Cassiel looks up at the moon, fingering his holy symbol of Sarenrae.
He turns back to Ezebelle. "Come on, let's get this done before one of us changes their mind."
One of us. I'm not going to say who, but I think you know him very well.
"Onwards then!" Ezebelle exclaims.
She goes about retracing her route from earlier into the restlands, taking caution to try and avoid any detection from the locals.
After his prayer Utho goes downstairs, and reads to his companions (pointedly looking to Cassiel and Ezebelle. [b"We must do what is necessary to eliminate evil."[/b] With that, he goes out for a couple hours watch before turning in for sleep.
Cassiel cringes as Ezebelle exclaims.
"Not so loud, please... they'll probably notice us if they haven't already."
He follows behind her, making a conscious effort to remain quiet.
The Restlands is directly north of town. You would either need to cross through the town center, go around to the east or go south to the bridge and then cross the river and head back north on the west side of town.
You successfully skirt the town to the east. There is a single outlaying farm and you move, crouched, just beyond a rock retaining wall beyond the farm. To your east stretches the moor surrounding the town, patches of rocks and shadows accent the dips and rises.
You come to the farm lands north of town and see the river veering to the north east cutting your path back to the Restlands, which you remember sits on the other side of the river further north. You see the covered bridge that led you out to the monument earlier in the day, but traversing that would increase your chances of detection.
You sense no one about except for the glow and faint noise coming from near the town center. The river before you is roughly twenty meters wide, but you know not how deep.
Ezebelle looks over to Cassiel. "Water or Bridge?" she whispers enquiringly.
Cassiel looks around the bridge for anyone who could potentially see them.
"I want to use the bridge. I can't swim."
Thank the gods, I really didn't feel like trekking around soaking wet.
Ezebelle nods and starts to head towards the bridge.
Still keeping an eye out for any passersby or potential witnesses, Cassiel creeps across the bridge.
You get across the bridge quietly and continue to see no one around. The path leads out of town up into the Restlands.
Cassiel smirks, and motions for Ezebelle to take point again.
"Time to rock & roll."
Edwyn paces back and forth in his room, murmuring incomprehensibly and still clutching his amulet, his thumb repeatedly tracing the Pharasman spiral engraved onto its surface.
Maybe they're still downstairs... perhaps they decided against it... But what if they did go? Should I have gone with them? Or maybe... no, no, that wouldn't do at all...
A few minutes pass before the wizard finally relents, going back downstairs. "Are... they gone?" he asks Kendra and Ezra.
Ezebelle leads them towards the Restlands, retracing the path to the mausoleum from earlier.
"Edwyn, perhaps you should read the Second Act. It may help you in this matter." He will also act Edwyn if the high priests behaviour seems strange to him.
Ezra nots to Edwyn, "Yes, they are."
In an effort to calm Edwyn, Ezra begins pulling up books, and looking for some insight into the possible inmates at the prison at the time of its unfortunate collapse, and any survivors who might be yet alive.
Edwyn sighs at Ezra's response, but only partly out of relief. I hope they conclude their business quickly... without getting caught. Part of him regretted not accompanying them, but what was done was done. With that matter out of the way, he ponders Utho's question.
"Strange? N-not particularly," he replies, seating himself at the table. "The Restlands are a s-sacred place, after all. And we are the only ones who suspect f-foul play... or even know that the Way is involved. The Professor was v-very secretive with his goals... if only h-he'd..." The wizard bites his tongue, shaking his head.
"Well... n-no matter. Perhaps he kept some n-notes on those prisoners somewhere around h-here..." he adds quietly, now loathe to ask Father Grimburrow directly.
"A good thought!" Utho smiles briefly and begins rummaging for notes.
Cassiel follows behind Ezebelle.
He's being unusually quiet, still on the lookout for impending problems.
But he appears to be so focused on not making noise that he likely misses a lot of things.
Rather than focusing on the research herself, Ezra abandons the task based on her dismal failure, and simply scans the spines of the volumes searching for anything labeled appropriately.
After a few moments, an exasperated oracle just collapses, frustrated, into a corner and waits politely for the others' return.
Between your tired mind, lack of the organizational help from Ezra and the mass of information you've already gathered for today, you find yourself inept at discovering the information you seek. Perhaps tomorrow your research will be more fruitful.
You come to the south entrance to the Restlands. The dead trees scattered throughout the area look like dead veins of the earth, reaching towards the void beyond the surface. Some branches curl and twist away from their goal, as if repelled or confused. A light fog has settled, as the Restlands sits just higher than the path you have traveled. The ground is cold but the air has a strange weight. In the moonlight, very little color remains in what you see: gravestones of various states of well-being and disrepair, patches of dry grass and the masoleums to the north west, to your right along the Black Path more crypts and finally, your destination at the end of the path in the north eastern most corner of the Restlands. It is the crypt you noticed on your way from the funeral. It's lock seems tampered with, unlike the untouched rest of the stone frame.
Your knowledge of local history is none, but due to the vast amount of resources at your disposal you can at least attempt to find the information you seek.
Originally, Harrowstone housed only local criminals, but as the prison’s fame spread, other counties and distant lands began paying to have more dangerous criminals housed within this prison’s walls. At the time of the great Harrowstone Fire, the number of particularly violent or dangerous criminals imprisoned within the dungeons below was at an all-time high.
"...perhaps I... should have gone to bed after all..." Edwyn murmurs, resting his tired head on an old encyclopedia.
Cassiel creeps towards the crypt door and checks it.
Unfortunately, it's pretty dark, so he doesn't see much.
Ezra nods to Edwyn. "Perhaps we should take a break, then ask our hostess about libraries in town. We may have exhausted our luck here. she manages with a pained look on her face. Standing, Ezra courtesies then takes a quick nap in one of the coney chairs in the professors library.
