"We were also invited." Kyra points out. "Or at least I was. It's not likely that he'll come out an admit his part in the murders." She pauses, thinking back to the notes. "Actually he might do that. But I'd still like to look around."
She frowns. "There is also still the possibility that this is one big trap."
Pick grunts, a vaguely disbelieving noise, as he fiddles with the tumblers.
"...possibility? Cer... certainty."
Let it never be said that living in the Underdark and being raised by a fanatical cult doesn't give you a healthy sense of paranoia.
Pick fiddles with the lock on the front door for several moments, pulling tumblers this way and that - but he is unable to get the lock open. He bends a tool and has to spend a moment extricating it. It's a very complex lock - apparently rich people can afford that kind of thing.
Kyra looks at Pick with disappointment and sighs, before raising her hand and hammering on the door.
"I have lockpick too," grins Khalbar unshouldering his axe. He motions to take down the door, but waits until The Hammer gives the okay.
[b]"If it comes to it, I have a spell that will probably open the lock. I'd rather use my power for something else, but it can be done..."[b]
Pick cringes at Hammer's stern, disapproving look. He has his tools ready to try again, but the resounding banging of Hammer's knocking makes him lower his hands, and then lower his head in shame. He has disappointed the elder...! Perhaps he should commit ritual suicide.
Hammer's knock echoes loudly in the room beyond for several moments before there is the sound of latches turning in the door. The handle rotates slowly, and with a creak, the door swings open.
Beyond stands a physically-imposing form. Clad in tribal robes over a chain shirt, and carrying a large spear, the familiar form of A'letta greets your eyes, but along with her appearance is the arresting smell that rushes out of the door. Her eyes glint with a strange light, and she appears oddly pale.
"His Lordship has deemed you will enter freely." she says. Her voice is crackly and breathless, but no less imposing than it always was.
Beyond A'letta lies a wide and large entrance hall. You can hear the house straining and creaking under its own weight from here, and it gives the mildewed and moldy room an additional sense of age. The place smells damp, a smell that pervades the whole area once the door swings open, and the walls are covered in trophies - a boar, a bear, a firepelt cougar, and a stag. In the center is the most impressive of all trophies, a twelve-foot long amalgam creature of lion, scorpion, bat, and human.
Kyra wrinkles her nose at the smell coming from A'letta. "Lord and Lady," she curses, raising her hand to her mouth. Getting ahold of herself, she frowns at A'letta, but makes no move to step closer. "What are you doing here?"
Her eyes move between the trophies, vetting the difficulty of each kill. The one in the centre particularly catches her eye. It's nothing she has seen before, but as she looks at it she is filled with a sense of envy, and a desire to hunt such a creature.
She strains her mind, thinking back to their boar hunt, and finds herself unable to be sure whether a) Aldern was faking being clueless and knew how to hunt, b) he had come a long way since then, or c) he was just a noble who purchased pretty things.
"Ah, my friends!" she says, spreading her arms wide. "I had hoped it would be you who he had summoned." She shows a smile, though her teeth are hopelessly filthy and strangely sharp. "He has so many gifts to show to you. Gifts that can take you to altogether new heights." She gestures into the house's front room, stepping aside with one foot to allow room. "He has bidden that I bring you to him, so that you can receive his gifts. He claims that my connections to the spirits can help protect you from the spirits of this place until we get to his lair."
Khalbar nearly drops his axe as the door opens revealing his sister of the Shoanti. He rushes forward to grip her in a giant bear hug, when the smell hits him and he realizes something is dreadfully wrong here.
The faint sobbing sound draws his attention momentarily, but it is quickly regained by the A'letta-thing and the immediate surroundings. He grimaces at the she-creature, and his knuckles whiten as he grips his axe hard.
"What is it? It is not A'letta anymore." whispers Khal to Rhanoi, hoping his learned friend knows how to respond.
After their trip to Geb, Rhanloi is not as shocked by the appearance of A'letta as the others. He studies her for a moment, and answers Khalbar's question. "Alas, this creature is not the A'letta we remember. What you see before us is a dread ghast, a stronger form of a ghoul that retains much of its former memories and powers but is stronger, faster, and smarter than a regular ghast."
Rhanloi looks to the top of the stairs and asks, "Did anyone else hear that? It sounded like someone sobbing! We should hurry..."
And then the reek overpowers the mage. Apprently his stomach hadn't quite recovered from the nauseating stench cloud from the necromancer...he is sickened again!
