It is unfortunately near impossible to tell if the burns originated from the inside or out based on what was left. The points where the fire's broke out was the most intensely burned, and the holes there now are much larger than would be needed for the skulls to have entered that way. There is no sign of splintered wood or anything either, that might point to a directional force being applied. This part of the mystery may not be solvable, at least for now.
The council members stare back at Delia after her out burst. Each of them look at a loss for what to say to a sixteen year old girl who has reproached them in such a manner in public. Vashian begins to turn red, and almost shakes with anger. Gharen simply puts a hand on Vashian's arm though and says, "Then you'd best be to it, shouldn't you, m'lady.
Ried interjects before Delia takes the man's head off, "Yes, let's be to it ... everyone ready to head back to the ruins?"
Finished with his cursory investigation, Alistair gathers up his belongings. "Yes indeed, would we perchance to find somewhere to recharge my waterskins and acquire a new cloak before we arrive it would be useful."
The group heads back to Kendra's house, in somewhat sullen silence. A brief stop at the general store sees Alistair reequiped with the cloak and waterskin he was seeking, and a stop at Jorfa's allows Vallachi to claim his new silver hammer. Once returned to Kendra's, everyone begins to suit up in their adventuring gear and armour, if they were not wearing it before, without any discussion or being asked; it seems to be universally understood that time is short, and you are needed at the prison. Before long, all are ready.
Ried coats 10 bolts in ghost salt.
"Anyone else want any?"
"Let's get this over with," Valachi grumbles. He gives Kendra a questioning look, to see if she will be joining us or staying behind.
Kendra stands with everyone else, and begins belting up her coat and buckling her boots like everyone else. It seems clear she intends to go...
As she is belting on her component pouch and organizing her scrolls Kendra says, "How are we intending to get down into the dungeon? The stairs were blocked, so we'll have to go down the hole in the exercise room. It is supposed to be 20ft or so down, and we'll need a reliable way of getting back up too. We should get a long ladder I think. That would be best. I'm not very good at climbing ropes, up or down. The general store has some that size for working on rooves. I prepared See Invisible today, so hopefully we won't have the same trouble we had with that Poltergeist again. Is there anything else we should do or get to prepare?"
"While I do not disagree with getting to the dungeon, I thought our next line of attack was the rest of the structure above ground, that is, the upper floor. Am I in error?"
"First, yes. But once completed, we'll need to be able to descend below as well. Best to go prepared. I know we aren't sure what is upstairs, and we could be there for days, but if not and we need to proceed to the dungeon today, I'd rather not be delayed by a lack of foresight."
The party makes their way back to harrowstone, stopping, by Kendra's insistence, at the Avanaki's general store, and picking up a 25 ft ladder. Two of the gentlemen are required to carry it, one at the front and another at the rear. Once reaching the prison, it is stowed safely somewhere it can be retrieved later.
Kendra askes, "Which way should we go up to the second floor? The main stairs were clear, but we could also try and get in through the door on the East Terrace, seeing as we have Ried now, who seems quite clever with locks... What do you think?"
The Dungeon:
The party regathers in the partially flooded training room in the east end of the prison building. The form a circle around the gaping hole that was once a shaft for a service lift to the lower level, but is now just an open pit. Pits of melted machinery hand from the ceiling indicating that there used to be more to this that what is seen now, but all that remains is this wreckage. A small stream of water cuts its way across the floor from the pond now encompassing the the east end of the building, and flooding most of this room. It meanders to the opening of the pit, and pours in slowly, creating a soft splatter of water somewhere on the stones 20 ft below in the darkness.
Delia considers their options, before adding her opinion. "I would rather we enter via the balcony, if possible. If we could avoid the first floor, and its darkened halls, I would feel a little more comfortable. Not to mention, we don't know if any of the maligned spirits have remanifested." She rubs her arms as the chill of the air takes her, but tries to maintain her strong outer demeanor.
