Champawat will check on everyone to ensure that no one is in mortal jeopardy. Once satisfied, she will scurry back up to the upper level where she left the chest and attempt to open it. Afterwards she quaffs her Detect Secret Doors extract and begins to thoroughly search the tower.
Champawat returns to the tower to continue her investigation of the chest. The others take a look at their defeated foes, or what little remains of them. Other than dust, the armor and swords the cairn wights were equipped with look to be rather nice, ornate and in high quality condition, once the grime and dirt of who know how long in their under ground graves. The group below looks into the holes where they crawled from and sure enough, they were buried literally under the floor in cramped spaces of natural earth.
Champawat in the tower pops open the chest easily after an inspired insight that leaves her tail twitching contentedly. She quaffs her extract and makes sure to scan the tower exhaustively and comes up with nothing. All that is left is to investigate the chest's contents now that it is unlocked. With a deep breath she gingerly lifts the lid of the chest, and inside are two bags. They appear to be leather, and were perhaps oiled at one time to prevent moisture from seeping in. The quality of the chest and these bags may have helped preserve the contents, even still the bags are somewhat dried and crinkly from age and the temperature changes that this ruined tower is exposed to.
The larger bag appears to be square and fairly distinct as if it contains a painting, easily enough to tell just running her paws over it and feeling inside. The other bag clearly contains coin as it clinks in a telltale manner and is quite heavy to heft and in fact she is afraid the ancient leather bag may tear if lifted from the chest, so old and brittle is its condition.
Champawat tries to push and then attempts to drag the chest just to see if she can move it. If it budges, she'll try to maneuver it closer to the stairs. Regardless, she makes her way over to the stairs and calls down "so the chest has a painting wrapped in cloth and a lot of coins in a large sack. I'm not sure the sack or the chest will be able to support the load if lifted off of the floor though. Any suggestions? Goivan, could you come up here and give me a hand with moving it?" While waiting for a response, Champawat unwraps the painting to see what it depicts.
The chest is very heavy, but Champawat is no slouch. Her muscles ripple and she gets behind the wall and pushes the thing with her feet. The chest, so long in one place, balks at having to move, but eventually it gives in and with a loud noise the thing grates across the surface. Champawat builds up some steam and manages to get the chest to the stairwell top.
Pulling the painting gingerly from the wrappings around it, she gives it a look. The painting is well done, and pulls her quickly into it its subject. A human woman, dark hair, intense eyes, dressed in a formal gown, seated and posing as one does for these things, or so you have heard. She appears regal or at least noble, with a tiara, ermine and silks. Her backdrop is a window that may very well be one of this tower's windows or the artist added the window's view later.
Champawat studies the piece and its masterfully worked frame. Her eyes continue to be drawn to the woman in the painting. Her eyes seem to gaze back and you feel a tugging deep within you. The woman seems to be calling to you somehow. You feel something building, a tiny terror at first, something dark, something sad and horrible. You cannot place what or how or why. You sense torment and pain, loss and betrayal. You hear a scream and pause, but you don't think there was a scream at all. Is your mind playing tricks? Fighting the urge to stop looking at the painting, your feline curiosity denies you. You continue to scan the painting for clues, details, your paws run over the sides of the frame. You flip it backwards and look at the back, but there is nothing there, no writing or artist information. No backing concealing anything. Hurriedly you turn it back again, and resume gazing at the front. You frequently meet the eyes of the painting's subject. They seem to plead with you now. A shiver comes over you, your fur stands on end, and your ears lay flat against your head. You feel a dark presence in this place. Something still lurks here, even after the defeat of the cairn wights. Something worse, a deep festering evil. This place still holds a mystery of a dark and bloody past.
With the fur on the back of her neck standing on end, Champawat does her best to cover the painting back up until Goivan is present. She shudders a bit and sets the painting down on top of the chest. "Goivan, I'm not very religious, but even I can sense great evil in the picture. Do you sense anything? If we tie some rope around the chest, do you think we can lower it to the ground level? I have a belt pouch and a backpack so I can carry some of the coins, but I don't have enough containers for this amount. We'll have to divide it up among everyone to see how much we can haul."
Harumphing and dusting off the rubble of his enemies, Prar ascends the stairs and casts detect magic on the chest. "Let's take a look my sister."