A'letta frowns at Rhanloi's words. Her eyes, though they are deeper-set and glinting oddly from within, seem sad. "But I am the A'letta you remember. I remember the scenes of doom as I auguried the goblin lair. I remember the demonic creature beneath the Glassworks, that escaped our reach. I remember the sand between my toes on the beaches of Sandpoint, and enjoying food and drink with you in the Rusty Dragon."
She opens her arms out again, her expression having changed to one of jubilation. "I am the very same A'letta, but as you say...stronger, faster and smarter. His Lordship has made me so much better. He has opened my eyes to all of the possibilities that are open to me. And he wants to do the same thing to you. Won't you come in and at least talk to him? I'm sure he can convince you, even if I can't."
A'letta looks up towards the ceiling. "Yes, the spirits of this house are unquiet. Sometimes they are aggressive. And they mourn. Many have died here, it would do well to be careful."
Pick's nose wrinkles, and he wordlessly gathers his thick scarf and wraps it around his lower face. The stench is distracting. He stares at A'letta with his red eyes, remembering the Spear-Woman. The Spear-Woman he remembers was... kind to him, when he knew little of such things. The one who told him that it was... alright, when first he failed to open a lock... the one who explained the gesture of one-eye-shut, one-eye-open. The one who danced on the sand of the beach with joy in the movement, a thing that was totally alien to him at the time, but which struck a chord deep within him.
The Spear-woman he remembers did not speak of a Lord. Nor were her teeth sharp, her body reeking of death. He does not need Ran-loy's words to know the wrongness of her, but it helps. He is deeply uneasy over this not-dead version of her.
His gloved fingers tap against his leg and arm in a fidgeting, restless gesture.
Pick grunts, red eyes never leaving the form of the false Spear woman. His fingers adjust his hood, sketch a half a gesture in mid-air before dropping back down to his side again.
Still, he makes no move beyond that, though his fingers twitch near the handle of his pick and he continues to look at the form of A'letta as if he could light her on fire with just his gaze.
Kyra frowns at the hand signals occurring between Pick and Flibble, part of her wishing that she had learned their secret language. "More undead." she mutters in response to Rhanloi. A'letta marks the first one that Kyra has seen with her own eyes, and the monk is at a loss as to how to take it. She seemed to possess A'letta's memories, and if she is to be believed, her abilities as well. But Khalbar was right: It was not A'letta.
"I'm perfectly content being as slow and dumb as I am." Kyra remarks, though it's an obvious lie. The majority of her life was spent trying to be faster and stronger. But not this way. Instead, she cocks her head. "If the spirits inside are dangerous, perhaps we would do better to speak out here?"
"We might do better." says A'letta, "But His Lordship would not. If he comes outside, the Skinsaw Man might come, and none of us would like that." She leans in closer so that she can whisper, her voice crackling and unsteady. "You would die."
She leans back again. "His Lordship? He owns this house. He got such a vision, and he's so generous!" She smiles again, revealing once again his disgusting teeth. "It's too bad about him and his wife. They haven't spoken in so long - she stays upstairs. Maybe you could help talk to one of them? He's forbidden me from doing it, but...maybe if you did it, and I brought you to him he would thank me! And reward me..." She trails off, looking away in a random direction.
It was not so long ago that Rhanloi's words and pronouncement that A'letta was an undead abomination would've filled Khalbar with such fear and loathing that he would've struck the caricature of his sister of the people down without a second thought.
But experience has taught him a lesson about the undead and things not always being what they seem. He stays his axe-arm, watching the Hammer intently for a clue about how to proceed.
Pick's eyes narrow as he watches the thing that wears A'letta's face. He shrugs his shoulders in a sullen fashion. "Fine. We go see 'Master'."
Despite his pronouncement, he looks to Hammer to be sure she agrees.
Rhanloi nods, eager to see what this place would reveal to him...
"That's..." her speech staggers "I'm unsure of the wisdom of that idea. His Lordship has expressly forbidden me from speaking with his wife, but...you could do it. And I could show you where she is. Would you like to speak to her? I could bring you upstairs and to where she stays, and then...you could go in, and tell her how wonderful His Lordship is. Then maybe she could join all of us for dinner."
Kyra begins to nod in agreement with Pick when Flibble mentions the wife. Her eyes flash as she wonders what he might be getting them into. It would be bad enough having to face something that bore the traits of A'letta without having a mysterious woman thrown into the mix. It takes a second for Kyra's glare to fade as she realises that Flibble's plan might well be to get her on their side. 'An enemy of my enemy...' she thinks, making a note to credit him later, should they both survive.
