LOST TRAILS: THE HARROWDALE HORROR: PART 3

[ewancummins]

KLOKULF
IN THE BAILIFF'S OFFICE

Speaking a word of dark power, Klokulf calls up a deathly gray film over his eyes,which tints the scene before him.
The priest glances over the hacked and smashed bodies of his fallen enemies, now shrouded in black. Dead.
But one glows a dull, flickering red; alive but weak, disabled, helpless. He could easily claim it as a prisoner.
Or kill it.

VIEW CONTENT:

OOC We'll resolve this bit before advancing to Klokulf joining Katrin and Benn in the storeroom.

[Wolfglide of the Fraternity]

Klokulf draws a silvery silk rope out of his pack and wraps up the helpless plant-dwarf. As he finishes, he quietly whispers a command word, petrifying the rope around the creature.

He rolls the prisoner ahead of him as he catches up with the others.

[ewancummins]

The disabled and bound creature rolls along barrel-fashion before Klokulf's booted foot.



STOREROOM


Klokulf reaches the storeroom and sees the unexpected mystery stair leading up into the attic through gap in the ceiling.
He hears noises from the floor. Thump…thump…
Katrin is looking up the stairs.
Benn is glancing at the trap door, a worried look on his face.
Raen, too, seems distracted by the thumping noises from under the floorboards.


Klokulf squats and moves to open the trapdoor, cautiously reaching out with his left hand as he hefts his mace in his right. It won't budge!
Kneeling close to the cleric, Raen lifts the hatch with ease--but not far, just a couple of inches.

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Unbeknownst to Klokulf, the wizard has magicked the trapdoor.

Alain has joined the party, bringing his magic light with him.

Peering through the gap in the floor, Klokulf sees a recumbent form, partly filmed over with black and partly lit with flickering dull red patches. The woman in the cellar is near death. Another passing minute and she may be beyond his powers to help.



He blinks as Alain's light comes closer to him. Additional details emerge within the gloomy, shallow cellar. The woman's pale face is half-hidden by her tangled, dark hair and by patches of red-brown grime. Three chests covered in rust-colored slime and fuzzy stuff occupy part of the floor just beyond her, obstructing his view of part of the farther, dimmer cellar space.
She groans softly.
Her disheveled clothes bear more red-brown gunk, which stands up in hairy clumps, swaying as if in a draft.
What he at first took to be a tattered carpet under her appears to be a patch of mold on the floor, the same stuff growing on the chests. It's moving...

The woman coughs violently, and as she does so, the mold in the cellar exhales a red cloud of dust.

[ewancummins]

BENN, looking in the open trap door set in the floor, sees the young woman and the strange reddish growth.
He drops to the floor, mouth closed, and seizes the stricken woman, hauling her up out of the shallow cellar.
SLAM
The door panel now closed, Benn puts one boot-heel firmly on top of it.

The reddish cloud has disappeared.

Klokulf sneezes several times, but seems okay otherwise.

Raen has turned purple in the face and is clutching at his throat, wheezing.
In a moment, the choking fit passes and the Darkonese mage can again breathe and speak normally, but ugly purple blotches remain on his cheeks.
His eyes have gone bloodshot.

The pallid maiden in Benn's arms groans, twists a little, and faints dead away.

Checking her pulse, the archivist finds it is palpable but weak. Her breathing sounds raspy. Alive-- but she needs healing, and soon!

Katrin, monitoring the ceiling hatch/stairway, sees nothing unusual up there, just the shadowy open rectangle in the ceiling and not far above that the rafters and underside of the roof.

[ewancummins]

THE STOREROOM, CONTINUED


Benn tends to the stricken woman first.
Apart from some scrapes and bruises and a goose egg on her left temple, the woman doesn't appear injured; her condition seems likely to be related to the noxious mold that stains her torn garments. Somebody or something did strike her on the head, though...

Raen doesn't look so good, either, though he's stronger than the female Benn yanked out of that moldy cellar.

Both seem as if they will survive. But without magical aid, a full recovery for either will likely take some time.

Klokulf looks fine.


The young woman opens her eyes.
''Ahhh!"
Her scream dies away as she looks about her and sees the adventurers. She sits up on the floor where Benn had placed her to rest.
''I..who...who are you?"

[Adam]

"We're travelers," Bennedict says, "We saw there was some trouble in your town and stopped to help."

"What do you know about that thing down there?" he says, pointing at the cellar.

[ewancummins]

"We're travelers," Bennedict says, "We saw there was some trouble in your town and stopped to help."

"What do you know about that thing down there?" he says, pointing at the cellar.

The maiden stares at the cellar trap-door, which is now shut.

