Codex Venator - The Diaries of the Weaver - Session 01

We share with you, dear readers, the tale of our first session of Codex Venator, a shared campaign for the 5th edition of the world’s most famous roleplaying game. It consists of a series of linked adventures that share the same subplot and are played simultaneously by several play groups across Italy. We played with La Costola dei Barbari of Trieste.

I awoke suddenly, lying on a stone floor. My head was spinning; the air felt stale, cold and damp. The first thing I managed to focus on was an old barrel-vaulted stone ceiling. Then, weakly, I sat up and looked around. Beside me were other people — many other people — all rising to their feet, their gazes vacant and confused. The creak of the rusty hinges of a heavy wooden door abruptly caught our attention.

Into the room came a stout, middle-aged man in rather flashy clothes. He introduced himself as Onofrio Pancisvaldo, head of the Inquisition in Trieste and representative of the Dogma. In an authoritative voice and a blunt tone he explained that we had just been brought back to life by the Rimembranti — though none of us seemed to remember the circumstances of our death. A complication, an error in the Ritual of Remembrance, the churchman claimed. Without mincing words, he ordered us to head for the district of Barcola, where there had been reports of disappearances. First a young couple, then a vagrant, and lastly one of his guards. As the minutes passed, the fog gripping my mind began to lift, and little by little the memories resurfaced. We are Noble Hunters, called to defend the city of Trieste from the dangers lurking beyond the walls. My name is Morgana Padovini, and I am a Noble Huntress of the Padovini Family. We are the keepers of the Tabular Registers, appointed to that duty by virtue of our incorruptibility and our family’s total devotion to the law. Our bodies are forged by daily training; agility and balance are our creed. Agile and balanced in body as in thought. No lie or inconsistency escapes us; we are as much at ease on the rooftops as in crowded squares.

Looking around, I began to recognise faces. There were members of all the families of Trieste’s nobility: the Baseggio, paranoid and puffed-up, in league with the Dogma; the Cigotti, curious travellers and explorers — rather too curious; the Giuliani, cordial and honourable, but simple souls.

Once out of the room we were asked to recite the Hunters’ oath anew; then we were hastily divided into hunting parties and asked to decide who would carry the hunt-leader’s pistol. I gladly left that burden to a Giuliani: one observes others better when one is not the centre of attention.

Before setting out on the hunt we had time to prepare, stopping by the armoury to take whatever we might need. I would have loved a hot bath; instead I only managed to tidy myself up, redo my braid and change clothes. Fortunately, a servant of our Family had brought one of my new leather armours. The weapons on offer were decent but plain — hardly fit for a true noble, barely adequate to their purpose. I found an old heavy crossbow, sturdy though slightly unbalanced. I strapped it to my back with a bandolier, filling its pouches with bolts. I also took a dagger and a hand crossbow, for emergencies and close-quarters fights. I equipped myself with chalk, a couple of ropes, metal marbles, parchment and ink, torches, bags of chalk dust, little bells and many other objects useful for hunting — and for investigating. I packed everything carefully into a light, comfortable backpack, suited to acrobatics and climbing. Then I rejoined the other members of my team and we boarded a carriage bound for the district. The carriage rolled down a battered dirt road snaking between dry-stone walls, heavy wooden boards sealing the windows and doors of the houses along it. Roofs of stone tiles, old and unstable — not suited to the rooftop runs we Padovini are used to. Built far from the Iron Chain that protects the City’s gulf, the district spreads along the slope between the sea and the plateau. The old buildings are eaten by salt; the dark, dense pine forest separates the settlement from the shore, where the foaming sea breaks against the rocks. The sun was already sinking lazily toward the horizon when we stepped down from the carriage. I thought the situation must be very urgent indeed, if they had chosen to begin the hunt at so late an hour. We stood beside a church, from which I could hear an indistinct litany. That was the first place to investigate — where the vagrant’s disappearance had been reported. We entered the building, a solid construction with a small portico crowned by a large skylight, its stained glass depicting Saint Bartholomew, the church’s patron, with a stern, austere gaze. Despite the urgency, the Baseggio, true to form, insisted on waiting for the liturgy to end. When at last we managed to meet the parish priest — who introduced himself as Don Angelo — he hurriedly gave us little more than vague information about the missing vagrant, then suggested we speak to the caretaker and handyman, a man named Joseph. This Joseph — a slave branded with the symbol of the Dogma on the nape of his neck — proved reticent, but after the appropriate pressure he decided to give us some useful information. The vagrant was a halfling who had arrived two nights earlier asking for shelter, but Don Angelo had turned him away, since he had nothing to ‘donate’ to the Dogma in exchange for a roof. The next day he had vanished, leaving behind his tattered cloak and some mouldy biscuits. He led us to the spot where the man had bedded down and — after I spotted small traces of blood tracing a path toward the pine grove — added that the vagrant was already sick and wounded when he arrived. Finding nothing further of use, we moved on to the second disappearance. The parish priest’s shameful conduct, however, will be noted and reported to the proper authorities. Crossing some of the district’s narrow streets on foot, we quickly reached ‘The Empress’s Terrace’, a renowned inn with a wide second-floor terrace overlooking the gulf. As soon as we entered we were greeted by an innkeeper, admirably well groomed for a commoner. He introduced himself as Elia. In a clumsy attempt to curry favour, he immediately tried to offer us drinks. He did not appreciate my rebuke — during a Hunt, indulging in the pleasures of alcohol can bring dire consequences. The moment we asked about the missing youngsters he openly showed disgust and displeasure. Questioned on the matter, he reported that two young people had disappeared three days earlier — in his opinion, to crown their love story far from Trieste. It was plain he was not telling everything: he had an annoying twitch in his eye and kept glancing at the servants. After a highly effective close-range talking-to from a brawny Cigotti, the innkeeper spontaneously decided to explain the rest. Cinzia — that is the name of the missing halfling — had cut her hand deeply while on duty in the kitchen three nights before, ruining an entire pot of stew. Elia had therefore thrown Cinzia and her fiancé Gualtiero, the other missing halfling, out, sending them home to keep them from causing more damage or wasting the other servants’ time. He had neither seen nor heard from them since. Other servants of the inn confirmed this version, and we discovered nothing useful around the building. The last place left to check was the militia outpost from which a guard had disappeared. Set in the outermost part of Barcola, atop a small rise, the great stone tower covered in creepers held a good position for watching the roads and surroundings. The perimeter torches were all lit, as city guard regulations require. As we approached the building, two guards recognised us and immediately went to fetch the officer on duty. A massive man with a military haircut introduced himself as ‘Lieutenant Jure’. He was still chewing, a boar’s leg in his hand — fresh game, as he told us, offering to share it. Politely invited to compose himself and report, he told us that the missing guard, a human named Carlo, had gone during the previous night shift to wash at the well behind the outpost, and had not been seen since.

