== Oathday, Neth 14, 4707; The Misgivings, Evening ==

While I was updating my journal, Sabin and the others spent the past half hour investigating the odd basement room in which we found ourselves.

Sabin was convinced this was an arcane workshop at one time, with work tables and rusty tools and paraphernalia scattered across their surfaces.

The northern stained glass window depicted a gaunt man drinking from a vial filled with a shocking green fluid. The southern showed the same man, but with the familiar signs of rot and corruption associated with undead. His arms were uplifted in triumph as his form turned to smoke which was consumed by a seven sided box.

A set of moldy books on necromancy occupied Sabin, but when Rigel touched one she paused and stared out with vacant eyes. It lasted but for a moment, and afterward she described a vision where she was Vorel at his moment of triumph just as he was to consume the potion that would transform him into a lich. But as he drank the potion he doubled over in pain. This vision was quickly replaced with a powerful sense of anger — anger that a loved one could do such a thing to themselves — followed immediately by fear and a sense that she must save their children.

We took the books, which Nolin stored in his pack.

[214] 10 Necromancy books (Nolin)

A second door in the southern wall led to a short hall and another door, which opened onto a flight of stairs leading down and around to the north.

At the base of these stairs was a square room with walls carved from the surrounding rock. The floor was littered with blocks of stone and in the center of the room was a staircase, spiraling far down into the darkness.

Picks and chisels were laying about the rubble; and it looked as if the stairway had been bricked over with stone and mortar in the past, but this had been recently torn apart.

Wafting up from the pit was a terrible stench of death and decay.

We prepared to descend with Sabin, who can see in the dark, leading the way; but as soon as Avia stepped onto the stairs she gasped and began to flail about with her sword and buckler as if she were fighting some unseen foe.

Gashes and bite marks appeared on her skin as we raced to her aid, but we could neither see nor feel anyone (or thing) other than ourselves in the room. Detect Undead revealed nothing.

After a few moments she stopped struggling, and said she saw Aldrin frantically chipping away at the stone on the floor with a pickaxe, all the while repeating, “For you, for you!” He finally broke through the barrier sealing off the stairs when a stream of ghouls filed out from beneath and attacked her.

After a bit of healing we began the descent anew, carefully picking our way down the ancient cracked stone steps as they plunged downward into the darkness and ever growing fetid reek.

At last we reached the bottom, which ended in a large limestone cavern. Sabin estimated that we had come down 80 feet.

The air was damp and water dripped from the ceiling and oozed from the walls, which were covered in blue and black mold that spiraled about in crazy patterns. Bones from various animals and humanoids cluttered the floor, and a sound like a great beast breathing echoed out from the three tunnels that led from the cavern.

The tunnel to the north was narrow, while the one to the northwest was wide and looked well traveled. There were rocks and dirt around the entrance to the southwestern tunnel, which indicated that it was recently opened.

We moved out through the northwest passage into a large natural chamber when a gang of ghouls sprang out from the shadows and attacked. After a short and bitter fight we killed them all, and decided to make sure nothing unpleasant would sneak up from behind.

To this end Nolin volunteered to guard the entrance to the southwest tunnel, and Kane crept into the north tunnel. Unfortunately the northern tunnel was choked with thick matts of mold, which Kane breathed in and was incapacitated for a short time.

We then continued on to the west, winding our way around as the chamber narrowed and bent to the north where it opened into a vast circular grotto.

A side tunnel led due west, but the main chamber was nearly fifty feet across and towered up into the darkness. A wide pathway, or ramp, spiraled down past several cracks and openings before ending in a dark pool of water some fifty feet below.

Large cracks gaped in the wall to the northeast, while a doorway and a dark opening were to the northwest and west.

More bones (fresh and not so) and body parts were strewn about, all of which showed signs of having been gnawed upon, and the stench was horrific.

We took the west tunnel, which led to an oddly shaped chamber with a sloping floor that dropped down to the opening we had seen in the west wall of the circular chamber.

Sabin led us over to the nearby door, which he opened and passed through. I was right behind him, and Avia and the others behind me.

By the seemingly feeble light of our torches we saw a rickety table with a damp surface and all sorts of detritus scattered about it. Fine china and plates and bowls were filled with rotting flesh. A painting sat upright facing away from us.

Behind the table was a high backed leather chair facing the wall.

And behind the chair protruding out from the wall was a thick mass of mold which formed a humanoid shape. From the moldy figure came the most offensive and foul of the odors that had yet assaulted us, and it was all we could do to keep from gagging — indeed some of our team found themselves gagging and choking and could come no further in to the room.

We then saw a broken seven sided box at the foot of the mold man thing.

The chair then slowly turned towards us, with Aldrin calmly sitting there staring at us. He was no longer human, but he also did not look quite like the regular ghouls we had seen thus far.

He caught sight of Avia and became quite excited. “You’ve come to me! I knew my letters would convince you. Now let us consummate our love.” He gestured to the piles of rotting flesh on the table.

Trask made some sort of pert comment and Aldrin’s good humor vanished as he sprang up and attacked.

Avia struck him hard and he collapsed to his knees and began to cry. He sobbed, “The hurter is gone.” He looked back up at us and seemed about as pathetic a figure as a ghoul could.

We asked him what had happened to him, and he said he had to run errands for the Brothers: they wanted him to collect rats and the fungus to find out about the disease down here in the caverns.

Avia quietly confirmed that poor Aldrin was evil, but that the mold man creature behind him was an evil of a far greater power.

