Azrin casts Resistance on everyone before they open any more doors.
The first area Azrin explores is the Eastern Cellblock . The skeletons in this area are not animate, but there is nothing else of interest.
The open area is the guard outpost. It was considered a cushy position (much less depressing than the basement level) and the guards would often wager shifts in the hopes of staying up here as often as possible.
Azrin detects a weak magical signature here, and tracks it to a potion. He easily identifies it as a potion of Cure Light Wounds.
The final room is a spacious cell. Though spacious, it doesn't appear any more comfortable than the others, besides the obvious comfort afforded by being able to move around more.
In the corner of the room lies a skeleton, dressed in tattered robes, and weighed down by chains, each chain bearing the Holy Symbol of a different god (Pharasma among them).
A small journal lies in the opposite corner. There appears to be no magic here.
"Huh. Wonder who this guy was, because it looks like he pissed off every deity I know of..."
Shoukichi walks over to the journal and takes a look at the cover and back before flipping through the pages.
Unfortunately, the journal, while somehow escaping most of the heat from the fire (being singed around the edges, but not much else) is covered in soot from cover to cover. It is impossible to make out any of the words, besides the word "Father" on the spine.
"Ah, this must be Grimburrow's!"
"...Grimburrow's still alive, you big oaf. This guy almost definitely isn't." Steef looks at Azrin. "Right? He's not getting up or anything, right?"
"I don't know. How can we be sure that he is really dead?"
Ezekiel shrugs and smashes the bones.
READIED ACTION TO ATTACK IT WHEN IT POPS OUT
Nothing happens, except the bones are reduced to a fine powder.
Steef shrugs and goes out in the hall. "Alright boys, where next?"
"Downstairs?"
Azrin opens the final door and finds, horror of horrors...
A BATHROOM.
Besides the extraordinary amount of filth in here (not all of it from the soot and ash...), there is nothing of interest.
The group then troops down the stairs.
You find yourselves in a short hallway, with doors on all sides.
"Ha! Those stirges didn't stand a chance! Smash, chomp, SMASH! Killed all three!"
Turning to Steef, Ezekiel says "That bow of yours is a bit, how do you say, inferior to real man's weapon, huh?" Ezekiel seems to be in a rather good mood.
"What's that about a bow you say? A bow is a martial item first utilized by the highest, most experienced royalty. It takes immense strength alone to draw the bow, and thousand times more intellect and delicacy to shoot it properly. While you go romping around with a crude club, Steef is practicing an art that has been perfected with skill.
"Do you guys bicker like this a lot?" Azrin quietly asks Steef.
"Yeah...it's a form of stress relief for you young people, I guess. Both of you, shaddup. I like my bow, and it's a good walkin' stick too. Don't care about any 'delicacy' or anything like that."
"Dunno about you, but perfection seems to not kill very many stirges."
Azrin Detect Magics all the doors. If the south double doors don't have any magic, he opens them.
Azrin opens the doors.
You have found the foyer, the first room after the front door of Harrowstone.
There are doors in the foyer as well, south leading outside of Harrowstone, and east and west leading to different parts of the first floor.
Other than that, the room is fairly nondescript, the mold covering most of the walls and floor (thickly, in this case, almost like a carpet) being the most interesting feature.
Azrin opens the front door just for the fun of it, then the double doors on the east side of the foyer.
Azrin opens the front door, and begins moving toward the east door.
But before he can open it, ghostly heads begin screaming from the walls, their badly burnt faces contorted in agony. Abruptly, tehy disappear just as quickly as they appeared.
And all of the doors slam shut!
"Lady preserve..." Azrin gasps.
He tries to open the north door.
Azrin is unable to force the door open.
"Zeke, can you get this door open?" he calls through the door.
"Never mind, I just remembered they should open on their own in about a minute."
And after a minute, they do so.
Azrin opens and Detects Magic through a few more doors.
Opening the first door reveals several rows of wooden benches, all spotted with mold and sagging with neglect, facing a stage walled off from the rest of the room by a wall of iron bars.
The door you open goes onto the stage, and the third door you were planning to pull open goes into the main auditorium area.
The second door opens onto a hallway, full of offices. Papers are scattered everywhere in here and most of the adjacent offices, and look to be in surprisingly good shape. With a bit of work the papers could be gathered up and organized, granting a +4 bonus on research checks to research Harrowstone or the its prisoners.
"What do you guys think, want to check out these papers?"
Door 4 opens onto a larger chamber. There are three rooms that you can see without walking through the door.
"What do you guys think, want to check out these papers?"
"I suppose so. There must be some useful information in this mess."
Ezekiel stands watch while the people who can read more than a line a minute sort through the papers.
It takes 4 hours, but you get the papers in working order.
"Well that was fun! Wasn't that fun, everybody?"
Azrin continues opening doors.
So this is the thrilling life of an adventurer, huh?
The first is a stark room that contains a low stone bench against the north wall and a ruined desk to the west that sits under three narrow, barred windows. An old brass brazier lies on its side to the
south, surrounded by several rusty branding irons.
Shoukichi follows with his bow ready to fire.
Steef looks in the records to see if he can find anything about the priest, and why he was in such a relatively cushy cell.
Steef learns nothing new about the prisoners.
Azrin scans the room and turns to leave, Shoukichi not far behind.
Suddenly, Shoukichi smells something, the unmistakeable stench of burning flesh. He whips around to warn Azrin that something's about to happen, but it's too late.
Two of the branding irons swiftly float up from the cold brazier and burst into flames, streaking towards you!
The branding iron launched at Shoukichi misses the nimble Bard, but the unaware priest catches the full force of one of them.
It hits him in the upper shoulder, branding a mark into him. It appears t be a prison code, and Azrin has now been marked as prisoner "C193874".
The brands, fallen to the ground, abruptly disappear and reappear back in the brazier. They do not stir again.
This chamber is in a shambles—old wooden benches lie in ruins along the walls, while rusty chains and bits of rotten rope lie scattered on the floor
As they enter, Azrin hears a faint sobbing, and the rattle of chains. After a moment, the sensations intensify, becoming very real to Azrin. A sense of hopelessness, helplessness, and dread overcomes him, and he feels the sensation of heavy manacles about his wrists...
And just as suddenly as these feelings appear, so do they pass.
As soon as they do, the rattling returns. This time, definitely not as a hallucination. A set of manacle chains rise up from the floor nearby, and start floating towards Azrin and Shoukichi!
The manacles float up right next to Azrin.
Azrin channels positive energy at the manacles, healing a bit of his wounds from the branding.
The energy washes over the manacles without touching them.