Snow identifies the tree creature as an arboreal. Thanara recognizes the bird as a roc and the lion-taur as a sphinx, but is unsure about the other two creatures. Likewise, she can't quite comprehend what the box is supposed to represent.
Snow investigates cautiously down the main hallway, taking care not to actually enter the main foyer and sniffing as she goes.
A ratty throw rug partially obscures a foul stain of dark-colored mold on the floor of the main hall. The stain under the rug is about 10 feet across, a swirling pattern of dark blue, sickly green, and black mold that grows in a spiral. To Snow's close examination, it looks almost like a bird’seye view of a spiraling staircase descending downward, with each step littered with skulls and bones...
Avoiding the stain, Snow peers into the manor's foyer. The sound of the house straining and creaking gives this long, high-ceilinged room an additional sense of age and decay. The place smells damp, the unpleasant tinge of mold lacing the air as surely as it stains the wooden floor, walls, and furniture in pallid patches. Moldering trophies hang on the wall to the northeast: a boar, a bear, a firepelt cougar, and a stag, yet they pale in comparison to the monster on display in the center of the room. Here crouches a twelve-foot-long creature with the body of a lion, a scorpion’s tail fitted with dozens of razor barbs, huge batlike wings, and a deformed humanoid face. Fortunately, the beast is dead and stuffed.
Snow catches a momentary whiff of burning hair and flesh, but then it is gone. But she does hear what sounds like sobs coming from upstairs...
Shaking her head at the strange noises of the house snow goes back to the stain and sniffs it carefully - undead living upstairs in the house seems instinctively wrong to her and this is the first sign she's seen of any access to a lower floor.
Thanara was quiet as Snow took charge and led the way through the haunted house. When Lisavet mentions it could actually be haunted, Thanara gulps to herself but continues following along.
She does indeed put the rat out of its suffering with her cantrips, then dutifully follows along behind the others again.
Snow doesn't notice any unusual scents coming from upstairs, so she leads the way into the last two ground-floor rooms. The first is a cozy-looking drawing room that is marred by the unnatural dampness and the thick sheets of mold that cling to the curtains closed over the southern window. There seems to be little of interest here.
The last room is a library that features two chairs, one of which lies on its side, before a stone fireplace. A scarf, its reds and golds contrasting with the drab palette of the room, is draped over the side of the fallen chair. A book sits facedown on the floor between the chairs. A stone bookend, carved to look like a praying angel with butterfly wings, lies on its side in the fireplace itself.
A splash of dried blood stains the back of the northernmost chair, and an examination of the bookend reveals more blood, clots of hair, and bits of skull and flesh—in addition, part of one wing has been broken off. Also, as Snow gets near the scarf, she sees that it is subtly moving on its own...
Thanara moved up towards the blood just behind Snow. ”What…what happened here?” she asked quietly, mostly to herself.
Snow reacts with impressive speed, leaping forward and grabbing the scarf between her two hands - stretching it taut enough that the fabric lets out a slight groan in protest.
She retreats quickly, keeping the scarf stretched out until she makes it out of the room again.
"Nothing good." She answers before handing the scarf to Lisa. "Hold that. Watch carefully."
Once the priestess has the potentially dangerous object Snow returns to the room to see what she can piece together.
A couple of minutes examination reveals a story to Snow, whether its right is hard to say but there's a certain amount she can be sure of.
"Think two people." She says, pointing to the chairs. "Reading. One stands up. Angry. Grabs angel. Hits other. Breaks skull. Guess man hit woman. So scarf. Angry spirit." She pantomimes most of the actions, looking remarkably ghostly herself in her white armor.
When Snow brings the scarf back, Lisavet prays over it to ensure the animating spirit has truly departed. The scarf itself is a work of art. No doubt it will be valuable if sold!
The priestess grimaces at Snow's description of the possible murder. "How dreadful!"
Now that they've cleared the ground floor Snow looks out the nearest window, apparently pensive.
"Don't think upstairs." She says slowly. "Undead like ground? Not up, where might be sun. But no way down. Except odd stain. Like stairs."
Beckoning the other ladies to follow her she returns to the odd stain on the floor.
"See? Like staircase, round and round."
”Ooookay? But…it’s a floor? Are there no, like, proper stairs?” she asks, looking to see if there are any other doors they’ve missed. Surely the stairs to the other levels would be somewhere near the main hall…right?
