Party 6

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Hazel quickly positions herself between the armor and her teammates, wanting to help them avoid damage if possible. She whiffs a few of her initial attacks, but Benson soon covers her with some divine protective energy, and with renewed confidence she begins landing blows. She takes one hit herself, but is able to shrug it off without too much difficulty. Once the armor falls she takes a deep breath, "Well that was decidedly unpleasant. I sure hope that we don't run into more of such nonsense anytime soon."
 
Balcony:

Dusting yourselves off after the sudden attack, you look to the left of the stairs, where the wailing of the child seems to have continued unabated beyond a set of double doors decorated with panes of stained glass, glinting slightly in the light you carry with you. The sound seems almost too real to be true.

Beyond that your gaze sweeps across the rest of the floor and spots a second set of grand doors, these ones sporting stained glass designs resembling windmills. Right next to that is a smaller room, slightly ajar and leading to what appears to be a small bathroom of sorts. Both are dark and dressed with many cobwebs from lack of use -- come to think of it, it occurs to you that this entire floor is dusty and deserted and abandoned, a stark contrast to the glamour and sheen of the previous two floors. Just what was going on with this place?
 
"Hazel, if you would please take the lead. I can hold up this protective shield over you a bit longer. Just in case there are more foul things ahead."
 
"Benson of such bravery,
No longer among the wounded, be,
May your strong flesh re-knit,
And we'll never submit..."
Reppip completes his verse with a swiftly descending scale, only to reach perfect resolution at the base chord, bringing a sense of calm and vitality.
 
Hazel nods, and heads into the next room ahead of everyone else. She goes to move into the room where the child can be heard wailing.
 
Nursemaid Suite:

Just as you reach for the door, you pause, craning your ear. You hear a young woman's voice as she cries to quiet the child, poorly singing a lullaby. "Hush little baby," she sings sweetly, "don't say a word, Mama's gonna buy you a Blinsky bird... And if that Blinsky toy don't work..." An exasperated sigh. "... Walter, stop crying. Please, stop crying... by the Morninglord's light, just STOP crying..."

Yet as you press on and enter the room, there's no woman, no light, no singing. Cobwebs are everywhere in this room: along the windows, between the posts of the bed, stretched across the wardrobe. Even the mirror set into the wall is draped in eerie silk. Stained glass doors lead to the balcony you saw from outside, and gloomy dust-choked air haunts this place like a distant memory. The child's wails seem to continue from behind a door to your immediate right, the threshold dark and dusty and foreboding.
 
Varïs follows into the room, puzzled by the sounds, "I swear they we're in this room, something is playing tricks on us." seeing the balcony, he walks over trying this door. As it creeks open letting in a brisk air the room hasn't seen in quite some time, "if we really wanted to leave we can try." with a smirk he closes it back up, "but I think we should try and finish what we started." Looking towards the next room with the baby noises, Varïs nods and readies himself for what may be next.
 
Reppip breathes in deeply, lifts his lute, and tries to think of a good lullaby as he follows his friends into the next room.
 
Nursery:

You turn to the sound of the ceaseless wails and open the nursery door, pushing past the dust and dreary cobwebs to seek the source inside. The nursery, dimly lit except for your own torchlight, is decorated in strange toys -- a mobile of black and white bats shaking slightly in the disturbance, a rocking chair carved with the likeness of a proud and mighty wolf in the middle of a slight snarl.

At the end of the small room, a long black shroud embroidered in windmills covers a large crib. There is no sign of a woman -- perhaps she had left the room through another means, if she was even there at all -- but the cries continue, only slightly muffled beneath the thin cover.
 
Stepping forward, close to (but not touching) the baby's shroud, Reppip raises his voice over arpeggiated soothing chords. He is focusing on keeping the tone gentle and un-startling. His plucking hand is close to the lute's neck, not the bridge, giving the lute a mellower, soothing tone as he starts to sing.

"In the deep and dark night,
O'er the baby the moon still shines,
So there's nothing to have fright,
sleep just over th'horizon line.

Lie thy head down, silence the tears,
Rest yourself, happy and warm,
We can put away all those fears,
And awake joyful in the morn..."
 
