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Message: <blockquote data-quote="soanso" data-source="post: 6269185" data-attributes="member: 6684655">Les Misgivings, denouementWe awoke, and the plague-stricken ravens were nowhere to be seen. Fully recovered and prepared to follow the path Mother had laid out for us, we approached Misgivings with a new feeling- hope.   Dropping into the exposed basement, we found something unnerving- someone had been excavating the basement in recent months. Perhaps the haunted house was less abandoned than we had thought.  The basement was itself a complex mix of rooms, the first being a shoddy kitchen. Waves of rat swarms plagued us, but were eventually overcome.   We came to a ruined arcane laboratory. A mural spanning the walls depicted a gaunt, gray-fleshed man imbibing a vial of viscous green liquid; his other hand clasped a seven-sided wooden box. I recognized the man as Vorel Foxglove, patriarch of the Foxglove line; he also appeared in paintings in the house proper.  We left the room, all except Noria. I turned in the doorway, and watched as her arm eerily and slowly extended itself at the bookshelf, as if it were pulled towards the dusty tomes unwillingly, and she touched one of the books. Her eyes rolled in her head for just a moment, and she gasped, withdrawing her hand and cradling it as if it had touched open flame or solid ice.  “Are you alright, Noria?” I asked, my hand moving to the hilt of my rapier.  “I, yes. It’s numb, that’s all. Yes, Caramour? Where is he?” Her stoic voice cracked as she asked for the cleric. Caramour came around the corner.  “Are you wounded?” he asked.  “No. But tell me, this mural here- it is familiar, yes?”  Caramour studied it, and walked to the seven-sided wooden box. “Phylactery,” he said.  “I thought so,” Noria said, shaking her hand free of numbness. “This is part of the process the depraved take to become a lich.”  My head swam with confusion. What was happening? Where did the Open Road lead? A fortnight or so ago I had discovered a half-sister I never knew existed; today, my mother’s spirit finally released, I found myself on the trail of a lich.  Three iron bird cages cluttered one workbench, and I thought of the ghoulish ravens that had swarmed us. I shuddered to think of what pain my mother must have suffered under this evil roof.   Another room featured two bunks and appeared to be servant’s quarters. The room appeared to be recently used, but we found no evidence of any particular individual. A set of stone stairs led to the murky depths of the earth.  “We must save the child,” Noria said. It was her first utterance since the necrotic laboratory.  “What child?” I asked.  “We must save the child,” Shaiira repeated, her eyes again glassy and adrift.  Noria shook herself from some sort of fog. “There is great evil here,” she said. “Follow the stairs below.” The paladin was burdened by something, but I could not perceive her qualm.  Her voice was too monotone to be Noria, but we acquiesced. We followed the staircase into a natural limestone cavern, leading straight into darkness. Shaiira scouted ahead.  “She’s gone,” Noria said.  “What the what-” I stammered, not ready to lose another one so soon.  “Aye, something swooped in an’ took her,” Mundin said.  We followed the dwarves into darkness, albeit cautiously. Mundin’s war-cry prompted C to put light on his walking stick, illuminating the battlefield. Sha was huddled in a heap in the lair of a winged nightmare, bleached bones littering the floor. We finally brought it down, feeling weary from the fight. Caramour healed Shaiira; though dazed she seemed fine elsewise. There was life in her eyes again, and that made me smile.  “Some sort of ghoul-touched bat,” Noria said as she looked through the beast’s lair. Several fairly ripe bodies lay among the bones and guano.  “By the Goddess, it’s Bilger!” Shaiira cried.  “A friend of yours?” Mundin quipped.  “Nay, but he is a known criminal. He robbed a Magnimar merchant and there is a bounty on him,” Shaiira said as she stripped the dead dwarf of his belongings. “This should be enough evidence to collect the reward,” my sister said.  “Glad to have you back,” I said. She smiled oddly.  “I never left,” she said.   We decided to rest again at the burnt-out servant’s quarters, Caramour providing both protection from the cadaverous birds and the benefit of a nap stack. We were quickly back to the caverns beneath the Misgivings, thanks to his prayers.  A second tunnel was the lair of a small pack of ghouls, which were quickly dispatched.  We entered another natural cavern, this one was met by the sea. Green sea foam splashed up against the high walls of the cave, and four sickly goblins quickly engaged us, joined by a few more.  “Ghouls!” Caramour shouted, using his grace-given energy to lay them low.  We came to a locked stone door. As Shaiira investigated, I felt my stomach turn, my nose struck with the whiff of carrion. She opened the door onto a terrible scene.  A macabre sitting room greeted us. A rickety table stood to one side, what appeared to be a stack of paintings leaning on it. Lumps and heaps of rotten meat filled the air with the overwhelming stench of death. Lazed in a chair was Aldern Foxglove. My heart stopped.  It was Aldern, but not Aldern all at once. His frame and finery were intact, but his visage was that of a terrible monster. His purplish face split in a too-wide and wicked grin, a distended tongue lashing out from behind viciously sharp teeth. He donned a mask of horror, a sickly stitched thing from the flesh of the living.  “My Darling, you have arrived!” the corpse said, lithely sliding from its chair to the floor.   “I am not your Darling,” I said, drawing my rapier. What this undead abomination was, I was uncertain. I only knew it killed my mother, and that was all I needed to know.  “My Darling, I do love a woman with spirit,” the thing said.  “You killed my mother,” I said.  “No, my Darling, I gave her everlasting life. I freed her.” The horror’s fetid breath was that of a dung-heap left to wallow in the jungle’s heat. “And now it is you who has come to me for salvation.”  “Can we kill it?” Mundin asked.  “Aye,” I said, and I lunged into battle, crimson with rage.   My rapier met the soft flesh of its belly, tearing it apart. The ghoul’s eyes widened with the blow.  Yet Aldern was powerful still, and soon I gasped on the floor of the cavern, unable to move. I faded in and out of consciousness, but I saw Noria strike the fatal blow, I smiled then spiraled into darkness.   It was the voices of Caramour and Mundin that brought me to light. “Can you hear me, Siv? You have been graced by the gods,” C said, his warm hand on my forehead.  “Get up lass, we’ve more business, and your songs keep us dwarves movin’!” Though his voice was gruff, it brought a certain measure of concern.  I smiled. I struggled to sit up.  “I won’t leave even if asked,” I said.   “A Varisian to the bones,” Vohoi said.  I forced myself to my feet, and took in the surroundings. Aldern, or what was once he, was dead. The cavern was littered with rotting meat yet was surprisingly put together in a horrific semblance of noble order. A fleet of canvassed paintings littered the walls and floor; a silver candelabra graced the table in the middle of the room; a rack of clothing stood in one corner. A wicked cleaver rested in the dead noble’s hand. But most curious was a man-sized silhouette of mold on the far wall, pulsing with energy. We searched the body of Aldern and the room, hoping for a clue.  I found a silver locket on the beast’s body; my mother’s portrait was held therein. I immediately clasped it on my neck, and it felt like the hug from a mother to a daughter after a moment of strife. The grotesque mask and a pair of rings were also magical; but the true find was Shaiira’s.  She approached us, her hands cupped. She walked gingerly, protecting her treasure.  “I found this,” she said, carefully depositing the splintered wooden box before us.  Noria looked at C, and they both looked at me; I nodded. Shaiira had found the splintered remains of Vorel Foxglove’s phylactery.</blockquote>

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