Vampires and Voltaire: Blood Moon opening
Blood Moon: A Night to Remember
The Blood Moon brings Count Maxius’s castle back to Lore, and with it an invitation to an extraordinary party. Bubble can hardly contain her excitement: Kimberly, Voltaire, and everyone she has wanted to meet will be there. The Hero joins the celebration. Maxius welcomes his guests with charm, apologizing for the lonely centuries he has spent away and urging everyone to enjoy the night. Then the lights go out, and the guests vanish one by one.
The Hero wakes in a dark abyss. Safiria appears there, but as the ghost of the Vampire Queen. She explains that the Blood Moon has opened a way to Gehenna, the part of the Underworld where vampire spirits go after death, allowing her a temporary return. Maxius normally lives there too, though he is not dead. Long ago he challenged Safiria for the crown, lost, and was banished by the vampires of Darkovia.
Safiria suspects that the Count intends to reverse that banishment. His guests have been placed in separate rooms, each trap tailored to its occupant, and his winning manners conceal a side of him she knows too well. The Hero must first escape the darkness, fighting through it toward the distant light. Beyond it waits Constantin, the Lycan king, driven into a frenzy. Defeating him gives the group a chance to learn what has happened to him.
Constantin hears a high, discordant noise that neither the Hero nor Safiria can hear. Safiria suspects music distorted into a frequency that torments canine ears. The Hero finds and destroys three speakers. Constantin regains control of himself, though his old quarrel with Safiria quickly resurfaces. The Hero insists that escaping matters more, and the Lycan king punches a hole through the wall. On the other side, a familiar guitar reveals the next prisoner.
Blood Moon: One Trap Feeds Another
Kimberly is trapped on a stage beneath a platform of spikes. If she stops playing, it will fall. Her concert has also supplied the distorted music that kept Constantin in a rage, making one guest’s captivity serve another’s. The Hero moves two stone pillars into position to block the falling platform, giving her a way to stop without being crushed.
Maxius has prepared a second danger. With the spikes blocked, creepy creatures flood the room to attack the would-be escapees. The Hero fights them, then follows their source through a hole uncovered where a pillar had stood. The search leads to Voltaire, with a strange creature attached to his head. The monsters have been coming from his imagination.
Voltaire describes the creature as a brain-sucker that gives real form to whatever he thinks about. The room itself is part of it, and its nervous system has disguised itself among those creations. He wants it removed, regardless of how impressive its work might be. The Hero clears away more of the franken-beasts and searches the room for something that fights back.
The hidden brain stem proves to be the black unicorn. Defeating it disables the parasite’s hold on Voltaire; the rescue calls for attacking that system, rather than harming the captive musician. The reunited group makes for the end of the hall. For a moment, the exit is in sight—then it slams shut, and their host appears to demand an explanation for their departure.
Blood Moon: The Guest of Honor
Maxius calls them ungrateful. Each guest, he explains, had a role: Voltaire’s imagination kept Kimberly occupied with monsters, her music kept Constantin maddened, and Constantin waited to stop the Hero if the first prison failed. The Hero is the essential sacrifice. Their life energy would allow Maxius to reverse his exile and return to Lore permanently. Escaping the individual traps has interrupted that design, but the Count has not abandoned it.
One guest still praises his hospitality. Bubble appears entranced and talks happily about the candy Maxius gave her—and the candy he gave her cat, also named Bubble. The cat has changed into something dangerous. Safiria tells the Hero to knock the poor creature out, while trying not to hurt her badly. The fight is against Bubble’s transformed cat, not an instruction to kill either the cat or the girl holding her.
After the battle, Bubble holds her cat and asks what happened. The Hero says Maxius had her under a spell, guessing that the candy carried it. Her enthusiasm for the party turns to anger at the Count, and she wants to leave. Her return to awareness brings another friend out of his influence, without proving exactly how the enchantment worked.
Maxius answers that they cannot leave yet. The Blood Moon has not fully risen; when it does, he intends to finish his ritual. The Hero promises to stop him. This time the Count opens the exit himself and tells them he will be waiting. The party’s prisons have been broken, but the confrontation with its host is still ahead. Neither his permanent return nor his defeat has happened at the close of this first escape through the castle.