Date: Calistril 17th 4713 A.R., Sunday, Ravengro
It was not only Therapart that wanted to get back to Harrowstone today. Alfrem and Marius supported that decision, so after the breakfast Kendra prepared for us, we where on our way to the ruined prison again.
Back in the ground behind the broken wall, I wanted to try something with the used haunt siphons. As Gareth remembered, those magical vials have a secondary use, once they helped neutralize a haunt: thrown like a flask of alchemists fire, to shatter on the ground or enemy’s armor, it sets free the captured negative energy in a burst.
I tried this out on the swarm of rats we had found in one of the prisons observation towers along the outer wall.
What we found out at that test is, that it doesn’t do the enemy as much damage as it does against a haunt… would it not have been for Alfrem finding within him the power to summon fire, casting burning hands.
Still, as that spell has a very short range, some of the rats managed to get to his feet, crawling up his trousers. Marius quickly helped out and threw the rats back into the burning mass, but Alfrem already ran shrieking.
Without his help, it was a tough fight, as neither Gareth nor myself were of much help to Marius and Therapart, who tried to keep the rats back.
Theraparts greatsword plowed through the vermin in wide arcs, slicing a dozen at a time, while Marius kicked and punched and stomped and smashed at the living mass.
I was of really no help in this fight, but in the end Therapart and Marius killed most of the rats, and the remaining few scattered fast enough to hopefully never come back again.
Gathering Alfrem again, we went into the prison building, where we discovered that the doors in the first room were haunting us again. This time a vial of holy water sprinkled on them quickly ended this haunt.
Moving through the long hallway I only remember running through last time, we came to the infirmary again, where, much like we anticipated, the invisible ghost awaited us. Now that we were better equipped and knowing (or expecting) what was about to happen, we instinctively planned our approach:
Marius was to enter the room first, as he could easily deflect the projectiles the ghost was throwing at him. He also seems not to be feared easily.
After the ghost tried to frighten the monk, Alfrem used his burning hands, making it easy for Therapart to pinpoint the (now again invisible) ghost, so he could shoot a ghost touch arrow at it.
Gareth boosted the morale of our allies, but before I could do anything, Marius grabbed an arrow from Theraparts quiver, stabbing it at where the ghost must have been. A terrifying scream filled the room, before the presence vanished.
After we took a quick breath, we searched the room, finding several vials and some potions, as well as a healers kit and some other things intended to help persons in need.
The next room we entered held a very large furnace, but was also notable for the fact that one of it’s walls has, since the fire, turned to rubble. Right outside the remains of the wall, the pond stretched out. Some part of the floor towards the missing wall has dropped some inches as well, extending the pond into the room.
While we examined the view of the pond, the temperature in the room seemed to climb and become unbearable hot.
Looking at the furnace, it’s front had animated, transforming it into a visual much like a skull leering at us.
Alfrem again was one of the quickest of us to react, sending magic missiles at the furnace, though they didn’t do much damage.
I followed with Pharasmas power over the water, sending icicles into the maw of the skull, again to not much of an effect.
Suddenly a fiery tongue shot out of the metallic face, headed towards Therapart, but luckily it didn’t hit the fighter.
Before Therapart in turn could strike at the furnace, Marius discerned some bones between the ashes and coals within the huge stove, and having a hunch, grabbed them and hurled them into the pond.
Alfrem followed his example and casted mage hand on a piece of slag deep in the furnace, pulling it and the remaining pieces of bone out.
Dropping those bones into the pond as well seems to have robbed the haunt of the furnace of his power, as the face transformed back into the usual front it should be.
This was not the end of what happened in this room though:
Shortly after the furnace was dealt with, a bunch of skeletons emerged from the pond, stepping into the room.
Alfrem again was the first to react to the situation, invoked his burning hands another time, but this time it did us more harm than the skeletons.
These skeletons ignited and burned, their bones blackening, but the fire did not damage them. At all.
