The rest of the room on this side of the bars holds nothing of interest, and the door is neither locked nor trapped.
The northeast wall of this room has partially fallen, revealing the dark, murky waters of the pond outside. Moldering training dummies and other similar equipment hint that this room may have once been a training area for the guards. In the northeast part of the room, the floor around a dark, jagged hole is surrounded by black scorch marks.
Park follows Petyr into the room casting Detect Magic and scanning ahead. Spotting the hole with scorch marks he focuses there. "I wonder if the flames were somehow stopped here. I've been thinking that if the fires below killed everybody why weren't the upper floors destroyed as well?"
Petyr chuckles dryly. "I think the University had a course of study in arson investigation, but I was never interested. Now I wish I'd read a paper or two."
He keeps his sword low but ready as he carefully approaches the hole. "See anything, Park?"
Once he gets there, he steps carefully to the edge and peers down, hoping that his odd vision would allow him to pierce through to the bottom.
As Petyr and Park walk towards the hole, three flaming skulls (like the ones in the town hall) fly out of it and scream towards you through the air.
Park steps forward to the weird, flying, flaming skulls and attacks. "More haunts? Or just undead?"
Since these seem to have physical form he uses a regular attack. ,
Andrei moves up to the leftmost skull and slashes at it with his cold-iron kukri. "Kill them first and then we'll worry about what they are!"
"More undead," Petyr confirms, recognizing them. He moves past Andrei and the one he had just rendered into inert, fiery ectoplasm, and jams his blade into the northernmost one at the far side of the hole.
The first two skulls explode just as easily as the ones from the town hall, but the last one isn't quite finished off by Park. It lashes out, attempting to bite the bard.
Unfortunately for it, it goes wide and misses completely.
Park hacks at the attacking skull again, hoping to crack it in half.... . but swings wide.
"Crap! This thing is harder to hit than I thought. I could use a bit of help guys."
Petyr flicks his blade free of burning ectoplasm and moves around the hole in the ground to attack the remaining skull. Given Park's initial blow, he assumes the skull has nearly been rendered inert, so he holds back to focus on accuracy.
His left foot slips on some rubble as he rounds the corner, threatening to throw him off balance, but Petyr twists his right ankle to lock him in place, straining against the effort before stabbing out.
Andrei steps over and slashes at the last remaining skull.
Luckily for Park, his two companions finish off the final skull easily enough.
Looking down into the hole shows that it isn't as deep as you might first think, only about 20 feet deep. The edges of the hole may appear dangerous but the unstable portions have long since fallen away, leaving the remaining rim solid enough to support the weight of numerous creatures.
As you stare down into the darkness of the pit, however, all three of you get a vague awareness that seems to warn you not to descend, not yet. Something on this level is pulling at you, trying to grab your attention.
Park backs away from the pit. "Something's wrong here! Warning us off. I think we need to explore the rest of the topside. Or at least.... We need to find something."
Turning around he heads back toward the entrance, "Come on. Back this way."
He walks straight back to S2.
Petyr shakes his head. "Not wrong, at least no more than usual." He raises his eyebrow as Park seems to retreat. "The furnace is right through there," he says, pointing the other way. "We can go there, and then the infirmary."
He takes a few more steps in that direction, hoping that Park would agree.
Andrei nods and follows Petyr towards the furnace. "It's a shame we don't know the spell for protecting ourselves against fire yet," he remarks, "if I was a ghost who died in a fire, I bet burning people from the furnace would probably seem like a pretty good idea..."
Petyr glances back at Andrei. "Right, protection." He thinks back to the day before when they had dealt with the fire. All three of them had burnt clothes afterwards, but their skin had been oddly unsinged compared to the others in the building.
Park barely gets to the door when he hears Petyr's comment. "Right. The furnace, then the infirmary. As long as we don't go down yet. I get the nagging feeling that there's something we have to find up here."
He returns to the group. "Have you checked the door?"
"I always check the doors," Petyr says flippantly.
The doors to the furnace room aren't locked, but do feel slightly warm to the touch.