The Dungeon
As they stand around the dark wet hole in the floor, Father looks to each of the others, and decides to act. Some times the best way to overcome reluctance is to just charge in head first and not think about it. He shrugs, grabs the ladder carted in, and begins to maneuver it to lower into the darkness below.
Upstairs
The group proceeds up the stairs to the East Balcony, which are still slick with moss and require a careful step to climb without falling. The balcony itself is still and quiet, and nothing seems to disturb it. The blood left from your previous battle here, for which only some of you were present, seems to have been washed away by the rain. The broken scythe lays where you left it, and the headsman's block sits quiet in ominous stillness.
Ried moves up to the heavy, reinforced door with purpose, readying his tools. He bends to the lock and begins working at turning the neglected tumblers.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dungeon:
The ladder sinks down into the darkness without any protest. No sound comes back from its trip down except for the scraping of the wood against the broken stone edge of the old elevator shaft. It hits ground at the expected spot, confirming that the ground down there is exactly 20 ft below.
Upstairs
Succeed if guidance exists
Ried will lead, drinking his mutagen on the way down.
Upstairs
After a few minutes of fiddling with the old and rusted lock, a solid click is heard as Ried manages to turn the robust old mechanism. The door pulls open to reveal a short hall, ending in a solid stone interior wall, with a closed interior door set into the wall on the North side.
Dungeon:
Ried descends the ladder after quickly quaffing a strange mixture, one only he knows the ingredients of. He sets one of the group's Ioun torch stones orbiting his head, and the circular light, while disorienting at first, reveals depths and features around him in a way a motionless light would not have done.
He steps off the ladder into thigh deep water, the trickling water falling from above splashing into the surface only a few feet away. The cavernous chamber around him may have once been an underground cellblock, but it has long since collapsed. The crumbled walls are thick with mold and stained with soot, and heaps of fallen stones and charred wooden beams line the area. Water drips and seeps along the walls, collecting in a dark, murky pool in the middle of the room. To the north, the twisted remains of a wood and iron lift lie in a heap in a shallow portion of the pool. A jagged hole in the roof yawns twenty feet above this ruin. To the west, a partially blocked opening seems to open up after several feet into a dark but stable tunnel.
Ried sees nothing moving, and nothing that appears immediately dangerous.
Ried moves forward to search the door for traps
Ried will wait for the others to come down, maybe moving about 5 feet to the southwest to look down the tunnel.
An extensive examination of the door reveals no traps. However, the old posts and lintel, as well as the door itself have rotted, more or less wedging the door in place. It will likely need to be forced. Luckily, while it looks strong, the rot should make it easier to pull out than it might once have been.
Wordlessly, Valachi tries to kick the door in.
...and fails.
*
Valachi will follow Ried, careful to mirror his footsteps.
Father waits until the men that tend to be in the front go in, but as soon as either Kendra or Delia make for the ladder, he steps in right before them. Primarily Kendra, as Delia knows that she doesn't exactly belong in the front.
After nursing his aching foot for a moment, Valachi notices the door pulls in and changes tactics. He grabs the latch firmly and pulls a few times.
Unable to get a good grip on the damp handle, Valachi pulls hard, only to have his hands slip off the handle time and again. He cannot even seem to even keep a grip on it let alone pull it open. Frustrated, he loops his arm through the handle, grabbing his own wrist for support, and then pulls against the wall, pushing off with his legs. There is at first a groan, and then a crack, and then the entire door pulls out of the frame, and right off the hinges! A bit of damp wood and moss rains down on Valachi and those near the door. The door atop him, Valachi can't help but feel a bit sheepish. He stands, shunting it to one side.
Ried peers in and steps through the door looking east and south.
"Huh, hear that music? That's not the wind whistling through the rafters ... something's here."
Valachi nods with a grunt, baring his claws.
