Dirty House

 Present:

• Phoebe Lacrosse. Human Barbarian from Pugtown – Andrew
• Griza Muso. Human Thief from Lakeside – Jeff
• Balder Dash. Gnome Wizard from Toluene - Jamie
  
• Bush Tucker. Human Rogue from Spite Anti - Darryl
• MARMALADING: Red Feuersturm. Human Temple Fighter of Hob from Toluene - Chris
• Malcom Gandhi. Gnome Thief from Brian – Kevin
  
• Napolean Twig. Elf Priest of Caribou Gorn from Pugtown - Ian
• Joe Manco. Human Fighter from Toluene – Shane
• Galena Alfdis. Elf Priestess of Vingt et Un from Palantir - Steven

By Phoebe 

Alicia Leafturner

Our group had been tasked by Thursa Demont to capture suspected necromancer Simeon Massimo. We had broken in to his residence in Kilgith Cove, battlewards from Spite Battle. Deciding that the sea route might be safer, we had rappelled and magicked down the cliffs (near his mansion) to a smugglers' cave entrance.

We had done a bit of exploring in here, and had rescued an elf girl, Alicia Leafturner.

But, already, all our spellcasters (Balder, Napolean and Galena) had used a lot of magic and were pretty low on power. We could not rest to recharge, as we had to get Simeon tout-suite. Should they discover that Alicia was out, the alarm would be raised. And being an undead-friendly place, we suspected this would happen tonight - in three hours.

Balder, undead-adjacent

Also, Balder's health was deteriorating. He was feeling sick all the time [CON was dropping ], but he could now "see magic". Any magic items or enchantments in his line of sight would take on an eerie glow.

We had established that Balder could no longer actually see Gandhi. Gandhi was wearing Bobbin's (the green dragon) jade ring, and he got told it made him invisible to undead. So, Balder being "undead-adjacent", it made sense he could not see Gandhi.

Cellar

Balder and Gandhi found a secret door. Moving some shelves opened a door to a tunnel, heading in the direction of the cliff top mansion. In we all traipsed, me leading the way.

After one hundred or so paces, it opened out into a room. There was a musky rotting stink - 

eau de cadavre desséché - and Balder's hackles rose.  

"Mr Zombie"

I brought Galena forward and she could sense undead. Gandhi went for a recon, and confirmed a tall ex-human, half-rotted, half-desiccated, zombie creature, with his belly cut open and intestines galore, seated upon a large chair, carrying a two-handed sword.

So Galena, with power of Vingt et un (and a bit of Luck), turned the creature. She held "Mr Zombie" at bay, allowing us all to safely progress.

There was a metal door here which was warm to the touch. Balder confirmed that the door and the chair were magic.

"Do not sit in the chair!" cried Napolean.

Gandhi confirmed that Mr Zombie could not see him, so cavorted about with his jade ring.

We did not need to open the warm metal door, because we found a secret door. It lead to a cellar storage area with bags of flour, sugar, onions, almonds, etc., and a doorway and stairway exiting.

So Galena kept Mr Zombie at bay, and that allowed everyone into the cellar. We closed the secret door effectively blocking our exit route. C'est la vie, as the elves would say.

There was another metal door here, warm and magic like the other one, and a door to a well - down six metres to water. Again, we wisely did not open that metal door.

The stairway up was single file, and finished on a door. With a rune.

"That rune says Death," quipped Balder.

But the door wasn't locked.

Griza opened it carefully. Immediately there was the smell of cooking meat. And frying noises.

The room was a kitchen. There was a large cook in here - as in HUGE, as in ogre-sized - wearing a cook's hat, with his back to us, frying offal in a huge iron frying pan. 

Phoebe fights the undead ogre cook

Napolean cast Silence on the whole kitchen area, and Joe and I engaged the cook in combat.

Everything went silent for him, so we didn't get surprise. He spun around - his belly open with intestines visible, like the downstairs zombie.

