The group arrives back at the Harrowstone, pushing past the "stuck" doors as they again briefly bar their way.
There are a few as yet unexplored areas on the first floor.
Azrin starts 'sploring
Azrin opens a door.
This spacious room smells of mildew and rot. A long desk and chair sit to the south, while to the northwest a narrow alcove contains a closed safe. Thick layers of dust cover everything in sight.
It appears to have been the Warden's office.
As soon as Azrin passes over the threshold he feels a weight lift from his shoulders. This is the only place in Harrowstone, indeed all of Ravengro at this time, which does not feel a bit of the oppressive taint the ghosts and Haunts are exerting.
On the far wall is a safe. It looks to be another that is beyond the abilities of Steef to open at present.
The door next to it is the guard's washroom. A door to a privy lies on the other end. There is nothing else of interest.
"Let's leave the safe alone for now. There may be a key somewhere else."
Azrin continues exploring on the west side of this floor.
Azrin opens a pair of double doors.
The northeast wall of this room has partially fallen, revealing the dark, murky waters of the pond outside. Moldering 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.
This appears to have been the place the fire first started, from what you know of the details.
The pit in the center of the room looks to be where the lift used to be. The pit doesn't look all that deep from the entrance of the room, and may serve as a potential passage to the lowest floor of the dungeon.
Azrin tentatively gets closer.
Azrin gets close enough to see down the pit. It looks like a reasonable drop of about 20 feet, very doable with some rope.
Also, he sees three skulls begin to move amongst teh rubble, catching fire and letting out an unearthly shriek as they fly towards the poor priest's face.
The three skulls are a mite slower than our nimble priest.
Ezekiel
Azrin
Steef
Skulls
Ezekiel smashes a skull easily under the weight of his hammer.
Steef draws his bow and shoots at another skull.
Steef's shot goes wide.
Azrin slashes one of the skulls with his dagger.
Azrin cracks the skull open with his dagger, and it falls lifelessly to the ground.
The remaining skull attacks Ezekiel.
Who smashes it with his hammer as it moves closer.
Azrin opens the door to the last unexplored room.
A huge stone furnace dominates this room, large enough for a child to climb inside. An ancient fire has burned away the entire east wall the room, providing a panoramic, if eerie, view of the lake beyond. That same lake has gradually expanded into the room, flooding its eastern half.
There appears to be some sort of object, covered in soot, inside the furnace, but you can't make out what from here.
Steef follows Azrin into the room.
Azrin gets closer with about 20% more tentativity than the last time he did this.
The group gets closer to the maw of the furnace.
Everybody but Ezekiel smells the growing scent of burning flesh. The soot falls off the object in the furnace, revealing a set of gleaming human bones.
The furnace awakens, contorting into a leering skull-like visage of steel bars.
Azrin channels positive energy at the furnace.
Old Embermaw is not amused.
It lashes out at Azrin with a tongue of flame.
Azrin is dropped to the ground, smoldering.
"Oh, sweet mother of..."
Steef grabs Azrin and tries to drag him out of there.
"Zeke, help me!"
Embermaw chuckles and roars his fury, building up fire for another attack on the only target still in range...
Ezekiel steps up and crushes the furnace.
Ezekiel's hammer bounces of the furnace with a resounding GOOOOOOOOONGGGGGG but doesn't appear to so much as smudge the haunted metal.
The furnace huffs and roars again, spitting out another gout of flame.
Ezekiel stops raging and jogs out of the room.
Battered and bruised, but thankfully with everyone still intact, the group has completed exploring the first floor. They have only located two of the 5 Haunts they need to destroy, and destroyed none, but their efforts have made their job easier, though at a cost.
Nowhere to go but down, now, into the depths of Harrowstone prison.
Ezekiel chugs all of the healing potions administers them to Azrin.
Once Azrin wakes up, he casts Cure Light Wounds on himself a few times.
"Could...could someone else be in front for a while?"
"Okay."
"Oh, in case you guys have forgotten, we did leave your friend Jules' body here. Should we take it back to the Temple?"
"I'm sure he's fine where he is now."
So. What do?
Ezekiel finds Grimburrow and tells him about the two haunts they have found.
"What would be the easiest way to destroy them?"
"I really wish I could help you in this matter, but Haunts are...interesting. Haunts are unique, or semi-unique occurrences. The only one I know of that commonly recurs is the Slamming Portal, which closes doors on its victims for little purpose other than to give a small fright, and to be an annoyance. Every Haunt has a specific way to destroy it. "
"While Channeled Energy works on all Haunts, it merely disperses it, and temporarily, the Haunt coming back within minutes, hours, days of its destruction. Thankfully, the more dangerous ones tend to take longer to re-form. But I digress. To permanently destroy a Haunt takes a convoluted and often unintuitive process. The simplest I know of is, again, the Slamming Portal, which can be destroyed by simply sprinkling holy water over the area it affects after it has been dispersed."
"Other Haunts are less simple. I heard of one a few years back that required lamb's blood to be used to mark a specific kind of ward around a hunk of rock that had been partially melted by fire. Then and only then was the Haunt truly DESTROYED."
"Thankfully, most Haunts have a fairly small area of influence, meaning that you can avoid them easily once you know where they are. I'd be surprised if that furnace you were talking about had an area of influence that stretched further than 5 feet in front of its maw. The room itself is probably perfectly safe by your account, that it only activated upon getting close."
Ezekiel sleeps during the day and keeps watch at the statue during the night.
Ezekiel turns on his heel without saying another word to Grimburrow, leaving the priest awkwardly staring after the Barbarian before eventually throwing up his hands in exasperation and going back inside the temple.
Both the remainder of the day and the night pass uneventfully.
Azrin uses his remaining spells and channels to heal everyone completely before going to bed.