It’s not often you witness a miracle, two if you count our escape from the Durst House, or the Death House as the locals call it. That sort of information would have been useful to know this morning. I am safely back at the Burgermeister’s house along with Karak and Lunae as the holy men pay their respects to Donovitch in the temple. Ireena is running errands and Ismark is out of his mind with worry.
We rested well last night, after the unsettling appearance of Strahd in the graveyard, and made our way to finish what we had started the previous day. There is no such thing as sunlight here apparently, the mists coming in from the valley were thick and the air chilled me through my clothes. As we walked carefully toward the house, I could not help thinking that this might be a fool’s errand. The streets gave off a mildly unpleasant odour of decay, I was cold and all things being equal, I would rather have set out for Valaki that morning. But Bastion was adamant that we had to lay those poor children to rest, and so, within a short space of time we found ourselves approaching the gaunt, terrible visage of the red brick house.
“Help us Mister.” Said the little girl.
“There’s a monster in the house,” said a boy, a little younger, who joined her “our parents keep it in the cellar and we’re really worried about our baby brother Walter. Can you help us?”
I had been half expecting this, so was a little ruder than I am normally, but this was the third time I had heard these exact sentences.
“Hello Rosa, Thorne.” I said turning to both of them in turn. “We’re going to help you today.” And as a group, we entered the house for the second time.
We showed Gorek the plate mail armour on the second floor, and once he had assured himself that there was nothing untoward or unholy about the set he was looking at, he donned it. Sounding like the entire collection of a rich merchant’s silverware draw being hurled down a steep slope, we crept to the top floor of the house and descended the secret stairs that we had found the previous day. The basement was very dark, very spooky and I was not at all happy to be the last one to reach the packed earthen floor. We could all hear the chanting and slowly made our way to find the source of the unsettling noise.
It felt as if we were really working well as a team, the others bravely let me go first into a few rooms to make sure that there were no traps or anything and on discovering some sleeping cells, with battered chests serving as foot lockers I discovered some beautiful moss agates that I thought the Dragonborn might use in his magic, (I don’t know much about magic, but he seemed pleased with them,) and a short sword that had been treated with silver. Which I have now used a number of times to great effect.
We carefully explored the corridors, making sure that no-one fell into the spikey pit trap that Gorek spotted, and avoiding the very angry nest of centipedes that he disturbed, bitey little bastards, they can be! Lunae started to complain of the smell, the source of which became obvious when what looked like two rotting corpses shambled into the room that we were in. Karak disappeared around a corner and Lunae threw some enchanted fog around us, which was odd, because it was full of silently screaming faces. One of them came close to me so I stabbed it with my little silver sword, which seemed to hurt it quite a lot, so I ran to the back of the room to let the big folk have a go. Gorek got hit, Karak appeared from behind them, (he had jumped over the pit and circled back around) and unleashed the magic his patron had gifted him with, which hurt the two ghouls quite badly, and then I rushed forward and stabbed one in the head. It was disgusting, but effective as he fell over and stopped moaning. Lunae then turned into a giant bear, which was awesome to watch, but a little scary. She was huge and started ripping into the last of them. He fought back, and I was worried that she / it might get hurt, but then Bastion called for divine inspiration and Karak sunk a sickle into the ghoul’s back, just as he was distracted by the light of the Morning Lord. Whether it was the holy words or being stabbed by a Dragonkin, I don’t know, but we counted ourselves lucky no-one had been badly hurt.
As we picked our way over the mess, we kind of got separated, I found a huge room with skeletons chained to the wall, which was a little unsettling. There was a wooden statue at one end, covered in flaky paint, that looked a little like Strahd. It was holding a smoky glass orb of some kind, and Gorek just went right up and took it out of the statue’s hands. As he moved the orb in front of one of our torch’s shadows were flung against the walls. Now, I don’t know much about shadows, but I do know that they’re not supposed to attack you. I always thought that if you were going to get into a fair fight, it should be with something solid. And this fight turned out to be as fair as cheating a goblin out of his turnips, as my brother used to say. So, when the shadows in the room started moving towards us and reaching out, I did what any respectable halfling would do, and ran out of the room.
Gorek, who is much better at this than me, thought that a strong light would remedy the situation, and promptly set the statue on fire. I think his logic was sound, but it only seemed to make the shadows angry. Bastion called on his god, because, well, there’s no way these things were friendly, and this seemed to slow them down a lot. Lunae Bear then ripped into one of them and scattered it all over the place. ‘So, they can be hurt!’ I thought to myself and stepped back into the room with my bow ready. Bastion must have been lost in prayer, because one of them (there were several) managed to hold on to him briefly. Afterward he said he felt like his soul had fractured. Which sounds horrible. I broke my toe once, and that was painful enough. He was still in communion with his Lord though and was able to cause them as much pain back. We worked together so well, the Warrior Monk, priest, dragonborn, bear and little me, so that we were able to defeat these terrifying visions. Gorek smashing the last one out of this plane of existence with an almighty hammer blow.