The chest itself does not emit any magical aura. You do get a sense that the painting is magical though.
Tapping his chin, Prar begins the incantation to identify the magical properties of the painting. A low humming chant and a few stoic motions of hand.
Gunther attempts to keep an eye out while the others investigate the chest. The dark dwarf's bow is clutched protectively in one hand as he presses the other to his wound.
"We can always just leave. It is not necessary to poke the hornet's nest of evil."
(nice!)
Prar ascends the stairs and begins to examine the situation. He checks the chest and then the painting. Curious about its properties, he invokes his identification spell. Studying it for several rounds, he determines the painting contains potent conjuration and necromantic magic. It also has subtle abjuration and divination magic as well.
Prar feels the same unease with the painting that Champawat did. The subject seems to be reaching out, trying to contact Prar as he focuses hard on the magical auras. He concentrates with all his might, trying to keep his sanity and to prevent the painting from infiltrating his psyche. He feels the urge to scream, but it comes out as a mere whispering gurgle. There is an accompanying otherworldly scream that comes from nowhere, and everywhere at the same time though. The scream, a woman's, and one may guess the subject of the painting emits a long shriek that trails off into a haunting wail that chills one to the bone and makes the skin on the back of your neck crawl. Fighting the urge to flee from this place, Prar doubles down on the magical mystery presented here.
Prar surmises the painting's subject was either cursed or laid a curse as she died or was murdered. Such curses can be the result of great torment or madness. Not knowing the history of the place or the subject, it is conjecture, but given the presence of the cairn wights, something unholy happened here at some time in the past.
Below, on the first level Gunther, heavily wounded, clutches the grievous wound he suffered in the fight, clutching his bow for more trouble. The group hears the wail as well, and Gunther, attuned to the earth as a deep dwarf, feels at unease, something terrible is still trapped within the earth here. An unholy blight has besmirched this place. Goivan's holy senses can feel it as well. There is an evil radiating from beneath this ruins, an unsolved mystery, an unquiet spirit and the legacy of dark deeds done.
Prar feels the painting to be a crude spiritual vessel and two way portal to the spirit world. While the group does not have access to the level of magic that may reveal more information, he feels that if they unearthed more information, there may be clues tied to the painting that would allow him to devise a ritual. As he tears his focus away from the painting, one of the harder things he has had to do in his life, a single word whispers in his mind, half imagined, 'Shelevara'. Was it a name, an invocation, a command word?
"I can't be certain unless we take the time to investigate this place, but there seems to be a great evil tied to this place. I realize its not our mission, so I understand if any of you feel that we should push on and leave this place, but I think we need to decide what to do as a group. I think we should push on. We move out and try to complete our objective and then we head back to the city. They'll have a clearer idea of the history around this place I would imagine, so maybe we can learn more there before returning to here. If there is evil here, Master would not want us to let it grow unchallenged, but I also agree with being well prepared. What do you guys think?"
"We cannot, in good conscience, allow this evil to continue. Some hapless travelers may be the next victims of its fell power. But we cannot throw our lives away in a fruitless attempt. Let us wrap the painting to prevent any further exposure and take it with us. We can return later to perform a ritual to help banish the curse of this site."
Champawat couldn't help but agree with Qahnaarin, but more for her own reasons. She still believed the tower could be a defensible position. She wasn't as concerned about random travelers, although he did have a point. She was more worried about having a safe place to rest, a secure shelter to call their own. In this new world, a group like theirs would attract attention.
5 masterwork parade armors
cursed painting (appraise check?)
Goivan scowls at the ground. "There is a great evil below us..."
Goivan starts to heal Gunther of his bad wounds.
** spoiler omitted **
Goivan scowls at the ground. "There is a great evil below us..."
Goivan starts to heal Gunther of his bad wounds.
[dice=LoH Spam]3d6
It is a moderate aura. You can barely detect it, perhaps due to the stone floor blocking your sensing, but it it there.
Qahnaarin knows little of arcane matters, and defers to the judgment of those who are more learned on the subject. He arches an eyebrow in puzzlement.
Prar nods. "Qahnaarin is right. We may be ill equipped to handle whatever is down there, but we are more than likely better equipped than the average traveler. The tower is remote." Prar raised a hairless eyebrow as he contemplated.
