Iesha enjoys her breakfast, and asks Kendra if her servant can pack some lunch for them as well. She reviews and prays for her spells, and checks her equipment, making sure she has ammo and holy water. If necessary, she'll pick up two more flasks of holy water.
Talia, thankful for the sleep and food, enjoys the repast before stepping outside and talking to a bird for a while. Stepping back into the house, she dutifully packs the food Kendra left out, and mutters a wry, "Picnic at the prison..." before smiling and turning to her companions, ready to face the new day.
The muddy walk is uneventful. The sun climbs higher behind the clouds as the party trudges back toward the prison.
The broken gates, the looming windows, all remains as left, quiet, still, waiting.
Eloise eats while studying a book bound in simple, brown leather. After the meal, she spends what time is left until the group's departure doing sword exercizes behind the house.
"Fill me in on what we should expect at the prison," she says as the group walks up to the prison.
Peredur grimaces and pulls back the collar of his shirt to reveal an "H" burn scar in his neck. "That were an old branding iron mark. Dead cold when we set foot in th' room, glowing a few seconds after, then coming through th' air with no hand on it. Right to my neck, quick as lightning. One time a door closed, with Talia cut off from th' rest of us, an' haunts coming through th' walls. Near th' storeroom's a haunt that'll suck th' warmth right out of you...I weren't fully over its touch 'fore this morning. If you chance to walk 'round th' prison from outside, 'ware th' water to the east. Set foot in it and call forth burning skeletons.
"Th' place is brimful of rage given form, but from what Vesorianna said I misdoubt any but her or th' five have what you'd call personality. Think you we should start with th' records again, ferret out th' last of th' five 'fore we come to meet its ghost?"
"Sounds wise to me," Eloise says. "As the Professor once told me, it's wisest to know the foe before you try to stab it with something."
Morning finds Sour Heck gnawing on breakfast of a cold roasted potato. He's retrieved a pack from the inn, plus an iron-shod longspear he uses like a walking staff, and is reflecting on the town monument.
"Can't see a drop of blood on it. That's dedication, that is. This town's blood scrubber knows his trade. Wish we'd had someone like that in my town growing up...old Spenk just wasn't up for his work anymore. Of course, we had more work than any one blood scrubber could handle. Tried my hand at it one summer as Spenk's apprentice. Couldn't stand the hours."
He falls in with the party.
"Sure, let's look over the records. Nothing like a few hours of tedium to warm up for some terrified screaming."
[dice=History]1d20+6
"What's that you found, Sour Heck?"
Iesha moves to his side to review the pages he's holding, reading over his shoulder.
"Ooo," Talia says, looking at some of the papers herself.
Account of the crimes of one Ispin Onyxcudgel "the Mosswater Marauder:
A doting husband and highly respected and well-liked artisan; turned murderer when he discovered his wife with another man. The guilt and shame drove him mad, and he aparently attempted to rebuild his wife's skull after he had shattered it with his craftsman's hammer.
Twenty innocents died in his mad attempt to find a matching piece for the missing skull fragment. Finally captured when he attempted to kill the daughter of a noble from Varno.
”Oh, Crazy Ispin! Well, of course they didn’t call him the Mosswater Marauder in Mosswater. The children there call him the Black Hammer.”
”It’s a perfectly normal story of true love’s ups and downs. Ispin Onyxcudgel was a stonecarver, a master of his craft, and far too busy and important to find himself a bride. So his family arranged a marriage with a young beauty from a distant town, and sealed the nuptuals with the traditional bag of gold to help her parents overcome their grief at having their child move so far away.”
”The young girl was sad and lonely in her new home, which was closer to the quarries than it was to the hamlet of Mosswater. was not blind to her sorrows, and Onyxcudgel threw himself into long hours of labor in his workshop to make stone treasures that would cheer her young heart. Now, some might say that a lonely bride would appreciate having her husband close at hand more than a new hearthstone or a finely carved drainspout, but that misses the point of just how fiercely Ispin loved his dear wife.”
”Loved her so fiercely, in fact, that it nearly killed him to find her in bed with another man. The stories don’t say who that homewrecker was, but we can safely assume that he was a dashing, mature, adventuresome scholar, or perhaps a brawny ranger with an alluring accent. In any case, Onyxcudgel, heart breaking, tried to explain to his bride just how dear and irreplaceable she was to him by bashing her head in with a hammer. No doubt she saw the light, perhaps at the end of a great tunnel.”
”Afterwards, Onyxcudgel came to regret the great distance that now seperated him and his wife, and manfully admitted that he might be somewhat to blame for their alienation. So he took it upon himself to mend affairs between them, beginning with cementing together the scattered fragments of her once-lovely cranium. He reassembled the ivory shards with consummate skill, taking great pains to return every pearly tooth to its former polish, every splinter to its exact place.”
”Except one. One tiny bit of bone eluded him, no matter how many times he crawled in search through the wreckage of their marriage bed. How could he ever hope to win her heart again, if her head remained incomplete?”
