Session 14

Side-Questing in Rowen: The Haunted House
The heroes arrived in Rowen and received word from Mr. Mugwump that the owner of the magic shop, Sariel, had requested to see them. Recalling that Sariel had never been very interested in them before, they were naturally curious as to what she could want. When they arrived at The Crescent Moon, she surprised them by offering to hire them to investigate a potential haunted house. The house, she explained, was abandoned, and she had been hoping to convert it into a workshop for her magical craft. She had sent scouts to search it, but when they arrived they found it was full of ghosts. Sariel told the travelers that she would pay them to cleanse the building of its ghostly presence. They agreed, and spent some time haggling with the eladrin, finally settling on 300gp per ghost. (Sariel reminded them that she was proficient in the arcane arts, and that she would know if they were lying about how many ghosts were exorcised.) Fausto was unsatisfied with the plan, and refused to participate unless he was offered more money. Sariel agreed to increase his share of the profits if he was able to vanquish more ghosts then the rest of his team members, a challenge he readily accepted.

They arrived at the haunted house shortly after, and worked together to pry open the heavy wooden doors. The smell of decay wafted out of the old building, and they had to hold their breaths as they entered. The front room was dark and musty, and the few furnishings there were in a state of great disrepair. Unsettling portraits lined the walls - Taargus was sure he saw their eyes following him as he walked through the room. Casually searching the sparse area netted 50gp to the fortunate Caraga. Fausto, eager to find something valuable, poked around a fireplace full of old ashes, finding a small statue of a child, carved out of what looked disturbingly similar to human bone.

The group had just reconvened in the center of the room when, without warning, four phantom warriors phased in. The ghosts quickly began attacking, dealing out massive amounts of necrotic damage to the members of the group before they even knew what had hit them. Unwilling to be waylaid for long, however, the adventurers got their wits about them and mounted a defense, attempting to vanquish the tormented souls from the house. In-between fighting, someone began interrogating the ghosts, trying to discover the reason for the haunting. Instead of learning anything that would help them in their quest, however, the adventurers chose to ask the ghosts about their names and occupations before they died. Thus, they were introduced to Frank the carpenter, Fred the plumber, and Bob the unemployed, and got to know very little else about them before they unceremoniously snuffed them out. (They never got a chance to speak to the fourth ghost before it too was thwarted.)

The phantom warriors having been dealt with, the group decided to continue exploring the house, none the least bit disappointed to be leaving the spooky front room behind. Their only option was to go through a closed door into the next room, and Twitch took it upon himself to work on getting the door open. He charged head-on toward the door, but merely succeeded in running into it with nothing to show except a nasty bump on the head. As it turned out, the door was not even locked, and a simple turn of the handle revealed a well-stocked library behind it. Bookshelves packed to the brim with dusty old tomes lined the walls. The group did a quick search to see if anything interesting was tucked in among the volumes, and Fausto did find something of note. It was a scroll containing the instructions to perform the ritual Comprehend Language, and nearby on the shelf were several small vials of rare earths to be used in the ritual. Always on the lookout to benefit financially from his endeavors, Fausto offered the scroll and the vials to Twitch, the resident ritualist, in exchange for half of the coin the cleric was promised by Sariel at the completion of the mission. Twitch agreed to the trade, and stashed the materials away for later usage.

The group headed upstairs by way of a creaky spiral staircase and found themselves in a long hallway with several closed doors on either side. The ladies decided to check the room directly across from the staircase. They stepped inside the long room, disoriented by the large mirrors covering the walls. The room was empty save for a giant round chandelier suspended from the ceiling. Only too late did they realize they had stepped into a trap. The door slammed behind them and the chandelier fell to the floor with a crash, blades suddenly rising out of hidden compartments within it. The device then began to spin like a top, whirling quickly in random directions throughout the room. Caraga and Cora jumped out of the way just in time as it flew past them, then braced themselves for its return. Meanwhile, in the hallway, the gentlemen wondered which room they should explore. Fausto made up his mind quickly, and set off for the room on the left at the end of the hall. While Twitch and Taargus continued to decide, they were surprised by the phasing-in of two trap haunt ghosts. The ghosts, eager to lead the mortals into the trap that caused their own deaths, tried hard to take over their victims' bodies. One of the haunts used its ghostly possession to dominate Taargus, and lead him into the room with the whirling blades trap. Twitch was left in the hallway to deal with the other ghost on his own. Luckily for both men, the women had already taken care of the trap, having banded together and hacked it to pieces before it could do any damage. Regaining control of his body, Taargus joined them in defeating both trap haunts.