She clears her throat, partially because of the horrible smell choking her, and looks towards A'letta, giving a deep bow. We would be honoured to speak with her on his behalf. Perhaps in the meantime you could keep it quiet that we have arrived? His Lordship" she tries not to choke on the words, "has been hard at work for quite some time, and deserves to have a pleasant surprise."
"You're right, His Lordship has wanted your attention for as long as I've known him. Please, come right in." She gestures past herself and into the house. The rotting entrance hall is avaiable for everyone to walk into, and the three exits from the room are more evident now.
A'letta gestures to a staircase winding upstairs from this room. "She's up two floors. Who'd like to go first?"
Pick grunts his grumpy unhappiness with this set-up, but duly follows along, to the base of the staircase. He interposes himself before Kyra, and gestures to himself, and his eyes, then at the stairs. Then, he examines said staircase grimly, in between shooting metaphorical visual daggers at Dead'letta.
Pick grunts again, somewhat satisfied, and steps back, shrugging, and looking towards Big Man. Does he wish to go first?
As they walk, Rhanloi looks around with interest. What a tragic fate for the residents of the house.
"Something definitely did happen." says A'letta, very seriously. "I think they had a fight, though I've never met his wife and His Lordship won't tell me about it. I know for sure that he still cares about her, though."
"Were we going up to talk to her?"
Pick shrugs, and takes the lead up the stairs, stepping as tensely as if he thought every stair was the open jaw of a dragon.
Khalbar takes the rear of the group, expecting an attack from behind. He constantly watches their tail.
The wizard, of course, goes in the middle of the group, or maybe just before his friend Khalbar, knowing the giant man will literally 'have his back'...
Kyra walks immediately behind Pick.
The group proceeds up the stairs, A'letta taking a place in between Kyra and Flibble. Her large form obscures vision forward, and she has to stoop (as does Khalbar, both of them being very large and the ceiling in the staircase being quite low).
The staircase reaches the second floor and opens out into a crab-shaped hallway. Six closed wooden doors and two pairs of double doors leave into other rooms from this hallway. A'letta looks back and forth between all of the doors. "I don't know precisely where she is - I just know that she was upstairs. Any ideas?"
Khalbar concentrates hard, and turns his head at strange intervals, but can never catch sight of the thing that he feels is following them up the stairs.
"Rhanloi," he whispers to his friend. "Do you see anything with elf eyes? I feel something is following but cannot see it."
Pick walks as lightly as he can, eyes burning a hole in the back of not-A'letta.
"What is lady's name?" he grinds out.
Kyra looks at the hallway, cocking her head. 'Wife. Even with an argument. Gotta be a nice room. In a manor. Perhaps double doors?' Walking further down the hall she notes double doors on either side, and frowns.
Not wanting to seem less than confident, she pauses for only a second to flip a coin in her head, before moving towards the double doors to the right and giving them a light knock.
Kyra's instincts about it being a nice room were correct, though her guess that Aldern's wife might be in there were not. The large room that she enters features two padded chairs and a long couch facing a wide alcove lined with stained-glass windows. These windows depict a diverse array of animals and plants.
From north to south, the windows depict:
-A large, pale and ghostly scorpion
-A gaunt, pale man holding his arms out as a dozen bats hang from him
-A moth with strange skull-like patterns on its wings
-A tangle of dull green plants with bell-shaped flowers
-A young maiden sitting astride a well in a forest while a spindly spider the size of a dog descends towards her.
Rhanloi studies the windows. His recent studies and travels in Geb help him to make some sense of them. He says to the group, "These are depictions of fairly common spell components for necromancy magic. Scorpion venom, the breath of a vampire, the tongues of deathwing moths, belladonna, and the heart of a maiden slain by poison. Not unexpected given the nature of the threat we are facing...or our guide so far." At the last he nods at A'letta...
A'letta is unfazed by Rhanloi's words. "Necromantic magic has nothing to do with my creation." she says, impassively. "The gift of disease was given to me and my kin, and we rose as something stronger." She pauses for a moment. "His Lordship cannot perform any magic himself."
She looks back towards the double doors. "Are we continuing on or do you wish to study the mosiacs?"
As they head upstairs, Khalbar listens hard for the sound of a screaming woman to repeat itself again. He has little interest in the room or its arcane mosaics.
Rhanloi follows Kyra to the next set of double doors. Her logic was sound that the wife is likely in a suite...
"Disease?" Kyra asks curiously as they continue to the opposite set of double doors. "How does that work, then?"