Haldar begins searching around the outside of the house for a way into the house.
Rinn let everyone know that his injuries must be addressed before they continue on. Misty brings him a bit of potion and he drinks it. It seemed to help quite a bit.
Rinn looks into the room adjacent to the room where they had just battled the ghouls and see's a wardrobe. The chanting is coming from the West, maybe this is the way. Rinn moves into the room to find a bedroom with no apparent exit, a footlocker, wardrobe, bedside table, and a skeleton hanging from a noose. Below him was a knocked over stool. It appears he hung himself. Rinn lets the rest of the group know about the body. Kyana seems to be scared and Snoggly tells her not to worry and to stay behind him. She does as he says. Nothing about this sounds right but then again, I don't really know these two that well.
Rinn moves over to check the hanging skeleton. Searching his pockets, he finds a note and begins to read it out loud.
“My Beloved Children,
I wish I could do what all fathers do and tell you that monsters aren't real. But it wouldn't be true.
Life can create things of exquisite beauty. But, it can also twist them into hideous beings - Selfish - Violent - Grotesque - Monstrous. It hurts me to say that your mother has turned into one such monster”
It was then that a female undead thing came out of the earthen wall and started telling Rinn, in a seriously evil sounding voice, that “He deserved to die”. Rinn asked, “What could he have possibly done to warrant his death?” The creature replied “ He was an adulterer! All men are scum!”. As she moves to attack Rinn, she says “Die!”. In a single attack, she put Rinn down. The battle is joined!
Dain moves to battle the creature that just put down Rinn. Misty moves to the bed to bandage Rinn. Kyana steps into the room. Misty notices the skeleton beginning to move. Kyana brings forth daylight burning the creatures. Snoggly introduces himself with a series of magic misses. Meanwhile, the skeleton attacks Misty but misses. Dain hits the undead female creature. Misty attack back at the skeleton. Kyana lights up and drops the hag. Snoggly fires bolt the skeleton. Misty dodges a another attack, Dain retaliates, and then Misty lands the death blow.
After the battle finished, Snoggly asked what the note said. Before Rinn was healed and able to, he read the note outloud again.
“My Beloved Children,
I wish I could do what all fathers do and tell you that monsters aren't real, but it wouldn't be true.
Life can create things of exquisite beauty, but it can also twist them into hideous beings - Selfish - Violent - Grotesque - Monstrous. It hurts me to say that your mother has turned into one such monster, inside and out - and I'm afraid the disease that afflicted her mind has taken hold of me as well.
It sickens me to think what we've put you through, there is no excuse. I only ask of you, though I know I do not have the right to do so, to try and forgive us. I despise what your mother has become, but I love and pity her all the same.
Rose, I wish I could see you blossom into a strong, beautiful woman. Thorne, Walter, I wish I could be there for you, but I can't. This is the only way.
Goodbye”
After finishing the letter, it became very clear that we just killed Gustav and Elizabeth. Perhaps killed is too strong a word for what we did. We stopped the undead life and set their spirits free. It took only a moment for Rosa/Snoggly to catch on and become almost inconsolable. Thorne/Kyana took longer to come to terms. It had to be explained to him, after which, he too was very upset.
We had Snoggly and Kyana leave the room while Dain cured some of Rinn's damage. Dain then, wrapped the bodies in blankets pulled from the bed. It was but a short distance back to the crypts so the party took the bodies to their final resting places. Here, Dain prayed to Clanggedin Silverbeard to help them to go to their final resting place and to help bring peace to the children.
Haldar is outside searching for outbuidings and anyway into the main house.
The party moves back to a room which had two exits that go down stairs. Listening, it sounds as though the chanting is coming from down below. The children are still highly upset. Misty breaks off to go back to the room where the parents were killed and searches the armoire and footlocker. She finds a cloak(pretty nice), small wooden coffer, chain shirt, mess kit, flask of alchemy fire, bullseye lantern, spellbook(room 34) and thieves tools. She puts on the cloak and seems to like it and then meets back up with the group.
Snoggly attempt’s to regain control, focus, but Rosa is still too upset. Rinn backs back into the room with everyone else and suggests that we consider resting. We’ve been drained, and Rosa and Thorne need time to process and recover from what they witnessed.
Haldar is still searching around the house and he starts hearing noises in the woods. He see’s a couple of big canine forms stalking him. Haldar readies his bow and watches and waits.
Misty hands the thieves tools or Rinn. They are in good shape but not exceptional. She lays the rest of the items out on the table for all to see.
Haldar is watching the dogs and they freeze and watch back. The party inside decide to go back up to the main floor to rest.
Everyone rests but the children are still quite upset. Though physically rested, they are not fully recovered on the arcana part.
Rinn returns to the closet to get the jewelry box he left earlier. Misty reminds him of the sword so he goes and gets that as well. It’s nice but again, not exceptional, but it does have a cameo of a windmill on it. Then Rinn goes back to the room with the skeleton and the chest to see if there is anything he missed. There wasn’t anything else in there.
