Azrin opens a door.
Behind door number 1 is another guardroom, with another winch. This one presumably raises the portcullis at the end of the hallway.
The second room , is a more fleshed out guardroom.
This guardroom contains a single large table with two chairs astride it and a single sagging cot pushed up against the eastern wall. Several battered cabinets line the northern wall, with a few arrows and bits of chainmail lying scattered on the floor nearby, yet the most eerie sight are the three fractured skulls sitting on the table next to a heavy hammer. It looks as if someone has arranged the fragments of the skulls in some sort of pattern, as if an attempt had been made to construct a fourth skull from the broken fragments of the trio on the table. The leathery body of a long-dead dwarf, his wiry red hair and beard still strangely vibrant in death, lies slumped on the ground behind the table.
Ezekiel notices that there seems to be a secret door on the opposite side of the room.
Azrin opens the secret door.
As Azrin walks into the room, a ghostly form begins to rise up from the dwarf's corpse, sobbing and wielding a hammer, A ghostly skull floats in the air nearby, its cranium laced with cracks and missing a knife-shaped shard of bone along the side.
The skull is a dwarf woman's skull.
The ghostly figure swoops down on Azrin, swinging his hammer at him.
The hammer connects, giving Azrin a searing headache and sending a ghostly fragment of bone shooting from his head. It flies through the air and tries to fit itself to the missing piece of the floating ghostly skull, but to no avail. The piece of skull disappears into nothingness.
Immediately afterward, the pieces of skull on the table rise up, forming themselves into 3 complete skulls, held together by ghostly energy.
Ezekiel
Steef
Skull
Azrin
Skull Skull
Ezekiel crushes the skull.
The Mosswater Marauder's ghost staggers backwards a step and holds his head, obviously in pain.
"Right then-let's get the skulls!"
Steef follows his own advice.
Steef plugs the last two, severing the ghostly connections.
The Marauder screams loudly in pain and dashes at Steef.
He swings his ghostly hammer, knocking an enormous fragment of Steef's skull out, the pieces shattering and reconfiguring, each trying to fill the gap in the female dwarf's skull. But, as with Azrin, they all have some small imperfection and disappear after failing to fill the gap properly.
Azrin casts magic weapon on Ezekiel's earthbreaker.
Azrin channels at the Moron-rauder.
Azrin's holy energy suffuses the whole room, blinding everyone for a brief second.
When it fades, the Marauder is gone, as if he'd never been, only the corpses and shattered skulls remaining.
The stone secret door remains locked, and Steef finds that unlocking it is just barely beyond his reach. However, with Azrin's divine Guidance he is able to jimmy the lock open, just barely.
Inside, there are several exceptionally well made, but mundane items (6 suits of Masterwork Chainmail, 6 suits of Masterwork Studded Leather, 4 Masterwork Longswords, 2 Masterwork Heavy Crossbows, 4 Masterwork Heavy Maces, and 120 crossbow bolts).
In addition, there are several magical items (10 +1 Crossbow bolts, 4 potions of Cure Moderate Wounds, a wand, and a rope that detects as magic).
Azrin puts on one of the studded leather suits.
Azrin identifies the wand as a Wand of Hold Person (11 Charges) and the rope is a Rope of Climbing.
Ezekiel will take one suit of studded leather.
Azrin dispels more of the fog of not-seen-yet-ness.
Many of the iron doors along the walls within the cellblock hang open, revealing empty cells within.
You remember form your history lessons that Reaper's Hold is where prisoners scheduled for "advanced interrogation" were held.
The door at the end leads into another room.
Numerous grisly tools of torment decorate the room, from cages to hanging chains along the walls to a stretching rack, a large wooden tank, and a fire pit in the middle of the room. To the east stands a grim iron maiden, the lid closed and presenting a stern decoration of a tormented woman upon its face. The broken, twisted skeleton of a human dressed in a tattered guard’s uniform lies upon the stretching rack in the middle of the room; the body is surrounded by several discarded knives, branding irons, and pliers. A large, bloodstained wicker basket sits at the head of the rack.
Azrin gets this easily with a take 10:
The man's death was not an easy one. His bones have been broken, hands severed, hips and shoulders dislocated, jaw shattered, and numerous long, thin needles were driven into his eyes, ears, elbows, hips, and knees.
Azrin catches, out of the corner of his eye, one of the hands from the basket moving in on him like some horrid mockery of a spider.
