"i, uh, She was so beautiful and then rotted away as we danced, did you see her? Her neck was so perfect, then it was all bruised, like something had a hold of her..." He steadied himself and took a deep breath. He reached for his flask and took a sip. "a bit tired, dont feel right, actually.
"I didn't..." trails off Kiera, idly touching her own neck for a moment, "... but this house is definitely haunted."
Ullogash reurns to let the others know what he found and sees Volkar looking gray and frightened. "What's wrong with you?" Shaking it off. "I couln't find who was sneaking up on us but I did find stairs to the basement and stairs to the second floor. The basement stunk of mold and rat piss."
Shara is shocked at her feeling. "I wanted to run. There is something very wrong in this house. I don't think we should touch the dust or the mold unless someone knows what it is." She'll pull the door shut on the dusty room if no one has a suggestion on what the mold and dust might be.
"Well we know that this place is definitively haunted. Now it's just a matter of finding the source." Andrezi says.
"If I were a gambling man, I would guess the source lies below with the mold and rat piss, but I think we should investigate the upstairs first...whenever we are satisfied with our searching of the main floor that is."
"Let's head up the closest stairs. I can lead the way unless someone wants to sneak up and see what they can see." Shera moves to the foot of the northern stairs.
Volkar had walked through the set of doors and came back to where Shara and Ullogash were in the great hall. He looked about the room and at them. "Still not feeling all that well, but sure we can head up if that is what folks want to do."
He let his eyes come to rest on the stuffed creature in front of him.
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Perception
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Shara moves towards what she believes to be the foot of a staircase before realizing that it is the head of the one going down. With a mental oops she spins around and begins to ascend the staircase opposite it. The stairs groan under her weight and that of her companions, but as she gets to the top of the stairs, she realizes that her companions have not yet begun ascending.
On the landing above, a single door threatens to burst out of its frame, water having bloated it tightly against its fittings.
As the remainder of the group files in to ascend the narrow stairs up, Volkar stays back a smidge, examining the largest stuffed creature. Looking down at the description plate, he comes to find out that this is a manticore, a magical beast found in the highlands of the Storval Plateau. But as he looks back upon its face, its features seem to shift into those of a plain Chelish woman. A woman, who does not seem to be very happy. "Our children! HOW COULD YOU DARE?". Her fury ignites the stuffed manticore's mane, as it's burning tail shoots out to spear the dwarf!
In a split second, Volkar's instincts kick in and he manages to avoid most of the flaming stinger! As he staggers back though, the entire manticore catches fire.
"There's a door that seems to be swelled closed with water." Shera tells the others. Then she hears something whoosh downstairs and turns around to see if she can see anything.
Volkar fell back against the wall and then slipped in a half fall into the stairwell. The smell of singed hair, dwarf, and cloth filled his nostrils. He whipped his hand back and forth quenching the small flames that still danced about his cuff and hand.
"It - she - the manticore was a woman for a moment and she, it, it attacked me then burned itself up," Volkar said in a mix of fear and disbelief as the whiffs of smoke swirled about him and then behind him as he climbed the stairs.
So, take half - 5 right?
"There's... some kind of ghost or something here," says Kiera uneasily. "We'd better stay together. I mean, not so close together as to make weak floorboards collapse, but... y'know."
She moves up to join Shera above.
Ullogash shudders and follows Andrezi up the stairs. "Don't like ghosts. Though how is a ghost making more of the dead?"
Andrezi nods in agreement with Ullogash. "I'm not entirely convinced that this place shouldn't be burnt to the ground."
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Moving on up, you decide to open the door, which leads to another corridor. This one, with a rather obtuse amount of doors; two double door face each other while on either side further single doors stand. Leading past the door you emerge from, a staircase leads on down, possibly back to the main foyer.
Volkar agreed with Andrezi's sentiments. He was still a bit shaken and singed as he followed the others up into the stairwell and into the corridor. "Not sure how this is happening, but I think Ullogash, the ghosts are not creating all of this. Something else did, why did she say our children?"
The last bit seemed to be more to himself than anyone in the party.
"Let's take a look at the double doors over the main part of the house, and then the other ones." Shara moves up to the doors on the left carefully. She takes a look, and if she sees nothing odd with the doors she'll push open one of them.
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Not hearing anything but the wind howling through cracks in the manor's walls, Shara opens the door onto what might once have been a cozy little common room. A stone fireplace sits in the northwestern portion of this chamber while paintings hang on the walls to the
north and south, each covered over with a thick sheet of dusty cobwebs that obscures its subject from view.
Andrezi looks over Shara's shoulder. "Alright, so how long until something comes to life in here and tries to kill us.
"Not funny Andrezi, not funny at all," Volkar said as he followed the others into the room. He looked about and wandered into the room with a focus on the paintings.
Perception ; Appraise paintings
"This place is empty. The only living or undead thing we have found is the rat scurrying around in the tub." Ullogash grunts as he opens up the set of double doors next to him.
"Ohhh... it won't be alive," says Kiera, a bit creepily.
"C'mon, let's keep moving." She follows behind Ullogash.
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The room looks... Deserted. Empty. Bereft of anything approximating another person. And has little to show for itself, apart from the paintings, which might be worth something if one were to clean them up. As it stands, only Volkar can make out that these paintings are portraits. Of whom? Impossible to say.
Shara moves next to Ullogash and waits to see what happens when he opens the door.
"They were of someone, not sure who, but someone," Volkar said, he shook his head and then turned himself towards where the others were heading. "Who builds such a mansion just to let it decay? Shouldn't there be some family to take care of this?"
