Chromoid

Thrushmoor Murdir's attempts at levitating the cabinets falls just short of their weight, unfortunately. With a philosophical sigh he resigns himself to levitating all four of the dogs and strolling forth from the fort, sardonic grin still splitting his face wide. Jack shovels the contents of the cabinets into a Bag of Holding, which now seems about at its limits in terms of carrying capacity before he even begins, and certainly doesn't hold all of the books and scrolls available. The other Bag is more accommodating, but the grim reality is that there's just too much here to take with you at present. Some of the documents will have to be left behind. Having satisfied your curiosity about the place, the four of you finally take your leave of the fort. The journey back is fairly uneventful, but none of you can shake the feeling that your every step is being watched from somewhere behind the treeline of the nearby forest. The town is empty and quiet. Eerily quiet. Only the breeze from the mighty river and the rustling of the ominous trees encircling Thrushmoor can be heard now. Not even animal noises are to be found here. It feels like death, but somehow worse. You hastily hurry on to the New Chapel, taking care not to leave yourselves opened to ambushes. Once or twice you fancy you see a cloaked figure dart around a corner or recede into an alleyway, but any investigations into these foreboding figures only turns up shadows and wind. Though there are still a number of hours left in the day, the sky is overcast and the land prematurely darkened with rolling storms and fog, reminiscent of the first night you arrived in town. You are very glad to see the relative safety of the chapel's lighted windows once you draw near. OOCYou are only able to take about 3/4 of the available documents. You will have a 25% chance of missing out on each clue as a result. "Glad to see you whole and hale" Winter says, greeting you at the door. She's been watching for your arrival it seems. "Come inside quickly. We can't afford to risk anything getting in." So saying she ushers you inside the chapel and then quickly closes and bolts the door. Two men begin shove pews and various other bits of furniture across the entryway. This is beginning to feel a little too uncomfortably familiar to those of you who escaped the Asylum. Within the chapel is what's left of the town. Men, women, and children all huddled over small cooking fires and bedrolls or spare sheets laid out in heaps on straw mats. Hushed whispers here and there, but mostly grim silence. Tear-streaked faces full of fright turn to look at the four of you as you join the throng. It is extremely familiar, in fact. "Get yourself some food" Winter instructs. "I've already cleared a space for you to sleep. You're going to need it for what we have ahead." She pauses, then manages a wry smile and claps Michael, the closest member, on the back. "We've faced worse. We can do this, I have faith. Just get your legs back under you now. This is as safe a place as any in this town, at least for one night. We've got able-bodied men taking watches all hours of the night, and believe me when I say their paranoia will ensure nothing crosses that threshold without us knowing about it." Map Red Dot - You Are Here

Fort Hailcourse While Jack and Michael continue ransacking the towers, Murdir and Eilidh make a quick sweep of the reading room and move on to the other low-slung building on the parapet. Everything in this room is in disarray. Overturned and broken furniture litters the floor, and sprays of dried blood mark the room’s stone walls. A cracked mirror hangs on the eastern wall at the top of the stairs to this room. A portrait of an aging couple lies amid bloodied and torn bedclothes near a large double bed and the room’s wardrobe stands open, its contents spilled out in front of its mahogany doors. The impression the two adventurers get is that whoever lived here was brutally murdered and their belongings hastily rifled. Whoever did this clearly did not search thoroughly enough, as Murdir turns up a loose floorboard and uncovers a pouch filled with gold, silver, and three freshwater pearls, while Eilidh's intuition helps her to find a skeleton key that was stuck to the underside of one of the desk's drawers with a wad of red wax. Having finished your tour of the parapet, the four of you meet once more in the front entrance where the double doors still hang open. After exchanging the passphrase and verifying that you are in fact all accounted for, it seems that the time has finally come to leave the fort behind at long last. That is, until Murdir asks if anyone has taken a look into the room with the closed doors at the far end of the dining room and court room. Reluctantly, the party turns and re-enters the fort one last time. It turns out the skeleton key was in fact of some use, as it easily opens the locked door on the far side of the dining room, and again with the other locked door exiting into the court room. What lies behind these doors is a relatively small, but very densely packed archive. Years of court cases, building permits, ships logs, and just about any other documentation an administration might keep are stored here in rows upon rows of scrolls and leather-bound books stacked high inside two wide cabinets with reinforced wooden doors. The skeleton key also makes short work of the locks on these cabinets and a wealth of town history lies before you. It'd take hours to sort through it all, no doubt, but if there's any place where you could learn more about what happened in this little town both before you arrived, and before you left... this would be it. OOCIt'll take 2 hours of careful research here to find 1 relevant clue about Thrushmoor and 8 hours to find all relevant clues. Map Loot 80 Ballista Bolts (10 lbs, 10 gp each) 3 Freshwater pearls (100 gp each) 22 sp 88 gp 1 Skeleton key