When I asked for further details — why was he washing in the middle of the night? — the lieutenant added that they had returned from a hunting trip in which they had caught the boar now roasting, and everyone was dirty with earth and the animal’s blood. Inspecting the site of the disappearance, a small garden used as a training area, the bold hunter Cigotti insisted at length on being lowered into the well to check. There he fortuitously recovered a medallion, recognised as Carlo’s, but no trace of the body nor any particular sign that might reconstruct what had happened. By now it was clear to us that some monster must lie behind the disappearances — or more than one, given the frequency of the attacks — and that what drew them was blood. Supposing the creatures had a preference for halflings, an intrepid servant of that folk belonging to the Cigotti family volunteered to serve as bait. Some might report that he was not exactly a volunteer, but these are only unfounded insinuations that stain the honour of such a gesture. Since it is a Noble’s duty to safeguard the lives of servants — even those of lesser races — I suggested an idea. Using the ropes we carried, some counterweights and the halfling’s slight weight, we built a rudimentary mechanism whereby, cutting a rope at the right moment, the halfling would be hoisted high up, out of the monsters’ presumed reach.

Our hunt-leader conferred with the others and everyone approved the plan. Our group would serve as bait for the creatures, while the others waited for the right moment for a pincer movement, cutting off the monsters’ escape routes.

The plan worked: the halfling’s blood drew creatures out of the sea — abominations with human features, bipedal but hunched in their gait, as though unused to moving on dry land. Webbed hands, gills at the sides of the neck and skin almost scaly in places betrayed a marine — or rather amphibian — nature. Abominations, surely the spawn of some malignant force that had tried to ape the human form. Their number was great, but not great enough to overwhelm skilled Hunters. From my elevated position I had the advantage: I had perched on the branches of a great pine. I was able to follow the course of the battle and the heroic deeds of the Hunters, doing my part by covering those in difficulty with precise bolts from my heavy crossbow.

I will not record every detail of the fight — they are of little use to this diary of mine — but in a short time all the creatures were slaughtered. Once first aid had been given to the wounded Hunters, several stressed the need to find these beings’ lair, to make sure no others remained. I and a few other Hunters — the best trackers among us — managed to follow the creatures’ trail back to the partially concealed entrance of a cave system near the coast. Luckily for us, a peculiar violet fungus grew in the cramped caves, giving off a bluish luminescence intense enough to let us see without torches. After a short stretch through narrow, damp tunnels, we all emerged into an enormous cavern, more than a hundred metres across, filled with fetid air thick with the stench of carrion. Brackish water reached our ankles. We had no time to prepare before more of the horrid creatures burst from side tunnels and from underwater shafts hidden at the bottom of the cavern. Evidently they had been alerted by the din made by the clumsier among us Hunters, and they ambushed us — a clear sign of intellect and coordination.

The fight was long and confused, as many were worn out from the previous clash. The closed, dark space, the crowding and the slippery floor favoured the creatures. Having no room to use the heavy crossbow, I opted for the hand crossbow, exploiting my natural agility to always keep other Hunters between me and the horrid abominations.

When the last of the creatures had finally expired, we could examine the cavern more closely, finding a heap of remains — skeletons with gnawed, stripped bones on which scraps of flesh, tendon and clothing could still be seen. Judging by the number of bones, and their state, there must have been other victims beyond the reported missing — evidently never reported at all.

Several Hunters decided to take trophies from this battle, cutting claws and teeth from the aberrations. They also gathered necklaces of shells — horrid trinkets covered in strange tribal symbols, worn by the largest specimens. I took none of that: my trophy was the chance to watch so many Hunters at work. I took careful note of what they said and did. The hunt concluded and back in the city, I met with the other members of my Family. We cross-checked the information gathered and recorded everything of use in the Loom. We also updated the Book of Grudges — if only for minor slights. But the Padovini forget no offence.

I have decided to keep this private diary to note down what happens during the hunts. The amnesia caused by the failed Remembrance seems suspicious, since no one appears to know the circumstances of the deaths of so many Hunters. One cannot trust the hypocrisy of the Dogma, as we have been shown once again. The Tabular Registers, moreover, seem to have been tampered with — but that will require future investigation. Now that I have completed my report, I may go and rest. Many Hunts await us, and I am called to watch not only over the enemies beyond the walls, but over those hiding within them.

I am the Weaver, artisan of the Loom. I scan the threads among the lies and voices of the City and weave new ones, steering events from the shadows until all is revealed and order restored.

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