"The remaining spirits..." Mrs. Hawkran looks down at the floor for a while before meeting the party's eyes again. "...truth be told, I do not know where, exactly, all of them are."
"The Lopper and Marauder were consigned to the dungeons of Harrowstone... as was He Who Writes In Blood." She shakes her head. "The Piper and the Charlatan, however, were kept close to the guards' quarters--for reasons I cannot remember."
"Shatter them, break their forms, and I will keep them from rising anew."
"Once the four are dispatched for good, what will become of you, Mistress Hawkran?"
Her expression turns mournful. "Then I... I shall wait for my Lyvar in Pharasma's court. As long as I am here--"
She suddenly winces and doubles over in pain. "--AAAAGH!"
Her ghostly form becomes horrendously burned once again, and the smell of blood and burning flesh fills the room. When the smell fades, and she looks up at you, she seems... partially gone, somehow.
"He Who Writes In Blood... even now, he seeks to complete my name. He cannot walk beyond the walls of this place... how is he succeeding?"
"The dungeons!" says Khardan. "Quickly, which way to the dungeons?"
"Yes lets get to the dungeons. We'll worry about Charlatan later. How do we get to the dungeons? We haven't found a door that leads there yet." Imperia is ready to head out as soon as a direction is indicated.
"We must keep searching. There might be another way to the dungeons near the collapsed stairway, perhaps we should look there first." The dhampir heads to the door and keeps musing about the phantasmal criminals. "We only have three haunt siphons left, but four ghosts to deal with. I agree with Imperia: let's leave Father Charlatan last."
As Vesorianna cried out in pain and spoke of The Splatter Man, Jayla looked to her companions who were quick to react and want to search out the dungeons.
She followed the others in their search of Harrowstone's dungeons, keeping her eyes and ears open for any notable sights or sounds.
"The dungeons... there must be another way to reach them..." The ghostly woman rests an ethereal hand on the rubble of the room. "...He Who Writes in Blood... how is he writing beyond this prison?..."
--------
Imperia moves out of the room and heads to the east.
Jayla, having noted the direction Imperia took (heading east), began to carefully follow the librarian in hopes of finding the dungeons.
The party carefully moves eastward, passing into the prison's foyer. Streaks of mould stain the walls of this foyer, and the floor below is a thick, grey carpet of fungal growth. Sturdy wooden doors beckon from every wall.
Imperia listens at the northeastern door. Then she examines it for traps.
Imperia doesn't find any traps on the northeastern door, but after she stands up, the doors the party entered through suddenly slam shut.
A strange warmth enters the room, and the oaken doors begin to warp and twist and merge with their frames, with leering, badly-burnt faces beginning to emerge from them. The smell of burning wood and smoke begins to fill the room...
"More tormented souls. The guards, this time?", Bramwell wonders, looking at the faces emerging from the doors. He covers his hand with a piece of cloth and turns the doorknob to the eastern room.
"We must keep moving. We cannot stop with evey lament in Harrowstone. There's too much madness."
The doors are being held shut by some sort of force.
Khardan tries to wedge them open.
"The haunt is holding the door closed. An application of Holy Water should take care of it. Khardan I believe you had a vial or two, correct?"
Khardan's attempt at forcing the door open ends in failure.
Damn these troublesome haunts, she thought to herself. She nodded upon Imperia's discernment of the situation.
Jayla had used her only flask of holy water earlier in the day and so she looked to Khardan as well.
She whispered to the Half-orc, "I have no holy water left, I'm afraid."
Bramwell rolls up one sleeve and rests the palm of his hand against the door. "Let me try something," he says, closing his eyes in concentration. The dhampir invokes a surge of positive energy and releases it against the door, his face contorting in pain as the force flows through his body.
The door smokes for a second, and the burning smell abruptly ceases. The room's temperature drops to its former level, and the ghostly faces in the doors fade in the blink of an eye.
After the haunt vanishes, Bramwell tries to open the door once again.
This time, the door opens with no resistance.
Bramwell steps inside and studies the room.
Imperia follows Bramwell into the room sword at the ready.
The door opens without any resistance this time.
The room beyond holds several rows of wooden benches, all spotted with mould and sagging with neglect. They face a stage walled off from the rest of the room by a wall of iron bars. This room appears to have been an auditorium of some sort.
A set of double doors sits across from the doors the party entered from, and another door lies beyond the iron bars.
Oddly, the room seems to turn very cold as the party enters...
Imperia shivers as she enters the room. "Do you think there's another ghost?"
However, if you move through the area it's in quickly, it shouldn't do any lasting harm...
"Let's get moving. I think this is another haunt, and if we move out of it's area. No lasting harm will come to us." Imperia moves to the iron bars and examines them.
The iron bars appear to be very secure--it's likely that, considering they divide the podium from the rows of benches, they were in place to prevent prisoners from escaping or attacking those attending whatever function this auditorium served.
She whispered to the Half-orc, "I have no holy water left, I'm afraid."
