There are no locks on the inside doors. With their tendency to stick, though, opening them quietly is all but impossible.
Garrick mutters something about poor construction as he looks at the swollen and stuck doors.
Vidar sighs heavily and then wordlessly turns to Garrick.
"I am afraid brute force is needed here, not subtlety."
Although it's not possible to bar the way behind the party, Nia is confident that she'd be able to hear the door opening. The party heads up the stairs to the second floor.
There's an odd sort of echo effect from the sound of footsteps on the stairs, but Nia soon realizes that it's the treads rebounding from the weight--nothing material has likely come this way in some time. The stairs end in a narrow room with a door in the southwest corner.
Nia goes ahead and opens the door.
It opens into an unoccupied hallway with multiple doors.
Nia checks and then opens the closest door if she finds nothing dangerous looking.
Garrick keeps close, ready to protect Nia as needed.
The door is not trapped, and Nia hears nothing at it. On the other side is what looks like a human child's bedroom--the bed is small, a chair sits next to a toybox, and a looming stone fireplace almost big enough for a small child to get lost in occupies much of the east wall.
"I do not know why, but considering what we have witnessed so far, THIS room is the one that fills me with the most dread..."
Nia frowns, nodding at Vidar. "Let's see what fresh hell is in store." She enters the room to look for anything useful and wary for anything dangerous.
Nia carefully enters the room, scanning for threats. Despite the overall creepiness of the setting, though, she doesn't notice anything.
She goes over to the fireplace and checks for a hidey hole.
Garrick follows Nia into the room - at least, just inside the doorway - as she goes further in.
Nia is looking for a place of concealment when Garrick enters the room. Both of them suddenly hear a child sobbing somewhere nearby. Suddenly the dwarf is convinced that his parents are trying to kill each other, and whichever of them survives will be coming after him next; he has a vision of his mother, wielding a torch, and his father, festering with tumors and wielding a long knife, both struggling to kill each other. Somehow he knows he's a human, and it feels completely normal. The vision passes as fast as it came on, though.
Garrick stumbles a moment, then shakes his head, "Memories. A child's. Human. Parents trying to kill each other, then will kill me -- er, him."
Andrezi shakes his head in further disappointment in this house. "After we find what we are looking for here, this place should be burnt to the ground."
As if to punctuate Andrezi's comment, a random gust of wind from the ocean rattles the windows and makes the house creak in the silence following his words.
After the brief distraction, Nia finds nothing else of interest in the room.
Garrick nods, "I agree."
Nia shudders and shakes her head. "I heard crying but..." she glances at Garrick "not the rest."
She nods at Andrezi. "I'll help set the fire." The investigator heads back out into the hallway and gestures at the double doors just a few feet away.
"Let's see what's in here."
Nia finds no traps and manages to push the door open. The large room on the other side 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 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 a young maiden sitting astride a well in a forest while a spindly spider the size of a dog descends along a string of webbing above her.
Nia makes a face and gestures at the stained glass. "Somebody making a bad joke. Those are each a reference to classic spell components for necromancy magic. Whoever had them put in was laughing at anybody who didn't know."
There are shelves, but the only things left on them are rusted or corroded musical instruments. None of what remains is worth anything.
Garrick shakes his head, "The whole place is terrible, an evil joke like that would fit right in."
Nia sighs and shakes her head. "Should we continue even looking or just set a fire on the first floor and be done?" In spite of her words she goes back out to check out the room directly across the hallway.
Garrick sighs, "Search. We were drawn here by evil, and we need to be sure it's destroyed, rather than just striking our tinder and hoping for the best."
Andrezi nods in agreement with Garrick.
The double doors don't appear to be trapped, and Nia doesn't hear anything at them. She manages to shove them open without any problems, though the screech of swollen wood on wood echoes through the hall.
A stone fireplace sits in the northwestern portion of this chamber. 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. There's another set of double doors directly across from the ones the party has opened.
Nia looks back over her shoulder at Vidar. "Do you know that spell that lets you clean things without touching them?" She gestures at the paintings. "I'd like to see those but they're probably haunted like everything else in this place."
"I'm going to go see if anything's hidden in the chimney."
Nia finds nothing but soot and ashes.
Given the telltale stained glass windows in the other room, Nia goes over to the windows and tries to clean the grime off.
Garrick looks around the room, then says, "Don't suppose there's anything magic in there?"
"Allow me..."
Vidar attunes his senses to the arcane.
Vidar notices a faint, pervasive miasma of magic that seems to permeate the entire room, but there are no specific hot spots that he can find.
Nia starts to the right of the fireplace, cleaning enough of the accumulated grime off of the first of three paintings on the north wall to tell that it depicts a stern-faced brunette woman with a few strands of gray in her hair. She wears a blue dress of a style popular over half a century ago. A brass plaque on the frame bears the name "Kasanda Foxglove."
Nothing apparently happens when Nia brushes off the painting, and Vidar doesn't notice any change in the faint aura of magic.
Nia recalls that Foxglove Manor was built by Vorel Foxglove roughly 80 years ago. Vorel's wife was a woman named Kasanda, who took his name when they married. They had one daughter. About twenty years after the manor was built, all three of them and their servants died of some sort of plague.
The investigator moves on to the next painting on the north wall. This one is labeled "Vorel Foxglove," and shows a tall, clean-shaven man of middle age, with long, dark hair. He wears blue clothing slightly darker than his wife's. Next to them is a painting of a young brunette girl in a long, light blue dress; the plaque on this painting bears the name "Lorey Foxglove."
Garrick stepped into the room to look around, so he's there and near the door.
Given what the primary dangers of house have been thus far, Andrezi steps into the doorway awaiting whatever spectral haunt will befall the party next.
The five paintings on the south wall show:
Traver Foxglove (he looks like Vorel, but with a narrower face and a thin mustache),
Cyralie Foxglove (a young woman with long red hair and an impish smile; Vidar realizes that it was her face he glimpsed briefly on the burning manticore),
Aldern Foxglove (Vidar and Garrick recognize him immediately from the goblin attack and the boar hunt),
Sendeli Foxglove (a girl who looks rather like Aldern), and
Zeeva Foxglove (a red-haired girl whose smile matches Cyralie's).
Nia recalls that Traver is Vorel and Kasanda's great-nephew. Traver and Cyralie are Aldern, Sendeli, and Zeeva's parents.
Nia finishes wiping away the last of the grime on the paintings.
Feeling chill begin to creep into the room Andrezi tells his companions in the room, "Get out...seems my suspicions were right."
Raising his holy symbol he readies to let loose a burst of energy when the cause of the chill presents itself.