"Bah. Let's look at the other door."
west?
"Sure. Kick it in."
str 20 + 3=23.
I don't kick it, just kinda manhandle it gingerly.
Hudak gently rips the door off its rusted hinges. Although once a pantry, this room has become the filthy, reeking lair of what must be hundreds, if not thousands of rats. Swaths of fur cling to everything and mounds of rat droppings cling to the floor. Numerous cracks in the walls doubtlessly allow the rats that live here acces to a wide network of tiny tunnels beyond the basement walls. The rats here scamper but offer no belligerance.
(No other exits.)
"Yuck. Last door, then."
str chek r 13+3=16
The door is warped but otherwise opens fairly easily. A short corridor heads east before endind at another door. This one is iron, streaked with rust but otherwise formidable.
STR CHECK R 15+3=18 ON THE IRON DOOR
Yes, I think this is the type of door that Larken might like to check for traps and pick locks. 18 and 8 unmodified if you want rolls.
"Yeah....could be secret stuff. Tell me when he's done and I'll kick the door in."
Larken finds no traps but the lock fails to fall for his seduction technique. Hudak's experimental kick also fails to do the trick.
Any other ideas? If not, back up stairs.
There's two doors I don't think we went to; the door east in the room we entered through the french windows, and a door south in the hallway south of that room. I say we backtrack to that east door in the first room, unless I'm confused and we've been through that door.
"Yeah....could be secret stuff. Tell me when he's done and I'll kick the door in."
Pappy always been sayin' "If'n thar be a door made by humans an' de door be tuff, be lookin' to de walls aboot de door. Humans be missin' dat ye can be choppin' through a bit o' plaster and lathe!" What say ye, Shoanti? Trough de wall?
I'll try around the edge of the door where (I assume--eff you, Benny Hill) the knob hooks to the wall with my handy dandy #1 anti-zombie weapon: crowbar.
r18+3(str)=21.
The frame looks pretty tough too, though the plaster crumbles a bit with age as it is attacked.
r5. "Somebody made this. It's not a natural cave. Too many ripe angels."
"Somebody.....with....secrets, by Korm. Or I'm an Aztlani."
"With a battering ram, this shouldn't be too hard. Did anyone see something that looked useful on the way in?"
"How about Dravite? No? Let's go look. maybe chop down a tree outside if it comes to that."
"Maybe those bunks back there--there's maybe a big chunk of wood we could use?"
Hudak'll go back there, see if there's a couple sideboards that could be tied together and used as a battering ram.
"If that doesn't work, we can probably salvage a couple of beams from the burnt-out outhouse. I really want this thing opened."
Heading back, the party notice (again) the big table in the middle of the kitchen. After carrying it back to the corridor, and with a bit of time and effort the door finally buckles and gives way. However, it is clear that whoever built it seriously didn't want anyone getting in uninvited.
Once inside, this room looks to have once been some sort of arcane workshop, although little remains but broken glassware, shattered jars of pottery that contain dust and mould, and several rusty instruments and tools. A row of soggy books sits on the northern end of a workbench along the western wall. At the other end of the workbench, what looks like three iron birdcages sit, each containing a dead rat. To the east, two stained-glass windows loom. The northern window depicts a thin man with gaunt features drinking a foul-looking brew of green fluid, while the southern one shows the same man but in an advanced state of decay, as if he had been dead for several weeks. His arms raised and head thrown back in triumph, his rotting body turns to smoke and spirals into a seven-sided box.
There are two exits from the room - the one through which the party entered and a door in the south wall.
Vethran gently touches a book on a shelf, stares blankly in horror for little more than a second, and then doubles with a cry of pain.
"What's wrong? What did that secret stuff do?!?"
Elisile looks about the room. “Notice the windows,” she says. “The seven sided box again. This imagery seems to suggest that Vethran was right in assuming it to be a liche’s phylactery.”
She turns to confer with Vethran on the arcane meaning of the features in the room , but her words are interrupted by his cry of pain.
“What is it?” she asks, concerned.
Elisile looks about the room. “Notice the windows,” she says. “The seven sided box again. This imagery seems to suggest that Vethran was right in assuming it to be a liche’s phylactery.”
She turns to confer with Vethran on the arcane meaning of the features in the room , but her words are interrupted by his cry of pain.
“What is it?” she asks, concerned.
(Fairly recently dead, though they are beginning to bloat.)
Vethran takes a moment to regain his composure. "He... Vorel... the man who must've lived here. He became a lich even though his wife and children still lived. He abandoned them. His wife was overcome with rage when she found out..."
He rests a hand on his heart, seeming to calm down from a fit of rage himself. "I am alright... for now. This place is possessed of potent spiritual residue."
The name 'Vorel' that Vethran mentioned stirs up some conversation until finally, after a bit of deliberation, Vethran has a revelation. "Vorel Foxglove! Aldern Foxglove's grandfather! It has to be the same person, he's the one who built this mansion! So... if Aldern's grandfather is a lich... then perhaps Aldern is not as he appears."
"So....he's a cool guy, and totally not a weirdo?"
"That might be stretching it too far. But it might not be particularly surprising that he turned out a strange one." Alwyn turns to the other door that leads out of the workshop. "Something tells me this is the door we were searching for. Can someone search it for traps? It probably leads somewhere the builder really didn't want anyone else to go."
Larken finds no traps and the door is unlocked. In the room beyond, piles of broken stone, dirt, and a few ruined pickaxes line its edges. The floor in the middle of the room has been torn up to reveal an ancient set of stone spiral stairs, obviously of much older construction than the surrounding basement, winding deep into the bedrock below. A foul stink, like that of rotten meat, wafts up on a cold breeze from the darkness.
Aubrey:
aubrey:
Hudak starts yelling, and doubles over in pain, thrashing about (I guess).
"Whoa. That was unpleasa... HEY! What's happening to you?!"
1d20 3=5 1st will save, 1d20 3=15 2nd will save.
AcCKK! I be hit! Gods it hurts! Damnable ghosties!! Let's be burnin' dis place ta de ground and git it over wit!
Illes covers his mouth and nose with one hand when the door opens- "Oh Hudak... no!"