The crew: Bear [Ian], Debbie [Steven], Dexter [Jamie], Gillard [Kevin], Myrtle [Andrew], Oliver [Jeff], Tu [Shane], with Ouzo [Darryl] and Scuttle [Chris] slumped somewhere nearby marmalading.
 |
| Two black ravens settle in the trees |
“Ravens” she hissed at Gillard, “Two of them, and definitely
unnatural”
“How did it come to this?” Gillard wondered to herself,
thinking back over the last few days.
It had started in Penstoke, when the party had broken into
the residence of Ingrid Barnett, the ex-cleaner of the Penstoke REAL temple,
and suspected Malechai witch.
They had crowded around outside the door of Ingrid residence
after having attempted entry and retreating hastily under enhanced Magic
Missile fire. Ouzo had run squealing back to our Inn after hearing Oliver’s
description of the skeletal mage who was guarding the house.
From Oliver’s brief glance into the entry lounge [no one
else could see into the unnatural darkness that filled the room behind the
door. But while Oliver held his magical cursed dagger, he was able to see into
the darkness clearly. A useful effect of the cursed item] he had determined
that of the two windows that fronted the residence, one led into the dangerous entry
lounge, but the other opened into another different room. The windows both had
drawn curtains and the interior was not able to be seen from the outside.
Tu glanced around to check for observers, then raised his
sword and bashed the glass window with the pommel. A mighty shatter echoed
around the street and the window glass imploded into the curtains and dropped
into the room. Tu quickly smashed out the remaining pieces from the frame and
prepared to climb in.
“Patrol” yelled Dexter who had been keeping an eye down the
street, and the party quickly dispersed around the neighbourhood and
nonchalantly imitated local villagers.
Fortunately, the village guards in the patrol were as
observant and Debbie and just hurried past looking around for anything out of
the ordinary. The seven-foot fighter in chain mail and the midget female halfling fighter did not attract their
attention and they carried on down the street and around the corner. The party
quickly gathered back around the broken window and Tu pushed the curtains
aside.
 |
| The kitchen |
“I’ll stand guard out here” stated Bear, “no way I can fit
through that tiny window”
So we all slipped through the broken window and into the
kitchen of Ingrid’s house. Except for Gillard, she could not quite reach the
sill despite standing on a small rock in the garden.
“Toss me”, she whispered to Bear, “but don’t tell the elf”
The kitchen held nothing of interest so avoiding the door
that would lead into the dark entry lounge, Tu opened the other door, which led
deeper into the house and opened into a study with a large writing desk. The
drawers were locked though, so Gillard pulled out her sword and started to hack
away at the desktop.
“Stop” commanded Tu, “like this”
Tu flipped the desk upside-down, revealing the underside of
the draws, and easily sliced through the bottom of the exposed drawer. He
pulled out a bag of coins, some glass fragments, and a bunch of damp papers.
The papers turned out to be various letters addressed to Ingrid Barnett from Ophelia
Treacle, and they mentioned other letters than had been sent by Ophelia to
other people.
“Well”, queried Myrtle, “others who?
“Various people” replied Tu, “Someone named Rose, and a
Hayley, and a Ruby, and an … Oliver”
Everyone turned to look at Oliver!
“Hey, can’t be me” responded Oliver, “I got no letter from
anyone”
Rose would most likely be Rose Gervan, recently retired from
the Toluene town militia, and now possibly visiting Ophelia in Skulk. [refer
previous adventures: https://scabport.blogspot.com/2022/06/ouzos-second-letter-home.html]
Ruby would most likely be Ruby Jeffrey, deceased, recently
of the Toluene Mages guild and suspected owner of a were‑cat familiar that also
recently passed away. [refer previous adventures: https://scabport.blogspot.com/2022/06/ouzos-second-letter-home.html]
“Who’s this Hayley then?” asked Dexter.
After searching around the rest of the room and piling everything
interesting on the floor next to the overturned table, Debbie cast her Detect
Magic spell and reported no magic items in the room.
Tu marched over to the only other door leading out of the
study and quietly opened it. A short passage with stairs leading up, but also a
narrow stair heading down.
Debbie hushed the rest of the party and turned her ear
towards the stairs.
“Yikes” she whispered, “something’s coming up from below.
