptied. The concealed trap was found
some feet away, as if it had been
purposely tossed aside. But surely not.

(02:49):
On the following night, I
waited in the cemetery myself.
The mayor offered to lend me his guards,
but he was clearly terrified, and I
suspected that the ghoul wouldn't show if
a crowd was present.
I hid myself as best I could in shadows
at the far corner of the cemetery. I
waited all night, but it never showed.

(03:11):
Was this a coincidence?
Do ghouls not need to feed every night?
Maybe that it wasn't hungry that time. My
next attempt was to string twine near the
ground through various pathways. Each
line would run out of the cemetery and
some distance away. There it would be
hung with little bells.

(03:34):
If something snagged a string with
sufficient force, the distant bells would
ring. This time, I took the mayor on his
offer to provide me with guards, and
instructed them to wait for
me for the sound of the bells.
That night, many hours
passed in very silence, listening.

(03:54):
When the bells finally rang, they crept
into the cemetery. We saw it under the
light of the moon, an emaciated, hunkered
creature with thin wisps of hair. There
it should have had eyes, lobes of folded
flesh had overgrown.

(04:14):
But somehow, it spotted
us nearly immediately.
Hissing in inhuman outrage before it
scrambled for an exit, one of the damned
guards got caught in one of the damned
traps trying to chase it.
I devised a much more thorough strategy

(04:36):
of approach into the cemetery for the
following night. But it didn't matter.
Bells didn't ring this time, and yet the
following day, another grave was emptied.
There was no doubt this time. That thing
was far more clever than I was led to
believe. Many days and nights came and
went. Many traps and plans were formed,

(04:58):
and many graves were emptied. If anyone
was present, the ghoul would not appear.
Numbers and force were counterproductive.
I realized that more drastic measures
would need to be taken, and approached
the mayor with a new plan. All of the
bodies in the cemetery were to be exhumed
and burned, all except one. Of course,

(05:20):
the simple man was horrified by this.
"Had I not come to prevent the bodies
from being taken?" he asked. Having very
little patience left from being
consistently outsmarted by something that
goes about on all fours, I
simply invoked imperial decree.
The bodies were burned as per my plan.

(05:41):
The last one was left out in the open,
inside an iron cage that had been fitted
with a mechanism to
close once anything entered.
Three days passed, and three nights. Yet
the body remained untouched. The mayor
urged me to reconsider, like the
sniveling little coward that he was. But

(06:01):
their ingenuity may have failed me.
patience did not. I knew that time was on
my side. I knew that each day that
passed, as clever as the ghoul might be,
that body would look ever more
appetizing. On the fifth night, I was
awoken by a clanging and howling.

(06:23):
I could not help but smile. I came to the
cemetery to find my quarry, thrashing
within its cage, shrieking so that the
guards balked at a distance. But I was
not deterred. I approached
and looked upon the ghoul.
It did not seem to notice me, thrashing
about in its prison. I saw what appeared

(06:46):
to be markings, some kind of symbol
carved into the flesh of its face.
"Are your accommodations not your
liking?" I asked. The ghouls cried
slowly, as if it registered that I was
speaking to it. "We'll see if we can't
make you more comfortable at the

(07:08):
capital." Alaric von Beller, Grand
Inquisitor of the Thacean Empire.