Fort Hailcourse Red Jack and Michael quickly make their way over to the tower due east of the one your party just pillaged. There they find another light ballista, of which they make short work and shove all the bolts from the storage box into the Bag of Holding they took with them. Meanwhile, Murdir leads the way to the closer of the two low buildings with Eilidh in tow. After checking to ensure no more nasty mechanisms awaited his opening of the door, the Duergar enters and finds a surprisingly cozy room within. This room is furnished with a large table, a few comfortable chairs, and a standing mirror. In fact, the room appears reasonably clean compared to the rest of the fort. A fireplace sits cold in the corner, and a pile of books and folios is spread across the table. This must be some sort of reading room, and indeed the stack of books suggest someone was using it for just that purpose before the fort was sacked and taken. A staircase leads back down into the fort near the northern wall of this room. There is nothing of immediate value that either member of the party can find or detect, magical or otherwise. Map Loot 20 Ballista Bolts (10 lbs, 10 gp each)

Fort Hailcourse So saying, Jack heads back up the basement steps resolutely. Murdir follows him with a cheerful grin, while Michael and Eilidh bring up the rear. There is still no sign of any fresh assailants upon re-emerging from the basement, so the four of you make your way swiftly up to the top of the fort's parapets by way of the nearest tower's spiral staircase. At the top, you find yourselves atop the parapet wall with another spiral staircase continuing up to the top of the tower itself. Peering out the door in the side of the tower gives you a view of the other towers, as well as two low-roofed buildings built along the wall. Ascending to the top of the tower requires pushing your way through a heavy trap door, but it does give you a nice view not only of the fort, but the surrounding area as well. In the distance you can see faint plumes of smoke rising in the direction of the town. You also notice that the alarm bells have long stopped tolling. A single light ballista is mounted on a pintle hinge here in a position that would give anyone using it near full 360 degree coverage of the area. It takes some doing, but eventually Jack and Murdir are able to unfasten the weapon and heft it down. It will not fit into the Bags of Holding your party have, so someone will have to lug its thirty pounds back to town the old-fashioned way. Nearby you find a box with a stack of ballista quarrels, and thankfully these do fit into a Bag of Holding, as each weighs roughly ten pounds apiece. This process took about twenty minutes all told, and there are four other towers remaining, each with its own mounted ballista. It'll likely be nearly two hours before you're done with removing all of the weapons, and their combined weight will be about one-hundred fifty pounds in total. No small feat to haul all of this back to the town, certainly, but five light ballistae properly mounted and utilized might indeed make the New Chapel a bit more difficult to assail. Loot 1 Light Ballista (30 lbs, 500 gp) 20 Ballista Bolts (10 lbs, 10 gp each)

Hailcourse Basement The familiar wings away immediately into the next room while Michael tries his best to get a visual on what lies ahead from this side of the shattered door. Both come to the same conclusion: there is nothing hostile or even all too interesting in this next room. Just a long well shaft that extends from a sunlit opening in the ceiling overhead and descends through the floor into a dark abyss below, presumably full of ground water. The bucket and rope are currently hauled all the way up to the surface. To confirm, Imp manages to descend into the well shaft, where he verifies that there is actually an aqueduct about forty feet below the floor leading away to the north. The passageway is narrow and not well-suited to flying, so the familiar makes a small aerial acrobatic maneuver and reverses his direction so he can soar back up into the primary room and return to Eilidh. There is nothing else beyond this room except for the smooth stone walls surrounding it. OOCYou will see a blue line leading north on the map as if this room continues. This is the aqueduct, and can only be accessed by descending the well shaft 40'. There is no egress from this room otherwise. All players receive 400 XP for surviving the trap Map

Briarstone Asylum With Lora leading the way, your small group moves on into what must have once been some sort of reception, or perhaps a nurse's station. Pale paint peels like scabs from the walls of this spacious chamber. A bent desk guards the broad hall stretching away to the north behind you, while curtained frames shroud the room’s eastern quarter. The place smells intensely of rubbing alcohol. Right in front of the desk are several large piles of used gauze and bandages, yellowing and covered in dried, crusty blood and other fluids. It appears they were discarded here hastily during the events that caused the disruption and uprising within the Asylum. From these piles you see two large, pus-colored puddles of slime coalesce rapidly and rise up until they stand roughly three feet off the ground. Each has an indistinct shape, but you can tell for certain that they belong to the ooze family. Tumors and boils can be seen swirling beneath their discolored surface, sometimes pushing far enough to distend the viscous exterior with grotesque protrusions of swelling malignity. They both immediately turn and begin advancing on your group. You can be sure that their intentions are not amiable. We are in combat! Creatures Unknown Ooze 1 <Standard> Damage: 0 AC: 7 Touch: 7 Flat-footed: 7 CMD: 5 (can't be tripped) Turn not yet taken Unknown Ooze 2 <Standard> Damage: 0 AC: 7 Touch: 7 Flat-footed: 7 CMD: 5 (can't be tripped) Turn not yet taken Map

Briarstone Asylum There is nothing unusual about the desk. It seems sturdy enough, though a little dusty. But you can all now hear the soft, wet sounds coming from somewhere in that direction.