Fortunately, you are able to find stairs down behind a door in the main hall here. A large oaken table, its surface covered with moldy stains and rat droppings, sits in the center of this large kitchen. Shelves line the walls, and an oversized fireplace dominates the northeast portion of the room. The shelves in the southwest wall are in a much greater state of disarray, and two one-foot-wide cracks in the wall near the floor lead south into the earth beyond the basement walls.
As you look around, the rapidly growing susurrus of oily, diseased rat bodies slithering through tight confines, combined with the rising wave of rodent squeaks, gives you a few moments to prepare before three swarms of shrieking, scurrying rats pour out of the cracks and advance on you!
Thanara squeals in disgust and fright as a horde of rats emerge. She sends some magic their way…much larger than she’s ever displayed before!
As the accompanying thunderous boom dissipates, she looks down at her hands, shocked.
____________
The rats are even more shocked than Thanara! Within moments, the swarm lies dead or dying, legs twitching feebly as the electric blast slaughters them by the hundreds!
Snow nods respectfully to Thanara and steps cautiously across the room, trying not to get her new boots covered in charred rat. Since the room seems largely abandoned she pushes on, intent on staying here no longer than strictly necessary.
The two small rooms adjoining the kitchen are a pantry covered with fur and rat droppings and a wine cellar. Most of the wine bottles lie smashed on the floor, but you discover a hidden compartment in the back wall which holds eight fine vintages of wine from the famed Vigardeis vineyard in distant Cheliax. Each bottle is quite valuable!
The next room must have been the quarters for the kitchen's sttaff, but it is abandoned and holds little of value.
The south hall leads to a locked door made of iron. While patches of rust mar its face, the door remains quite stout. Snow is eventually able to pick the lock open, though.
This room looks to have once been some sort of arcane workshop, although it now lies in ruin. A row of soggy books sits on the northern end of a workbench along the western wall. At the other end of the workbench, what looks like three iron birdcages sit, each containing a dead diseased rat. To the east, two stained-glass windows loom. The northern window depicts a thin man with gaunt features drinking a foul-looking brew of green fluid, while the southern one shows the same man but in an advanced state of decay, as if he had been dead for several weeks. His arms raised and head thrown back in triumph, his rotting body turns to smoke and spirals into a seven-sided box.
For some reason, Snow instinctively knows that the man in the windows is Vorel Foxglove, the man who constructed his manor and Aldern Foxglove's great-great-uncle.
"I may be mistaken," Lisa says carefully, "but I think those windows show that man becoming a powerful undead spellcaster--a lich! And is it just me, or...did he just move?"
Once again Snow is quick off the mark, sending her starknife hurtling into the window with the loud sound of smashing glass!
"Bad man." She says, "Vorel. Know that. Not sure why. Shouldn't."
She proceeds extra cautiously to search this room - if something is messing with her head and pushing knowledge in there that she has no right to know then maybe her eyes and ears can't be trusted either...
The books are in sorry shape, but a look through them reveals that they all cover various arts of necromancy and the creation of undeath. Worm-eaten and crumbling, they won’t stand up to much investigation, but making note of where the previous owner had glossed the text with marks and observations makes it clear that whoever studied the books was indeed investigating the transformation of a mortal into a lich.
Close examination of any of the cages containing the dead, diseased rats reveals a small symbol of a pig with a mouthful of lock picks peering at a keyhole; under the pig is a guildsign that says “Pug’s Contraptions—Magnimar.”
With nothing else to examine here, you move on through the last door, which leads to the basement's central room. Piles of broken stone, dirt, and a few ruined pickaxes line the edges of this room. The floor in the middle of the room has been torn up to reveal an ancient set of stone spiral stairs, obviously of much older construction than the surrounding basement, winding deep into the bedrock below. A foul stink, like that of rotten meat, wafts up on a cold breeze from the darkness.
"Ghouls there!" Snow says firmly, the smell is a dead give-away. "Stay close."
She wants to shift into her wolf form, but stairs and paws don't mix well, especially narrow ones so she refrains and simply leads the way, helmet on and hands ready for battle!
Lisa and Thanara follow Snow down the stairs. As soon as Thanara sets foot on the stairs, she experiences a sudden vision of Aldern Foxglove, sweaty, filthy, and wild-eyed, digging away at the stone floor of this room with a pickaxe. With each swing, he grunts out two words: “For you.” Thanara knows that Aldern is speaking of her. As the vision ends, Aldern breaks through into the room beyond, and a horde of shrieking ghouls rises up to pull him into the darkness below before they turn their lambent eyes to the sorceress!
