Pirknok heads for the southern door.
This library features two chairs, one of which lies on its side, before a stone fireplace. A scarf, its reds and golds contrasting with the drab palette of the room, is draped over the side of the fallen chair. A book sits facedown on the floor between the chairs. A stone bookend, carved to look like a praying angel with butterfly wings, lies on its side in the fireplace itself.
Ventus enters and looks around, getting closer to the chair until he can see what was printed on the book's spine.
Ventus steps into the room and peers over at the book, An abridged history of Varisia.
The moment Ventus approaches the book the room suddenly shakes violently. The scarf suddenly jerks to life and flies across the room.
It wraps around Pirknok's neck!
Pirknok feels something trying to influence his thoughts as the scarf strangles him but the party is able to tear the hostile garment free before any real harm is done.
As soon as it's removed from the dwarf, the scarf becomes an inert scrap of clothing once again.
"Ow!" exclaims the poor dwarf, slashing the scarf to bits with his sword. "That thing tried ta kill me!"
Jessamy's eyes widen as the murderous cloth is torn to shreds. She looks around, trying to see if anything -- besides the supernatural -- could have been responsible.
Jessamy spots no hidden wires or pulley systems.
"You alright Pirknok?" Ventus asked, looking around the room for anything else.
Undead 30
"Don't!" Ysme calls out abortively as Pirknok tears the scarf to shreds. Sighing, she contemplates their present situation.
Ysme recognizes what the party just experienced as a haunt - a kind of living trap powered by undeath.
Eli pauses to examine the images on the windows while the others search the room.
I have a feeling about this... better take no chances.
He crouches down and unslings his pack. Taking various mixtures and powders out of a box, he combines them and then drinks the resulting liquid.
The answer eludes him, and with a sense of disappointment he follows the others, reluctantly, while continuing to glance back at the windows, convinced there's something he's missing... something important...
The scarf almost distracts him from his unease.
The dwarf shudders, his face grim. "Ah'm tired uv evrybuddy tryin' ta kill us."
With that he urges the group to continue. "Don't wanna stay in here... never know wut else might come alive an' try ta murdur us."
"It's not everybody Pirknok. It's not even everything...
This house. The house itself is a kind of undead...
Professor Lorrimor talked of such things when he was lecturing at Pitax...
Let me see if this helps us at all." As once more a pulse of holy light flares out from her.
"So, how do we stop these traps? I mean, I'm OK with normal traps, but I don't think I can do anything about undead ones," Jessamy asks just as Ysme channels.
She looks around to see if anything had changed.
"It looked like it had stopped. Maybe you should save whatever you did in case we need it later?"
"We find thuh persun who dun all this an' we kill 'er."
As Ysme’s burst of cleansing light fills the room she feels the house reel in pain and for a moment the general unease within the area is lessened.
Unfortunately, the paladin also knows that such countermeasures are temporary at best. The only way to truly silence a haunt is to destroy whatever corruption has caused it.
"No. This is far greater than one ghoul. We need to learn what happened here. At the very least we must let people in Sandpoint know the true danger should we fall within."
The dwarf pauses in his walk to the next door to look back at Ysme, a puzzled look on his face. "An' how are we gunna do that if we do die in here?"
"We don't, we can't. Which is why we need to leave. We are allowing our fear & our outrage compel us now." Turning to Adventus. " person can't have done this, not in this short a time. This is years of corruption & pain & hatred my friend. One more night & day will not be more than a drop in a bucket, but one more night & day may mean the difference between our success and five more victims..."
"Yer sayin' we shud just walk out, an' let that wuhmin — whoever she is — kill more people tuhnight while we jus' sit out there doin' nothin? That don't seem right."
Pirknok looks around at the others to gauge their responses.
"When have I ever advocated doing nothing, Pirknok?" Ysme replies, her brows lowering. "I'm saying right now we're spooked & our inclination is to charge in, frothing & raging, because that will make us feel better than being afraid we are retreating because we don't know what we're facing & it has frightened us."