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Ullogash flanked by Shara opens the set of double doors to behold a large room featuring two padded chairs and a long couch. These all seem to face a wide alcove lined with stained-glass windows, themselves depicting a diverse array of animals and plants. From north to south are a large, pale and ghostly, scorpion, a gaunt man holding out his arms as a dozen bats hang from him, a moth with a strange, skull-like pattern on its wings, a tangle of dull green plants with bell-shaped flowers, and finally a young maiden; sitting astride a well in a forest scene, seemingly unaware of the white, dog-sized spider descending from a tree branch overhead on a string of webbing.
"Something awful befell the Foxglove family, and this rotting ruin of a building is all that's left. This and Aldern," says Kiera, her mind wandering a bit.
Kiera takes in the scene quietly, then pauses and says, "Huh."
She rubs one of her index fingers idly as she concentrates, focusing on the pictures. "Scorpion... skull moth... this is uh... weird."
"I think... these are all related to necromancy? And poison? Like... maybe this family had some connection to one of the gods of poisons? Or studied necromantic magic?"
"That would explain the ghouls, I suppose."
"But, Miss Kiera, something doesn't really add up," Volkar said as he looked over the windows that Kiera was commenting upon. His thumb and forefinger found the silver beard woven into his beard. "Why wouldn't the lord in town not take better care of all of this?
Appraise windows
"We're not in town, though," she says. "We're halfway between Sandpoint and Magnimar. There's... nothing around here for miles. Why would anyone in town care?"
Ullogash grunts. "I think this whole place is a dead end. There is nothing her but dust." He reiterates the fact once again and wipes his hands across a large swathe of it, tossing the motes into the air. "We can always split up to cover more ground."
"Nnnoooo, let's not do that," says Kiera. She moves past Volkar and says, "Just one room at a time. Let's check here." She regards the double door to the west side with some scrutiny.
Shara quickly moves up next to Kiera. "Careful. I'll open the door just in case. This place is just weird. We should burn it to the ground. It might free the spirits held here."
"I'm starting to agree... but if there are clues to the murderer, they'd be burned up too," says Kiera.
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Walking past the dust-covered paintings and their mysterious subjects, Kiera and Shara open the doors after a quick, perhaps not-as-thorough-as-it-could-be check for traps. Looking in, they quickly come to the conclusion that this must be a bedroom of some sort. And while unkempt and dusty, it does not exhibit any of the signs associated with water or mold damage. With one exception: a dark stain on the desk besides the northern window.
"That's odd," says Kiera. "How come this room is so well-preserved?"
She moves cautiously just inside the doorway and sniffs for mold and listens for movement.
Andrenzi listens as well, waiting to investigate the dark stain that appears to be the defining feature of the room.
Volkar walked over to the window and looked out as the others looked about the desk. So this room, almost looks like it was closed and left alone. Why?"
Perception outside
"Maybe someone was just using this room?" Ullogash begins to get an uneasy feeling as he looks around the room for any further signs of clues.
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The dark stain appears to be dried blood, albeit dried blood that has somehow managed to retain most of its' color. By Andrezi's reckoning, enough that whoever was wounded must not have survived long, if at all.
While Volkar joins him to look out the window, both Ullogash and Kiera, weary of any shenanigans, stay within the doorframe, seeing and spotting nothing more than they initially perceived. Looking out the window, Volkar looks back towards the cart and the nearby ruin. Strangely, the crows have returned. In greater numbers. And as if they had somehow sense that they were being watched, they all, almost simultaneously, turn their heads to affix a single eye upon Volkar.
As Andrezi ponders the meaning of all this, he notices something. A simple dagger, placed upon the desk. While in most circumstances, this wouldn't be noteworthy, the Varisian could have sworn that this dagger was not there mere moments ago.
(add +1 if this is an enchantment effect.)
"What is the stain? Shara asks from the doorway. She keeps an eye out, but isn't willing to step inside.
He saw their cart and horse outside of the ruins they had found earlier. The number of crows had grown and seemed to be growing. He looked about at the birds and then they all in unison looked back at him. He tilted his head slightly as he looked at the larger group. He was certain they all did the same.
He shook his head, and made a quick set of movements with his hands, something that he remembered his parents did when someone or something concerned them. Gulping, he turned back to the inside of the room and his fellow adventurers. "This place is giving me a bad feeling."
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For the briefest of instants, Andrezi wonders how he could have let it come to this. How he could have let him puppeteer his body. How he could have done this to her. He blinks back tears as he glimpses at her broken body below. But as he looks at the dagger, it is no longer there: in its stead is a jagged piece of wood. A harsh splinter.
From where she stands Shara is certain that she is hearing the wood shifting. Creaking. As if the house was slowly wakening. Surely, the product of an overactive imagination, yes?
Andrezi shakes his head, trying to clear his mind of the visions. "A bad feeling is an understatement, Volkar."
Turning to Shara, the priest says, "The stain is most certainly blood. A man killed a woman here...the blood is hers."
Kiera suppresses a shiver. "Members of the Foxglove family, do you think?" she says.
Finally she steps, tentatively, into the room.
"I guess we should check the furnishings."
She slowly gives the once-over to the bed and any drawers or side tables that may remain, even opening them gingerly and checking to see what kinds of ruined remnants of clothes might remain. Was this a man's room? A woman's? A child's?
Andrezi nods affirmatively to Kiera's question. "At least it would seem so."