Session 27 - The Haunt One Shot Part Two

Pallas returns to the bar after following a local to see his cache of rare magic items and discovering nothing more than a collection of fake potions such as a "potion of instant puddle" to find his friends gone, he asks the Innkeeper Romaine about it and finds out they went looking, well for him. He spots a newcomer to the patrons in the bar, a tall copper green skinned Dragonborn wearing chainmail armor, and looking like she is itching for a fight. Introducing himself Pallas is able to enlist Nova to help recover his friends. 

As they head out they encounter Gnarvik on the street and they head to the Montarthstat Mansion together. They arrive to find sealed doors and after a time a glowing disk appears on the doors which shows they their friends adventures through the tea room, the dining room, and the basement. 

The party emerge from the stairwell to the basement and the glowing disk disappears and the doors open, after Pallas, Gnarvik and Nova enter the Mansion the doors slam shut and are sealed again.

After reuniting and confirming what the watchers saw was what actually happened the party decide to head upstairs and see what is on the second story of this place.

Entering a hallway at the top of the stairs the group splits up and listen at all the closed doors. Snowball, and Baromar decide to storm into a bedroom where they heard something. They find seemingly empty room, but are quickly facing off against two large phase spiders. Snowball tries out a new spell, the swirling ring of death hamsters that circle him and attack anything that comes within 15 feet of him. 

Baromar takes down one of the spiders with a kick to a cluster of eyes followed by a kick that enters the spider thorax....via the other cluster of eyes. Pallas, Gnarvik come in and help take the spiders down. 

Meanwhile Denzel and Nova enter another room, this time its a kitchen, as they enter the room the doors slam shut and the cupboard doors start to slam open and closed, this crescendos and the pots pans and knives stored in the cupboards start to fly across the room, Denzel and Nova attack and are able to stop the flying kitchen ware by taking down one cupboard at a time. Nova making use of her breath weapon and Denzel making very effective use of his scimitar they make short work of the doors and look around the kitchen, they find a small chest with a lot of gold pieces in it, and there is a hole in the floor where a dumb waiter had been utilized at some point, but the mechanism is missing and they now can see the dining table below, where the party had encountered the ghosts. 

They see the child's doll which had previously been in the waiting room sitting now at the head of the table.

Snowball and friends walk past the bathroom and decide to peek inside, they see a body on the floor bleeding out from slashed wrists, and run over to help, as they get close the body disappears and a ghost rises up from the floor yelling at them. They all attack the ghost and err kill it (re-kill it??) and the bathroom is now clear. 

The next door they open is an office, there is a small desk where a skeleton is writing in an ethereal ledger. As the party observe its operations it turns to them and smiles, saying welcome he is waiting for you head on in. The party realize that the skeleton is talking to an apparition of a beautiful dark haired lady who walks through to the next room, letting the skeleton get back to his eternal work. The party open the door to a waiting room where the apparition of the lady is talking to a spectral young child. 

The lady hands the child a doll (which looks familiar) and turns to face the next set of doors. Behind her the child looks at the doll smiling, the doll produces a knife and starts stabbing the child repeatedly until she lies on the floor bleeding out. The spectral form of the doll runs through the party and out the open door chucking maniacally. The chuckling continues and becomes more real as the doll appears in the doorway much less spectral this time around and proceeds to try and murder all the party.

The party manage to chase the doll away watching it run off into the darkness its glowing blue crystal eyes seeming to hope to haunt their nightmares.

They open the double doors and enter the master bedroom. They see glowing green energy pulsing through the room and black vine like tendrils extending out to all parts of the mansion. The floor is littered with human remains, and attached to the roof is a man, with a very large green emerald embedded in his chest which appears to be the source of the green glowing energy. Seated at a desk is a lady her face pointed to the ceiling and mouth open, she appears to be dead. 

The party fan out and start to look around, they have their eye on the emerald and are trying to work out how to get it, snowball tries mage hand and as soon as the emerald moves the tiniest bit the woman in the chairs mouth snaps shut and her head faces the offenders. She stands up and casts a spell to raise three ghouls from the corpses that litter the room. 

An intense battle ensues and at some point the lady draws green energy from the man on the ceiling, which heals some of her wounds. They eventually take her down, and as she dies her withered body for a brief time reverts to a state of beauty, she was the dark haired lady from the visions the party saw. 

The party now that she is taken care of, revert their attention to trying to retrieve the emerald. They manage to get the man off the ceiling and he whispers thank you for saving me, shortly before his body turns to ash leaving only the emerald on the floor. The removal of the emerald causes the black vines to wither and turn to ash, in turn as they die throughout the building, the party feels the whole building start to shudder as the evil that has sustained its existence leaves it and as any mortal form its immediately degrades and starts to collapse. The party run out and make it to safety as the building crumbles into rubble.  As they turn towards the rising sun of the dawn, they see two glowing eyes in the forest beyond the wreckage of the house, staring at them through the fog.