Nursery:

Despite Reppip's soothing melody the cries continue unabated, as if the swaddled infant hadn't even heard it at all. However, standing this close to the crib the gnome can hear another soft whisper, sourceless yet echoing quietly all throughout the small room. It sounds like the woman's voice from before, albeit much more raspy and raggedy and pitiful.

"Why are you crying... my dear child...?" A chill runs down everyone's spine. "Because I couldn't protect you...?" It's followed by a muffled weeping, the sound of which intimately crawls into your eardrums. You feel the burden of pure regret and sadness.
 
Hazel very slowly and gingerly walks over to the crib to inspect the baby bundle in there. "Y'all keep your eyes open. I... have a sneaking suspicion that I'm about to disturb a spirit that won't like what I'm doing. Though if there's an actual baby in here we need to find that out so's we can help it out."
 
Nursery:

You lift the shroud, uneasy as it feels with the creeping dread -- and there's nothing there, just an empty bundle of rags wrapped around nothing. As soon as the cloth is brought up, the wailing ceases, the last of the empty cries echoing throughout the dusty room... until another sound creeps into the air. Weeping, much more clear and direct than before.

Suddenly there's another thin bony hand on the rails of the crib, on the opposite side of Hazel, almost longingly brushing along the sides of the empty bundle. For a moment you wonder who it could belong to, considering the crib was right next to the wall... until you glance up, and are met with the sight of a woman, dressed in a soiled white gown and hair covering her face like rotted vines as she looks down upon the crib. "My dear Walter... why... couldn't you be mine...?" Looking down you realize she is sticking halfway out of the wall, phasing fully into the room after a moment or two.

She slowly turns her gaze upwards towards the party, her frayed hair giving way to a ghastly visage of pure spite. "Why... Why. WHY. WHY WHY WHY--" She screams in a bloodcurdling tone, her face stretching impossibly far; she shifts through the crib and lunges forward, razored claws ready to strike.
 
Benson's magical protection over Hazel runs out just seconds before the phantom appears. His jaw set in grim determination under his helmet, Benson raises his hand to the sky again, saying, "May your three lights sear this unholy wraith to ash and the void!" A fountain of white-gold flames blasts down onto the ghastly apparition with deadly accuracy.
 
Varïs, uneasy about this house seems at the ready for anything to erupt. He feels calmed from Reppip's song and in that moment violence strikes. As the ghost swings and misses at his friends, Varïs douses it in flames. Seeing it not do much damage he tries to blast it with necrotic energy.

As the ghost subsides Varïs nods, "May you pass through to the next world and not haunt this land anymore."
 
Reppip sets down his lute (with as much care as combat allows) and draws his rapier.

"Time to poke the unappreciative."

He stabs forward, making contact.

"That was a good damn song damn you."

He shoves the blade further into the transparent mess.

"I was trying to be HELPFUL."

He finishes by slipping the blade lenghtwise through the ghost's head.

"Maybe NOW you'll appreciate the next one who tries to SOOTHE you. Ingrate."
 
Hazel reels back in shock as the apparition comes out of the wall. "What iintarnation.." She quickly assumes her fighting stance and drops into the familiar "whack everything and stand between it amd my buddies" mode. A few swings later and the thing had fallen. She finds herself saddened, I hope you are able to find peace soon lady.
 
Benson scouts the room from the doorway. "This looks like another dead end," he says.

Turning back to the small bedroom he's standing in, he begins to search around it, opening the empty wardrobe, and looking under the bed. As he approaches the mirror on the the far wall, he's not surprised to find more strange artwork carved into the frame.

"Look at this, worms. And... Eyeballs." He touches the frame, and notices that the mirror seems to be loosely mounted. He tugs it away to reveal a secret set of stairs leading up. "Whoah."
 
Master's Suite:

After the encounter the room falls silent, devoid of crying and ghastly wailing. With nothing more of note in this quiet room you instead turn to the rest of the floor. The stairs leader to what seems like the final attic floor are caked with settled dust, only a few motes stirring at your presence. This hidden corridor has not been used for a very long time, years at the very least.

