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Not finding anything new in this area, Mina opens the door to the next room.
This library 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.
There appears to be a large dark stain on the northernmost chair...
K.local DC10 - Even from the door it's easy to tell the scarf is a traditional Varisian scarf.
What do you do?
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Just as Mina grabs the scarf...
Surprise Round
Haunt 10
SURPRISE ROUND
Initiatives
Wymarc 27
White Rose 13
Shamus 13
Mina 10
Haunt 10
Lasciel 6
Only Wymarc notices the scarf in Mina's hand starting to move, about to fly out of in direction of White Rose!
Only he may act in this surprise round!
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The arrow pierces through the scarf cleanly, like a needle. It doesn't seem to stop it!
At this point, a horrific shriek fills the room as the scarf flies into the air and wrap around White Rose's throat.
She suddenly gets another vision of a young man, a noble, using the scarf to choke her to death! Behind him, by the knocked chair near the chimney, you see the body of another man in the ground, his head bleeding profusely. For a brief moment, you lose your sense of self and you believe you are the Varisian woman you saw from the piano haunt.
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White Rose manages to resist the power of the Haunt, separating herself from this person's memories. The last impression you get as you "pull back" from it is the feeling of confusion, anger and deep betrayal against this young man with eyes wild with fury...
Without having a hold of you anymore, the scarf becomes limp, and falls to the ground. It would appear the scarf is not only a murder weapon, but it is haunted.
Those of you who had passed the Religion checks start to get the feeling that these experiences are attacking particular members of your party. Whether it is something that reminds them of themselves or the situation that originated the haunt...
A search of the library reveals that a splash of dried blood stains the back of the northernmost chair, and an examination of the bookend by the fireplace reveals more blood, clots of hair, and bits of skull and flesh—in addition, part of one wing has been broken off.
Survival DC 10 It's been a few weeks at the least.
White Rose remembers from her vision, the body of another man lying by the fireplace, bleeding from the head.
There's a door to the west of this room and the scarf is in the floor now. What do you do?
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Shamus pokes at the scarf with his cane making sure it's inanimate now.
He picks it up and hands it to one of the ladies.
"It really is a nice scarf. It would be a waste to leave it here. Besides, it might look good on one of you."
He then shuffles over to the bookcase and takes a look around...
And is completely oblivious to what could possibly be found.
He inspects the books on the shelf.
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The books on the shelves have a variety of topics... Most of the books here are history or geography books from different parts of Avistan and the Garund. There are a number of adventure chronicles of famous hunters and the like.
The book on the floor, lying between the empty chairs, is a book on Varisian History. A few of the pages have drops of blood splattered on them.
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Shamus picks the book up from the floor and browses through the pages. Focused on the book, he doesn't even look up as he sidles up to a plush comfy chair to sit down and continue to peruse the book.
He looks up from the book at his companions.
"Go ahead. Have a seat."
He says as he motions at the couch.
"We're certainly in no rush, I do believe. Let's take a rest here now, shall we?"
He buries his nose back into the book.
"Go on... Have a seat. Rest for a bit."
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Getting a bit bored with the book, Shamus closes it and places it on the side table. He notices no one took the scarf.
He picks up the scarf and fluffs it out, noticing a small hole where the arrow shot through. He then wraps it around his head like an Osirian turban.
"Well? How do I look?"
He asks, smiling wide and showing off his turban.
"No? Alrighty then. Probably a good idea to just leave the scarf here. It could still be filled with the taint of dark spiritual energy."
He drapes the scarf on the back of the chair.
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Finishing checking this room, you check the door to the west, to B8, revealing a small drawing room is marred by the unnatural dampness and the thick sheets of mold that cling to the curtains closed over the southern window.
A small raft gets in through the not perfect seams of window panel and moves the curtain. For a brief second you could have sworn you saw the face of the Varisian woman looking out sad and lonely reflecting on the glass. Or maybe it was your imagination...
The other two remaining doors in this area are stairs leading up to the second floor and down to the basement...
Which level do you wish to explore?
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The group moves as silently as they can down the stairs. Mina/Babr and Wymarc are the first ones to see the area below...
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-footwide cracks in the wall near the floor lead south into the earth beyond the basement walls.
On a cupboard near the oven sits a very fine silver dinner set, with an exceptionally large silver salver and a dozen crystal decanters.
There are four doors here. Two to the west, one to the north and another tot he south at the end of a hallway.
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Lasciel starts looking around the kitchen... the decanters and silverware are quite expensive. She also notices that on the southwestern wall of the kitchen there are two large cracks in the walls... and she hears the faint sound of scratching and squeaking growing louder by the second coming from those cracks in the wall... Hundreds, if not thousands, of rats are converging into the opening attracted by your presence!!
You have...
rounds before they arrive.
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"Oh no, rats!"