Before anyone else of us could act, they were upon us, clawing at us. Alfrem took the brunt of the attacks, being surrounded by three of the now burning skeletons, gaining some deep cuts.
Marius smashed his fists against one of the skeletons, but missed, I think. Therapart swung his sword masterfully, hitting two of the skeletons, but could not down them.
Then I brought up Pharasmas spiral, channeling her holy power, filling the room with positive energy, destroying all of them at once.
From this room we went on to find ourselves in a trainings-room. This one as well had it’s outer wall crumbled. In the middle of the room was a gaping hole in the floor, and a small streamlet from the pond dropped water down.
Naturally, some had to step close to the opening, peering down. A small body of water is directly beneath the hole, but the floor surrounding the pool seemed to be unusually clean and free of dust, unlike all the other rooms we looked through up until this point.
Getting a hunch, I casted bless just before three disembodied, flaming skulls floated out of the hole and up to us. Even though I did this I was too surprised by the … things … attacking us, that I didn’t even get to cast another spell, or channel energy so quickly were they dispatched by Alfrem, Marius and Therapart. Gareth at least could improve their morale with a quick song.
We decided to not go down that hole that day, as we weren’t equipped at all.
The next room we entered seemed to be some sort of courtroom, having a number of benches lined up, a bit of free space in front of that and a railing that kept it separate from another room that held a comfy chair and a small desk. As we stood there, thinking of the use of a courtroom inside a prison, I felt a chill run down my spine, but I must not have been the only one, as the others reacted just as well.
Whatever happened next, I’m not all too sure. To me it seemed like another spirit haunting this room, so I got out the last of the unused haunt siphons and activated it. If it did have an effect or not I don’t quite remember, just like I don’t remember who and how we overcame that haunt in the end, but I never was the best at remembering things.
After the judges room, we found a heavy metal door, locked and still sturdy. It took the combined effort of Gareth (picking the lock) and Therapart (forcing the door open) and quite a bit of time until we could enter the room beyond. It was a storage room, containing many different things, like a painting, hair clips, and a wand of lesser restoration.
Taking all those things with us, Alfrem searched the room even more thoroughly, with a casting of detect magic, finding a hidden vault behind a secret door. Inside this little space, we found five more items, though I suspect they belong to those five terrible prisoners.
There was a collection of a dozen holy symbols, most likely those that Father Charlatan used, but they were not magical; a bloodstained handaxe, probably the weapon the Lopper’s favorite weapon; a tarnished silver flute, which can only belong to the piper of illmarch; a moldy spellbook and a smith’s hammer.
Though I don’t like to have those, probably evil, things in our possession, I agree that we better take them before the ghosts of those prisoners might be able to get a hand on them, now that we opened them the door.
With that we had worked our way through the one half of the ground floor of the prison. As it was still just past noon, we went on to explore the other half.
The first room we found there was a long hallway with a number of smaller rooms attached, that seemed like offices, judging from their content.
Wanting to get a better picture of the prisons day to day business, we set to work comparing the many papers we found. This took some hours, but in the end we had a good understanding of the prison’s workings, and had found out a great many things about the five main prisoners at the time of the fire, though I will not go into the details here, as it really did not help us figure out what happened when the fire broke out, or when the Professor died here.
This whole haunted prison is not really an explanation of why the professor died here, and I still doubt that it simply was a worn out stone smashing down for no reason other than bad timing on the professors part.
On the other hand, Pharasma took the professor, so it must have been his time.
Even though Alfrem found another source of magic, seemingly from the next room over, we decided to call it a day when we finished with our research in the prisons papers, the sun already standing low on the horizon.
We now have the items of the ‘big five’ here with us in Kendra’s home, and come the morrow, I will prepare some other spells than the days before. For one, I would like to see if the belongings of the five would show up as evil, and for the other, I think Pharasma granted me a bit more of her power for the things we did at Harrowstone.
We will try to finish exploring Harrowstone tomorrow as well, so it’s late now when we all hit our beds, and it will be early tomorrow.