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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Sir Brennen" data-source="post: 2033654" data-attributes="member: 553">April 25th 998Since I was on the last watch, I was already up as the sun rose somewhere behind the gray clouds.  Over breakfast Father Al studied the scrolls we bought, saying a prayer which I think might have had a little divine power behind it.  We broke camp and made sure Bob was fastened securely, then worked our way up the western slope to reach the more level road on the north.  Looking over the estate, Charlotte asked Lord Blaine where the vault was supposedly rumored to be.  "You're starting to sound like the dwarves," Marcus groused, which earned him an icy stare and then a quick slap from his sister.  I'm not sure what the problem was; I had been thinking the same thing.  It was, after all, why we were here.Oh, and the clock.  Almost forgot.Before we entered the front, I looked around carefully to see if there was evidence of anyone else moving around the building recently.  Nothing showed in the soft mud.  Unfortunately, the windows were too high off the ground to peek inside before we went in.Coming into the foyer, we agreed to search the lower floor first, beginning with the west end of the house.  We made our way through a couple of dusty rooms, one that appeared to have been a makeshift barracks, and then bashed our way into the base of the tower.  While the stairs in there seemed to draw us, we stayed our course, checking out a series of servants quarters. Barrick, who had been in the front kicking in doors as we proceeded, slowed us down at one point, as he thought he heard something in what turned out to be the kitchen.  It was nothing but mice, apparently, and we also found a pantry and stairs down to what we assumed was a cellar.From there, we headed into the dining room, which had its ceiling open up to the second story, and a balcony situated around it.  I was still in the back in the kitchen, but Barrick saw something above us, and ran to the stairs leading to the balcony.  There were a couple of shouts for him to stop, then humans quickly overtook his short dwarven legs.  By the time I entered the room, there was nothing to see.  The ghost, as everyone called her, seemed to have fled down a side hallway.Overlooking the dining room were several life-size, full-length portraits, and when I asked what everyone had seen, I was told it was a pale girl in a white dress, standing in front of a portrait of herself.  I thought for a moment that perhaps the painting itself, briefly lit by a stray shaft of sunlight, was what Barrick had seen, but after our encounter at the monastery, I held my peace. The name on the girl's picture was Regine.  Curiously, the paintings to either side had be slashed beyond recognition, but they carried the names Rebecca and Reveri on small brass plates attached to the frames.Determined to finish investigating the ground floor first, we uncovered a weapons room next, probably for those in the barracks, and a spiral staircase descending "to the horrors beneath", as Father Al put it.  After that, we moved into the greatroom, with a raised dais opposite the large double doors through which we entered, and a fireplace on the outer wall."This is where we lost our companion last time," Blaine said, and there indeed was the message written in blood that he had told us about.  I carefully examined the footprints in the dusty room, which seemed to vanish into thin air at the center.Everyone else moved into the room, and we began to investigate it thoroughly.  Strange rattles and thumping sounds made me look up from where I was testing the floorboards, just in time to see a swarm of angry centipedes cascading from inside the fireplace.  Marcus dropped the poker he had been prodding with and dragged Charlotte away from the angry vermin.  Father Al, who had been watching the siblings and not the floor, now glanced down to realize the critters had swarmed around him.  "Thanks alot, Marcus," he said heatedly.  "I won't forget this."Barrick and I rushed up to help the priest fight the centipedes off, and I was rewarded for my efforts by a painful bite on the ankle.  Blaine and Marcus joined in the fray, with Charlotte plugging away with her faithful crossbow.  Between all of us, we made short work of the pests.My ankle became swollen and stiff, but with a little help from Father Al, we were able to keep the venom from spreading any further up my leg.  Meanwhile, the rest of the group checked out the chimney, but saw nothing beside the centipede nest of rotting leaves in the loose brickwork.The next room of interest was a nursery.  A decapitated doll lay in an ancient crib, and dark handprints could be seen all over the walls.  With a closer look, I determined they were those of a human woman's, perhaps a girl, and the dark prints were made of blood, dry and darkened long since with age.  