Something small and light”
 |
| Black cat leaping up the stairs |
“Twang” and Dexter’s arrow misses the cat and rattles down
into whatever space is below, closely followed by the cat which leaps backward
down the stairs and disappears. Closely followed by the rest of the party
rushing blindly down the stairs chasing the small cat.
At the bottom of the stairs was a short passage leading to
an archway. But through the archway was nothing. Nothing but darkness anyway. A
thick darkness that our lights could not penetrate. But which Oliver could see
right into without any problem at all.
“Looks like another Malechai
shrine.” reported Oliver, “No cat to be seen though”
A rope (just in case) was quickly tied around Oliver, and he
was sent through the archway to explore.
“It’s a pretty small room actually” resonates Oliver’s voice
from the darkness. “A small shrine with some candles in a candle holder, … a
box of matches, … a few stools,… and
hey, there is a cat flap in the wall back here!”
 |
| Three evil looking candles |
Oliver cast a Detect Magic spell in the room which
revealed that the three candles were definitely magical, but nothing else from
the place. And the usual glows were emanating from the party’s personal and
collective equipment.
A decent search revealed that the cat flap was embedded in a
hidden door, which was soon opened to reveal a dark passage carved through the
earth. Echoes of our excited chatter indicated that the passage was relatively
long, but at least the darkness was not magical and withdrew as we peered in
with our lanterns blazing. So, we closed the door and returned upstairs to
search the rest of the house.
“Hey” exclaimed Dexter, “the cats back. And he seems to like
me!”
We were not sure where it had reappeared from, but the
little cat was indeed back, purring and rubbing up against Dexter’s legs in a
very friendly way.
“Might be a spy, a witch’s familiar” stated Myrtle and after
we had searched the bedrooms upstairs, she cast a Detect Magic spell. [Any
witch’s familiar would present as magical due to the magical process of
“finding” the familiar and bonding it to the witch or wizard involved]
“Nope” Myrtle confirmed, “just a cat”
“Awww” replied Dexter, “He’s so cute and cuddly”
And thus started the catmance between Dexter the feline
lycanthropy infected Ranger and Cellar the little black cat from Ingrid’s
cellar.
With just the dark and guarded entry lounge and the cellar passage
left to explore, we updated Bear on our progress and headed back down to the
cellar. The passage extended from the cellar about two hundred and fifty yards,
well outside the town wall, and exited out a concealed trapdoor into a shady
copse of trees. There was nothing of interest there, so we sent Tu and Gillard
off to collect Bear and braced ourselves to face the hideous skeletal mage in
the entry lounge.
With Bear in tow, we all snuck back into the house through
the tunnel and assembled in the sitting room. Tu eased the door open while Bear
stood ready with his double handed monster smashing axe. Darkness! Oliver
clutched his dagger and peered around the door jamb into the room, but this
time the room looked empty. Myrtle cast a Light spell onto her notebook
again and tossed it into the room. Poof, normal light and shadow instantly
returned. Definitely empty.
“So, where is this skeletal mage then?” asked Bear, gently
swinging his axe in an arc.
Fortunately, the room yielded no surprises and we all
entered for a good search. Oliver cast a Detect Magic spell, which found
a magic source behind one of the paintings on the wall. A small hole in the
painting, artfully concealed in the eye of a raven, led back into a hidden
cavity within the wall. Myrtle and Oliver rushed back to the study on the other
side of the wall and discovered the whole wall was much thicker than it
appeared.
Meanwhile Bear had grabbed a poker from the fireplace in the
kitchen and thrust it through the hole in the painting. It went in about a foot
before there was a loud crack, a tinkling sound, and then a mighty zap as Bear
was flung back across the room and taking seven points of electrical damage!
Myrtle found the secret panel in the wall of the study and
opened up the door to the wall cavity. A complicated and delicate looking
metallic device, now sporting the pointy end of a poker, was mounted behind the painting.
Another Detect Magic spell from Oliver showed that
whatever magic the device had once had, it no longer did. But we throw it into
a bag anyway, along with the three magical candles, and head out through the
cellar passage and back to our Inn.
Spell recovery, followed by healing spells, and then more
spell recovery was undertaken. A Detect Evil was cast on the
magical candles, but there was no trace of evil taint there.
We again met with Ingbot the REAL priest to update him on
our findings at Ingrid’s house, and he mentioned that there was a powerful
wizard called Hayley that lived with her husband Peter about fifteen minutes
out of town.
”Could it be?” wondered Tu.