Haldar notices a wagon moving down the road. An individual inside the wagon wakes and after getting his bearings, climbs down out of the wagon which at first seemed to be in good shape but is now falling apart. The dogs were distracted by the new sound and turned to approach it. Haldar followed them and put a Hunters Mark on one. The newcomer seems to hear the movement of the dogs headed toward them. He doesn’t notice Haldar following them.
Haldar notice that they are approaching something, but not sure what, decided to take a shot. He fires on the dog with the hunters mark on it. The dog yelps in pain and drops. In the next round, Haldar moved his hunters mark to the other dog which is now clearly a wolf, and then attacks it and cuts it downs as well. The newcomer seems to be aware of something occurring but didn’t seed anything.
Snoggly tries to refocus his energies by focusing on the globe he acquired earlier. There seems to be some evocation magic involved.
Haldar moves, quietly, closer to the noise on the road. He sees the figure on the road, and determines it’s possibly human. The wagon behind him appears to be broken down. Haldar realizes that the wagon wasn’t there earlier. Finally, he decides to approach the figure. He puts his weapon up and steps out into the road announcing himself. The newcomer seems as confused as Haldar about where he is and how he got here. Haldar explains that there are others in the house down the road. When asked his name, the newcomer replied, “Zanfyr”. They make their way back to the house to see if they can find a way in.
Rinn attempted to contact Haldar during that time but was unable to. He is a little concerned that something may have happened to him. Haldar tells Zanfyr what he knows of the group inside and what he’s experienced and what they have relayed to him about what is going on inside. They keep looking around and the other buildings look to be in very bad shape.
The rest passes and though everyone recovers physically, they didn’t recover but about half of the spells they would have normally recovered. Snoggly does a ritual identify on the globe and decides it is a communication device. With what device it communicates with, that is unknown. Misty approaches Dain and asks if he is the godly type. He is, he tells her. She suggests that we should look into putting the skeletons of the children to rest below. Aye, says Dain. I wanted to do that before we left anyway, now would be an excellent time. Maybe this would allow them to moved beyond the vail and finally rest.
Dain and Rinn go upstairs to wrap the bodies of the children in blankets and bring them down. The kids seems to feel strange as but are not certain what it means. Dain and Rinn then get the bodies to heir correct tombs and Dain prays over them. He closes the crypts and as he does, peace comes over Snoggly and Kayan as the spirits leave them.
Misty tries the front door and the door is still locked. We decide that they must still have to deal with Walter before the curse will lift.
The group moves down to the room where the snake was killed and Rinn moves down the steps towards the chanting. Across from the stairs is a room with a well in the middle with a cross beam with a rope and pulley system. There are several small rooms off each edge of the room. There are bunks and chests in each of the rooms but no people.
Misty shows off her new cloak to Snoggly. He plans to check it for magical ability later.
Rinn messages Dain to bring the others up. Dain moves towards the well and looks in. It’s dark and damp, smells not unlike a simple well. Rinn moves into one of the rooms and checks out a bed and chest. The cloth on the bed is mostly rotted. Going through all of the chests, the group finds 11gps in a weird leather like pouch, 3 agates worth 10gps a piece, a black leather eyepatch with a Carnelian(Red) stone sewn into it worth about 50 gps, ivory hair brush with silver Brussels worth about 25gps, and lastly a short sword. After checking it out, we determine that its’s a decent sword but it’s main attribute is that the blade is covered in silver. It’s probably worth a good 100gps.
Snoggly casts light on the bucket above the well and lowers it to see water, nothing interesting. He brings up the bucket with water and the water seems fine so he refills his water skin. Rinn does as well.
The group returns to the main hallway and they start towards the chanting. Part of the way down the hallway, the floor collapses under Rinn but he manages to avoid falling into it. At the bottom of the pit are some spikes with a dark liquid on the tips. Everyone else goes around the trap by going up to the room they came from and down to the next set of steps and then back down. Misty decided to just jump the pit which she did with eased.
They come to a set of steps leading down about 30 feet and with a hair pin turn continues down another 10 feet. Rinn begins searching for traps now being more cautious since the almost fatal error. “He is the ancient, he is the land!” constantly drones on and is coming from in front of us.
Rinn lets the others know that he is sneaking further down, they should hold here till I see what is ahead of us. A room with alcoves, with grizzly trophies line the chamber. The chanting is louder here and the lyrics are clearer. The chanting sounds particularly evil. Rinn moves to the first alcove and see a small mummified hand, yellowy and has sharp talons on the end of each finger and it's tied to a loop of rope, like something you would wear on your neck.
