30 Kythorn 1491

Session 24, 6/11/2021

The next morning we gathered once again in the common room of the Roc’s Nest. The Professor was feeling poorly again and excused himself for the day. Ankeli also bid us farewell. She was being called away by the raven queen to apply her skills elsewhere. She offered no explanation as to why, but I fear the raven queen was not so happy with our desire to save as many of the undead souls as possible instead of outright destroying them.

As we were discussing our further plans and how we would deal with the different members of the a stranger entered the inn. And by strangers, I mean someone quiet strange. The creature appeared to be an artifical creature of some sort. But not one of the golems I have seen controlled by higher members of the church, which are not much more than animated statues. I had heard of constructs before, beings created through a combination of science and magic, but had never encountered one before.

The construct headed directly to our table and introduced himself. His name was Pacha and he had been sent by his mistress Isabella. Isabella was a worshiper of the god Kelemvor and he had instructed her to send help to our group to avoid a potential upcoming disaster. Other than that Pacha knew nothing of our quest and circumstances.

Being aware of Kelemvor and his ways, this did indeed seem a plausible story. And Pacha, as far as one could tell with such a creature, truly seemed to be telling the truth. The only other ones who know of our quest are the Cult of the Grey Master, and now that things have become openly hostile trying to infiltrate our ranks seemed an unlikely move for them. We decided that, with our diminished size, we could certainly use the assistance and we welcomed Pacha to the group.

We filled Pacha in as much as possible on the status of our investigations. In trying to explain each member of the Council of Bones and the difficulty we would face in defeating them, we struck upon both a problem and a solution in dealing with the Boneclaw. The Boneclaw is in service to a young child. And in the book we had discovered some weeks prior it was written that the Boneclaw would reform itself after destruction as long as it’s master was still alive, but we would not want to harm the child.

The solution struck upon was to acquire the ring stashed by Professor Mirakle in Windmeer’s keep. If the child were to wear the ring, she would loose her evil nature and the Boneclaw would leave her service. During that time, before it found a new master we could destroy the beast without it arising again.

For now we put off the discussion of the moral consequences of such an action, forcing the child to change her very nature. It is undecided, if after the Boneclaw is defeated if we would leave the ring on the child or remove it. But that decision will have to be made at some point.

So, we decided on a plan. We would use the mist walking spell to fly to Windmeer’s keep and infiltrate it. We would try and steal the ring without anyone taking notice and only if discovered would we get into a fight. To be honest, we spent a long time upon our plan. Discussing what could go wrong and how it would be handled. And upon arriving at the keep we spent a long time searching for the perfect room to materialize in. But the actual deed was done within minutes.

We materialized in the dinning room where we had taken dinner with Jensen and his abomination of a wife. Evelios and Pacha snuck down the stairs and remove the ring from the painting. As soon as they rejoined us in the dinning room we changed back to mist and flew back to town. In total we were in and out in less than 5 minutes. While that was probably the best possible outcome, it was somewhat disappointing to once again leave Windmeer and his wife alive.

After returning to town, surprised by the ease we had infiltrated Windmeer keep, we decided to continue with our investigation. We leaned form Gharrus the location of the Tarramor estates and decided to head there to see if we could find the ghost of Gavin Tarramor.

From the outside the estate appeared as one would expect. It was probably very fancy and beautiful at one point, but now was run down and decrepit. We entered through the main doors into a large receiving hall. The hall was two stories high with a balcony and railing circling the top floor. A wide set of stair led upwards and several doors led off of the main room.

We decided to start exploring the first floor and picked a door heading to the east. The door opened to another large room, but this one looked as if it had been a sitting room. There was a fireplace in the far wall with a large painting above it and several seating areas. There was also a long dead half orc in the middle of the room. Perhaps he had been a looter of some sort.

We entered the room to search it and the body when Evelios was struck by a debilitating pain in his head. Fearing attack we spread out a bit and did our best to search for any enemies thinking something must be in the room. We found nothing and neither did Sylrel’s Faerie Fire. Suffering repeated attacks and unsure what else to do, we left the room and the attacks promptly ended.

We reasoned that somehow, the corpse must be the source the attacks, even if we could not reason out how. A detect magic spell indicated several items on the corpse, but nothing else in the room. While trying to figure out how the retrieve the items without taking too much further damage, Pacha had a stroke of genius.

The corpse was especially dry and desiccated, as though it had been in the room for some time. He simply walked in and placed his torch upon the corpse and then quickly rejoined us. He did feel an attack, but did not suffer any damage. The corpse begin to smolder, and though it took some time, it did slowly burn away allowing us to retrieve the items and do a more thorough search of the room.

