[This continues the story of Rogier the bard, a warforged called Gravedigger and a goliath paladin known as Uthmar Shatterstone. They have arrived at the mysteriously deserted town of Everaska and have just recently beaten up some cultists and generally got confused about almost everything.]
DAY 15 cont ...
Gravedigger was in conversation with Lady Viers.
He asked, 'so what did you actually see if you went in and saw no mad houses and no cultists?'
She replied, 'The mansion outside the city is Viershade, our ancestral pile, it appears this "gentlemen" was a relative Benjamin a hero of our town, then something happened to transfer him into - well the "Beyond" perhaps?
Everything points to something happening in the mansion.'
Gravedigger then went to talk to the bashed up cultists. He tried to use his cunning and a process of drawing out information known as 'Elicitation'.
It worked quite well, although he was probably very lucky and he learned that the language we've been seeing in the notes and on the walls is Infernal.
They also told him that 'various areas of the town are "thin" between the realm of the gentlemen and the real world and in those areas it can affect their mind, you can hallucinate in those areas.'
This made a twisted sort of sense to Gravedigger. The whole 'mimic house' thing had been a hallucination shared between him, Uthmar and Rogier?
A cultist also volunteered, 'We were trying to follow the rest of the town, you know, follow the Gentleman. Plenty of people in the town had been planning all this, but I suppose some other people just got caught up in it all.'
'Where you in on the plan?' asked Gravedigger.
'Yes we were. We had been tasked with gathering information, mystical herbs, reagents, that sort of thing. We were delayed though and didn't make it back in time.'
'So where did this all happen?'
'At Viershade Mansion. All of it happened there.'
Right, thought Gravedigger, now we are getting somewhere. He went and talked to Lady Viers again.
'So you were not involved in any of this?' he asked her.
'No,' she stated plainly. 'I have been living in Waterdeep for some time and had lost contact with the family.'
Gravedigger decided to believe her for now.
It had been a long day and it was time to rest. He sat down by the fire and warmed his sockets by its heat. Down by the river, Uthmar and Rogier were arguing about whether fish had testicles or not.
DAY 16
In the morning they let the cultists go. They would probably get up to mischeif but nobody could be bothered dealing with them, least of all Gravedigger.
In fact they went back to the inn and to the same table they had sat at before.
Gravedigger sat and watched them again, but after four hours nothing had happened. He could hear the other two playing the piano and arguing in the other room.
He decided to 'let the voices in' and as soonas he did that, the cultists went all green-eyed and floaty again. Gravedigger found that they were following him so he went and got the others, but when they returned - as before - the cultists were sat where they had always been.
'Right, stay here and watch me then,' he said. 'I'm going to surrender to the hallucinations again, just to see what happens.'
When the cultists went green-eyed and floaty once more he let them get to him. The came close and the green light from their eyes entered Gravedigger via his eyes and ears.
Gravedigger was the possessed by rage again and began strangling the nearest cultist. Rogier waited to see what happened next, while Uthmar wasn't even in the room any longer! He had just wandered off.
The other three cultists attacked Gravedigger with their scycles. Gravedigger let the strangled cultist drop and went for one of the others. Rogier cast Shatter into the melee. Gravedigger began smashing a cultists head into the table, turning it into mush. Rogier then cast Cloud of Daggers that quickly ripped apart the other two. The last remaining cultist charged at Rogier, closely followed by Gravedigger weilding a candlestick.
Rogier cleverly healed the cultist so he would act as a barrier between him and the enraged warforged. Gravedigger battered away until he came to his senses and was healed by Rogier.
At that point Uthmar arrived back with a keg of ale under his arm. Gravedigger motioned for them to let the last cultist go, who ran off holding his bloodied head in his hands.
'Ah well, sorry lads,' appologised Gravedigger. 'Bit of a waste of time.'
Uthmar looked at one of the sycles. It looked cermonial and had a sigil on it that looked like Infernal. Searching the other bodies Gravedigger found an 'Infernal to Common' dictionary and they translated it. It meant:
"The Guide Beyond Marks You"
Not long after that the called it a day and returned to camp.
DAY 17
In the morning they returned to Viershade Mansion. They went to the front door. There was no sign of life and the door was locked. Gravedigger smashed a window and gained entry that way.
He then found a key and opened the door. In the entrance hall was a large statue of a dragon that they all agreed looked a bit 'Devilish'.
They wandered through to a kitchen, then through the servants quarters into a posh sitting room. In a large room the found that the floor had been covered in pentagrams. There was one main pentagram, surrounded by smaller ones. Rogier stepped into the main one and played a tune on his lute to see what happened.
Meanwhile, the others looked for clues. They went through a door in the east wall and found a library. Rogier stopped strumming and went through the library to another room where he found a piano.
Gravedigger looked through the books and one caught his interest, a book on
"Mefitica" - apparently it was an ancient religion that Uthmar thought he may have heard of.
'Centres on raising the damned from hell, that sort of thing,' he mused.
'Oh yeah,' chimmed in Rogier as he returned to the library.
'I heard about that, the process requires that the damned be replaced with innocents.'
Gravedigger put down the book and rubbed his eyes, a very human sort of gesture for a warforged. How had he, a Priest of Kelemvor, never heard of Mefitica. Well at least, he told himself, we are making process on finding out what had happened here.
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