"This might work - it did on the scythe before."
Hailiss will cast Disrupt Undead on the manacle. She has a lousy chance to hit, but eh. ,
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"Nothing bruised but my pride." Hailiss opens the door that Gregorf nods at.
Wands need you to have the spell on your list, or UMD. I have neither.
Blue runes flare along Hailiss' blade as she swings at the spider: ,
"Right... I'd honestly forgotten."
"Or he could have been like, a con man, right? I don't think all the criminals held here were neccesarily murderers."
"The axe is magical," she informs the rest of the party.
Hailiss carefully examines each item, careful not to touch them.
"Then let's follow the sound," Hailiss says, and puts words to action, pulling the double doors open.
I'm actually in favor of selling most of it. Not the potions maybe, but all the rest of the stuff.
"Then let's go!" Hailiss does her best to open the doors.
Hailiss follows the paladin, and swings her sword at the indicated spot; ,
Hailiss leaves the room, and instead goes to stand watch over the cowering brother Grergof.
Hailiss infuses her blade with power and, gripping it in two hands, charges the apparition. ,
Hailiss jumps in surprise, but recovers, intoning a chant and pointing, firing a missile of force towards the apparition. Then she draws her sword.
"There's always the haunt siphons. Are we sure it's a haunt though? It could just be a ghost in hiding, and the haunt siphons won't do anything there."
Taking a haunt siphon from her belt pouch, Hailiss makes sure she's at least as close to the furnace as Aada before she twists the cap on it, releasing a torrent of white mist that swiftly collapses into the vial again.
Hailiss leans over to catch her breath. That'd been a close shave. "Let's," she says.
Hailiss swings her sword at the one attacking Spugnoir. ,
"It's cold, right? We could just burn it."
"There's also the haunt siphons. Do we save them for later?"
"That seems a little... Harsh. Does it say if anyone arrived on the day of the fire?" Hailiss checks the next door.
She'll have to come back later, to bag the notebooks and bring them to the university for archiving. If nothing else, this is the sort of thing they look at when trying to figure out how people lived in older times. In five hundred years from now, some student could look through these and write a thesis on the contemporary value of the silver coin. Not now though. "There's not much here. Names of guards, if that's important. That Hawkran guy again, he was the warden."
Hailiss draws a pale light from her blade with a touch. "Huh. I suppose prisons need offices too. It's strange that they didn't move the paperwork after the fire. Anyway, they wouldn't have kept the records up after they abandoned the place, so there's probably little point in looking through this stuff." Still, she rifles through the shelf, and opens any drawers the desk might have while muttering a spell designed to outline magical objects and spells in her vision.
"No-one mentioned anything they'd brought back, I don't think. Didn't you just have those so you could find out what they were?"
"I have them in my bag. The doors will open in a minute or two, so let's save the siphons for something dangerous."
"As long as the roof doesn't come down on our heads." Hailiss is prepared to follow.
"I'd keep it around for getting out of here safely at a later point."
"Well, at least we brought the Haunt Siphons. Did I ever say what they do? They can drag out the psychic energy of whatever is keeping the haunt active. It's supposed to be pretty effective." Hailiss leans against the railing, as they figure out who needs healing before they proceed.
"It's a construct, animated by a haunt," she says. "The steel is real enough." She circles around the fighting to find a clear shot, then calls forth another ray of light.
"Holy energy worked!" Hailiss hurries to get a little closer, and with a flourish, calls forward a ray to mirror Lucy's. Her sword probably wasn't much use against the steel of the scythe.
"Let's try the balcony stairs first. The main entrance looks sort of rickety."
"I think it's a bad idea, personally. She could easily get killed, and then we have to explain that to the locals. You kind of promised her already, though? Backing out would probably be no good either."
They find Hailiss back at the house, her nose stuck in a book.
"Is there any tracks left behind?" Hailiss looks around on the ground, might be some clues to be had.
"That sounds like a fine plan. We might make time for an afternoon jaunt, if we leave soon? I don't like the thought of staying there after dark."
Well, crap. She'd messed that one up. Stupid. She frowns. "I..." Ah. She focuses on Grergof; at least she knows how to handle that question. "Well, they're a necromantic cult, basically. They're old, enough so that they easily predate the fall of Aroden. Their main goal is the release of Tar-Baphon, 'the Whispering Tyrant', who was imprisoned way back when. As best I've been able to tell, the organization exited even before Tar-Baphon's imprisonment, although he may have founded it in life." Her voice is level, almost like she's reciting from a book. "On an individual basis, they seek power, quite specifically lichdom, which I assume you're familiar with. They operate mainly as lone agents or in small groups, and are prone to gathering knowledge, accounts of rare undead, or even capturing animate specimens, that sort of thing. They're secretive, obviously, and go through some effort to keep their knowledge among themselves. They share their philosophies in whispers, but whether that's because of some magical or ritualistic property of the words, or if it's just theatrics isn't clear. Their symbol is a gagged skull, which ties into the practice of mutilating the faces of their victims. They're powerful. I almost hope that this is all just wierd coincidence, even if it'd leave us with relatively little in the way of clues."
Hailiss suddenly feels like she's made too big a production of the whole thing. She sits down. "It's not a big deal, really. I just wondered if any of you remember what the professor's face looked like, when he animated. Did they break off his jaw? It seems it's a calling card of the Whispering Way, kind of. I don't recall either way, so I thought I'd ask you. It'd be a very clear indicator of their involvement." She reaches for the case on the table. "Can I?"
Her face lights up in a smile.
Hailiss looks up from her book at the sound of Darius coming back, and them talking in the hallway. "Great! I wanted to ask you guys something." she calls. "Can we sit down at the dining table maybe?"
While the others investigate the crypt, Hailiss elects to spend the morning quietly reading in the late professor's library - she'd been itching to take a look at it anyway. Hmm. She should probably ask Kendra first, that'd be polite, right? She corners the other woman after breakfast. "Hey Kendra? I was wondering if I could take a look in the professor's library, see if I can look up this 'Whispering Way', if that's okay. I wouldn't want to impose." If yes:
She spends the next four hours going through the books.
Gives a +2 bonus to the check.
She hummed happily as she went about the research. It was quite calming, being surrounded by stuffy tomes, working with a clear goal in mind.
Hailiss curses the fact that she's left her sword behind. She calls a disk of force into existence, hovering near her right arm, and pulls out her knife.
"How strange; it seems the remains dug themselves out. I was under the impression that necromancers needed to touch a corpse to infuse them. Maybe he was animated before he was buried?"
"The professor's remains animated at some point after the burial. It was quite the debacle - his corpse was attempting to tear down miss Lorrimor's door as we arrived home. Darius here struck it down, and we brought the remains to you after a brief discussion." Hailiss' voice was crisp and detached.
"It's not like we have much of a choice, really. Not unless Kendra is wrong, and she's lived here a lot longer than we have." Hailiss decides to leave her sword behind as they set off. Wouldn't do to look too threatening, she'd just get arrested.
"Rats. Western tower." She points. "I do believe they have something for them to eat over there."
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