Deciding against ascending to the attic for the moment, you instead turn your attention to the other suite on the other side of the hall. As you saw before the double doors are decorated with fine yet dusted stained glass, the abstract windmill designs standing out to you in the darkness. The hinges squeal at your touch, revealing a magnificent suite choked with dust and neglect. A rotting tiger-skin rug lies before the ashen fireplace, watched over by a wilting portrait of a gloomy couple, who you recognize as the parents from the family portrait from before.. The four-poster bed's curtains hang open, revealing yellowing sheets while the wind rattles an old oaken door leading out towards another balcony, this one at pointing to the back of the house.

The wardrobes are empty. Completely empty, everything gone. Not even a single hanger or accessory remains. A nearby vanity is caked in grime and dust, a greasy jewelry box sitting on the desk. The dumbwaiter yawns half open, the gate almost stuck in its frame as its apparently final stop hasn't seen use in what seems like decades. You find a dusted mirror set upon a closet door, and beyond your confused, disgusted expression you see in the reflection only the gloomy neglect of the suite.

In the absence of noise it strikes you harder than ever how strange it is that this entire floor seems so.. empty and abandoned. Why was this floor so starkly different from the maintained cleanliness of the first two floors? Who was even maintaining the house and keeping it clean in the first place? The more you explore, the more you wonder if there is something more to the house, more than mere hauntings and some bad parenting. There was only one way to find out, and that was by delving deeper into its mysteries.
 
Attic Hall:

After exploring what you believe is the last of this third dusty floor of the manor, you double back towards the hidden staircase that you had discovered before. Figuring it was hidden for a reason you continue forth, sweeping up dust and decay as you go up the long-forgotten stairs to what lay above. Unlike the grand staircase before this passageway was clearly meant to be hidden away, abandoned, left to age and wither and rot. Still, it holds up against your weight albeit with a soft creaking of the wood.

Ascending to its peak you soon come to a small hall, choked with dust and cobwebs, as if no one has been up here in years -- decades even. While many doors stand around you -- another spare bedroom to the left, two doors at the end of a short hall in front of you -- you notice that the door to your immediate right to be locked tight with an old and heavy padlock, a first for the rooms you've trespassed into within this strange house. Beyond it, you can almost swear that you hear the faint sound of playing children in the air, however distant. This wasn't real... was it?
 
Deciding that the sound of children playing was one weird thing too much Hazel determines to enter the room by force if needed. After Benson nearly got it open, she decided to have a go at it. She rolls her shoulders, cracks her knuckles, and grips the padlock. She gives the padlock a mighty heave and manages to tear the whole doorknob right off. She's left with the knob and the padlock in her hand. "Uh... didn't really mean to do that. Guess we can go in now though? I'll uh head in first. Don't like that it sounds like kids in there. Be ready for another ghost attack or something." She gingerly opens the door and heads into the room.
 
Benson pulls a crowbar out of his pack just in time to see Hazel tear the door open with her hands. He slowly puts it back in his pack and follows her into the room, shaking his head.
 
Children's Room:

As Hazel easily tearing down the knob with a resounding CRACK, the sounds of laughter quickly die down as if in anticipation of what was entering. Despite that, the group sees no apparently human movement as they first peer into what appears to be a children's bedroom.

There is a strangling gloom about this place. You spot two child-sized beds, a toy chest, and a dollhouse -- a smaller scaled house which, you noticed, seems to look eerily similar to what the manor itself looked like as you walked into its front door. What's most unsettling is that the room's sole window is bricked up -- that is until you spot the small skeletons dressed in tattered but familiar clothing. The smaller of the two cradles a doll as if it alone could've changed the future.

As you take a step inside, trying to make sense of it all, a sudden chill seizes your spine. You look back down over to one of the bed sand see... Rose and Thorn, almost as they appears outside -- but this time ever so slightly ethereal, like they could fade away at any time. Rose looks over to you all curiously, still holding her brother in her arms as they appear to be floating barely a centimeter above the mattress itself. "So... are you here to play with us? It's been so long since we've had visitors. It's lonely here."
 
Benson has emotional whiplash, at seeing the tiny prison built to hold these small dead children. And to think that someone just left the bodies there, too...

He puts on a blank face, to hide his sadness, anger, and fear, and when he speaks it is with kindness. "Hi again. Do you remember us? From outside? Well, we're here to keep you safe now, and we'd love to play with you. Do you like to play with this doll house? Could you give me a tour? It seems like a very special toy."
 
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