Round 2 (ongoing):
Initiative order
Andrezi-acted
Red swarm-acted
Garrick
Nia-acted
Vidar-acted
Nia and Vidar retreat and recover from the distracting shock of being covered with silent rats.
Garrick is nauseated by the rats, and withdraws out of the swarm.
Round 3:
Initiative order
Andrezi-
Red swarm-
Garrick
Nia-
Vidar-
The priest taps Garrick on the shoulder, granting him a Bit of Luck before dropping back the furthest he can from the oncoming swarm.
Round 3 (ongoing):
Andrezi retreats and gives Garrick a bit of luck on the way by.
The swarm follows, covering Nia and Vidar.
Out of the immediate path of the swarm, Garrick switches to his Lucerne hammer and tries to hammer the offending rats into pulp.
He succeeds, smashing enough of the creatures that the rest flee.
Nia puffs out a sigh of relief. "Thank the gods. We were about to be eaten by rats after killing the monster." She shakes her head at the thought of their ignominius demise. "Let's get upstairs."
There are three more rooms down here. One, a pantry, is where the rats seem to have been nesting. Another is fairly clean, and looks like servants' quarters. The last room used to be a wine cellar, although the wine racks are empty and the floor is covered with broken glass. Garrick and Vidar notice something odd about the wall behind the top shelf of the western rack. It turns out to be a hidden compartment holding eight bottles of wine. If the labels on them are accurate, they're from a well-known vineyard in Cheliax, and may be worth a considerable amount.
"No sense leaving these bottles of wine." Andrezi says with a shrug. "Could be worth a pretty copper or failing that, quite tasty."
Returning to the main floor, the party heads down the narrow corridor from the entrance hall. The first door has no traps, and opens onto a simple washroom. An ancient metal washtub stands to the north, a ring of mildew crusting its inner surface. A strange, furtive scratching comes from inside the tub. Investigating, the noise is coming from a single rat trying to climb out of the tub. Its body is covered with tumors, and its eyes are blocked shut by the growths.
Nia makes a face and backs away from the tub. "I'm happy to leave that one alone," she says.
Someone puts the rat out of its misery, and you move on.
The last room on this floor is a dusty lounge featuring a long couch caked with white sheets of wispy fungus. Eddies of dust skitter along the warped floorboards as if caught up by a slight breeze, but no wind is noticeable in the air.
Vidar shudders and tries his best to put the feeling of rats swarming over himself behind him.
"Forgive me, I was not all that useful back there, i think I panicked a little.
Nia shakes her head. "No problem, Vidar, it's been a long day. We got through it." She turns to enter the room, ready to jump back out if a haunt manifests. "Hopefully we get through the rest of it."
Nia notices that the dust in front of the fireplace is being disturbed, almost as if someone was pacing back and forth there.
"There's something moving in front of the fireplace," Nia whispers back to the others. She moves forward carefully to deliberately trigger the haunt, ready to jump away the second she notices it preparing to spring.
Senses keyed and ready to bolt, Nia cautiously steps into the disturbed area. She hears a woman's voice whisper, "Lorey," and gets out of the area barely before the haunt fully manifests.
There is nothing else of interest in the room.
Shelves of books line the walls of this room, interspersed with curious objects such as skulls fitted with stubs of candles, tribal fetishes, and decorative scroll cases. An empty birdcage lies near the southern wall beside a small desk and a fine leather chair. Statues and sculptures grin from all corners of the room.
Nia carefully enters the room, watching for movement and listening for anything out of the ordinary.
Nia finds a valuable painting of a bullfight, two scrolls which Vidar identifies as scrolls of lightning bolt and keen edge, and an assortment of books on Shoanti tribal culture and customs, nautical charts, and the like. None of the books are particularly valuable.
Since there seems to be nothing more to do in the thoroughly unpleasant manor house, the party wisely chooses to depart before something else happens. As you finally get outside, though, the last cruel jest of Foxglove Manor becomes plain: where only a few sickly-looking ravens had perched on the foundation stones of the burned servants' quarters, the ruins are now covered with what must be thousands of the birds. They watch the party intently, making no noise at all.
Nia freezes in the doorway. "These are carrionstorms, undead swarms created when a large number of birds feed almost exclusively on the corpses of corporeal undead such as ghouls."
"Well now, I have a great deal of frustration that must be released, the building they perch on is already burnt..."
Vidar rubs his hands together, then, with a glint of wicked intent, the begins to chant the words for a fireball spell.
All of the ravens are burned to ash in the conflagration.
The next few days are blessedly uneventful, at least by comparison to what's gone before: no ritualistic murders, no ghoul sightings, no goblin invasions...it scarcely seems like Sandpoint. Nia spends some time crafting alchemical items, and Andrezi and Vidar have three days to do whatever strikes their fancy. As the days go by, though, none of you can escape the feeling that the reckoning with the real author of Sandpoint's most recent misfortunes still awaits--that Aldern's death has only delayed that entity's plans, not stopped them. The only leads you have point to the city of Magnimar, so it's there you feel you should be going.