"I'm with you. Spugnoir, can you lay her inside and call for someone on the staff to tend her?"
Spugnoir picks up Kendra and carries her inside. I don't think she has any servants! He sets her on a couch and hurries to get some good strong brandy for her.
"Get her awake, we need.to get the grave site. Find a blanket or something and wrap his body. She don't need to see him again, no one does, especially like this."
"Do we have a healing potion, my arm is in bad?"
I am afraid I do not yet have any healing extracts. Umm, it would take me a few hours to brew one Spugnoir gets a blanket
Lucy drags the body into a different room and drapes her coat over it, a look of barely constrained fury on her face. "Cemeteries are consecrated ground. Sacred. Someone had to have dug him up, dragged him away, and animated him. In broad daylight. Something about this town stinks to the Boneyard and I will find out what."
If there is any chance that thing will become animated again, we can not leave it here with Miss Lorrimor alone. If you can not wake her, I will carry her as we move. It will draw far less questions when the sheriff tries to stop us then if we being the body.
He thinks for a minute then says; Going to the grave site makes sense, but we should talk to Father Grimburrow as well. If this does not convince him there is something going on, he is clearly not helping this town. Plus, having him with us when we head into the Restlands after dark will stop any questions others might have.
Brother Varsk is clearly anctious to stop talking and leave as soon as possible.
Spugnoir keeps trying to revive Kendra with a cool cloth and water. It is getting pretty late, no doubt we won't be able to see any evidence if some necromancer is indeed raising undead.
Miss Kendra opens the eyes again. Her eyes wandering hastily around. "Is it true? Was it my father?"
"Brother Grergof, I think going to Grimburrow is a bad idea. You know he'll only accuse us of digging up the professor. He's got no patience for us and if he is up to something or has an agenda of his own he'll just twist it against us to make us the villains in this. Why take him a weapon he can use against us?"
Darius looks around at the group considering each of them.
"We're on our own here."
He looks over to Aada. "I'm with Aada on this. Let's head to the Restlands now while clues are still fresh". Then nods to Lucy. "Lucy, you look properly seething. Let's go bring down whichever fool desecrated the Professors place of rest ay."
When he finishes he notices Kendra Lorrimar is up.
"Spugnoir, how is miss Lorrimar doing over there?" Darius calls over everyone's shoulder into the foyer of the house where he sees Spugnoir tending to Kendra.
Kendra sit's up and replies. "I can speak for myself. I've been better but I will manage. But please don't leave the remains of my father's body lying here. There is a wheelcart behind the house. Please place him there. And cover him that he will not be seen."
"I would like it best if we could bring him back to the cemetery but that can't be done without informing Father Grimburrow. And he is not as bad as you tell."
She gets up but needs to grab for Spugnoir to not falling again. "Oh. I'm still dizzy. I need to take it slow."
"With all due respect Kendra, he's a Pharasmin priest who dismissed a haunting without a proper investigation, so I can't even remotely trust him until I know more."
"You don't have to trust him if you don't want to. But there is no way to get my father back into his grave without involving Father Grimburrow. If you're seen with shovels in the Restlands without him around you're in deep trouble. So if you don't want to talk to him, I'm going to contact him first thing tomorrow morning." Kendra replies.
The man did not want us to stir things up. Well things are stirred up and it is not our doing. And we have the evidence right in front of his eyes.
She knows this town better then we do. If she says give him another chance I'm trusting her.
He picks up the professors body and walk to the door to implement her plan. Unless one of you want to stop him.
Darius watches Grergof take the Professors body away.
"I trust Grimburrow as much as I trust a goblin raiding party. I swear if he accuses us of doing this with the Professor then I'm going to storm the Restlands myself or with anyone who'll join me."
If no one else objects... Then we take the body covered in a push cart and bring it to the temple avoiding people as much as possible. (So no going through the middle of town). We do not want to make any more panic.
"It's not like we have much of a choice, really. Not unless Kendra is wrong, and she's lived here a lot longer than we have."
Hailiss decides to leave her sword behind as they set off. Wouldn't do to look too threatening, she'd just get arrested.
Spugnoir makes sure the body is covered and Kendra is steady before they head out, shaking his head at all the trouble a simple paying of respects has snowballed into.
It is Father Grimburrow himself. "I didn't expect to see you back so soon. What leads you here again?" he asks with a raised eyebrow.
"Preacher, preacher, we need your help. There has been a disturbance of the terrible kind!" Aada raps on the door
"The title is Father please. And would you tell me what actually happened?" The Father sighs fearing for the worst.
"The professor's remains animated at some point after the burial. It was quite the debacle - his corpse was attempting to tear down miss Lorrimor's door as we arrived home. Darius here struck it down, and we brought the remains to you after a brief discussion."
Hailiss' voice was crisp and detached.
"We came back to the Lorrimor residence to discover a terrible occurrence. A man was beating on the door. At first we thought it was a drunk or another disgruntled villager," Aada removes the tarp for Grimburrow to see, "Somebody or something had reanimated the body of the late professor."
The Father turns white. "The Professor turned into an undead? In the Restlands? Oh Pharasma save us!"
He turns around and shouts "Thomas, William, I need you right now, we are going to the Restlands. And bring some holy water."
As the two are there as asked by the Father he leads the way. "Please come along and bring the cart with the body." he tells the group.
As it is dark he casts a light.
"How strange; it seems the remains dug themselves out. I was under the impression that necromancers needed to touch a corpse to infuse them. Maybe he was animated before he was buried?"
"An arm, a skeleton is just dug itself from the dirt, over there!" She draws out her club. Her arm felt better from the healing, muscled fixed and bone mended. It would do well to prepare her for what was to come.
Lucy quickly enforces her tunic with magic and prepares for battle.
Hailiss curses the fact that she's left her sword behind. She calls a disk of force into existence, hovering near her right arm, and pulls out her knife.
Father Grimburrow walks towards the skeleton that comes out of the dark looks how the distance to the other two skeletons is and as soon as he has all of them in reach he holds up his holy symbol, utters a short prayer and douses everything in golden light.
"The Restlands are my responsibility and I can handle that. But if you want to help please search for open graves if you find more undead who already left the Restlands and threaten the town. I'm going to consecrate the ground here to prevent the creation of further undead."
"The dirt from this grave leads into town. We should hurry!"
Darius draws his sword and readies himself for the coming conflict.
"I'm no tracker so I'm going to need some help!"
Spugnoir hurries along and squints at the Father destroys the undead. Uncorking a vial from a pouch, he drinks down the fluid and his form seems to grow leaner.
I'm not good at tracking I am afraid.
"This one, it went into town, you can see the trail. It turned left over the bridge. This must have nee the Professor."
"Makes sense Aada. Let's see if any more Restland residents followed suit."
Darius then starts walking through the rest of the cemetery looking for open graves.
Brother Grergof draws his flail and looks around but does not see much that can help the effort to track the undead.
As he walks past Hailiss he stops and places one hand on his scimitar.
With the dead rising, no one should be undefended. You may take my scimitar if that would help you. I believe The Dawnbringer would approve your use of it against the living dead..
Brother Grergof thinks for a minute then says:
Miss Bladotter, can you track the one that went into town back to the professors grave? Maybe I am being paranoid, but I would much rather make sure there is not another one then risk any of the townsfolk are heart by another nasty suprise.
"I can take a group to town to check quickly while the rest of us hunt for any other abominations lurking around."
"I'll take the group to hunt for more lurkers around the graveyard."
Darius states with a flick of his longsword.
I don't think it is wise to separate.