"Thing? I remember the dark, not being able to breathe, caught underneath something... Before that, iron bars and those little green two-legged creatures! Goblins? Whatever they were, they attacked me and threw me down there. Before that, it's all sort of foggy...I recall the harvest festival preparations, the beginning of the feasts and sacrifices. Something went wrong...Laughing? Why were they all laughing? And I fell in the sea, so cold! My neighbors locked me up, I think... Why? "

She shakes her head and rubs her eyes.

"I feel like I've been laid up in bed with a fever, having a long, horrid nightmare. But I'm awake now." She gets to her feet, shakily,
"I am called Periele. Thank you for helping me!"
She touches her chest below the neck with her right hand, as if grabbing for something.
''My holy symbol! It's gone."


Under the grime, Benn and the other men see that Periele is pretty; slim with coal-black hair and green eyes.

Kat recognizes that this young woman is the same one that she saw in the cell on her scouting trip, earlier, though she acts and speaks differently now.

KLOKULF
sees

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that the veil of approaching death has lifted from her--it went away quite suddenly when Benn was examining her injuries, as if by magic. She's weak but certainly not dying.

[Adam]

"It's possible we destroyed the evil that was clouding your mind," Bennedict says, obviously not that concerned with her holy symbol. "There was something foul in yonder church, a thing of darkness and gnashing mouths. As to the two-legged goblins..." he shrugs towards the dead things on the ground. "I can't say that we've destroyed them all, but we seem to have driven them back for the time being at least."

[ewancummins]

"It's possible we destroyed the evil that was clouding your mind," Bennedict says, obviously not that concerned with her holy symbol. "There was something foul in yonder church, a thing of darkness and gnashing mouths. As to the two-legged goblins..." he shrugs towards the dead things on the ground. "I can't say that we've destroyed them all, but we seem to have driven them back for the time being at least."

Periele gasps.
''Something foul at the church? In that direction... You don't mean the temple of Tymora, do you? I'm an acolyte there. Oh! My teacher, the others..it was abandoned? Just this monster you described?"

[Adam]

"Yes, we saw no one there. No one human, anyways. There were some more of these plant folk inside, but they have been dealt with as well."

He chews on his lip for a moment. "Regrettably, we did significant damage to the structure in the course of driving the monster out. I felt it would be best for the townspeople to rebuild and rededicate the church, rather than try to worship in a place that had been befouled."

[alhoon]

Raen was still a bit suspicious about the woman.
"Benn," he said in Falkovnian and not common, "are you sure we can trust this woman?"

[ewancummins]

"Yes, we saw no one there. No one human, anyways. There were some more of these plant folk inside, but they have been dealt with as well."

He chews on his lip for a moment. "Regrettably, we did significant damage to the structure in the course of driving the monster out. I felt it would be best for the townspeople to rebuild and rededicate the church, rather than try to worship in a place that had been befouled."

Periele says,
''Damaged? Befouled? Ah...maybe you are right... But what are these monsters? Where have they come from and why did they come here to Harrowdale? What about the people of the city? Have many been hurt? Where's the militia?"

[Wolfglide of the Fraternity]

Klokulf interjects, "As I understand it, some went missing after the initial attack. Others went mad with laughter in the aftermath, and most of the rest fled. We heard that you were one of those that succumbed to madness; you shouted, 'the darkness will devour us all,' or something similar, then leapt into the bay. You tried to fight off your rescuers, and they locked you in the Community Hall."

[ewancummins]

Klokulf interjects, "As I understand it, some went missing after the initial attack. Others went mad with laughter in the aftermath, and most of the rest fled. We heard that you were one of those that succumbed to madness; you shouted, 'the darkness will devour us all,' or something similar, then leapt into the bay. You tried to fight off your rescuers, and they locked you in the Community Hall."

Periele says,
''Oh! That sounds bad. I must make a libation and pray for guidance, excuse me.''

She then looks about the storeroom contents, quickly locating a bottle of wine.

[ewancummins]

ATTIC


KLOKULF goes upstairs and investigates the upper storage space.

The ceiling is low.
He has to stoop in places to avoid bumping his head on the rafters.

He finds an triangular window with open shutters and a frayed rope hanging out, descending along the wall to the muddy lawn.
A clump of overgrown thorns holds this cord in place, hooked under the windowsill.
He did not see this rope hanging out this window when his party arrived and some of them looked over the exterior before they all entered the building through the back storeroom doors.

In the dim light, he makes out a few muddy splotches like the prints Katrin found in the bailiffs office, shortly before the ambush.

Looking around and within the chests and boxes pushed to either side of the garret, he does not discover any lurking enemies.

He does find festive clothing, armorial banners, tinsel crowns, faded tapestries, vaporous mothballs, tarnished candlesticks, brass candelabras, and a lot of odds and ends.