With the cunning plan of inquiring about the purchase of
Identify spells we were soon on the road to investigate this Hayley. We located
their property at the end of a long and winding dirt road through low hills and
small clumps of shrubs and trees. As we jauntily approached the house, we saw a
male Elf playing with two young Half-Elven children. He identified himself as
Peter and inquired what we were doing there. Conversation ensued. He politely
asked us to wait while he sent the kids back to the house to fetch Hayley. He
did not invite us any closer.
Hayley soon arrived from the house, introduced herself as
Hayley Price, and confirmed that she would be happy to Identify any items we
provided. The cost was a bargain, only $150 gold per item.
She was not very chatty but was very interested in learning
our names, which we provided, including “Frank” our wizard! She asked after
Dexter’s cat and where he had come from.
“Are you sure you aren’t a wizard?” she asked Dexter.
 |
| The magic telescope is put to good use |
“Look” exclaimed Oliver, “The coven symbol is definitely etched
onto the back door”
“We must head off to Skulk and handle Hayley later” demanded
Myrtle.
After some discussion [and a democratic party vote] we
pulled back to Penstoke and prepared to head off to Skulk the next day. The
trip to Skulk was a three-day, two-night, journey across country, or a similar
length trip back down to the Strontime Forest, past the Druid’s Grove, and down
the Strontime Tributary.
We elected for the overland trip, which was absolutely
uneventful. We arrived in Skulk in the middle of the third day, and obtained
lodgings in the Violet Bastard Inn, one of only two Inns in the village. That afternoon
we meet another traveller staying at the Inn, Wallace, a priest of CARIBOU GORN
who had been working around Skulk to assist with some crop diseases and was
soon to travel back to the Grove in the Strontime Forest. He was a bit concerned
with he reports of bandits and other recent problems along the river, so we agreed
to escort him back there in two days’ time. We figured that we could search out
Ophelia and deal with her before then and may then be interested in leaving
town in some haste!
Tu and Dexter went off on a scout around the little village
to check for coven symbols, and the rest of us visited the local REAL priestess,
Jemima, to introduce ourselves, update her on our progress with our tasks for
the REAL church, and inquire the whereabouts of Ophelia Treacle. Jemima
responded that she knew Ophelia and her cousin Rose very well, and that they
were lovely people, and gave us the address. A moderate single-storey house
just outside the main village walls.
“But I can’t believe they would be involved in anything
nasty like that” she exclaimed.
“Well” replied Myrtle, “That’s our job, you just leave it to
us and we’ll bring you the evidence”
As we left the REAL priestess’s house, Tu and Dexter rushed
up to report that they had located the Coven symbol on a single-storey house
just outside the main village walls. Perfect.
 |
| The Sahuagin - without manacles! |
Dexter took the first two-hour evening shift of watching the
house.
“No smoke from the chimney, or lights in the windows” he
reported.
“Wait” he exclaimed a bit later, “there is movement in the
gardens. It’s … it’s … well, it looks like a large wolf or a small horse patrolling
around the house”
“Oh Crap” he then gasped, “It just transformed into a normal
humanoid and went inside”
Myrtle took over for the next shift and confirmed there were
no lights on, and no movement behind any of the upstairs windows. But she also
reported that a humanoid form came back out the front door, morphed into a
large four-legged creature, and was definitely patrolling around the house.
Oliver took over a few hours later and confirmed the same
information.
“That’s it then” declared Tu, “No one is home apart from one
shape shifting guard thing which we can easily take out. This is the perfect opportunity
to check out the place”
We quickly throw together a brilliant attack plan, and three
hours before light we spring into action. We quietly left the Inn, exited the walled
village in the opposite direction, and circled back around outside the village
to approach Ophelia’s house from the wilderness side. Oliver was ready with his
Magic Missile spell, Myrtle was wielding the ten-shot wand of Magic
Missiles, and Debbie, Dexter, and Tu had their magic arrows at hand. We would
approach from behind the handy neighbouring shed to firing range and wait for
the creature to circle the house towards us. Then whoosh, let loose the
missiles of war. Easy. And Bear would clean up.
And surprisingly, that is pretty much what actually
happened. Dexter did fumble his second shot and dropped his bow, but it was all
over in two rounds of missile fire. The creature dropped, Bear raced up and
lopped off its head, nothing else appeared, and no one else heard a thing.