Twitch had sulked away from the ongoing battle in the hallway, trying to hide himself in one of the other rooms. The room he found himself in appeared to have once been a cheerfully pink bedroom, but the colors had long since faded and everything now was drab and mildewed. Atop a child-sized bed in the corner of the room was the ghost of a young eladrin girl, playing with a raggedy doll. Twitch hesitantly greeted her, keeping one hand on his weapon. "Hello," she said, her voice a spectral whisper. "Are you here to help me?" Twitch explained that he and his friends had come to clear the house of ghosts. "I cannot leave this place," she explained to him sadly. "I am still linked to this world, and I cannot rest or be destroyed until the ghost of the man who kidnapped and killed me has been extinguished." She told him that her kidnapper's ghost still lingered in the house as well, and that killing him was the only way to ensure the ghosts would not come back. She found a key and handed it to Twitch, telling him that he would need it to reach his enemy, and went back to playing with her doll. Twitch took the key, and gave the room a quick glance before leaving. He saw an old diary on top of the dresser and took that as well, despite it being written in a language he did not recognize. Moving back out into the now-cleared hallway, he prepared the vials of rare earths he had obtained earlier and began to perform the Comprehend Language ritual.

In the meantime, Fausto had been busy exploring a strange room. He pulled aside the dark curtains that covered the windows to better see what he was doing. In the dim light, he made out a circular table in the middle of the room. He approached it, finding himself drawn to the strange red orb that rested upon it. Thinking that it might be valuable, he pocketed the orb and continued to look around. There was a cauldron in the corner but it was empty, and probably had not been used in quite a long time. On the outer wall was a dusty shelf containing several vials. Though the labels had grown yellow with time, Fausto surmised that the vials contained extracts from various beasts, and could be used as alchemical reagents. He pocketed these as well, considering that they might be of use in future trades with the cleric.

The group reunited in the hallway. There was one room left to be explored, and the door was locked. Finishing up his ritual, Twitch handed over the key he had been given, and the group tentatively entered the final room. In the center there appeared to be a makeshift surgical table, with rusty surgical tools resting on a nearby tray. Blood that had been dried for decades stained the floor and was splattered on the walls. Poorly preserved specimens in jars filled many shelves, giving the room a most foul odor. Suddenly, a ghost emerged from the floor beneath the table, letting out an inhuman wail. Cora was certain she recognized him from a portrait she had seen in the front room, but did not have time to reflect on it. The ghost unleashed one terrifying shriek after another upon the group, leaving Fausto and Taargus immobilized in fear. The girls were able to withstand the psychic torment, and Cora unleashed all her fury onto her enemy. The ghost disappeared, and the group immediately knew that the haunting was over.

Twitch took some time to read the diary, which had been written in the elven language, and through it became aware of a secret room at the end of the hallway. He touched the correct brick in the wall, causing a hidden door to swing open and reveal an unlocked chest. The chest contained a dynamic belt, 500gp, a piece of topaz, a bronze crown, and a decorative silver-plated sword. The group stopped in the little girl's room before leaving, but she was no longer there. The doll she had been playing with hung limply off the edge of the bed, and Fausto took it with him before he left.

Sariel was very pleased when the group returned to her shop. She rewarded them with 300gp per ghost, as she had promised. While she did not think that Fausto killed more ghosts than his companions, she did give him an extra 200gp for the young eladrin's doll. She immediately sent her scouts back out to the house to begin preparations for converting the place into a workshop. The adventurers headed out, searching for the next person in need of their help.

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