"I'll give us an ancestral blessing to aid us in eradicating these pests!"
Shamus puts away his haunt siphon and casts bless.
Move to wall next to stairs while pulling out wand of burning hands.
Ready prepared burning hands spell and aim at wall where rats will come through. Blast them when within 10' of Shamus.
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”Rat swarms,” Wymarc murmurs before jumping on the table in the middle of the room to buy some time and drawing his bow. ”Use blunt weapons if you have ‘em,” he adds as he draws a blunt arrow to fire to emphasize his point…
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You all ready your actions, as the first swarm comes out of the cracks in the walls, they pour as into the kitchen like if they were liquid, hundreds of squeaking and screeching diseased rats like the one you met in the bathroom above.
Wymarc fires a blunt arrow right at the opening of the cave, disbanding a good chunk of the swarm. They move towards him but with a combination of Shamus fire and the grease on the floor the remaining rats burn to a crips lighting up the kitchen and filling it with the stench of roasted diseased flesh... (even if it passed the ref save, it's dead).
But the rats don't stop coming into the kitchen... a second swarm pours in right at the side of the previous one and is clearly attracted by Lasciel as she's the closest target to them. She moves back as her readied action.
I'll take into account as if it was oil.
So to avoid catching one fire.
Initiative
Wymarc 18
White Rose 18
Rat Swarm 18 (-12)
Shamus 17
Mina 16
Lasciel 10
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Two bunks stand in this room, relatively free of dust and mold. A single chair lies on its side between them.
This room was where the kitchen staff would have lived decades ago. You find nothing more than stiff blankets and the whiff of rat droppings...
The southern most door leads to a long dark passage, that bends around the corner. The other two doors in front of the stairs lead to a pantry and a wine cellar.
B27
Once a pantry, this room has become a filthy, reeking lair of what must be hundreds, if not thousands, of rats. Swaths of fur cling to everything, and mounds of rat droppings cover the floor. Some of the rats that dispersed from the swarm fled here, but at the first sign of movement, they scatter back into the walls. If there was food here once, the vermin have eaten it all.
B28
Two wine racks line the walls here, their shelves empty and dusty. Mounds of broken glass bottles clutter the floor. Yet, on the top shelf of the western rack you find a hinged and hidden compartment in the back wall. Beyond is a narrow nook in which are hidden eight fine vintages of wine from the famed Vigardeis vineyard in distant Cheliax.
What do you want to do?
Mina orders Babr to break the door and the large cat smashes against the door at the end of the passage to the south!
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Wymarc finds no traps in the door, though he does notice the lock to have seen some 'recent' use. His experience tells him that while it is old and kind of rusted, there are scratches around the keyhole.
He manages to beat the lock, barely. And the door opens...
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. The cages look new compared to everything else in the room, though from the diseased rats inside it might have been a couple of weeks since their demise.
But most surprising of all is to the east. Even here in the basement level, you realize it was built in the side of the cliff, as two stained-glass windows loom before you, just like in the dinner room above. 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.
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Mina is able to ascertain that the person depicted on the stained glass is no other than Vorel Foxglove, the original owner of the house. She can also confirm Shamus' suspicions that it shows the last steps of the creation of a Phylactery to become a lich.
Lasciel, Shamus and Mina rummage through the old books and from the pieces still intact reveals that they all cover various arts of necromancy and the creation of undeath. Time has not been kind to the pages and half of them are crumbling in your hands as you turn them, but there are several annotations from who you assume to be Vorel Foxglove marking the steps and components necessary for his ritual. It would seem he had completed the list.
As this happens...
Surprise Round
Haunt 10
Wymarc experiences a sudden urge to stare back at the windows as series of visions chronicling the various stages Vorel went through in his quest to become a lich take place in the stained-glass windows, like some kind of twisted story book. He sees Kasanda, Vorel's wife, peeking and spying her husband from behind doors and walls as he researches the works of previous liches, gathering the components for the lich transformation potion, building his phylactery, grinning in triumph as he finish his work and is ready to start his ritual by drinking the potion. He doubles over in agony as his body rots away but he looks triumphant... yet, Kasanda sneaks behind him and breaks the phylactery before the lich transformation is complete. He screams in rage, unable to maintain his form and becomes... something amorphous and black that reaches at everything around him and crawls up the walls. You see a panicked Kasanda flee out of the stained glass towards you, the darkness chasing her.
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Wymarc needs to roll a will save DC14 or feel he's Kasanda and flee in terror to the second floor looking for your child so you can escape the house with her. You are sure Vorel, or something that used to be Vorel, is right behind you and will stop at nothing to kill you.
Anyone who gets in Wymarc's way or tries to stop him suddenly seems to transform into Vorel to him, and he must attack that character to the best of her ability until he can continue on his flight upstairs.