Aldrin sobbed on for a few minutes more, crying piteously for us to “Be kind to poor little Aldrin” when all of a sudden his face went blank and he looked up with a huge grin on his face.

“I am the Skinsaw man!” he proclaimed as he jumped up and put on a mask he had been holding. His face changed and morphed into that of Avia as he laughed and charged at us.

A few moments later and he was the dead Skinsaw man.

We then cautiously searched about the room while staying away from the mold man against the wall. On the table we found quite a few items of a personal nature that Aldrin had collected from Avia, like strands of hair and paper on which she had written. More disturbing were a series of drawings Aldrin had made of Avia, many of which had her posed without clothes.

I could not tell if the sudden flush of red on Avia’s cheeks were from anger or embarrassment, but the worse discovery was yet to come. The painting was a portrait of Iesha, but Aldrin had replaced her face with Avia’s by applying gore, blood and other bodily fluids.

We quickly grabbed the seven sided box from the floor.

[203] Seven sided box [broken]

We searched Aldrin’s body and found a handful of interesting items.

[204] +1 War Razor
[205] Ring of Jumping
[206] +1 Ring of Protection
[207] Stalker’s Mask: Crafted from leathery sections of cured human skin, stitched together in overlapping pieces like scales. This item can make the wearer translucent [+5 to hide]. Once per day it also allows the wearer to assume the shape of anyone within 60 feet. This latter ability improves as the mask feeds off of the wearer’s rage and jealousy.
[208] Cameo broach [painting of Avia on inside]
[209] Small iron key

We then torched the mold man with a flask of oil and a little flame, but even though the was mold burned into a cloud of greasy black smoke, the evil remained.

A handful of us then carefully made our way down the ramp to the pool of water. It was frothy sea water, and very deep. A rocky shelf formed a small island to the northwest, but there was little else to see.

I was quite puzzled about the water. How did the sea water get here? The top of the bluff on which the Misgivings was built was at least 300 feet above the sea below, and we had only come down some 140 to 150 feet (at most) from when we climbed down the stairs to the basement.

We returned to the main cavern, where I carefully retrieved a fine pick that Kane had spotted earlier when he had been engulfed in mold spores.

[210] +1 Heavy pick

Joining up with Nolin we passed through the opening to the southwest and into a long and large chamber that stretched to the west.

All manner of remains lay about, including the bodies of two Varisian nomads and another human. Searching them provided no clues to their identity, but we did find several useful objects.

56 gold pieces
[211] Pearl ring
[212] Adamantine long-sword
[213] Hat of disguise

As we were looking over these bodies we heard a loud thump from the west, and a gigantic bat flew in and attacked.

It took some effort, but we killed it and traced its arrival to a small round cavern to the northwest. A small circular opening in the ceiling led up to the surface, and to where I estimated the well was for the servants’ quarters.

We then returned back to the manor’s main hall to see if the odd mold stairway was anything special. Kane pulled the rope hanging from the mouth of the mounted monkey head, and the head shrieked, but nothing else occurred.

[215] Magical monkey head

Just then Trask and Nolin smelled something burning as the old stuffed manticore burst into flames and it whipped its tail about to hit Trask, singing him somewhat. And then it was just a stuffed (and now singed) manticore again.

I decided to experiment and carefully swept away the circular stairway pattern the mold had formed in the center of the hall.

We then decided to investigate the water level of the subterranean pool and using ropes verified that the top of the bluff was indeed 300 feet above sea level.

We then found some additional rope from the attic and returned to the pool where we found that the water level had changed with the tide, indicating a direct linkage of some kind with the sea beyond. How could this be?

Tying a rock to the end of our ropes we dropped it down to 140 feet before it touched bottom. That would put the base of the pool at or just above the level of the sea outside.

On the way back up we checked out the mold man room and found more mold was dripping down from the ceiling, replacing the mold we had burned away and forming another mold man shape.

Back up at the house some of my companions read the books on the Foxglove family while others studied the books on necromancy.

The Foxglove journals revealed a few interesting bits of information:

• Rogers Crazby was the caretaker of the manor while it was deserted
• The Foxgloves have long been associated with a shady organization called “Brothers of the Seven” and the their meetings had been hosted at the manor from time to time
• Vorel original built the house, but his family died and it remained empty for 20 years
• Aldrin’s family moved in until his parents went crazy and killed one another
• Another 40 years and Aldrin returned to a tragic end
• Construction of the manor was funded by the Brothers of the Seven After 100 years ownership of the house and lands would revert to them

Insightful as this information was, we had reached a dead end. Obviously some powerful evil force was still at work in the house, and our work was not yet done here. We needed to return to Sandpoint for extra training and more research before we could finish what we started.

We then experimented with the flocks of undead crows outside and verified that while they were indeed undead, they were not summoned creatures, and that there were more than enough of them to keep us trapped here at the house.

I devised a simple plan for escape that we can try in the morning light.

== Fireday, Neth 15, 4707; Sandpoint, Afternoon ==

Simple plans oft work the best. And so it was with our escape from the Misgivings this morning.

I cast Hide from Undead on all of us, including Nolin’s horse.

Nolin and Rigel then mounted the horse and galloped away, drawing off the undead crows that were unaffected by the Hide from Undead spells.

The rest of us then quickly ran to the northwest, away from the manor and avoiding the birds, until we returned to the road, rejoined with Nolin and Rigel and returned to Sandpoint.

We need to go over our list of recent finds to see what we can sell and how much income this will generate. I think all of us are ready to train, and that will require a large amount of gold.

And while we train we will continue our research on the Foxgloves and the Misgivings.