Andrei fiddles impatiently with his blades as he moves along with the others. "If there's enough darkness here to create haunts, I suspect there's probably enough to foster other kinds of unlife too..." he offers. "We may want to limit unnecessary chatting so we can listen for any creatures that may prowl these halls."
Unfortunately, whatever chaos and fire the prison suffered that last night have put the offices in disarray, and it would take more time than you have right now to find anything of use.
The warden's office, however, is a completely different story. Whereas the rest of the prison you've seen so far has been grimy and dark, this room seems to be in relatively good condition. A long desk and chair sit to the south, while to the northwest a narrow alcove contains a closed safe. Thick layers of dust cover everything in sight.
"Curious that this room was spared," Petyr says as he goes in, dragging his index finger through the dust. Seeing the safe, he grins.
"There are some skills one picks up in a lab environment that are eminently transferable," he says. "Although some might frown on it."
Petyr kneels down in front of the safe, draws out several thin metal instruments, puts his ear to the metal, and begins working.
The safe contains a large amount of numerous (but now out of date) legal documents. A quick read through doen't reveal anything of worth, but there is a wooden rack on which sit what looks like some sort of emergency supplies.
A quick few moments shows the supplies consist of four potions of cure moderate wounds, three potions of lesser restoration, and two potions of remove disease. Unfortunately for your investigative interests, beyond the relative cleanliness of this room and the safe, there isn't anything else of interest.
"Hmm..." Andrei remarks as Petyr meticulously works the safe's lock, "with the condition of this room I worried it might be haunted by the fastidious ghost of some former employee."
He pauses for a moment to be certain that none is about to pop into view then begins gathering the potions. "We'd theorized that the warden might have keys in here... any sign of anything like that in his desk, or anywhere else?"
Unfortunately for your investigative interests, beyond the relative cleanliness of this room and the safe, there isn't anything else of interest.
Petyr rifles through the documents and decides that most of them won't be worth much to them in the immediate. Still, he leaves the safe ajar and makes a mental note to come back for these documents when there's a chance later.
"It looks like this is it," Petyr says tentatively. "It's curious the warden had an emergency cache here. These sorts of supplies are usually in the medical wing. Was he afraid he might have to barricade himself in here, injured and possibly disease-ridden, when he had a home on the property?"
He shakes his head. "Anyone remember what was next?"
"The warden may have been in the prison when the fire cleared it. We may as well take his emergency supplies just in case we need them. Andrei can take the disease ones. I don't know of any immediate diseases that would need put you down if not healed in seconds...."
The small area next to the warden's office appears to be an old washroom, with an attached privy. Beyond the appearence of the walls and other materials returning to the old grimy look that the rest of the prison holds.
"Pharasma willing we don't get separated, but I'd rather have one on hand just in case," Petyr says, grabbing a few potions and sticking them in his increasingly-full bandolier. There were now a dozen vials of different sorts jangling slightly as he walked about: a good mix of curatives and combat enhancers.
The washroom proves innocuous, and Petyr looks to the others. "Well, should we continue our systematic search? It seems like this is the end of this wing and we'll have to double back. So far we have old records and emergency supplies, but no keys, and only faint details of what else might be going on here. Given the dust, it doesn't seem like anyone else has been within the prison recently, at least not where we've been."
Consulting his recollection of the blueprints, Petyr proposes a next step. As Andrei said, it was prudent to limit unnecessary chatter, so he returns to the relatively untouched warden's office for the next part. "The eastern wing will hold the auditorium, the property room, and the furnace room. Going to the north from where Park banished that one haunt would take us to the chapel, the workshop, and the infirmary. There are a few other potential stops along the way, but those are the most significant. Let's try the Property Room next: there's a dead-end there anyway, so it'll be the quickest. We might find other useful supplies there, too, if it wasn't destroyed by the fire."
Park considers the 'important' rooms. The chapel wouldn't likely have any resources, but he wonders if there would be any haunts there? Likewise the infirmary and auditorium, unless anyone died there? "Property room? Might have possessions of the prisoners. Items can be haunted too can't they? Good choice for the start."
Moving back through the foyer and into the smaller eastern door leads you into the room labeled as the auditorium.
Several rows of wooden benches, all spotted with mold and sagging with neglect, face a stage walled off from the rest of the room by a wall of iron bars. The door you entered sees you enter the raised platform of the stage. Beyond the crumbling benches and the rotten podium, nothing of interest appears to be in this room, at least from this side.
The door to the room labeled the property stands in front of you, made of a hearty looking metal.
Park studies the area through the bars as they cross the auditorium. "Did they provide entertainment for the prisoners? A bit strange."
Seeing the metal door he stays back, out of Petyr's way, but casts Detect Magic once in range. If he notices any magic he warns the group.
Petyr shrugs at Park's question. "Maybe. There's any number of uses for a room like this. Staff meetings, probably. And even though this prison housed the so-called worst-of-the-worst, enlightened practices would suggest some measure of incentive for good behavior."
So long as Park doesn't detect any magic within the room in need of closer investigation, Petyr heads to the door. He'll try it first, in the off-chance that it's unlocked, and then get down to the business of busting the lock.