Thanara mutters ”Aldern…stop,” and reaches out as if trying to console someone. She then shrieks and jumps back, her body spasming, jerking, and flailing about as bites and lacerations appear on her body in various spots! She cries out in pain as each vicious wound appears!
"Thanara!" Lisa shouts, watching as the sorceress suddenly flails around in pain. She reaches out to catch her before she falls down the stairs. "What happened?"
The cleric doesn't wait for an answer, though, immediately casting a healing spell from her staff to counteract the wounds.
Thanara clings to Lisavet in fear as the priestess heals her. ”I…I saw Aldern. He was frantic…obsessed! Then a pack of…monsters grabbed him and pulled him down, then they turned on me!” she says rapidly as her hands cling to Lisavet’s exposed back.
She eventually calms, and pulls away enough to retrieve the potions she bought weeks ago. She drinks them down, and the last of the cuts fade away, leaving just some bruised flesh and dull aches in their place.
Snow spins around on the stair and then has to watch helplessly as Thanara is attacked by an invisible enemy! Unable to fight an enemy she can't see Snow stays in place, growling ferociously and splitting her attention between the darkness below and her pack mates above.
Once Lisa gives the ok, Snow continues down into the darkness, unphased by the lack of light.
The stairs spiral down for 80 feet before ending in a limestone cavern. The walls drip with moisture, and swaths of black and dark blue mold grow in spiraling, tangled patterns on the floor, ceiling, and walls. Rubble and broken bones clutter the floor, and a rhythmic sound—like the breathing of some immense creature—echoes through the cave from three tunnels, one to the north and two to the west. Of the two western tunnels, the southernmost one seems to be a relatively new creation.
Snow catches the unmistakable scent of ghouls nearby...
"Ghouls." Snow whispers, gesturing for quiet. She leads the way down the older western tunnel.
The tunnel leads to an otherwise nondescript cave, but the stench of ghouls is very strong here!
Before you can react, however, three ghouls leap out from shadowy nooks all around the cave! They leap at Snow, biting and clawing at her! Two of their claws find gaps in the ranger's armor, tearing at her flesh.
Thanara gasps at the horrific appearance of these monstrosities! The stench is foul, and they strike at Snow with a ferocity she is not comfortable with. She conjures up a ball of rolling storm that engulfs two of them within its roiling fury.
Snow throws off the paralyzing effect and lets out an angry howl as her body shifts into that of a mighty wolf! The white wolf bites and claws at the ghouls around her.
Snow rips apart one of the ghouls with her claws! Lisa blasts another with holy light, but it manages to dodge Thanara's storming sphere.
The ghouls continue to try to take down Snow. The ranger is hit twice more.
The wolf takes a number of blows but replies in kind with a hefty bite and a claw attack powerful to take the head off a ghoul!
Lisa finishes off the ghoul she struck with another divine lance, then Snow rips the last one apart!
Thanara is still taken aback by the fearsome appearance of the unliving things, but is straining to maintain her storm. ”I…I think I can hold this for…a bit longer…” she says as beads of sweat start to appear on her skin.
Lisa uses her staff to heal Snow as the wolf leads the charge down the hall, Thanara bringing her ball of electricity with her. The western half of this foul-smelling cavern is heaped with bones, each scarred by the scraping of teeth. Most of the bones have been cracked open for the marrow within.
Four more ghouls are here, and they snarl as they prepare to attack!
They swarm Snow, biting at her!
Snow rips and tears once more!
Thanara rolls the storm cloud into the nearest one as she moves into the room.
She then moves and angles herself to send a wave of lightning over the one she hit with the storm and another one of the undead.
Lisa blasts a ghoul with divine energy. Thanra finds the undead hard to pin down, as the same ghoul dodges both her shocking sphere and lightning hands! Another foe gets zapped, though, and Snow rips apart her own chosen prey.
The ghouls assault Snow some more!
Blood runs freely down the wolf's flanks now, although she keeps fighting with determination!
Thanara continues maneuvering the storm and around the room to get more angles on the undead.
Thanara finally connects with her shocking sphere! Between the lightning, Lisa's holy beams, and Snow's teeth, the ghouls all go down!
