"I dunno, like, this organization doesn't seem huge on consent gong notwithstanding, vampires can do the whole enslaving their spawn thing, I wouldn't be so thrilled about murdering 'em even if we don't have a laundry list of alternatives?"

Jojo considers this for a long while.

"I think," he says eventually, "that we may have different - priors, about undead. Possibly the laws of nature are different on your planet. I studied the Tyrran Archive in Neverwinter when I was a novice, and there was much philosophy on the nature of undeath, but while the scholars disagreed on some points, they all agreed that the undead are fundamentally evil. Not in the way that mortals are evil, changeably and largely due to accidents of society, but - opposed to all that is good, like fiends. Heroes who become undead turn to villains. There are exceptions that prove the rule - positive energy ghosts and baelnorns, which are not composed of negative energy and can therefore run the gamut of the alignment chart - but we aren't dealing with them."

"You wanna know how fiends work, on my planet?"

"If it helps me understand where you're coming from, tell me what you will."

"You go to an evil afterlife and don't get eaten long enough. My dad's been dead a long while. Starting to grow little horns last I checked. If you meet my dad one day and you have to kill him I get that. You don't have to smile about it."

"Then I will not smile," Jojo says. "I'm sorry."

"Thanks." Pause. "For whatever it's worth I don't particularly feel this way about the mindless kind, pretty sure whoever used to live at that address is somewhere else."

"That's good to know," he says.

He sifts through the ashes in the sarcophagus. and comes up with a key. They leave the coffin behind, open the door to the room they're in, and walk out into a vast chamber.

In the middle of the chamber is a massive onyx statue of an emaciated-looking dragon. Around the statue are six kneeling vampires. As one, they look up and hiss at the interlopers, standing to attack.

Deekin Hastes everyone and starts humming.

Belmarniss cast a Resilient Reservoir before they opened the door, and starts Scorching vampires with Rays while she assesses them as targets for hostile levitation or the need to be ready with a counterspell.

None of them seem to be casters at first glance. One of them was quicker to stand and is heading for Jojo with aggressive intent, it being that he's standing in the doorway and they can't get to the others without getting through him.

The vampire tries to pick Jojo up and reposition him more favorably, but Jojo declines to be moved, and punches him in the crotch for his trouble. While the vampire is doubled over in pain, Jojo pummels him until he evaporates. Another two vampires have gotten up in that time, and they're coming closer.

Garrus fills one of them with arrows, but she doesn't go down; he swears under his breath. She and her partner make it to Jojo and start jabbing at him. Most of their attacks miss, but one connects; there's a prickle of negative energy over everyone's skin.

The last three vampires are hanging back by the statue, throwing shuriken at Deekin and Belmarniss. A couple slice into Deekin, but he ignores them and keeps singing.

She absorbs shuriken damage into her reservoir and turns it into scorchier rays and magicer missiles.

Jojo continues doorstopping and beating the hells out of the vampire monks, who, as they evaporate, return to sarcophagi set into little shelves on the wall. Eventually the party runs out of monks, and Jojo takes the arrow-stake out of his pocket and goes along the wall, staking each in turn.

This time, after each kill he bows his head for a moment and his lips move silently.

Once that's done, he returns to the group. "There are two exits to this room, both locked - should we check them now, and see which one the key fits, or does anyone need healing first?"

"I'm not more than scratched. And I have some Celestial Healings prepped."

"All right."

Jojo goes to try the key in the northern door, then stops. "No keyhole, just a socket for some kind of orb."

He tries the key in the eastern door, and it opens. He enters the room cautiously, then waves the others in. In the center of the room is a raised platform on top of which lies a celestial of some stripe, contained in a field of pulsating red light and hooked up to a diabolical-looking machine by a blood-filled tube.

"Are you here to free me?" she asks hoarsely.

"Jojo, you wanna double check she's legit real quick?"

Jojo squints. "I'm picking up an aura of evil from the device and from the field around her, but not from her. She could have Nondetection, though... Deekin, can you dispel any magic on her?"

"Dispel Magic," Deekin incants cooperatively.

Jojo looks again. "Still no aura. That's about as certain as we can be."

"Yup okay we're here to free you, do you know how this all comes off?" Belmarniss asks, inspecting the machine.

The machine has a big red button, and a slot where a lever could be inserted.

"The button tells the machine to drain my blood," the celestial says, "and the High Priest puts a lever in that slot when they want to turn the machine off and clean me. I think it has to be a specific lever, though, it has tines in odd places."