Andrei sighs at the mention of the undisturbed dust. "Anyone solid, you mean" he chimes in. "Ghosts and specters and those sorts of things wouldn't disturb the dust at all, so this just means there hasn't been anyone solid in this part of the prison recently..."
"They might have changed it to an entertaining space after the blueprints were filled," Andrei reasons aloud, "but the bars would make sense for a property room. Inmates come in to be processed and have to pass any belongs through the bars to someone whose safely on the other side of them."
"Solid indeed!" Petyr concurs with a chuckle. "Without sufficient studied on the nature of ectoplasm, it's uncertain how or in what way that would interact with humanoid detritus."
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Even with Petyr taking the few minutes required to really sit down and make sure he is able to open it, he nearly doesn't get it open. After about five minutes of fiddling with it, the lock finally makes a loud click and pops open.
Once inside, you see a bizarre collection of antique goods resting upon wooden shelves that line the room. Several of the items contain tiny tags with labels written in a careful script. A thorough inspection of the room reveals a secret hidden door in the eastern wall, which appears to lead to a second vault of confiscated items.
Resting on shelves in the second vault is a handaxe, a muddled collection of a dozen holy symbols of various religions on a silver chain, a thick leather-bound book with hints of mold on the edges, a silver smith's hammer, and a tarnished silver flute.
The property room has a wide variety of items, including a set of masterwork thieves’ tools, a bronze war medallion from the Shining Crusade (worth 40 gp), an unframed Taldan painting of Stavian I (worth 100 gp), a set of a noblewoman’s silver hair clips (worth 35 gp), a masterwork punching dagger, a pouch containing a dozen masterwork shurikens, a masterwork silver war razor, and a slim wand.
Park casts Detect Magic and scans the items in the outer room, then moves to the hidden room and does the same.
"Well isn't this a curious collection?" Petyr marvels, sorting through things that Park identifies as magical and those stll mundane. He supposes that most of the items were confiscated from prisoners, but the nobler items (especially those of distinctly Taldan origin) could have been from a worker. That or a prisoner obsessed with royalty and history from a foreign land.
Petyr appraises the thieves' tools with a grin. "Better than the ones I brought from home," he observes, replacing his old set with this new (but in reality, even older) set. Old-timers often knew what they were doing.
"If I recall my lessons correctly," Andrei says as he sets aside the hammer and razor, "silver is necessary for overcoming some undead creatures' resistance to harm... can either of you use these effectively at all?"
"Use? Certainly. Effectively? It depends on what exactly you mean by effective." Petyr shrugs. "I'm most effective with a fencing weapon. But I can manage with those sorts of weapons if I have to."
Park cations his friends. "Wait a minute guys. This stuff came from the criminals. Their personal stuff. Heck, their haunts could be attached to this stuff. I agree that we should take what we can use. But should we carry all of it around? Andrei? Can you detect evil auras?"
He does look at the mw silver war razor. "I 'can' fight with anything, but I focus mainly on light weapons like this. If its not haunted or anything!"
He also looks at the flute, not touching it. "I wonder which of the freaks had that!?! It's a pretty little thing. I wonder if it sounds as sweet as it looks?"
The only magical thing in the first room is the wand, which is a wand of lesser restoration with 12 charges remaining. The items in the second vault, however, are a completely different story.
-The collection of holy symbols appears to have a magical aura of the Abjuration school, but no other details are readily available.
-The book isn't just an ordinary book, opening it reveals it to be a mold-covered but still functional spellbook. I don't think any of you can use a spellbook, and most of the pages aren't readable through the mold, but it has nine pages that still hold usable spells. These include comprehend languages, dispel magic, false life, gust of wind, illusory script, levitate, mage armor, magic missile, and summon monster IV.
-The smith's hammer is a masterwork smith' hammer that grants a +2 bonus on craft checks (armor, weapons, and blacksmithing stuff). It has an aura of necromancy magic.
-The silver flute is a masterwork flute, and carries an aura of enchantment magic.
Once identified Park hands the wand to Andrei. "I think you're the only one of us that can easily use this. Hopefully you won't have need of one of us using it on you...." Looking over the other items he does take the War Razor. "It's different from my machete. But I can use it effectively. If nobody else wants to take it?"
Petyr's eyes take on a red hue as he studies the magical items, conferring with Park on what exactly they're looking at, and reporting all those items that register to him as inherently magical.
"Careful about calling them epithets, Park," Petyr warns. "If their spirits linger here, they might not appreciate name-calling."
The scholar shrugs when Park hands Andrei the wand. He was probably right. In a pinch, Petyr probably had a fifty percent chance of activating such a wand. But a wand was just like most tools--a bit of finesse, elbow grease, and effort, and it would eventually work.
The axe, hammer, and flute don't hold much inherent interest for him, but Petyr finds himself drawn to the odd collection of holy symbols and the spellbook. Professor Lorrimor had been the one to help Petyr understand some of the cosmological underpinnings of the multiverse manipulated and maintained by the gods. What gods had this prisoner worshiped, or at least acknowledged? Was it a particular pantheon? Gods united by a given domain or aspect? Or was it a hodgepodge that might not provide any clear notions at first glance?