"We're not retreating because we are afraid. If we are retreating, it is because we know, now, that there are factors of which we were previously unaware. Factors which make it very likely we will fail...
and in failing, leave Sandpoint undefended."
"We won't be doing nothing, we will be learning more about what happened here so we can defeat it." Ysme's tone flattens in implacability at the end.
"An you'd let her jus' keep killin' people while you go an' let her do it. Ah'm not spooked nor scared, an' ah say we keep goin'. We need ta end this buhfore she kin kill enny more people."
"Which we will accomplish when dead, how, exactly? You only insist on continuing the fight when you are scared Pirknok. Or did you think I hadn't noticed?"
The dwarf's face turns hard and cold as he stares back at Ysme. He seems about to respond, but turns to the others instead. "Wuddoo thuh rest uv you say?"
I might have pushed him far...
Or not.
Ysme's growing expression of concern at Pirknok's rising ire, eases somewhat as he accepts that others might have an opinion to air.
"Well, I suppose Ysme's got some points. If we all die here, don't we leave Sandpoint vulnerable. And it's not like one more day is likely to matter too much..."
"On the other hand, I think I still hear that woman crying. If that's the one we're looking for ... maybe we can find her or at least explore the whole house and then come back and deal with the haunting?"
Jessamy looks dubious about the whole situation.
"Whatever puts an end to this," Ventus said quietly.
"Care is needed here, I know when I'm out of my depth and the dead are often beyond blades and fervor. I want this 'lady' to pay but I can't do that dead."
Eli looks from Ysme to Pirknok and back again. "I'm not in favour of leaving now. Let's look around some more, and if we do come across something we can't handle, we can leave."
What about those windows? You don't know everything, do you?
Pirknok nods in agreement with Eli's words, and heads for the next door. Sixteen years old, she said... thinks she has the whole world figured out. Let's just hope I can keep her alive long enough to do that.
This oak-paneled chamber must have once been breathtaking, but is a sad sight now the floorboards are warped with moisture and the paneling scratched and spotted with mold. A grand piano, its surface splotchy and keys warped, leans tiredly in the southeast corner.
Pirknok takes a brief look around the room, then shrugs and moves to the door back to the entryway, and on to check the doors in the entry hallway.
Pirknok finds nothing of value in the piano room (besides maybe the piano).
Doubling back to the long hallway, the party discovers stairs! One set leads up a floor and the other descends into the basement.
Going up the stairs the party is haunted by echoing footsteps but no hostile neck-wear attacks... this time.
The second floor opens into a long perpendicular hallway.
Pirknok shrugs and heads south.
This bedroom features a child-sized bed, a chair next to a toy box, and a looming stone fireplace big enough for a child to get lost in.
Jessamy, still creeped out by all the undead, notices nothing of interest.
Eli eyes the room nervously, but doesn't find anything except a sense of unease.
21 for undead.
"Hold on, there is a kid in here," Ventus said, walking into the room.
"Hey! Can you hear me kid? We're here to help."
Jessamy looks around.
"He knows the room is empty, doesn't he? Is this the Pesh talking?" she quietly asks her companions.
"I'm sorry," Ventus paused for a moment, struck by the rather blindsiding comment
"Pesh? Really? How many Pesh addicts have you met, kid? Nevermind, don't answer that. You're a whole can of worms I'd rather not deal with right now." With that, he resumed searching for the errant child.
As Ventus pokes around the room's contents in search of the missing child, his eyes suddenly go wide in terror and he falls to his knees.
The images fade from view and you realize, though that scene never happened to you, it did happen - to another child. The trauma has a lasting effect on your mind.
A moment later, the ranger snaps back to his senses gasping for breath.
Pirknok hurries over to his friend's side. "Ventus? Ventus, you okay? Wut happind?"
Oh, yeah, definitely pesh.
Jessamy waits -- very nervously -- to see if anything else happens.
"Something in here. I think, I think I'll be fine. The sooner we get out of here the better." He was pale and sweating now.
"Gods damned place is haunted."