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I am being told that there is some issues at the border of the realm and that the decision on my fate is being delayed until the scouts return with news. It shouldn't be anything major as who would be foolish enough to attack Mystra's realm. They should be back within the week, so hopefully it won't be much longer. Anyways to continue....
We headed back up the stairs into the attic. It was dark and really dusty, it seemed as if no one had been up here in years, which was really odd seeing how the kids told us they had just escaped from there. We were in a dark hallway and there were two doors to the right and one to the left at the far end of the hall. After a quick group discussion we decided that it would be best if we all stick together from now on and proceeded to investigate the first room on the right.
We got to the door which seemed to be locked so I had Gorza break open the door and we proceeded inside, what I saw in there broke my heart. It was a child's room, there were two small beds on either side, some toys on the floor, and a toy house that in the corner of the room that looked eerily similar to the room that we were currently in. The window was boarded shut and what broke my heart in there were the 2 small desiccated bodies lying on the floor holding each other. They looked like they had been locked in the room, left to die, and I knew in my heart that these were the bodies of Rose and Thorne. As I covered the bodies with a sheet I decided then and there that I was going to lay these bodies to rest the first chance that I got.
After covering the bodies I went and joined the rest of the group who were huddled over and examining the toy house. It was uncanny how similar it looked to this house, everything was exactly the same right down to the smallest detail. As I was standing there staring at it I started to get a bad feeling in the pit of my stomach, which got even worse once people starting poking and prodding at it. Then Gorza decided to smash it, as he lifted his leg to try and smash the thing to pieces I tried to stop him but was unable to get to him in time. I could feel that something horrible would happen if he did this but fortunately she was a little drunk and completely missed the house. She looked at me like I was a crazy person for trying to stop her from smashing things then stormed out of the room. I told the rest of the group that I was sensing an evil magical energy eminating from the house and that it would be best to leave it alone and herding everyone out of the room.
Once I left the room and entered the hallway I noticed Gorza breaking into the last room on the right and Howler examining a section of the wall just to my left. I decided to head over and check out the last room and found the door unlocked so I headed in. The first thing that caught my I was sheets covering everything in the room and the heavy layer of dust. I decided to see what was in there and started uncovering the piles as I came across them and didn't find anything other then furniture. As I was making my way through the room I hear Howler shout from the hallway "Over Here!".
I stepped back out in the hallway to find Howler standing beside a doorway that wasn't there before. I have never seen a bird that look so smug before and I figured he could use this since he had gotten beaten up by a broom earlier. I came up and looked into the new entryway to see a circular staircase that seemed to go right down into the bottom of the house. We decided that since there didn't seem to be anything up here to all head down. We proceeded down the staircase, it seemed to go on forever in the dark until we came to the bottom in what appeared to be a dungeon underneath the house.
We started looking around the room that we were currently in and didn't see anything of note, though ever since we got to the bottom we could hear this ominous chanting echoing from somewhere deeper in. We started exploring and found what looked like a communal sleeping area and what appeared to be a family crypt. I started examining the doors and saw one for the mother and father and another for Rose and Thorne. I went and immediately got Iliad to come and assist me in retrieving the bodies of the children so that I could lay them to rest. Once we brought them down I sent Iliad off and preformed the rights according to Mystra to send there spirits off and prayed for there souls safe journey.
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Once I was finished interring the children I went back to the sleeping area and noticed that everyone had wandered off an left me. I started to look around calling out for the group when I heard a shriek come from just down the hall. I booked it in the direction I heard the noise when I came into a room that looked like an eating area. There were big tables in the middle of the room and Howler was there standing at another entrance with his finger pointed at one of the tables. I looked over in the direction that he was pointing and saw something lurking in the darkness underneath the table.
I started to head over to Howler and as I passed near the table a tentacle darted out from underneath and grabbed my leg. The next thing I know is that it yanked pulling me to the ground causing me to hit my head where I blacked out. When I came to I saw Iliad standing over me with the creature dead in the corner. I could hear the sounds of battle just over the chanting coming from not to far away. Just as I started to get up I saw the limp, flopping body of a zombie come flying into the room with the cat popping his head out to make sure it stayed down. By the time that I healed the lump on my head and got to the area that fighting was happening in it was all over. There was Gorza and the cat standing over the broken bodies of five zombies.
Once I joined them and healed their minor injuries I noticed that in all the action that Howler had gone missing. I asked everyone if they had seen him and no one had seen him since the fighting began. We started searching for him, calling his name, but no one could find him or hear anything over the sound of the chanting. Just as we were about to give up home of finding him we decided to check back in the sleeping area to see if he was there waiting. We were making our way back, heading down a corridor that we hadn't explored yet when we found him. It appeared that he had tried to sneak around to go and flank the zombies when he walked over a trap door. We looked in to find Howlers body impaled on spikes at the bottom of a six foot hole. There was a pool of his blood on the ground and bloody claw marks on the pike and walls of the trap. It looked like he had fell down the trap and bled out trying to escape, no one had heard a thing. We retrieved his body and wrapped it up on one of the cots and decided that we needed to rest, plan our next moves and mourn the loss of one of our companions.