Posts
[7
Neth 4707 continued]
In
the aftermath of Briza’s attempted self-mutilation, the adventurers take stock
of their dire situation. Exhausted and
hurt, they need rest but the prospect of spending the night within Foxglove
Manor is far from appealing. Yet, if
they venture outside, they must face the menace of thousands of undead
ravens. After much back and forth, Bey
convinces a reluctant Artemis that the group should hole up in a “safe” room
and wait out the night. The adventurers
return to the first floor of the house, check on the horses, and then barricade
themselves within the mold-covered drawing room. The brave (or foolish) explorers alternate
watches through the night, but when they can sleep, their rest is disturbed by
terrifying dreams of being trapped within a crumbling house that gets smaller and
smaller or of being stalked by a shapeless monster. Still, despite the nightmares, their inner
mental fortitude prevails and they wake in the morning better off for having
rested.
[8
Neth 4707]
Artemis
and Briza go to the front entrance hall to check on their horses. Although their mounts are fine, Briza catches
a whiff of burning hair. Artemis
suddenly cries out in agony. In his
mind, the stuffed manticore has once again burst into flame and lashed out at
him with a fiery tail. Briza sees red welts
erupt on Artemis’ arms, and the two make a hasty withdrawal back to the drawing
room where the others are finishing their preparations for another day in
Foxglove Manor. Hearing about what
happened leads Bey to conclude that it would be extremely dangerous to revisit
any of the areas where strange phenomena occurred the day before. The adventurers settle on a new plan: to
strike at what they hope is the heart of the evil that permeates The Misgivings
by venturing into its depths.
As
the walls start to bleed and more sobbing can be heard from somewhere above,
the adventurers hurry down the staircase to the basement kitchen. They argue about where to go next, since
several closed doors line the hallway.
They eventually decide to start with the two doors directly off of the
kitchen: one leads to a pantry that reeks of rat droppings, while the other is
a dusty, empty wine cellar. Briza’s keen
eyes notice a seam in the back wall, and she pushes on it to reveal a hidden
alcove. Inside are several valuable
bottles of what Kang identifies as fine wine from the Vigardeis vineyard in
distant Cheliax. Having discovered
little of monetary worth in Foxglove Manor up to this point, the adventurers
carefully add the bottles to their packs.
A
dilemma now faces the party: the only unopened door they know about in the
basement lays in the observatory that they fled from the day previously when
Briza was possessed and a veritable storm of animated carrion flew through a
broken window. Artemis persuades Arnald,
who has remained almost completely quiet since entering the house, to use his
adamantine axe to literally chop through a wall so that the adventurers can
bypass the observatory. The sellsword
quietly complies, and within seconds access is gained to a narrow corridor. Briza takes point and leads the group to a
chamber whose floor has been broken apart to reveal an ancient set of stone stairs
spiralling down into the darkness below.
A foul stink, like that of rotten meat, wafts up from the hole, the
bottom of which is so far down it can’t be seen until Artemis lowers an everburning torch on a rope to reveal a
natural cavern floor covered in mold.
Briza
starts to descend carefully, but as soon as Bey sets foot on the steps, she
begins shaking and thrashing as deep red claw and bite wounds appear on her
flesh. In her mind she watches as Aldern
Foxglove, filthy and wild-eyed, digs away at the stone floor of the chamber
with a pickaxe—and with each swing, he grunts “for you” while looking directly
at her. As the vision ends, Aldern
breaks through the room beyond and a horde of shrieking ghouls pull him into
the darkness—and then launch themselves at Bey!
The terrifying vision ends, but the physical wounds are very real and
remain.
The
stairs finally end in a limestone cavern, the walls of which drip with moisture
and the floors of which are covered with rubble and broken bones. Tunnels branch off to the west. Although the spelunkers have masked themselves
with Bey’s Hide from Undead abjuration,
the light of their torches stands out like a beacon in the darkness around
them. In mere seconds, shuffling sounds
can be heard approaching. The
adventurers take up defensive positions.
Two
waves of ghouls rush out of the tunnels, but the defenders are ready for them:
Kang hurls devastating alchemical bombs, Artemis fires pinpoint arrows, Bey
slashes with her bardiche, and Arnald and Briza cut wide swathes through the
attackers with their greataxe and greatsword respectively. In a few furious seconds, several ghouls are
destroyed in the fighting and none of the adventurers are seriously hurt. A search of the corpses reveals that one of
them has a partially smashed-in skull (made prior to the fight) from which a
broken chunk of stone protrudes—and it matches the missing wing from the
statuette found in the first floor’s library.
Having
met with success so far, the adventurers decide to press their advantage. They pick one of the western tunnels to explore
and find a cavern covered in a particularly thick yellow mold. Spores from the mold sicken Kang, but he’s
able to quickly prepare a concoction to cure himself and decides to take a
sample for future testing. Bey discerns,
through the use of her magicks, that a discarded mining pick is actually
enchanted for strength, and Artemis promises he can put it to good use.
A different tunnel leads to a long cave that stinks of rotten meat; the
source of the horrific smell is readily apparent as several half-eaten animal
and humanoid carcasses are strewn about!
Eyes glowing with unearthly green energy suddenly swoop down from the
darkness near the ceiling of the cavern as an ear-splitting screech fills the
air. Kang is disoriented by the sound
but the others keep their wits about them as a monstrously-sized bat with
decayed flesh attacks. Arnald is
paralyzed by its bite, but Artemis knocks it out of the air with two
well-placed arrows and Kang blows it to pieces with another alchemical
grenade. A search of the carcasses
reveals that one of them wears a black top hat which Bey identifies as a hat of disguise, while another wears a
pearl ring and has an adamantine longsword: Kang takes possession of the latter
two items.
The
time for ghostly apparitions and nightmares has passed, as the adventurers find
very real enemies to sink their steel into.
But by having descended so far below the surface of Foxglove Manor, have
they gotten closer or further away from the answers they seek?
--------------------------------------------
Director's Commentary (October 10, 2017)
Here we see the PCs, not for the first time, doing something that the AP considers "suicidal": spending the night in Foxglove Manor. Yet, they all made their Will saves and got away with it!
There's a reference to Arnald being extremely quiet in the session. Usually that's code for the player being away and the character lurking in the background, but this time the player was there and the character was just really, really quiet for a span of sessions.
I like the caverns underneath Foxglove Manor. They're what one would expect in terms of creepiness, but sometimes the classics are just right. The downside to the PCs going below first (and may have talked about this elsewhere) is that they'll end up completely missing everything upstairs, and especially what's in the attic. Those of you familiar with the AP know that means a major plot element of this section and several haunts are missed. But different groups are going to do things in different ways, so that's inevitable.
No comments:
Post a Comment