There are two openings on the opposite wall. So as not to step out in plain sight of anyone, Rinn looks back to see what's down those. The first opening was a hallway that heads back a little way and turns out of his sight. He moves to the other corner so he can look down the other hallway. It extends about 10 feet or so and then goes down some stairs into water. At the end of his view, there is a portcullis that is down. The chanting seems to be coming beyond the portcullis. Rinn sneaks back to the other hallway and the sound of the chanting is not as strong. He moves a little way in, up to the turn, and peaks around.
Misty starts checking out the rest of the alcoves.
Rinn sees that the hallway extends to another corner. He sneaks up to the next corner. A prison opens up before him. One lone skeleton at the end of the hall. Nothing in the first couple of cells. They are open. He moves down to the next two.
Misty keeps checking the alcoves and finds a knife made of w bone. and in the next one, finds a dagger with a pommel of a rat skull.
Rinn spies a short hallway off to the right about middle the way through the cells. It leads to two more cells.
Misty checks the next alcove and finds an orb that looks like a big eyeball.
Rinn decides to send his mage hand to collect the ring on the skeletons hand. The skeleton doesn't seem to miss the ring. It's appears to be a plain gold ring worth about 25gps. He will check it later.
Misty move on to the next alcove and finds an aspergillin carved from stone, which is the little thing that priests shake and sprinkle holy water.
Rinn checks out the rest of the cells and doesn't find anything else so he returns to the group.
Rinn looks at the alcoves and sees a folded cloak and the rest are empty. he asked what happened to everything. Misty said they were all empty but then gave up the information. She found a desiccated frog lashed to a stick. She also finds a leather pouch with some sort of black powder in it. In the next alcove she found a finger with a talon on the end of it. She also found a 6 inch tall mummy with it's arms crossed over his chest. She also found the shrunken head of a halfling and a small wooden coffer.
Rinn moves to the stairs and down to the portcullis. When he steps into the water, the chanting stops. When he backs up, the chanting doesn't start back, up. There doesn't appear to be a way to open it. Dain comes down and looks to see, with his stone cunning, if he can see away to open it. Dain points out that there is a wheel inside the room that may open the gate. Rinn uses his mage hand to raise the portcullis.
A room opens up with ledges running down both outer walls and a dais in the middle of the room rising out of the water. There are chains hanging from the ceiling above it. Rinn moves through a little bit of water to get to a ramp to go up a ramp to one of the ledges. Everyone else came in and followed up on this ledge but misty when to the other ledge. At the opposite end of the room is a grotto with a mound of garbage and rotting stuff inside of it. The smell if very bad.
Rinn can't see anything else about the alter from the ledge. Snoggly casts light on one of the chains. Rinn moves to the other end of the ledge, closer to the garbage. The smell causes him to be nauseated. (disadvantage on any saves involving strength, dexterity, and wisdom) Rinn backs away from that, and made his way back to the other end and checks the water to see if anything in the water responds to his touching it. When nothing happens, he walks through the water to the dais. Once there he searches all around the dais. He finds nothing.
Rinn climbs up onto the top of the dais and as he does, the shadowy figures come out on the ledges. Seven on each side. They wielded some black torches that seemed to suck up the light. Their faces are void and they begin to chant in union saying, “One must die”, “One must die”, “One must die”. Rinn moves up to the ledge and they seem to not be physical. He could walk right through them.
Snoggly responds that “It won't be one of us that dies!” He uses his staff to take a swipe at one and nothing happens as it passes through them. Snoggly then removes the light from the chain and casts it on the alter instead. It doesn't seem to change anything. Kyana casts Radiance of Dawn. it also appeared to have no affect.
Rinn makes his way back to the garbage in the back of the room. When he gets close he can see body parts and entrails, and bones. The smell sickens him again.
Kyana moves up and down the ledge sprinkling holy water and attempts to bless the area. She moves to both ledges and the to the alter.
Rinn has to back away as it's almost overpowering. Dain moves down to assist Kyana and though the smell is quite disturbing and horrid, he manages not to let it overwhelm him. Kyana continues to bless and and sprinkle holy water on the alter. Then she moves through the water towards the garbage pile and is also able to withstand the smell in her steadfast determination to rid this place of whatever evil is here.
Dain tried to push the alter over. He braced and pushed to try to knock it over but it doesn't move. Snoggly looks for any writing on it but doesn't see any. Kyana suggests that maybe we should check the chains but Dain starts wailing on the alter with his hammer.
We have surmised that the shadowy figures want us to sacrifice something on the alter. There isn't anything to sacrifice and even if there were, we were loathed to do it. Dain really starts to tear apart the alter with his war hammer. The chanting stops. Feeling good about shutting them up, he is disheartened to hear them start up again. This time they chanted “Arise demon, we awaken thee!” Dain continues hammering on the alter. Out of the mass comes a giant figure, a shambling mound of bone and flesh. It moves towards us.
Stay tuned for more adventures in the catacombs beneath Durst Manor!