Session 25, 6/18/2021

After the fire had burned down, and the smell cleared a bit, we made a more thorough examination of the room. The painting above the fireplace appeared to be of the elder Tarramor, Orson. The eyes were scratched out on the painting, as if done by someone in a rage. A closer examination of the books shelves along the north wall revealed a secret door.

With appropriate caution, we examine and then opened the secret door. On the other side was a small, dim corridor. There we several other doors as well as stairs going up and down. We quickly realized this was some sort of servants passage way when we realized the door we had used appeared to be a normal door from this side.

We decided we would start in the bottom of the house and work our way upwards. During that discussion a strange chill passed over the group, causing a small amount of harm to several group members. We brushed it off and headed downstairs.

The basement was old and must as one would expect. There was a long corridor running to the east with a turn to the south and further east. There were occasional shelves along the corridor covered in old crockery and dishes. Seeing several doors, we decided we would clear as we go and check each room on our way. But that did not last long.

The first door we opened appeared to be an old storeroom, but we could hear something moving among the old crates and bags. A large group of rats jumped out and rushed at us, and Evelios simply shut the door on them. Before we could move to the next door, we heard a women’s voice calling out from down the hallway. She said something to the extent of “They can’t see me. I am here, but they can’t see me. It will never end.”

Instead of moving to the next door in the hallway, we decided to hurry to the end of the hallway and look for the lady calling out. After several turns, the corridor opened up into a large room. It looked to be a large kitchen, with a giant fireplace and stoves as well as old tables and shelves.

We spread out to search for the lady we had heard calling out and were surprised by the appearance of several giant spiders. They put up a fight, but pretty easily overcome. Feeling cocky, we started to search again, when a ghostly apparition dropped down through the ceiling.

It seemed that the goal of our search, Gavin, had decided to join us. He quickly struck two members of the group (myself and Sylrel) and then before we could do much in retaliation he fled by drifting through a closed door. But that was for the best, for the wounds he had dealt were grievous. We took a few minutes to organize some he align and then cautiously followed after him.

The room Gavin had entered turned out to be an old wine cellar, with no other exit. He had clearly continue to move through the walls/ceiling and gone on his way. Since we were unable to directly follow him and we were unable to find the source of the woman’s voice, we decided to continue with our original plan.

Moving back down the original corridor, we went from door to door and opened each one. They were all old storage rooms, with the remains of old cookware or food in them. All, except the last.

The last door we opened opened up into a medium size room with a figure chained to the floor. The chains had some, but not much give to them. The figure, which was quite translucent immediately yelled out to us that we should hurry up and free him so that he could deal with his son.

The figure matched the older man that we had seen in the vision of Gavin as well as resembled the man in the painting with the eyes scratched out. We quickly decided this must be the ghost of Orson. He was VERY impatient to be released and had A LOT of very negative things to say about his son. To be honest, I could not tell if he even realized he was dead at first.

After a quick talk amongst the group, we decided we should free him if possible. If we got lucky he would find his son and destroy him or at least weaken him in the fight. Examining the chains revealed that although they had a ghostly appearance, there did seem to be a physical presence of some sort. Sylrel cast a dispel magic spell on the chains and the faded away freeing Orson.

Orson quickly set out in search of his son. We asked him to move slowly because we would love to be able to keep up and see Gavin get his well earned punishment. But Orson had no interest in that and shouted for us to get out of his house, before he floated through the ceiling. I guess he did in fact know he was dead.

We decided to move up to the second floor and see if we could find Orson or Gavin. The second floor had the railing and balcony viewing down into the entry area, so it seemed a good place to be able to get a view.

When we arrived on the second floor we heard the woman’s voice once again calling out a similar refrain as before. That their fight would never end, and they could not see her. If only they could. This time we actually got a glimpse of a ghostly apparition as she faded through a door.

We carefully followed and opened the door and it opened up onto a small balcony above the main door of the house. There was no sign of the woman herself. But, we did spy a small golden locket hanging on the balcony railing. The locket has a picture of a woman in it matching the figure we had seen floating around. She also matched a woman seen in several of the painting we had seen in the house. We figured this must have been Gavin’s mom.

Evelios retrieved it and we cant detect magic and identify spells on the locket. It was definitely magical and we got the sense that it could not identify it as a specific magical item, but we got the sense that it could somehow help Gavin and Orson see the woman, and with what she had said, we thought that maybe she would be able to end their feud. But we had no idea how to get all three of them together, and no idea what exactly to do once we did to get them to see her.

While we were contemplating that mystery Gavin made another showing. This time his attacks were not quit as deadly as before, but still gave the impression that he was more powerful than what we would want to tackle head on.

Feeling badly beat up, and not sure what to do exactly next, we decided discretion was the better part of valor and to flee the house for now. We could take a rest, recuperate and return with a better plan the next day.