"It could be the manifestation of the prisoner named the Piper of Illmarsh," Ember says as she readies her weapon. "Who carries the flute we found? Perhaps it can be used to lay this haunt to rest."
Father eyes the entryway suspiciously, "Careful, young ladies, the dead here seem to show up anywhere."
Delia places her light stone around Father, since he is usually more toward the front than she is, and uses him as her point of reference when there is combat.
As upstairs, she sets the stone to spinning around Father before he precedes them into the hole. She does her best to gather up her traveling clothes, trying to avoid the filthy water everywhere. They may be clothes that are expected to get dirty, but that doesn't mean she has to go splashing in puddles.
"Here's the flute ... should we give it a whirl now or wait until we encounter this spirit?"
"Perhaps when we fully encounter the haunt or spirit, the flute should be tried," Ember answers.
Delia considers the situation, then offers, "If the pipe could help us face the spirit, I could try to play it. I'm not trained in it, but I have a fair ear for music." She looks down, unnaturally sheepish, "Besides, once a fight starts, Father moves to fight, and I have requested aid from beyond, I have not much else to offer. At least this way I may add something more."
[ooc]With her Chr, untrained she still has a +4 to perform if it matters.
Ried passes the flute to Delia.
Upstairs:
At the sound of the music Agnar pulls out his greatsword as the other speak.
Having not seen the upstairs, Alistair spends his time observing the facility, its furnishings and architecture. He seems to hang toward the back of the formation.
When he hears the music the others speak of he pauses a moment and lets his eyes out of focus as he listens to the tune.
Ried steps out of the hall, into what appears to be the upper cell-block proper. He can now see all the way out to the west, to what appears to be a dinning area, and through a collapsed wall and out into the grounds where the collapsed west balcony was, and where the brackish dark pond that sits on the grounds now lays.
All is still as he steps out; there is little sign of fire damage up here, and it seems that this upper floor was mostly unaffected by it, except perhaps by the smoke. Signs of black soot still line the ceiling, though nothing appears to actually have been burned. Ried believes for a second he can see the halls clouded thick with black, impenetrable smoke. The cells he can see appear to have been occupied, and the bones of those who died there, locked within, can still be seen. His imagined vision stretches to include the sounds of coughing, and the screaming of the prisoners as they all choked to death, locked where they were within stone walls.
The eerie sound of the music continues; it is a funeral dirge, from Versex in the south of Ustalav, and played at somber occasions in remembrance, well after the wake is done.
After moments in the hall, a subtle rattling from the cell on his right grabs Reid's attention; a moment later he realizes that the sound is echoing from other cells as well. In mere moments it is no longer subtle, but a fierce, pounding torrent. The skeletons he can see begin to move, to stand, and eyeless skulls turn their gaze to look at Reid, their fleshless teeth trapped in an endless smile. As the closest one looks at him, two flames burst into life within the thing's empty eye sockets, and the rest of the bones begin to smoke as if burning.
Ried moves quickly to shut the cell door and then jump back into the party's midst.
Reid jumps forward to pull the door on the cell shut. It swings to the shut position with a groan. The lock clatters as it hits the latch, but Reid suddenly realizes that the lock is no longer functioning, and the door will not remain closed on its own.
Of course, the prisoner's cells would have been locked when the fire broke out, that's why they're dead! Any that is open now would be because of the rust and the doors falling apart.
Rattles of the hollow sound of fleshless bones echo down the hall as it seems the denizens of every cell on this block wakes, and begins to stir.
Ried curses, thinks through his inventory and then changes his tactic. Pulling out his wand of grease, he tells everyone "Stay back and wait for them to come, I'm throwing grease down on the ground, should make them easier to hit."
Ried retreats and will cover the area on the prison side of the door with grease.
Weary of the approaching undead, Alistair follows his normal tactic. He weaves a protective sign and the familiar translucent armor plates briefly appear around him, and he steadies him self for the approaching creatures.