And then the spellbook. Petyr takes out a handkerchief to hold up to his mouth as he begins delicately turning through the pages. "Although most of the spells have been erased, I might be able to gain something from this. There are...let's see...three spells that I should be able to duplicate in alchemical form given enough study. But beyond that..."
Petyr gulps. Wizardry was not something he knew too much about beyond basic theory, but there were a handful of things that he did know. There were typically eight schools of magic. Some wizards, though not all, became specialists, eschewing studies of two schools of magic in order to focus more deeply on one. Of the nine spells represented here, all but enchantment was apparent, along with two spells of the conjuration school and two spells of the evocation school. And the strongest spell by far was this conjuration spell, suggesting a wizard of the 4th Circle at least.
"Beyond that I hope we don't encounter the spirit of the wizard who owned this spellbook. He was, by all accounts, quite powerful."
---
An investigator can study a wizard’s spellbook to learn any formula that is equivalent to a spell the spellbook contains.
Not sharing his companions' understanding of, or interest in, arcane magic, Andrei sticks the wand into one of the many leather loops on his belt and waits quietly while the others work to make sense of what they found.
Park sees Petyr scanning through the moldy spellbook and decides to pick up the flute. Maybe later he could try it and see how it sounded. He'd learned how to play years ago but hadn't had a flute to practice on....
"I guess we could pack these, rather than leaving them here where some innocent might find them."
With a bit of reluctance he stows the flute in his pack.
Petyr snickers, thinking of teenaged interlopers braving the prison on a dare, or young lovers trying not to be found out on an escapade. "If there were any innocents who came through here on a lark, they would almost certainly not have the skill, patience, or fortitude to find the things we have so far. The Way had a specific goal in mind, so either they knew about these and didn't care or didn't know and didn't bother."
And sufficiently determined looters would get what was coming to them. But Petyr doesn't say that.
Andrei, Park, and Petyr were none of the above. They also had a specific goal in mind. This was not looting. It was fact-finding.
"If you're really worried, Park, just say your prayers."
The holy symbol necklace is a collection of a lot of the good-aligned deities of Golarion. Symbols of Erastil, Torag, Iomaedae, Sarenrae, Shelyn, Desna, Pharasma and a few other smaller gods of protection make up the string of holy symbols. Notably, they are all holy symbols, with not a single evil aligned deity to be found. Beyond their general good/protection themes, there doesn't seem to be any other pattern.
Nothing untoward happens as you pick up each of the items, and appear to have no ill effects as you carry them.
Leafing through the holy symbols, Petyr marvels at the collection. It even looked like there were some odd empyreal lords represented here, a dwarven god, and even an odd symbol from some of those ancient Osiriani gods. He had a vague recollection of some creatures that were particularly repelled by holy symbols. Wasn't there something called a redcapthat got sick or something when it encountered them? Hell, with how superstitious Park was acting, maybe he'd like to take them.
"I think that's everything here. Let's go to the furnace room next. I know we're not trying to figure out the cause of the original fire and nothing might have survived there, but I'd rather just check it out."
"Sounds like as good a place to start as any," Andrei replies to Petyr's suggestion as he finishes packing up the rest of the stuff they'd found. Then, after drawing both his knives again, he follows his friend's directions towards the next location.
As the two bicker, Petyr turns to Andrei. "Well, tie-breaker?"
The other side of the bars looks much the same as it did from the top of the stage, with the exception that you're looking up at the stage instead of down from it.
The room is empty of anything of interest, but as you cross it, the three of you notice a sharp drop in temperature. At the same moment, what sounds like a small solid object being slammed into a piece of wood echoes through the room from the other side of the bars towards the stage.
Park readies his weapon waiting for the haunt to manifest so he can attack it.
Andrei reflexively raises his hand to try to channel energy into the haunt, but remembers that his friends are capable of combating it with their weapons, so he pauses just short. Still, he can't quite bring himself to lower his hand or let go of the almost conjured energy.
The drop in temperature draws Petyr forward towards the apparent source of the haunt, his hand drawing his blade and focusing his very life energy into the metal. He thinks through the manifestation to determine if there was any way to dismiss the haunt permanently.
With all of the attacks thrown at the manifesting haunt, it is seemingly enough to stop it.
Each of you feel the cold hands of some spirit rush out to touch you, but just as they appear they are gone. The drop in temperature follows suit immediately after, and it returns to normal.
Your knowledge of haunts doesn't reveal a way to get rid of it permanently for now, but it might have something to do with the spirits that inhabit this place.
When the haunt apparently leaves Park looks around the area. "I don't like this. It's gone, but probably will come back. Either we avoid this route or we figure out how to get rid of it...."
Petyr shivers, asking for a few moments to breathe. "It should be easy enough to avoid going forward," he says. "But while we're here and unthreatened, let's see if there's anything else in here."
Andrei grits his teeth and sighs. "No matter what route we take, I suspect that won't be the last haunt we come across."
Kukri in hand, he sets to helping Petyr search the area and adds, "maybe if we can get to the bottom of what happened here we can figure out how to free these accursed souls..."