Party 7

Clover:

Red velvet drapes cover the windows of this room. An exquisite mahogany desk and a matching high-back chair face the entrance and the fireplace, above which hangs a framed picture of a windmill perched atop a rocky crag. Situated in corners of the room are two overstuffed chairs. Floor-to-ceiling bookshelves line the south wall. A rolling wooden ladder allows one to more easily reach the high shelves.

Jeymus & Jasper:

The wall crumbles to peices revealing a small room. Inside are a few book shelves filled with books. In the corner near where the wall was knocked down, there is a large wooden chest with clawed iron feet. It's lid is half closed. Sticking out of the chest is a skeleton in leather armor.
 
The clawed appendages scuttled towards Jeymus. Marcon backed away towards the chest to provide the distance he needed for his magical projectiles. As he did so he caught sight of further movement within the wreckage of the chest. He prodded at it with one end of his staff and a sleek, brown, whiskered form broke from its temporary shelter and headed towards him. He yelped and swung at it with his quarterstaff. With a crack, the wooden pole struck the side of the rat and it sailed across the room, thumping against a wall, a red smear its only epitaph.

Unfortunately, that rat was just the advance guard. Before Marcon could turn back to assist his companion, a writhing mass of brown fur and scaly pink tails exploded from the remains of the chest. So whilst Jeymus had his hands full... of hands, Marcon and the others now had a swarm of rats to deal with.
 
Clover's ears perk up at the yell (because of course they did, have you seen the size of those things?) and she sincerely hopes that the group hasn't gotten itself into too much trouble, so goes running to help after first setting down the jar of candy.
 
Jasper wrinkles his nose at the smell as the chest is broken open, opting to observe for a second as chaos begins to unfold around him.

Shaking his head at the antics of those around him, he pulls something small from an inside pocket. "Sanctify!" he says in a sharp, clear voice, and a brilliant red light flashes across the room.

When the light vanishes so to do the desiccated hands and a number of rats. Looking at the survivors, Jasper shrugs. "Guess these aren't unholy."
 
The remaining rats skittered towards him and Marcon, shuddering, stepped aside to let them pass. To his horror, the swarm changed direction and started scrabbling and clawing their way up his legs.

He swiped at them ineffectually with his staff, unable to dislodge them. They were biting at his legs and, so far, hadn’t managed to get to his skin through the thick cloth of his clothes.

Any calm he had left disappeared as the first rat reached the top of his leg and Marcon screamed. “Heeeeeelp!”
 
Clover aimed her hand crossbow, thinking 'There's no way this'll work...'

*THWANG*

Six rats speared cleanly through their midsection, pinned together and dead.

She tried to keep from smiling and just coolly reloaded her weapon, but on the inside she was jumping for joy and screaming, "Holy shit I am good!"
 
After the fight with the rats and the hands, Clover looked around through the mess that was left behind. Among the former contents of the chest, she finds three blank books with black leather covers, three scrolls that appear to have some kind of spells written on them, papers such as a deed to the house and a windmill, along with a will leaving everything the Durst family owned to Rosavalda and Thornbolt Durst. Shoved into the mouth of the skeletal remains was a letter:
 

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Clover starts packing the various papers in her backpack, "So, we've got a will, a couple deeds, some scrolls that I don't know what they are yet, and some blank journals. I'd like dibs on the scrolls, as I'm fond of trying to learn magic, but this assumes that we find a way out of this mess."

Standing up, she adds, "I think we still have one more room on this level, at least."
 
Jasper grabs the letter from the mouth of the skeleton and reads it aloud.

"Well, that answers a couple things at least. The family picture was fucked up because daddy found somebody else to play mommy. We've got an altar, a dungeon, and probably a lot of corpses yet to find in this house, and if we make it out we've got to contend with Dark Powers and potentially this Strahd character."
 
"Sounds good to me, Jeymus… want to lead the way?" Clover hefts her pack and waits for the others to move away from the site of rat genocide.
 
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The group continues up the stairs to it's full height. This floor is noticably colder than the ones below. The balcony before you has a thick layer of dust covering every surface. There is a black suit of plate armor standing against one wall, draped in cobwebs. Oil lamps are mounted on the oak-paneled walls, which are carved with woodland scenes of trees, falling leaves, and small critters. There are four doors leading from the balcony, one to the NE, a smaller one across from it, and two in the NW corner of the area.
 
Jasper follows Jeymus into the room and immediately gravitates toward the bottle of fancy whisky. He blows the dust from the bottle and picks it up, popping it open and giving it a whiff to see if it still smells good
 
Clover catches the jewelry box, then kneels and slips it into her backpack carefully to avoid destroying the small books and various papers, "Thank you, Jeymus. If they're still about, we can insist they hock this to pay for a rat-catcher... but really, the children were probably apparitions of a sort and since we arrived here we haven't seen a soul living or dead otherwise. Do you suppose the entire town is like this?"

Standing up, she considered a moment... they're trapped inside a house that's been untouched by looters despite the passage of time. Is the town the same way? Fighting down the momentary anxiety, Clover distracts herself ensuring the crossbow is tensed properly and the bolt true in its track before investigating the room.
 