"Perhaps we leave a warning at the entrance of the tower to dissuade other travelers from exploration." he suggested.
"That is an excellent idea. Simple, yet effective. Well said Prar. Care to write one?" Champawat can't help but be proud of her brother. She considered herself to be a thinker, but Prar was clearly the wise and thoughtful one. Champawat was just careful, sometimes. She begins to pull a quill from her pack, but realizing she doesn't have any extra paper puts it back away. "Maybe we can find a piece of wood or something to carve it on..." she says as she begins to look around.
There is plenty of wood around outside. Both fresh wood from plants and older dry wood from fallen limbs.
Champawat finds a decent-sized piece of wood and pulls out her dagger. She finds a spot to sit down and begins to carve out the word "Danger" on the hunk of wood. It doesn't take very long but the work is actually relaxing. It gives her a few minutes to reflect on everything that they have encountered so far, the undead, the misunderstanding with the goat-men, even the great dwarven city. It was all so strange, seeing it in person. She had read books about some of it, but to actually see it with her own eyes, it was something she hadn't dreamed would ever occur. She thought about Master, and their time together. She was beginning to miss home. She sighed and finished carving out the warning sign and began to look for a good place to put it up.
Champawat wedges the wooden sign next to some crumbling mortar right at the entrance to the abandoned keep. It should be plainly visible. You hope that whoever encounter it understands. You carved it in both Ancient and New Common. As the group prepares to leave the place and continue with their mission, Gunther, who had sustained some very serious wounds during the fight stuns the group by announcing he is going to return to the fortress. As a dwarf of few words, he offers little explanation and nods to the group and sets off back the way you came.
The group of four decides to press on with their mission and return here in the future to resolve the mystery. As they move away from the abandoned keep, You gain a feeling of dread as it something stirs beneath it. You all hear a woman scream, again perhaps more in your minds than audible, though you swear it was real and a pack of crows caws and scatters from a nearby tree startling you. The scream tapers off into a long low growl that ends with a dry hoarse cackle.
Goivan packs up the armor and swords that the cairn wights held. Keep in mind that together the weapons and armor weight 120lbs, which alone are close to exceeding the light load threshhold even for 20 strength. You may wish to redistribute a few of them. Properly cleaned and restored they may fetch a fine price at market.
The painting is rather large and of course fairly fragile and the covering that it is in is barely salvageable. It is about 3' x 4' and would need to be protected from the elements and the rough and tumble of wilderness travel, to say nothing of the risk it faces if the group faced melee combat again.
Goivan lets somebody else take the painting, instead using his thick skin to shove a path for the carrier through the underbrush.
"Gunther, wait!" Champawat called out as the dark-skinned dwarf turned to leave. "Perhaps we should accompany him back to civilization. We were almost slaughtered by the goatlings, and those vile undead hurt almost as much. We shouldn't let him go alone" she says to the others. "Besides, we have some money and valuables to trade. We can return to the fortress, re-supply, report in, get an update, and maybe even check to see if anyone can shed some light on the painting or the tower."
"Agreed. Let us lose our excess weight and resupply."
"Very well. Perhaps the dwarves have casters capable of lifting the curse from the painting, and they may send a force to clear the tower."
The group clears out, leaving the ruins behind and beings a trek back toward town. The journey is easier, in part because you can just backtrack, but the terrain doesn't get any simpler. You spend the rest of your 8th day travelling and camp at the spot you did the prior evening.
Day 9
The night was uneventful, and the next day heading back toward town, is also of little consequence. You encounter no travelers or monsters yet, though you suspect this close to Cliffort, no enemies have made it this far.
Day 10
The tenth day you make it back to town late in the evening, having travelled far on the known trails nearby in the wooded hills. You make it back, and are relieved to be able to dump your collection of armor and the awkward painting. Passing through the usual gamut of security and escorts by the marshals and dwarven guards, you settle in once again to your interior quarters. Your escorting marshal informs you (after using a share languages spell from a wand ) that in the morning, they would meet with you, although Head Marshal Hawke is off on a mission.
Before falling into a deep sleep, you discuss with each other your plans for the report, the painting and how to get rid of the armor and weapons.
