Zoli gulps, brushes her lucky button and then spins toward the monster, slashing deep into it’s side...yet somehow her magic scimitar passes harmlessly through it.
””
_______________________
HP 32/32
Luck 7/8
Panache 4/4
Charmed Life 3/3
Buffs luck (1/3)
"Wait a second...I've read a play once about something like this. It was a translation into Elvish from a work originally written in Ancient Azlanti, and the phrasing of the chanted chorus was quite-- well, anyway, the point is that they encounted a spirit like this that was bound to a locale, a haunt. In the play the protagonist neutralized it using positive healing energy, but it seemed it was very hard to truly destroy.
"I wonder how mobile they are? Perhaps we can get away from this one by going upstairs?"
"I don't have any spells anymore...I turned my back on the gods. Destrina? Help?" Eugeni asks, looking worried.
The fiery thing snaps its head back towards Destrina when she sends a surge of positive energy through it. It yells out "BUUURRRN!" once more in a high pitch shriek as it lashes out with its tail. The tail appears to pass right through her, but Destrina can feel the scorching flames the entire time as they pass through her, and she is left feeling burned both on the inside and out.
It then vanishes, leaving behind only the scent of Destrina's singed flesh.
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Zoli looks quickly left and right. "Is it gone? Just invisible? Will it be back?!?'
Wiping her brow -- deeply unsettled by a foe who her blade couldn't touch -- Zoli continues, "Do any of you have a means to locate invisible foes? If not then I suggest we hustle upstairs and hope we're done with this thing...at least for now!"
Several tense moments pass, and the house remains eerily quiet. No sounds other than those made by the group can be heard.
Eugeni's eyes narrow and he nods to Zoli, afraid to speak. He begins creeping silently up the steps. He holds his bow at the ready, an arrow knocked. Damn ghostly undead m&@%!& f&&~$&s. First it's f$%&ing demons and goblins, now we've got to deal with the living dead too? I need to start getting paid more for this s@+@.
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"This entire... place, the walls, the floor, almost the very air. It is all evil. This must be the source of whatever malaise has afflicted Sandpoint and its people." Destrina says, a look of dissatisfaction on her face. She turns to her companions and in a very serious tone says, "Be on your guard."
Destrina loosens her sword in its scabbard, still holding the oversized silver hammer in her other hand. She then checks her warhammer, shield and dagger for readiness before moving to the door past the manticore in the southeast corner of the room. "Are you ready?" she says, one hand on the latch, ready to open it and move through.
Darius, luckily, avoided the ‘haunt’, having been staying back and thinking about Manticores and animated constructs. After the whole thing is said and done, he peeks into the manor, glad that his companions took care of it without him needed to dirty his hands. Before he steps inside, he pulls out a small piece of cured leather and signs arcane symbols while speaking words of power, conjuring forth a defensive barrier around himself.
Then, feeling confident that the unholy horrors likely waiting within will have a harder time skewering him, he steps in and follows Zoli upstairs.
The group climbs a few flights of curving stairs and find themselves in a dark hallway. A lone window to the south lights this part of the passage, but around the corner, everything is cloaked in shadow. Mold and stains mar the walls throughout the manor it would seem, as well as joining with general grime encrusted on the windows to filter the little light from outside, resulting in the whole interior being only faintly visible. Surely in a few minutes the whole place will be as dark as a tomb...
Zoli creeps ahead with Eugeni at her side, and cautiously opens the door she found. However, she quickly finds that it is stuck in the frame, the warped wood and grime creating a strong seal. Her second effort, however, forces the door open, and she is greeted with complete darkness from within. To remedy the situation, she utters a brief incantation on a stone in her hand, and it begins radiating light.
The room is empty aside from some dilapidated decorations and a flight of stairs leading down. The hallway you are in continues around the bend, with a variety of doors.
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Seeing that they're heading into darkness -- and realizing that between the encounter with the haunt and Destrina's clanking armor make surprise unlikely anyway -- Zoli casts light onto a sling stone that she carries in her off hand.
Able to see again, she also notices the sobbing and says, "Do you hear it again? It's in there!"
She approaches the door to the alcove, once again listens and looks for traps...and then (barring surprises) opens it.
Prepared for the door to be jammed, Zoli gives this one an initial extra hard shove, forcing the door open with ease. It reveals a bedroom featuring a child-sized bed, a chair next to a toy box, and a looming stone fireplace big enough for a child to get lost in. Beyond this, the room is empty...
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Suspicious but concerned in case there is truly a child here (visions of the poor goblin child Thistle fresh in her mind) she calls out,
"Little one? Are you here? We're friendly, we can help."
While awaiting a response, she see Eugeni suddenly tense up. She puts a hand on his hip, saying "What is it? What's wrong?!"
Eugeni grabs his head. "Augh!" he cries in pain. "What the...I...." he trails off, looking pale (as much as possible through his fur). "I think I just saw a ghost?" The tall aasimar looks around furtively, as if checking to make sure whatever he saw is gone.
Zoli takes a survey of the room, including poking a bit in side the fireplace with her scimitar.
If nothing come of that, she follows Eugeni's old advice of hewing to the right: she goes back into the hall, stopping at the next doors on the right (the double doors) to listen and look for locks or traps.
“I love this place,” whispers Morythine with jollity as he follows Zoli. “Though I’m not sure what I’d do with all the space…”
He glances around as he creeps in the halfling’s footsteps. “Have to brick up those windows of course; much too sunny in here. Fantastic manticore, perhaps I could get one of those monsters from under Sandpoint taxidermied and added. Could be a regular menagerie of sinister, stuffed beasties. One might even learn to live with the ghosts in time …”
Zoli can tell that the door is not trapped, and neither she nor Morythine can hear anything in the still silence of the manor. These doors open easy enough, revealing a large room featuring 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.