Marcon trails the others as they ascend the stairs and make their way into the bedroom. He can still feel where the rats' tiny claws dug into his skin. He shudders and brushes at his legs, trying to remove the after-image of the attack that is burned into his mind.

He watches as Clover takes the box, but Marcon is so stuck in his own thoughts he barely notices. As he waits for his companions to complete their search, he positions himself with a good view of the door and a wall against his back. He stands there holding his staff protectively in front of him.
 
Jasper makes a sour face at the smell and sets the bottle of whiskey back on the table. He nods at Jeymus' words, "Yes, I suppose we should be moving on to the next tombs...er, rooms."

And he follows the barbarian into the nursery.
 
Clover walked around the edge and halts abruptly, "Have any of you noticed that this suit of armor is missing its shadow? There's no light where it'd need to be to keep that lit..." and then notes the ghostly form of an lady in front of them.

Her crossbow fires as she watches the bolt sinks itself into the chair behind the vaguely-tangible form, "Ah, I killed that mimic chair, it won't harass us again!" and then barely misses being assaulted from behind, spinning in place and firing another bolt into an equally intangible shadow and dissipating it.

Crouching, she says, "Is everyone okay?"
 
Hearing the commotion, Jasper follows Jeymus into the nursery. When the ghost appears he charges forward to attack it, whispering words of magic to envelop it in a burning light.

The fight is interrupted when a second shadow leaps out to attack Clover. Jasper lashes out with another bolt of radiant every, burning away parts of the specter and drawing its attention. With a single blow it nearly kills Jasper, the icy grip of undeath burning and numbing the flesh where it lands. He gasps in pain only to watch the shadow dissolve from where Clover shot it through with a crossbow bolt.
 
Startled by the sudden appearance of the apparition, Marcon brings his hands up to protect himself. He feels a burning sensation in his fingertips and, closing his eyes, points his hands towards the ghost. The heat intensifies but, rather than the explosion he was expecting, it suddenly dissipates and Marcon's fingers seem to deflate.

Opening one eye a crack, Marcon peeks at his outstretched hands. Instead of flame, each finger is shedding a fine wisp of smoke. He opens the other eye and checks that none of his companions noticed. It looks like they were all occupied and have vanquished their assailants but his embarrassment is enough to shake him out of his fear. For now.
 
Clover wanders out as Jeymus gets the look of "I'm going to relieve some stress" in his eye and goes to nab that really nice lace-trimmed dress she saw, then returns in time to notice him glimpsing into a stairwell.

"I can't leave you boys alone for a minute."
 
Clover was overcome with sadness and anger, walking between the skeletons and the rest of the group to remove the sheet from one of the beds, then returned to start carefully wrapping the larger of the two bodies.

"Jeymus is right, these two aren't monsters...they were innocent and should be laid to rest. We can't make things fair for them, it's far too late for that, but... we can stop doing further damage."

Looking down at the body, she places her hand on it a moment before finishing wrapping it up.
 
Watching as Clover wraps the bodies, Marcon starts to feel the closeness of the walls pressing in on him. The edges of his vision darken as Clover bends to examine the dolls house in the corner. Vaguely aware of her describing what she's seeing, he steadies himself with one hand against a wall. He takes a deep breath and another and the darkness clears a little. And then his mind snags on some of Clover's words. What was that? The toy is a model of this house? And it's damaged where Jeymus broke down the walls?

With sudden clarity Marcon pulls out his knife and pushes himself towards the scale replica. Jeymus tries to grab him but his sudden and unexpected burst of speed confounds the Gith's grasp. Clover leaps out of his way and he stabs at the facsimile of the wall against which he was leaning moments before. As the wood splinters he hears a louder ripping and snapping from behind him. A final thrust and a rough door-shaped piece drops out of the side of the dolls house. A matching, albeit much larger, hole gapes in the side of the room. Thick grey fog from outside the house pushes ominously up against the new opening.

Triumphantly he looks around at his companions. "We don't have to find a way out of this place, we can make one!" And then, catching the expressions on their faces: "What?"
 
Clover glances at the hole in the wall, "You know, that might work better for you from the ground floor, but if you'd kindly stop destroying the model for a minute, I want to see if there's an easy way to … I know I have to find someplace respectful to put the bodies, let me find it first." She picks up a small bone fragment and examines it, then slips it into her mediocre spell component bag.
 
Marcon saw Jeymus crumple to the ground. "Uh... Mr Pyl'cin-Tun? You OK?" This place was getting into all of their heads, taking them out one at a time. The only way they'd get through this was to help each other during these dark moments.

Walking over to the Gith, Marcon went to place a reassuring hand on his shoulder. But Jeymus startled him by suddenly jumping up, sprinting into a wall and falling through it. "Oh... I think we really should stick together!" He shouted at the Gith-shaped opening. No response.

"I'm going after him, but I'm taking this with me." Marcon indicated the dolls house. Bending down he grabbed the toy by two windows and heaved. Nothing. It seemed to be attached to the floor. He stood up again. "Actually, I think I'll leave it... Clover, Jasper, you coming?"
 
Clover nodded, "We're coming!" and lifts the carefully wrapped body. Is she speaking of herself and Jasper, or...?
 
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