”Ah, but years in his workshop had taught him that a mar in one stone can often be mended with a chip from another. The resourceful stonemason made the dark roads near Mosswater his new quarry, ambushing travellers who had particularly attractive, feminine heads and bringing these fresh materials home to try on for size.”
”No doubt he would have succeeded given enough time, but his twentieth quarrying claimed the life of a wealthy man’s daughter, who paid an inquisitor to discover her fate. I guess at that point he was brought to Harrowstone for execution, though the people of Mosswater likely would have taken care of that, once stories of the twenty-one skulls in his workshop spread to grieving parents and husbands.”
”The children of Mosswater say that on a dark night, you can still hear the Black Hammer’s tap-tap, metal on stone, echoing off the quarry walls. But those children must have keen imaginations, or even keener hearing, because by my reckoning we’ll find the Mosswater Marauder’s new workshop somewhere below our feet.”
”Shall we go see?”
"My, Mr Heck," says Talia, grinning. "You are loquacious. But yes, I expect we'll get to this fiend in time. Before then, what does everyone think? Should we continue to search this floor before going down, or just dive into the murk, as it were?"
Peredur shakes his head. "Going down would be passing hard, look you, for th' deadfall still blocks our path. There are more than a few places on th' main floor we've not yet set eyes on--best we get to those first, to find th' elevator."
"Lead on then. I'll be right behind you."
Heck drums his fingers on a tabletop, looking expectantly at Peredur to lead the way.
"Well then, Peredur, where to now? I guess finshing out this area of the prison would be best. Then, maybe trace that flute sound we heard from upstairs?"
She pauses. "Oh, yes, sorry. Before we left here the last time, we heard what sounded like a flute playing from the upper level."
POST REMOVED
"It's thinking I am to start as Sour Heck said, from th' wide hallway south of Vesorianna's rest. We can disturb her again after we've looked a few other places. Though we can avoid th' privy." The ranger heads back to the entry way, then north through the double doors, and immediately west.
Nothing bothers the party on the short trip. there are two doors close, to the left a solid looking iron door stands closed. To the right, a broken down door through wihch the party can glimpse thick gossamer webs.
Farther down, straight ahead is another door, another is down the hallway to the left and a door farther down to the right leads back to the hallway with the staircases.
"Foolish, this may be, but th' open door seems th' place to begin." Sword in hand, he peers past the broken-down door, looking and listening intently.
Eloise slowly draws her sword as the group approaches the broken-down door, and also trains her senses on any potential dangers.
Talia walks nervously behind the group, reading for another haunt to lash out at them.
stealth
party perception
Iesha
Sour Heck
Talia
init
Iesha
Peredur
Sour Heck
Talia
Eloise
spiders
This time, the threat is surprisingly solid, though no less vicious. Three spiders, roughly the size of small dogs, burst forth from behind the remains of the wooden door. One of them lunges at Peredur, wicked fangs sinking into his forearm, the other two move to assail Sour Heck and Iesha.
-
Spiders:
The spiders each attack their selected targets. The one clinging to Peredur's arm releases momentarily, only to once again sink it's fangs in, thankfully this time it can barely break the skin.
-
Sour Heck's new friend, skitters across the floor and bites at his ankles, but the bard manages to step away.
Iesha's assailant dashes around Talia and hurls itself at Iesha, fangs sinking in to her leg.
-
Iesha, startled by this all too mortal threat, curses softly as she smashes down at it with her battle aspergillum, wasteing a charge of holy water.
Sour Heck waves his arms in exaggerated terror and scampers around the hallway. "Look out! Their venom causes death, and impotence!"
The absurdity of his behavior makes it hard to remember to be frightened.
Eloise utters a vile curse, and sweeps her blade at the spider following Sour Heck.
"Nice little warm-up for the day's researches, isn't it?" the Chelishwoman says, her expression somewhere between a frown and a smile.
The spider attacking Heck is sliced neatly in two, now a twitching pile of insect parts and viscera.
Two of the beasts remain.
Round 1:
The ranger's return stroke goes wide as the spider skitters back.
"Ugh," Talia says, "I hate spiders!" Stepping aside, she readies her claws in case one of the critters comes near her to attack her.
"Smashing!" Eloise quips. "You'll have no trouble with us reducing them to dogfood, then." She winks at Talia as she looks for another target.
The Chelishwoman aims a stab at the spider bedevilling Iesha. "Dodge!" she cautions the priestess just as she makes her attack, cold steel piercing chitin and pulpy flesh.
Eloise wounds one of the spiders rather severely, but the mindless thing still loves, and lunges at her, but she swats it away.
The other spider, still untouched, moves to bite Peredur again, but he keeps it at bay.
Round 2:
The ranger's second attack is rather more effective than the first, cleaving into the chitinous creature.
Round 2:
"Not at all," Talia replies, moving behind Eloise and touching her lightly on the shoulder, the words of a spell on her lips.