Opening the door doesn't reveal any obvious flames. A huge stone furnace dominates this room, large enough for a child to climb inside. An ancient fire has burned away the entire east wall of the room, providing a panoramic, if eerie, view of the lake beyond. That same lake has gradually expanded into the room, flooding its eastern half.
Feeling the heat Park warns his familiar to stay back, out of the furnace room. Half expecting some sort of flaming haunt Park casts Detect Magic and scans the room. If he spots anything he immediately lets the others know.
"So..." Andrei mutters as he joins in surveying the room, "do one of you want to go first, in case there's a ghost you need to stab?"
Park hears Andrei's question while he is scanning for magic. "I'll follow Petyr in."
"You're rattled," Petyr observes. Not that there was no reason for it, of course, but the scholar presses ahead unperturbed. He wasn't planning to climb into the furnace, of course, but rather poke around it. "I'll be the sacrifice on the altar, then."
He avoids the water but moves in boldly towards the furnace.
Park follows Petyr, a little behind and to the left. He sings out another Detect Magic cantrip and scans the area casually. "I wonder if they burned any bodies in that thing?"
"Let's hope not. That sort of goes against what a prison is supposed to be about." He pauses and shrugs. "Though Ustalav has done worse over the millennia."
Nothing detects as magic when Park looks, but as soon as Petyr gets within a few feet of the furnace he notices something isn't quite right.
The furnace itself actually starts to move, the four iron legs holding it up shaking as they lift the main body of the large stone structure into the air. A loud hissing sound soon reveals itself to be burning coals that have sprung to life inside the furnace itself.
Park steps up to chop at the animating furnace. "Another haunt! Can we even hurt it if it's animating this thing?" He pauses to consider things for a moment and instead of swinging he sings a quick battle chant, empowering it with his bardic magic.
"Of course we can," Petyr says confidently. He flicks his blade out, imbuing it with a fraction of his aura. and stabs into the burning coals.
Petyr's knowledge reveals that it's not animated as a haunt, per se, but instead as an actual animated object. Whatever forces have a grip on Harrowstone act in a multitude of various ways, apparently.
Speaking of the various ways the spirits act, the furnace lashes out with its heavy frame at Petyr as he approaches and strikes it. Petyr's strike is normal damage, but somehow he feels as if the hardness of the object prevents a portion of his actual damage. .
Petyr's blade sticks into the furnace and he grins, finding that while it doesn't yield as much as he might like he still manages to hit it. But his hubris leads to a rude counterattack that rings his bell. He steps to the side to give his companions an entry to attack and speaks. "An animated object," he recognizes. "Resistant to physical damage as anything made of metal would be. Come on then!"
Rather than spinning about in a flashy maneuver, Petyr focuses on keeping his attention on the animated furnace, stabbing out as hard as he can and hoping not to snap his blade in the exchange.
"A construct? My blade isn't likely to do anything then. How about magic?" He quickly casts a cantrip sending a splash of acid at the thing.
It takes a moment for Andrei to process what’s happening, but when he does he moves up and joins the fight against the living furnace.
Petyr scores a good hit and the furnace lets out a sound that almost sounds like a human wail even as it gets hit with Park's scouring acid.
The fire inside the furnace seems to roar in anger as it swells, and the grate on the front of it releases a cone of fire and ash in front of it.
Petyr manages to shield his face from the sudden outpouring of flames. His clothes are singed in the exchange, but his heritage protects him from the worst of it.
The wayward scholar continues his sidestep around the furnace, looking for a weak point to exploit. That wail is enough to chill him to the bone and makes him wonder if Park had been right about someone having been burned in here. Putting the thought to the side for the moment, he stabs out once more.
Hearing the thing wail in supposed pain makes Park shrug in disbelief. What strange magic made this thing!?! Since it seemed to work he repeats the previous rounds attack.
And Park's final splash of acid is enough to finish whatever spirit is animating the furnace and it falls back into its slot in the wall.
You get the feeling that the spirit of the furnace isn't truly dispelled, and is more like the temporary banishment of haunts you have encountered before.
Park moves up to examine the furnace. "Could it possibly be disassembled, and the parts maybe tossed in the water outside? Even if the pieces could re-animate it couldn't 'fire up' underwater...." He chuckles at the thought, but shrugs, apparently not convinced even though it is his idea!