What he does not see, however, is the SECOND one which suddenly lunges up, trying to grab him by the throat, but fails, merely scratching him with its elongated fingernails.
Steef notes the lid of the Iron Maiden slowly creaking open.
Ezekiel
Crawling Hand
Steef
Azrin
Crawling Hand
Ezekiel brings them hammer down on the closer hand thingy.
Ezekiel smashes the hand into hand-paste.
He also chomps a few fingers off the second one.
Nevertheless, that one lunges at Azrin again.
It latches around his neck and squeezes, crushing his wind pipe.
Steef narrows his eyes and aims carefully at the hand strangling Azrin, loosing a single shot at it.
Steef nails the hand, sending it flying off of Azrin's neck. Its fingers curl in toward its palm as it stops moving.
Azrin notes that there is another secret door along the eastern wall, behind the Iron Maiden.
As well, now that the danger is gone, you notice there are a few interesting things shoved unceremoniously into various orifices of the corpse on the table.
Of note is a metal disk, bearing the seal of Harrowstone prison. It appears to be Warden Hawkran's Badge of Office. It was used to break his jaw, and now rests inside the shattered remains of his face.
As well, there is a ring of keys shoved inside of his pelvis. They should serve to open any of the locked doors or safes in the prison.
"Ooh, a badge...I'll be taking that."
Steef pins it to his chest. "Lookee here, I'm in charge now! Heh heh heh."
"So where to next, boss?" Azrin chuckles as he opens the secret door.
The secret passage leads into a small, rough cut tunnel. It's damp, and fairly short. It seems to lead back over to where the area named "Nevermore".
"Seems like a trap. I'll go first."
Azrin rubs the bruises on his neck. "Fine by me."
Ezekiel marches forward, and almost stumbles over a creature in the tunnel. It is a gray, almost transparent cube, filling up most of the space in the tunnel.
Ezekiel smashes it with his hammer.
Ezekiel hits it like a truck.
The thing still seems far from dead, however.
"Wow. Doesn't even look like you made a dent in it...that doesn't happen often..."
Steef flurries.
Azrin takes out his crossbow and loads it.
Steef's arrows go a long way towards putting it in the grave, but it nevertheless comes on.
It reaches a squishy pseudopod out and touches Ezekiel on the face, deceptively slowly. It hits Ezekiel with the force of a shotgun blast to the head, and then quickly tries to engulf his entire head, though the Barbarian is able to rip out of it with relative ease. As he pulls out he notices his skin is lightly sizzling where the pseudopod touched him.
Ezekiel roars, and smashes the slimy thing.
Ezekiel finally manages to bring the creature down.
The rough passage does indeed lead back to the Nevermore. You can deduce that it was probably meant as a quick and private way to transport prisoners from the Nevermore to the Torture Chamber and back again.
Azrin cast Cure Light Wounds on Ezekiel.
Also on himself.
Several iron doors lin ethe walls of this partially ruined cell block. The doors themselves hang askew, revealing entirely empty cells. Partially burnt wooden support pillars to the north nevertheless hold up that wall, though to the south they've collapsed, allowing water to trickle in, the overflow filling up the oubliette in the middle of the floor, and forming a bigger puddle around it.
"Blood trickling from walls. Back up out of this room."
Cautiously, Ezekiel withdraws from the room.
"Well that's not a good sign. Let's head somewhere else."
You all beat a hasty retreat before anything worse happens.
By process of elimination, you've determined you need to go north, since that's the only place left to go.
The northern passage read "The Oubliette". A short hallway leads to another guardroom, this one's door standing slightly ajar.
Beyond, lies the Oubliette.
But, the most pressing matter is the figure waiting just inside the guardroom. You heard it shuffling as you approached the hall, and now it has reached the entrance. It steps out into full view, a skeleton lacking a head, wielding a longsword. As it leaves the room, it bursts into flames and makes known its intention to attack.
Gurtis Vortch
Ezekiel
Steef
Azrin
The skeleton charges at the nearest target, swinging its sword at Ezekiel in both hands. It slices into the Barbarian's shoulder with a meaty *THUNK*.
Azrin casts Cure Light Wounds on the skeleton.
The skeleton doesn't seem unduly harmed.
Azrin, on the other hand, burns himself.
Ezekiel unleashes an earthshaking roar, and takes advantage of the creature's proximity to pulverize it.
Ezekiel obliterates the skeleton.
Ezekiel murders the skeleton with great prejudice.