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Walking along Zoli chuckles at Morythene's commentary. After listening and opening the door, she exclaims "Now this place is getting creepier and creepier!
"Those are all symbols for classic elements of necromantic magic--in fact these very elements are featured prominently in Jeanette Dureau's epic The Ghastly Graves of Galt. Seems like these haunts and what-not may have been around this house for a long time.
"I don't suppose we can be any more careful than we're already being without running away but, well, watch out!"
She takes a quick look through the room and then motions for the gang to follow her around to the next door to the right, once again listening and looking for traps before opening it.
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Destrina, rather belatedly, lays a hand on herself to heal her wounds as Zoli expounds upon necromantic magic whatsits and doodads. "Sounds like these Foxgloves are mixed up in things beyond their ken. If any yet persist, I'm going to have a very long talk with them." the paladin growls. She stays just behind the halfling girl, unwilling to let anything like what happened in the farmhouse earlier occur again.
"Necromantic Magic? You've only touched the surface on that, Zoli." Darius examines the various windows closely before continuing, "The components are known ties to various well-known formulae for turning oneself into an undead monstrosity known as a Lich, as a way to preserve ones' life past his or her body's normal lifespan. My cousin is right, although we may be getting into something beyond our own capabilities as well, if a lich is concerned."
Moving down the hall, everyone can see that the walls are covered in mildew and mold, a testament to how long this place has seen little care. Some of the patches take strange shapes, one patch looks like a broken skull, another somehow has taken the shape akin to a man hanging from a tree limb by the neck.
The door Zoli opens leads into a bedroom that is entirely caked with a thick, spongy layer of dark green, blue, and black mold.
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Zoli shakes her head and says, "I sure don't want to go in there. Let's close this one and keep going!"
Shrugging, Zoli leads on to the next room.
Morythine strokes his cheek absently.
"Well that was a weird feeling ..." he mutters to himself.
Zoli looks up at Morythene curiously.
Eugeni has stopped talking, and instead is just staring at everything suspiciously and jumping at every noise. His bow is always half drawn, and he's clearly quite uncomfortable. His ears lay flat against his head as he also looks to Morythine.
Morythine returns Zoli's stare , glances at Eugeni and shrugs.
"Just a little itchy. Don't get spooked. Aren't we the Heroes of Sandpoint after all?"
The next door opens up into a washroom. An iron tub sits in the middle of this room, the floorboards around it sagging with the tub's weight. It is obvious to her that too much more weight in the room and the whole floor would give way.
The next room is a once fine chamber, but it has been destroyed. The bed is smashed, mattress torn apart, walls gouged as if by knives, chairs hacked apart, and paintings on the walls torn to pieces - with one exception. A portrait hanging on the northwest wall seems to be untouched, although it hangs backward, its unseen subject facing the wall.
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Zoli surveys the room and is immediately itching to turn the picture around. WIth great restraint, she decides to first search for magical auras, speaking a few lilting words of the arcane tongue.
"Hold on, friends. I'm going to see if there's any kind of enchantment on that painting...then we should totally turn it around! What could it be?!?"
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Zoli hears the sound of Destrina grunting just in time to look over her shoulder--and see with horror that Destrina's enormous hammer is coming straight for her head.
She twists enough to have it crush her shoulder instead, and she almost collapses as she feels her shoulder blade shatter and sees her arm raw and bloody. Yikes! What's going on!?!? I can't survive another blow like that!!!
Yowling in pain, Zoli yells "Destrina! Snap out of it!! She's possessed! Someone, grab her if you can!!"
Meanwhile, Zoli concentrates on not letting that hammer connect a second time--dodging to the left and right while keeping her scimitar out in front of her.
______________
Destrina raises her hammer for the killing blow, but as fast as it came over her, the urge to kill the halfling fades away.
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Destrina raises the hammer once more, then just as she's about to swing it down again, she drops it, her will overcoming the magic that took over her mind. The paladin drops to her knees, head in her hands. Tears form in the corners of her eyes. She spends a long while in this position (30 seconds or so), after which she slowly raises her head. "Apologies, madamoiselle Zoli. I am afraid my mind was weak and taken by the darkness that infests this place. I shall seek atonement when we return, or if you should so choose I can leave this place now and do so."
"Well, one should never dither on the subject of atonement," points out Morythine, momentarily buoyed by the prospect of Destrina's departure "Go with all haste, that's what I'd recommend."
Every muscle in Zoli's body tenses in anticipation of a second--killing--blow. When (just as suddenly) Destrina regains her senses Zoli feels her legs wobble and she becomes more keenly aware of the savage throb of her shattered shoulder and bloodied arm.
Her lip quivers a bit as she tries to take it all in. If Destrina is susceptible to possession by the forces in this house...who isn't?
"I...I am glad to hear you hadn't just had a sudden change of heart." She does her best to smile. "And yes, I imagine a healing hand would do me good right now."
When Morythine quips about her leaving, Zoli gives him an odd look and then says to the paladin. "No, please stay. If you're susceptible to this house I fear all of us are....But maybe if you don't mind I'll walk behind you for a bit...just in case."
With Destrina's healing touch, Zoli's wounds miraculously vanish, though her armor and blouse are still stained with fresh blood. After looking in wonder at her arm for several moments, she looks up and sees the backward painting again. "I hate to ask but what do we do about that painting? It's magical. Someone turned it backward for a reason. I'm dying to see the other side...but suddenly a bit more nervous too."