"Who feels the best equipped to negotiate prices for the weapons and armor we found? We need to have the best equipment we can afford for the upcoming trials."
"I have a tendency for reason and shrewdness. I can also communicate with efficiency." Prar quips.
After finishing the discussion. Prar rolls over for a deep sleep before rising to prepare his spells and say his prayers.
"Prar certainly has more of a mind for trading and bartering than I do. I just wonder about the prejudice he'll face when attempting to offload our goods. We may be better off hiring a third party to perform the deed for us. Or perhaps Goivan or someone accompanies him to ensure his safety. Then again, maybe we can rent an escort to accompany him. What I do know is I'll be busy making some of my own concoctions in the mean time, assuming that I have enough time. Does anyone else wonder what Marshall Hawke is off doing? This mission of his? Or maybe it's just my own curiosity."
Day 11 - Morning
Morning arrives. A marshal named Pinnickee, comes to your room with a few dwarven guard escorts. She invokes her share languages wand, and speaks. "We will be happy to take a scouting report now. Please don't leave out any details." Pinnickee is a gnome, and she removes her tall pointed cap, revealing that her green hair underneath it is also tall and shaped into a conical point. Her skin is ruddy and her eyes also bright green to match her hair. She has a quick nervous energy and fast speech. A minute or two after she and the guards arrive, some other dwarves arrive with some food and drink for the group. The delicious hearty food is welcomed by your rumbling bellies.
She starts the debriefing, "Now, where shall we begin?"
Goivan starts listening to the language differences, trying to pick up on body language and inflection to learn what the words means. I must learn this new form of common... He thinks to himself.
"Thank you, the warm meal is much appreciated." Goivan goes into detail of the mission, leaving nothing out.
"Indeed, I am not sure if we were aware of this ruin. Surely we must be, but I don't have them all memorized. May I see the painting?"
"Of course." Goivan wipes his hands and turns to lift up the painting from the wall, gently turning it to show it to her.
"Egads, that's creepy. How do you think it was related to the screaming you heard or felt? I wonder what happened there. I can seek out Loremaster Cronin and see if he has any history of the location. That armor and weaponry. It is valuable, and a collector might want it, but it has historical significance too. We don't have a museum around here for that sort of stuff, but depending what Loremaster Cronin finds, it may be of value to the Crown to preserve it."
Goivan frowns. "There was certainly a great evil underneath the building there. It's quite possible, but I am not very well versed in magic." He glances at Prar. "Perhaps the more mentally gifted ones among us may be able to make a connection. Either way, if the Crown wishes to have it we would be happy to give them the first offer."
Prar recalls what he surmised when at the ruin, the painting might be a crude spiritual vessel and two way portal to the spirit world. He notes that a word entered his mind as he was interacting with the painting. He highly suspects it is cursed in some way.
"Does Loremaster Cronin have the skills or facilities necessary to contain this evil artifact? Despite whatever historical significance it may have, an evil item is an evil item and must not be left to endanger people."
Pinnickee scrunches up her brow. "He may or may not. That can be for him to determine. Certainly not my area of expertise. I'm just taking the notes! If, you like I can go talk to him now, unless you have more to report."
Pinnickee asks one of the guards if they can go track down Loremaster Cronin and see if he has time to look at the painting or review the information the group has given.
"Is your plan to head back out again soon? Do you need to restock?" she asks.
"We may need to buy items with any proceeds from the recovered items. If the items are deemed culturally insignificant, we may trade them based on their component value." The Bluish wizard droned.
"Oh, I see. I will see if I can expedite the process. Again, Loremaster Cronin can probably attest whether the armor is really significant or just pretty nice."
"Yes, we do need to restock and replenish, but we do not know how much currency our findings will fetch. We... need a budget, so to speak."
As the discussion goes on about funds and the sale of the armor and weapons, Champawat remembers the giant bag of coins in the chest that was lugged back. You had resecured it in some other sacks to keep the old leather bag from breaking from the sheer weight of the coins. As the guard goes to get the Loremaster, Champawat peeks in the bag and sees thousands of coins, copper, silver, gold, maybe platinum. You suspect your budgetary problems may be alleviated.
The guard returns after some time with Loremaster Cronin, perhaps twenty minutes of small talk with Marshal Pinnickee.