A quick search found a small leather bag, filled with a child's marbles made of fancy stones.Still carefully investigating the first level, we found a fancy tiled room with a large bath built into the floor.  The bath, almost twenty feet across, was full of black, brackish water, though since there were no leaves or visible leaks in the room, I hesitated to think what might be in the water to give it that color.Seeming to be taking to the exploration activities rather well, or perhaps still andrenalized from the fight with the centipedes, Charlotte grabbed a cleaning rake from the wall and plunged it into the water, despite protests from Father Al and her brother.Almost immediately, human bones roiled to the surface.  Even more frightening, the blackened skeletons began reaching and grabbing at anyone standing near the bath.  One wrapped its bony fingers around Charlotte's ankles, but she was able to dance out of its slimy grip and retreat into a corner.Barrick and I began flailing away with our weapons.  The axe-head of my urgrosh bit deep into the tile of the bath without hitting my target, while Barrick decapitated two of the skeletons with a single blow.  Even Marcus came in swinging his staff at the undead in the water, but the cramped quarters kept him from connecting solidly.By now some of the skeletons had climbed out of the pool, one threatening Charlotte in the corner.  I could see her trying to use her magic while avoiding him, but the flailing arms of her attacker knocked into hers, spoiling the spell.Behind us, we could hear Father Al calling on his god to rid us of our undead foes.  I almost rolled my eyes, thinking how effective he had been against the revenant at the monastery.  Unsurprisingly, the creatures ignored him.While Marcus, Barrick and I continued to fight off the skeletons trying to drag us underwater, Father Al seemed to have an epiphany.  His invocation to his god was something like, "C'monnn... Alioth!", sounding more like what I'd expect to overhear in a back alley dice game than a temple.  Whatever it was, his god must have recognized a truer tone in that plea, because the animated bones burst into pieces, raining into the black water all across the sunken bath.A couple of the skeletons had escaped the blast, including the one in the corner by Charlotte.  It grabbed and wrapped its arms around her in a gruesome embrace. She slid out of its grasp again and dropped to the floor.  I struck him with my urgrosh to get his attention, then jammed the spear-tip end through his eye socket, tearing the skull loose while the body collapsed.Marcus and Barrick finished off the other stragglers.  After catching our breath, we completed dredging the bath for anything of interest, but came up empty.Moving on, we found a small, cozy library room, with an open book resting on a stand in the corner.  While everyone else investigated, I broke apart one of the chairs to start a small fire in the fireplace.  Didn't want any more nasty surprises from that direction.  My ankle still ached.The book's author was Reveri Maltus, the same name as one of the defaced paintings upstairs.  Beyond that, we found nothing else of value, and continued on.We came across a long, narrow room, empty except for another book, lying on the floor near the far wall.  Barrick, sensing something was up, very slowly eased across the floor.  He halted when he felt the boards give slightly, as if unsupported further on.  To be safe, Charlotte used her magical rope spell to retrieve the book instead.  As she pulled it across, we could tell the end of the room was actually covered with a tarp, the dust so thick across it we couldn't distinguish it from the rest of the floor.  Barrick kicked the fabric away, and it fell into a large hole in the floor, splashing into a pool some distance below.  "Latrine," he surmised.  Thankfully two hundred years of standing unused had removed any smell.The book was another volume of poetry by the Maltus girl.  Deciding there was nothing further here, we headed toward the last room to be checked on the first floor.  I almost bumped into Marcus, who was still standing in the doorway, pondering the hole the tarp had covered.  I could almost see the wheels turning.  Though he still didn't seem satisfied with whatever he was thinking, he finally left and caught up with the rest of us.The final room on the first floor appeared to be a meeting room of some kind, with a table and chairs filling most of it.  At the end was yet another bookcase.  A cursory rummaging around revealed nothing initially.  As we were about to head back to the dining room and the stairs to the second floor, Lord Blaine said, "I think I found something!"A wooden block carved as a book unlocked a panel behind the bookcase, leading to a flight of stairs up.  I looked at Blaine, wondering if he knew more about this house than he was letting on.</blockquote>

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