Joe's armour was chainmail so he became the whipping boy; this meant all of the ogre's attacks would be taken by Joe. Joe's weapon was not magic, so he couldn't actually damage the creature. But Griza and I had magic, so we hacked and cut it. 

Eventually it went down. Then we could tend Joe's wounds; we had to use a heal potion - no spells in the silence. 

We dragged the undead ogre body down the stairs and left it in the kitchen cellar, and here found a mop and bucket. So we cleaned up all the mess,

Kitchen had a door to the outside. We finally had an escape path. And it wasn't trapped.

Mansion

With the cook gone, we explored the rest of the mansion. Balder's new "see-magic sight" was a great help.

• Lounge with trophy heads of mythical legendary animals: unicorn, manticore, cockatrice, werewolf, thylacine, llama. All magic. The unicorn had an intact horn. Joe wanted to break it off, but we said no. Besides, he already had one - we pointed out the unicorn horn poking from his backpack (which he got from the Emerald forest unicorn, killed by trolls, whose blood was poisoning the dryad stream  [ August ]). "Duh," he cried. "I forgot I had that."
• Banquet hall with a 20-person table, with designer spider webs.
• Snooker room, with dartboard, whisky cabinet (with bourbon, whisky and whiskey). One of the red snooker balls was magic, and there was a magic decanter.
• Drawing room with a fire burning in a magical hearth.

• 

  Skeletal maid

  Entrance hall with the front door - which was magic and trapped.

As we explored, two figures shambled down the stairs. An undead butler and a man-servant.

These were soon put to the sword with Joe and I fighting, dutifully aided by Griza and Gandhi. 

During the fight, a third skeleton arrived, a maid this time. She was also destroyed.

Mention in dispatches to: Galena tried to turn them, but they were tough. Bush hit one of them with a magical arrow, but it passed through the rib cage and broke on the wall behind. And Griza got three criticals.

The butler had a set of keys, which was to prove useful later on.

Then we ventured upstairs:

• Four bedrooms, with magic slippers and a magic hat
• Three magical doors.
• An office-cum-study-cum-library had one-way (magical) walls so you could look out into the entrance hall. It also contained books on necromancy and books on unnatural acts with cadavers, but no magic books. On the walls, of this room were four portraits: Loris Massimo, Simeon, Selina and another woman half-elf whom we didn't know.
• The entire house had no room-shape-or-size inconsistencies, so no secret doors and no secret servant stairs.

Napolean volunteered to wait watching the road outside towards the gate-house of the estate (one hundred paces down the road).

We did not search thoroughly upstairs because there was only an hour until dark, so it was decided to return to the basement and to the warm metal doors. The first warm door was off the cellar, the other one in the room (with the tunnel to the smugglers cave entrance) which still had Mr Zombie wandering around.

Griza carefully opened the metal door and Balder peered inside, the rest of us nervously peered behind. It was a large stone room with a pit with in the centre. The pit had a low wall, and flames flickering up.

There were statues on either side of the door, and in corners of the room; carved statues, of people in torment

Balder confirmed that all statues were magical, and that the fire was magical.

Suddenly, a flaming creature reared up out of the fire, and with its long fiery arm, reached out for the door way.

Balder gave a squeak of terror, and Griza yelled too. Then Griza slammed shut the door before a fiery hand could reach through.

Galena, in the split second she had, confirmed that this thing was not undead detected. Balder saw that it was magical.

So much for that route!

Light in the bay

We re-convened.

Griza and Gandhi went outside to check the stables. 

The rest of us returned upstairs to ransack and search the study. Bush searched for servants' stairs. During the search, we noticed some lights out at sea in the bay, about 500 paces out.

Griza and Gandhi returned to report: Stables: Tack room, four stalls. Two fine horses and a cart. They also heard howling of wolves - in the grounds.

Darkness fell; it was night. Balder lurched and immediately felt more ill [ CON now 8. ]