Poking around the room afterward I found a trapdoor that led to the room next to the front door and told the others. It might be useful as a quick exit should we need one.
Gorek in the meantime had found a bedroom with a man lying on the bed, with the jewelled hilt of a dagger sticking out of his chest and a lady hanging by her neck nearby. I think they were once human, whatever they were, they had some weird habits. I think the paladin was getting angry at the amount of evil and death he was unearthing in this basement, because his eyes glazed over momentarily and then he turned to Bastion and said, ‘they are undead’ and he exhorted him to ‘end these creatures’. As I looked in the room, they reminded me of the folk in the painting upstairs. On the wall, scrawled in dried blood were the words, ‘Your weakness is the reason he rejected us.’ Things were beginning to make a little more sense to me now.
At Gorek’s words the woman’s eyes opened and the man straightened up. Now, you know that I don’t get scared, but this was really unnatural, and I didn’t care for it at all. Gorek attacked the hanging woman, the battle was short and ferocious. The Man leapt from the bed and attacked Bastion. Gorek and Bastion brought the fury of their faith to bear with such force, I am sure that they saved us. Lunae got really badly hurt and at one point Karak seemed to be paralysed. I had discovered that I could rush in, stab the man with my silver sword and then rush away without giving them a chance to hit me back. I managed to slice him open at one point, so I like to think that I helped. It was over soon enough, we tended to Lunae and Karak and Gorek looked over to me and said I should keep the dagger with the jewelled hilt.
We heard the chanting get louder, so, when we had all caught our breath we continued until we found a set of stairs that led down to where we thought the noise was coming from.
We found a chamber with thirteen alcoves around the wall. In each alcove was a different thing. I saw a frog on a stick, a knife made of bone and a ton of other stuff. Karak looked over them and said with a sniff that they weren’t in the least bit magical. And he would know. Carefully poking around the basement, trying not to breathe in the foetid air we found a portcullis leading to a huge room and some cells, with chains on the walls. The chanting was really loud now, but we couldn’t see anyone singing from within the room. We couldn’t open the portcullis, but Karak found a secret door, so we opened it and I carefully stepped into the big room.
The chanting swelled to a crescendo and then we could hear words in the chanting. “One must die!” The voices called out in unison, as I looked up, I could see thirteen black figures appear overhead. One of them was right above me! We could see that the room was partially submerged in disgusting, brown water, it had bits of rubbish floating in it and smelled worse than a goblin after a night’s drinking, (as my brother used to say.) In the center of the room was a dais with what looked like a rusty dagger on it. I think Lunae Bear was a bit impatient because she ambled over to the platform to see what she could find. I don’t know what she did at first, because I don’t speak Bear!
As Lunae Bear put a paw on the stone in the middle of the room the hooded figures screamed “Logarth the Destroyer, we awaken thee. You lack the Faith.”
The strange thing about danger, is that you almost never know where it’s going to come from. In our case, it came from what looked like a big rotting pile of bones and rubbish that had collected in a corner, across from where we were standing. The mound of detritus, with s speed that belied its form moved towards Lunae Bear and two thick, glossy tendrils shot out from its middle, knocking her down, within a moment she had been completely engulfed. The four of us were shaken into action, each of us bringing their talents to bear; strength, faith, magic and cunning (well, arrows in my case.) Gorek managed to tear Lunae Bear free from the shambling mass of crap and then Bastion’s words ripped through the dank cellar. Forcing the stinking pile back away from us. We forced open the portcullis and fled into the antechamber.
Not stopping to think we all ran toward the trapdoor we had discovered earlier, I stayed at the back of the group, thinking that if the thing followed us, I could shoot a flaming arrow into it. One by one in the dark, narrow corridor we made our way into the room on the first floor and found ourselves in the study. Thick black smoke was streaming out of the fire grate, blinding us and causing us all to retch. The furniture was catching fire around the room and we could see dark figures moving in the smoke. There was an almighty crash and I the green vegetative mass, with bones sticking out squeezing its way through the trapdoor. Well, I think at this time we had all had enough, so we smashed the windows and leapt into the street, thinking we would have a better chance of fighting whatever this monstrosity was in clear air. As we all picked ourselves up outside, we turned to see the whole house on fire, collapsing in on itself. With a huge crash it seemed to fall from the inside out, there was no sign of the creature, it was obviously caught up in the destruction.
As one, we all looked up and saw a single shaft of sunlight, the first we had seen since arriving in this accursed town and five vaporous figures rising into the air along the beam of light, followed by sparks issuing from the now utterly ravaged house.
“The Miracle of the Morning Lord.” Said Gorek quietly. Bastion seemed at peace now that he had witnessed the flight of spirits that we obviously Rosa and Thorne, most likely with baby Walter and their parents. Exhausted, sooty, but rather pleased with ourselves we turned and headed back into the town.