We crept up to the back of the house, bypassed the back
door, and slipped around to the front. We had watched the creature slip in and out
through the front door, and it had not appeared to use any keys. So, we turned
the handle, opened the door, and just walked in.
The entrance porch had three pairs of boots neatly lined up.
One larger pair, obviously a male, and two more dainty pairs, obviously female.
Then a kitchen with doors into a bedroom and a study. In the middle of the
bedroom we found the obligatory witches trapdoor. A shaft with a ladder dropped
about fifteen feet into the gloom. Gillard shouldered her way to the top of the
shaft, whipped a rope around her armpits, and lowered herself onto the ladder and began descending.
“A big room with stone tiles” she whispered back up to us. “One
archway leading off from the left, but my light isn’t penetrating into there.
It must be that magical darkness stuff again.”
“And I hear something … a really deep growling” she whispered,
“Yikes, haul me up, now!”
 |
| Viscous dog growling |
“Dagger vibrating” stated Oliver, and then both the dogs backed
off and disappeared through the archway into the magical darkness beyond.
“Oh no” grunted Bear, “Not these again”
“I might be able to control them” offered Oliver, “And I
should be able to see into that darkness”
We tied Oliver around the armpits with the rope and lowered
him slowly down the shaft. Oliver held the vibrating dagger out in front of him,
hoping to force the creatures back. Just then the two dogs left forward through
the archway and launched themselves towards Oliver.
“Back” he commanded them, to no avail. “Pull” he screamed.
Myrtle somehow misheard Oliver’s scream and told Bear to
lower him to the bottom. Oliver landed at the base of the shaft just as the two
dogs arrived and clamped their jaws around his legs. Thanks to Oliver’s
adventure planning and constant preparation, his pre-cast magical Armour
spell reduced the damage by three points, and he did not pass out from the pain
and loss of blood. And in a series of fortunate incidents including the second
dog missing its attack, Bear interpreting Oliver’s subsequent screams as a
request for extraction, and the party winning initiative, Oliver was jerked
back up the shaft before the dogs killed him. He did drop the dagger though!
Myrtle cast a Healing spell.
The fighters prepared themselves and descended the ladder.
Bear bravely led the way, followed by Gillard, Dexter, and Tu in that order.
Myrtle stood at the trapdoor ready with the wand of Magic Missiles, Oliver by
her side. Debbie struck up her jaunty battle symphony on the lute.
Needless to say, Bear fumbled and snapped his shield strap.
The shield hung off his arm and was totally ineffective for defence. It took
him two rounds to throw it aside [14 on his fumble roll, -2 OV for the
current and next round, shield strap breaks, shield ineffective for the combat,
no shield bonus]
But we prevailed.
“Gillard, this isn’t a big room ya git, it’s friggin tiny!”
Bear complained.
Oliver eventually retrieved his dagger from the ground at
the bottom of the shaft and peered through the archway into the magical darkness
beyond.
Surprise surprise, yet another shrine to Malechai.
This time though there were three barred doors along one side
in addition to the customary alter and “religious” paraphernalia.
“All clear” Oliver reported. Myrtle cast a Light spell
which cleared the darkness and we entered.
The three doors had complicated magical locks. Two were
empty, but the third held a decaying corpse, slumped against the far side of
the small cell. We could not get in.
“Evidence!” stated Myrtle triumphantly.
We searched the whole house and located an old property deed
and a floor safe under a rug in the study. And some keys. The safe held some
bags of coin and gems, and three vials of coloured liquids.
Myrtle and Gillard hurried off to fetch the REAL priestess,
while the rest of us discussed possible plans for the next step in our
operations. It was still dark, so they had to wake her, but they were soon
heading back to Ophelia’s house.
 |
| The two black ravens |
“Ravens” she hissed at Gillard, “Two of them, and definitely
unnatural”
Ignoring the birds, they just hurried inside and told the
party about the possible spies in the tree.
Tu, Dexter, and Debbie gather up their magical arrows and
stepped outside. One successful barrage and both birds were killed, and then
totally hacked up and destroyed.
“Just to be sure” stated Tu.
Myrtle cast her mind back to first seeing the ravens and
recalled that they had seemed to arrive from the Anti direction. When this was
cross referenced with the old property deed, and with what the priestess Jemima
knew about Ophelia. It seemed that the next destination would be a small
country estate in the hills overlooking Nitro Lake.
“After escorting Wallace back to the Druid’s Grove” reminded
Dexter.
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