Edwyn shakes his head, though the gesture is lost amidst the awkwardness of his present posture. "I d-doubt any local library would have a collection this grand..." he mumbles, lazily gesturing towards the bookshelves. "I'm sure the answer is here somewhere, I just..."
"...Zzz..."
Utho shares his new found information with Edwyn and Ezra.
Ezebelle stays close to Cassiel, and reaches out to grab the lock after Cassiel's check, trying to open it.
Above you two gargoyles sit inert on the top corners of the mausoleum
Before you is a single stone door with rusted lock. Upon closer inspection you find that the clasp on the lock was melted with acid and set back in place to appear in tact. It comes off the door easily when manipulated.
Cassiel nods at Ezebelle, then opens the door. He starts walking into the darkness of the crypt, mumbling a prayer to Sarenrae as he does so.
His holy symbol starts glowing with a white light, illuminating the crypt's entryway.
A flight of stone steps leads down into the cold earth. The light from your holy symbol illuminates most of the chamber beyond, roughly thirty feet in width and twenty five feet deep after the short set of stairs. The crypt is filled with niches on the walls, likely for the interment of the dead, but there are no corpses or skeletons in this crypt. The last ten feet or so of the room is only dimly lit, but there you can see a wall and two stone doors ten feet apart. Two gargoyle statues sit opposite each other half way through the room. They are identical to the gargoyles on the top of you structure outside.
"Looks like nobody but us & our gear-stasher have been here in a long time." Cassiel says, pointing out the footprints. "I think that it's a pretty safe bet that our ghost-hunting cache is still here."
He sighs and approaches the center of the chamber, motioning for Ezebelle to follow.
"You know, when I took the Inquisitorial Oath of Sarenrae, I swore that I would journey forth and bring the light of truth to the dark corners of the world." He says, one hand on the hilt of his club. "I was kind of hoping my first stop on that journey wouldn't be in a crypt."
"But isn't this so much better!" Ezebelle exclaims.
"Hunting down the unknown, routing out evil things. If this is how this month is going to be, I might actually enjoy myself here."
Ezebelle cautiously walks through the crypt with Cassiel, trying to see if there are some hints to the whereabouts of the cache.
The walls are littered with cracks. A few small bugs scurry out of view as you near. You cannot see anything that would indicate that the stash is in this room, but there are the two stone doors on the far side of the room.
Ezebelle motions to Cassiel to follow and slowly begins towards the right door, following the footsteps.
You reach the door without noticing anything new or different. The door is much like the outside door, but without a lock and only a single, five feet section in width.
Cassiel follows Ezebelle and opens the right door.
He then steps out of the way so Ezebelle can go first.
The door opens with the scraping of one ancient stone upon another. Dust shakes free from the ceiling and the smell of long stale air blows lightly into your face.
Your light emanates into the next room enough to reveal a small chamber as wide as your current chamber, but only ten feet deep. In the center a ten food wide stair case leads further down into the earth. The air has cooled slightly and the worked stones lining the entire area are colder and indifferent to your presence.
After a short moment a groan echos back to you. Was it the lower, distorted reverberations of the scraping door? Or something else?
Ezebelle quirks her head at the groan. Did I just here that correctly?
Unsure of it's origin Ezebelle reaches to her back. Removing the greatsword from its sheath.
"Be on your guard Cassiel. Who knows, maybe there will be some undead to kill!" Ezebelle whispers, the excitement clear in her voice.
Ezebelle starts towards the staircase and down into the depths.
Cassiel cringes and readies his bow.
"I've got a bad feeling about this..." He says.
He follows Ezebelle, closing the door behind them.
Ezra snores loudly, a small rivulet of drool escaping the corner of her mask.
As the light flows down into the lower room you see it open up to both sides. About thirty feet down there is a sarcophagus on a raised semi-circle slab of stone, set into the center of the room against the back wall. The sarcophagus looks to have a heavy stone lid. This room is excessively dusty and you make out the foot prints leading straight towards the sarcophagus. There is a broken urn in the far back left corner and a few small lidded vases in the front left corner and the back right.
Ezebelle slowly inches forward towards the sarcophagus on the lookout for any movement.
Of course the cache is in a coffin, why wouldn't it be? Well someone got to the coffin before us and clearly left...So maybe I'm just working myself up.
Cassiel hangs back on the stairs, preparing to shoot at the first sign of movement that isn't Ezebelle.
I don't like this...
...evidently, he's looking EVERYWHERE but where Ezebelle is. His fractured nerves have him jumping at every little sound.
"...that seems... r-rather convenient..." Edwyn murmurs, his head still inclined on the textbook. His mind exhausted from hours of researching, it was refreshing to learn something relevant. Now if only he could stay awake long enough to hold a cohesive conversation. "W-what if the fire... wasn't an accident?"
Ezebelle hears the skittering of many small limbs coming from up the stairs in the previous room. She turns to see two human sized centipedes gliding towards Cassiel, their pincers clicking incessantly.
Ezebelle is first to act.
"Watch out Cassiel! Giant bugs. Here I was hoping we'd get to fight some undead." Ezebelle cries while quickly running back to Cassiel, taking up position beside him.
Ezebelle takes a might swing at the closest Centipede.
The centipede closer to Cassiel bites at his vulnerable calf muscle before he can manage to turn around and defend himself fully. It's pincers drawing some blood onto its mouth and the floor.
A venom seeps from the centipedes mouth as it's pincers clamp down, but it does not seem to have any effect on you.
The second centipede lunges at Ezebelle, it's pincers snapping at your readied arms, but you deflect the strike with the bracers of your armor.
"OW!" Cassiel curses. He promptly moves back, closer to the sarcophagus. He then takes a shot at the centipede that just bit him...
...missing wildly.