Petyr listens to Park's postulate and actively considers it. It wasn't the worst idea, but would that be enough to actually dispel the haunt? To put the spirit to rest?
Much of the world feared the undead, and with good reason. Whether manufactured by dread necromancers or arising naturally because of interplanar incursions of negative energy, the undead blighted the land on which they tread. But Petyr didn't put much stock in the overly religious arguments that undeath was a mockery of life, or that undead should be hated. Far from it: Petyr had cultivated a sort of curious pity.
Petyr had a certain level of attachment to his body, such that he understood logically that he didn't want his corpse reanimated after his death. But he also knew that he wouldn't be his body anymore. His self would--hopefully--be able to continue with its own energy, to the outer planes.
But this showed personality. This was not a body animated by necromantic miasma. This was someone with unfinished business. Someone who just wanted rest.
Park's idea is a good one, and would probably get the job done, but isn't really a practical solution. Petyr's is way closer to the truth and Park's discovery of a set of remains in the form of a pile of charred bones inside the furnace only serves to reinforce that idea.
There are stories of restlesss spirits calmed by their remains being put to rest in a multitude of respectful ways. Perhaps you could find a respectful way to do that to end this furnace's possession.
Petyr's jaw clenches as Park finds the charred bones. "You were right," he ruefully concedes to the younger man. "They burned bodies in here."
There were certainly some cultures and customs that held cremation either sacred or merely practical. But the fact that the furnace had animated violently suggested than the person--or people--subjected to such treatment were not pleased with the method of their corporeal disposal.
Or execution.
This was a classic way to create undead without explicit necromantic magic. Take an embittered person like a convicted criminal and corrupt their souls in the passage from life into death. Injustice in life perpetuated injustice in death. This was no better than what those zealots over in Galt were doing with their Final Blades.
He barely even realizes he's been doing it, but when he regains his senses, Petyr realizes that he has been gathering charred bones from the furnace. "Andrei," he says quietly. "Would you lead a burial service?"
Park is slightly surprised to actually find the bones. He had just been guessing, but considering the prisoners and how they all met their ends.... and how they had been kept at this prison! He is fairly certain that they will find worse below!
Seeing Petyr gathering the bones and hearing the question he helps to gather the bones. "Probably the ash too? Some bones would be reduced by the fire if it was hot enough."
Andrei frowns at the discovery of the bones and nods at Petyr's suggestion. He works with his two companions to gather the bones, and whatever ash they can, from the furnace and carry them outside. Not wanting to dull his blades, he uses the weapons found inside as makeshift shovels to dig a small burial mound and places the remains within it.
"Lady of Graves, grant peace to this troubled soul. Send your servants to shepherd them to your Boneyard, from whence they might find their place in eternity." Having so prayed, he moves his right hand in the symbol of Pharasma's sacred spiral as a final blessing and then respectfully covers them in earth.
"Alright, back to the investigation?" he asks after a moment of silence passes. "Lead on."
"The Lady shall keep it," Petyr swears, drawing the spiral across his chest and lumping his own final shovel of earth over the remains. He leads the way quietly down the central hall to the infirmary.
The door to the next room in order opens easily, not being locked or otherwise obstructed.
Several moldy cots lay strewn around this room, while doors to smaller, more private sleeping cells hang askew to the west. Judging from the rest of this room’s decor, this must have once been the prison’s infirmary. A quick glance from the door at the contents of the room reveals a number of medicinal-looking items in vials, tables full of once-sharp instruments now rusted to near-uselessness, the like.
Park moves into the room, right behind Petyr, casting and scanning for magic, or another haunt? before searching for anything useful.
"Let me know if you sense anything," Petyr says, focusing his attention more on determining what sorts of supplies they can gather. Or, to be more accurate, clues.
He probably needed to share his theories more directly with Andrei and Park, but he wanted to be more certain first. If a cabal of necromancers was trying to do something untoward with this place, then the only good way to counter it would be to understand the animating forces. Ghost hunting was never merely about the hunt: it had to be an investigation into the truth.