Khardan nods. He's...concerned... too. He pats the holy shield of Arqueros that hangs from his neck and whispers "We are not here by our will alone. Faith will see us through the places where strength will not."
Louder, he says to Imperia, "Do we know they're not related to one of the prisoners we're seeking?"
Bramwell shakes his head. "I do not, Khardan. More likely, it relates to the guards; I presume our inmates are stuck in the underground, from what Vesorianna said. In any case, I advise us to heed Imperia's advice and move on. We must not spend energy with this if we mustn't..." The dhampir walks across the room and tries to open the double doors.
The double doors open easily.
The northeast wall of this room has partially fallen, revealing the dark, murky waters of the pond outside. Mouldering training dummies and other similar equipment hint that this room may have once been a training area for the guards. In the northeast part of the room, the floor around a dark, jagged hole is surrounded by black scorch marks. Several skulls lie scattered in ashes around the hole.
"That hole doesn't look very safe, and those marks look ominous. I wonder what's down there. Does anyone have any ideas?" Imperia studies the room, but doesn't notice anything.
"Hmm. I don't see anything special in here", Bramwell mumbles in response to Imperia, "Unless the hole is the way down we are looking for." The dhampir walks slowly around the room, looking at it more carefully, studying the skulls, the pond, the walls. "At least this room does not seem to be haunted. We don't have to rush, then." He goes on calmly perusing the area.
Khardan, as ever, remains on guard, covering his companions while they search.
As Bramwell investigates the room, the smell of burning flesh and bone suddenly fills the air. Three skulls in the ashes twitch and vibrate before suddenly rising into the air, flames engulfing their blackened bones.
They turn on the party, their eyes lit with a hellish orange glow!
Still debilitated and faced with this new undead menace, Bramwell steps back and starts summoning a creature to fight in his stead.
Imperia takes a deep breath, and steps up swinging at the closest scull. "I like dead things, but this is getting ridiculous."
Khardan drops his spear and pulls his warhammer from his belt as he advances on the flaming skulls. "What kind of power could unleash all these undead? There is more at work here than just ghosts."
Imperia's mace connects with a skull and spins it around in the air, chipping off some bone.
Jayla reaches out and touches Imperia's back, channeling a protective ward onto her.
The skulls swarm Imperia and try to bite her!
One of them completely misses her, and the other two bounce off the protective ward Jayla conjured.
Khardan steps up and shatters one into splinters with his hammer.
"Thank you Jayla." Imperia swings again.
Imperia smashes the broken skull to pieces.
As Bramwell finishes his spell, a summoned eagle appears right in front of the remaining enemy, flapping its wings and and lashing out with beak and talons. The dhampir also advances to attack the hovering, flaming skull, both his hands firmly tightened around the swinging club.
----
Bramwell's eagle smashes the flaming skull with its talon.
Bramwell turns to the summoned eagle and offers his shoulder for the bird to perch on. "Thank you", he hisses, longing for the majestic creature's affection. His words and gestures, however, are insufficient to overcome the allure of death and decay that follows the damned nobleman wherever he goes. The cursed aura that animals seem to notice better than any other living being startles the eagle, as would the threat of a horrible predator. Bramwell watches the raptor desperately flying in circles above their heads and, with a sigh and a snap of his fingers, sends it away to the plane whence it came from. The eagle disappears immediately.
With a disgruntled expression, the dhampir goes back to inspecting the room in silence.
While running his bony fingers over the stonework on the southeast corner of the room, Bramwell feels a subtle crevasse. He leans forward and takes a deep breath through his nose, sniffing the nearly imperceptible stench of abandonment that seeps in through the fissure. "There's a passage here," he proclaims. "Hopefully, a way down to the lower level." Bramwell moves in to open the passageway, but suddenly remembers the many unexpected threats that plague Harrowstone and decides to make one final examination, looking for any hidden dangers.
Bramwell's senses don't find anything amiss with the door.
The door slides open easily, and a layer of dust swirls up around him as it opens. The stink of stale air hangs in the room for a moment before an errant gust of wind from the outside blows it away. Beyond the door are what appear to be five items...
- A bloodstained handaxe, its haft as long as a man's forearm;
- A collection of silvered holy symbols, wound together with a length of chain;
- A mouldy spellbook;
- An expertly-crafted smithing hammer;
- A tarnished silver flute.
Bramwell's eyes widen at the sight of such an improbable finding. "This is... no stairway,", he mumbles, stating the obvious. He squints and bends forward, his nose always touching the eerie panoply. "Hmm. I take it, my friends, that we have just found the Lopper's axe, along with Father Charlatan's heretic symbols, the Mosswater Marauder's hammer, and, perhaps, a book of names belonging to the Splatter Man?" He picks up the silver flute. "And, of course, the Piper of Illmarsh's own flute. These ought to help us get rid of the ghosts, I imagine." Bramwell closes his eyes and mutters an incantation that lights up his glare with a red, unnatural glow.