Briarstone Asylum Boots acquired, the party moves on. The last room barely has a working door, and upon opening it you see why: a huge portion of the ceiling has collapsed in on this room, smiting the bed and most of the surrounding area with its mighty weight. Luckily, it seems nobody was occupying this room when the ceiling fell. Map

Hailcourse Basement On his first attempt, the door groans. On his second, the gunslinger's ire and spite prove too much for the battered door to withstand. It caves in half almost right down the middle with a loud CRASH! Instantly a jet of liquid hoses down the center of the room, steaming white mist everywhere as it splashes across Jack, Michael, and the storage containers behind them. The "steam" is not hot though; quite the opposite in fact. Both of the afflicted men feel their bodies wracked with unbearable, bone-stinging chill and their extremities are numbed almost instantly. Frostbite sets in seconds later as the deep freeze inflicted by the alchemical trap which was triggered begins its work in earnest. OOCRed Jack and Michael have been hit by a freezing spray trap! They must both succeed at a DC 20 Reflex save in order to take half of the trap's damage. The damage type is "Cold." Map

Hailcourse Basement The hammer strikes with a dull ringing noise and leaves Jack's hand throbbing from the backlash. The plaster is powdered and there's a soft crater where the gunslinger struck it, but otherwise he's not accomplished much with his efforts. He tries again and again, but to no avail. There's just not enough strength left to him after the harrowing fights to force the blockade to part. OOCRed Jack can no longer attempt to Break this barrier.

Briarstone Asylum This room contains another intriguing, yet sad tableau. Within lie three bodies: two individuals wrapped in dirty yellow robes, and an elderly man easily in his eighties who lies where he fell upon the bed. Upon closer inspection (and after verifying that the coast is indeed clear), you see that the robed men have the signs of heavy, bludgeoning damage on their faces heralding the manner in which they died. As for the old man, he has no outward signs of harm, but even in death he wears a faint smile and in one withered hand he is still clutching a very sturdy and well-made leather boot. A bit of blood can be found near the heel of the footwear, and its partner lies on the floor nearby, unused. OOCYou may make an Appraise or Knowledge (Local) check to identify the maker of the boots, as they are quite handsome and robust. Map

Hailcourse Basement The plaster is chipping away due to the humidity in the room and what appears to be rather hasty stonework behind it. Nevertheless, it will take some time or exceptional strength to breach this sealed passage. The sun last told you it was just past noon before you descended into the basement to explore a second time. This will likely take at least an hour unless someone can muster up some serious grit to expedite the process. SituationYou will need to either attempt to Break or Sunder this barrier in order to force your way through quickly. Otherwise chipping away at the plaster and moving the stones out of the way takes 1 hour.

Hailcourse Basement It finally goes down. Or, well, vanishes anyway. Not even so much as a breath or a sigh escapes the silent specter's lips as it fades from view. There is nothing left but the reek of battle and your panting breathing. The question is: what now? Combat has ended!

Hailcourse Basement The undead takes a veritable thrashing now as the team rallies around Murdir. Gunsmoke and the acrid smell of ionized air fills the jail with a thin fog that makes the ghost seem even less real than before. Nevertheless, it is still floating, head lolling to one side, arms outstretched. Having apparently seen that its little supernatural tantrum has had very little effect on those in the room with it, the monster slips quietly past Murdir's guard and stretches both hands out towards Jack. We are now in combat! Combat Round 3 Ghost takes a 5' Step and attacks Red Jack! Creatures Ghost <Elite> Damage: 51 AC: 18 Touch: 18 Flat-footed: 14 CMD: 22 Free: 5' step Standard: Melee attack Map

Hailcourse Basement Murdir decides that discretion is the better part of valor and quietly slips backwards, just out of the ghost's reach. The ethereal monster, for its part, seems perfectly content to permit this to happen. Instead of pursuing the wounded Duergar, it begins to thrash about with its arms outstretched until it resembles a ghastly rendition of a whirling dervish. In response, multiple crates suddenly begin to levitate. They hover in midair for a moment before suddenly zipping towards anyone still in the room! Crashes and clattering noises echo through the tiny room as the crates slam into targets and walls, some breaking open to spill their old, disused contents on the floor and others somehow retaining their structural integrity. We are now in combat! Combat Round 2 Ghost casts a spell! Michael takes 9 bludgeoning damage! Red Jack takes 5 bludgeoning damage! Creatures Ghost <Elite> Damage: 20 AC: 18 Touch: 18 Flat-footed: 14 CMD: 22 Standard: Cast spell