The huge white wolf puts its head between its legs and then suddenly shrinks back into Snow. She looks somewhat the worse for wear and kicks at the nearest ghoul.
"Hate those!" She says vengefully before looking around to check nothing is waiting in ambush.
With all of the undead vanquished, Lisa sighs with relief. She moves to tend to Snow's wounds.
Thanara, now glistening in a fine sheen of sweat, slumps against a wall and catches her breath.
Thanks to Lisa's good healing Snow is soon in tip-top shape although she does have to remove her armor for the priestess to actually get to her wounds - the downside of her shifting.
This gives Thanara a good opportunity to examine Snow's torso, much bloodied and cut at the moment, but Lisa cleans her up efficiently and Snow has enough spirit to turn and grin at Thanara.
"Good as new." She says with a wink. "No scars. Sad. Chicks dig scars!"
She has no idea what the last phrase means, but the meaning was clear from the context she heard it in, so it seems worth deploying in the name of making her friend smile.
Thanara, breathing heavily from her magical exertion, raises her head only slightly to take in Snow’s physique as Lisavet tends to her injuries. She tries to ignore the butterflies in her stomach, mentally cursing Savah for getting her in this condition.
”How…how do you do it?” she asks the shifter as the trio catch their breath from the fighting.
"Do what?" Snow replies, "Not die? Dodge! Lisa helps too!"
She turns around to grab the cleric in a loose hug and is promptly scolded for upsetting her work.
"Sorry Lisa." Snow says, actually looking apologetic. Never annoy the healer while they're healing you!
The sorceress shakes her head. ”No. stay so upbeat. With all of this,” she says, gesturing to the four horrific bodies strewn about the room. ”I just don’t get it. I’m terrified. And with gods know whatever Aldern has become down here, obsessing, wanting to make me…into one of them…” she says, tears now joining the perspiration on her cheeks.
"Simple. Am stronger." Snow says with a shrug. "Than Aldern Than anyone. Am wolf. Protector, leader. Protect my pack. Must be strong. For them. For you." She waits a moment until Lisa finishes off her work for the moment and then slips over to Thanara, taking her in her warm arms.
"Don't worry. Aldern never touch you!"
Thanara simply clutches onto Snow, the sorceress’ body trembling. Her mind has little time to consider the intimacy of the act, currently overwhelmed by anxiety of confronting Aldern and fear over the terrifying place they are in. Snow can feel Thanara’s nails clinging to her back tightly.
Once Snow is healed, you move on. The cramped tunnel opens into a vertiginous gulf here, a cathedral-like cavern with a roof arching thirty feet overhead and dropping into a sloshing pool of foamy seawater fifty feet below. A steep stone ledge winds down to these surging depths, its slope glistening with moisture and mold. A stone door stands in the northwestern wall about halfway down the slope.
You carefully make your way to the door and shove it open. The air in this damp cavern reeks of a horrific stench—a foul combination of decay, brine, and mold. The cave contains a rickety table, its damp surface cluttered with all manner of what appears to be garbage: empty bottles, bits of clothing, crumpled bits of paper, and more, lying in neatly organized rows. Thanara recognizes the trash as her former belongings!
A painting of a woman leans against the far side of the table, facing a large leather chair that sits nearby. A clumsy attempt has been made to repaint the portrait with blood and bits of runny rotten flesh into a caricature Thanara. The chair’s high back and cushion are horribly stained by smears of rotten meat and its arms are sticky with blood. A smaller table sits against the southern wall, its surface heaped with plates and platters of rotten, maggot-infested meat.
The horrific stench of the room seems strongest to the west, where the cave’s wall has been overtaken by a horrific growth of dark green mold and dripping fungi. At the center, a patch of black tumescent fungus grows, its horny ridges and tumorlike bulbs forming what could almost be taken to be a humanoid outline. What appears to have once been an exquisite puzzle box the size of a man’s fist lies smashed on the ground at the fungoid shape’s feet.
Seated in the bloody chair is Aldern Foxglove, the once charismatic ladies’ man now a horrific ghoul himself! When he sees the you, his eyes widen in a mixture of fear and delight, but when his gaze moves to Thanara, he staggers to his feet.
”You! You’ve come to me! I knew my letters would sway your heart, my love! Let us consummate our... our... hunger!” He draws a war razor and stalks forward!