Session Summary #27 & 28

[Nathan Sherman]

Cast of Characters
Theren Moonshadow, a Moon Elf Bard played by Payson
Lutheo, a Halfling Paladin played by Dale
Otep, a Half Orc Fighter played by Nelson
Akronos, a Human Wizard played by Alec
Ceress, a Saurien Monk played by Graham
Tykor, very old half elven innkeeper that has forgotten he used to go by Illanor, an arch mage of the Conclave of Freedom - NPC
Nikos, friend of Tykor and entertainment manager for the Inn of the Broken Staff - NPC


After splitting the party and almost causing Otep and Lutheo to join the ranks of the grisly mansions defenders while Akronos, Theren and Ceress sat outside concentrating on first level spells to keep them immune from possession and then getting yanked into the mansion and almost losing Ceress to possession by the ghost, they decide that they need a new approach.

Akrons suggests that the party goes into town and hire some acolytes to concentrate on Protection From Evil for the five of them to all go in together as a team. This will require them to expose their plan to the town since word might get out. The party agrees, some reluctantly, to this new approach and they clean up some of the mess they have made outside of the mansion, board up the front door and head into Freeport.

The party gets four rooms at the Fair Wind Tavern in the High District. They send Theren and Lutheo to talk with General Thomas Harn since he is the one mentioned on the warning signs outside of the mansion. When they were in Freeport months (and levels) ago, Theren found out from talking with a solder in a tavern that the city has a deal for would be adventures that want to take on the mansion.

The office of General Tomas Harn is within the City Militia Hall on the North end of town. The Militia hall is a barracks, training ground, prison and offices and in a very organized six acres of perfectly manicured and maintained setting.

The main hall entrance has a huge clerks desk with many city guards coming and going. One of the clerks at the desk sees the party enter and calls out to them "excellent, are you looking to join the city or country militia?" he asks. Theren lets him know that they want to talk to General Harn about the mansion and they are granted an audience with him shortly after. 

General Harns office is a professional soldiers office. Sparse, clean and well organized. He is a brisk man. No nonsense and directly to the point.

He asks Theren and Lutheo "are you wanting to go into the mansion for the hopes of treasure, glory, earning the estate or just as an exciting way to die?" They explain to him that they are on a mission and need to clear the mansion of the ghosts but don't explain anything else of their mission.

Harn goes on to tell them that "We don't know why the spirit stays inside the property but one of my primary goals is that it never gets out to wreak havoc on the surrounding population.

Once or twice a decade a foolish party of adventurers will think they have a chance where everyone else has died before. It looks like you're the next group to sacrifice themselves. We don't like to attract the suicidal so we try to discourage attempts at clearing the mansion.

About 20 years ago one member of an adventuring party made it out alive. The other five members of his party died horrible deaths according to him. The spirit possessed some of them and turned them against the other party members. The spirit itself couldn't be harmed by normal weapons or many types of spells. It was a complete rout according to this poor soul.

Here's the deal that Freeport is willing to make. If you kill the spirit you can have the estate and anything you find in it but in order to have that deal you must leave with my office any valuables you have on you that won't help you with your battle. If and when you die the valuables will be sold off and the proceeds will de donated to the local orphanage. If by chance you survive you will be given your possessions back. Several guards will accompany you to the estate. After you've gone in and have been given enough time to die they will board it back up.

I'd rather have you join the militia or just not commit suicide on an attempt at the mansion, but you seem pretty determined to do this foolish thing so I won't waste either of our time trying to convince you otherwise."

They agree to the terms set forth and let him know that they would like to leave the next morning at 9:00. The general will have five solders join them to take care of boarding the mansion back up when they die inside.

Next, they search for some hirelings that can help with the Protection From Evil. In the High District of Freeport is the Freeport Conclave of Wizardry so they head there. It is set on a large estate with grand ground leading to the front doors. They knock on the mansions front doors and are soon greeted by a young man. They explain that they are looking to hire some wizards to help with a quest but the wizards will be in no danger since they will just stay outside. The young man asks them to wait there at the front door while he gets his master.

Soon, an old human wizard comes to the front door and introduces himself as Janog, one of the head masters of the school. When Theren and Lutheo explain that they want to pay some wizards to cast Protection from Evil and then wait outside of the haunted mansion concentrating on it, Janog explains that the Conclave of Wizardy is a small organization which serves as both a wizard's guild and a small magic school. It has less than thirty members who meet at this large estate. Members include young wizards in training, apprentices just starting out and a couple nobles who dabble in magic as a hobby. There are only a handful of spellcasters of any appreciable talent. The guild estate has a small library, a fine laboratory and an herb garden. Compared to other guilds, the Conclave is somewhat informal. There are no formal classes, but members pool magical knowledge and resources casually to help each other. There are no formal ranks or titles, merely regulars and some who come and go. He isn't sure if any of the member would be interested in such a job be there are two that he will talk to about it and send them to the Fair Wind Tavern if they are interested.

Theren and Lutheo decide to try the local churches next. While there are many churches in Freeport, the two largest and most likely to have spell caster would be the church of Semorjon or the church of Imarus. Semorjon is the god of the sea and his followers embrace the rough and often chaotic nature of the sea. They decide that having law and order abiding followers of Imarus might be better to trust with the job of maintaining concentration on a single spell for a full 10 minutes instead of the followers of Semorjon.

They go to the church of Imarus and talk with Civilar Kenton and explain their desire to rid the haunted mansion of the evil spirits that live there and their need of clerics to maintain Protection From Evil to protect them from possession. Kenton thinks this is a great idea and he will conscript some of his acolytes to assist them. They payment the party offers to the acolytes will apparently go to the church and it will compensate them out of it. Kenton will send the clerics he selects to meet with them at the Fair Wind Tavern later in the day.

Later that afternoon, two young men show up at the tavern and explain that they are Santiago and Salazar, brothers and wizards that are eager to join the adventure. They are a little disappointed that they will be required to sit outside and not join in on the main fun but as a start to their adventuring career they are willing to accept that as part of the deal. The party is a little concerned that the brothers might be too eager, but still agree to pay them for their services. Santiago and Salazar high five and quickly engage with Akronos on the greater arts of spell casting. Akronos teaches them Protection From Evil and agrees to give them a few more spells as part of their payment.

Four clerics show up a short while later and let the party know that they have been sent by the High Civilar Kenton to assist them. They are Hessen who is in charge of the group, Jaro, Gunthar and Lantro.

It is agreed that the party and their new hired crew will meet back at the inn the next morning to set out for another or the first attempt according to the parties story of it.

In accordance with the cities requirements for claiming the mansion as the prize if they actually survive and clear it out of the evil spirts, Akronos leaves his 22 gold with General Harn, Theren leaves 30 platinum, Lutheo leaves just about everything he had except for what he will use in battle and Ceress leaves all of his money. Otep doesn't leave anything with the city office and Theren has held back enough to pay for the hired help and their expenses at the tavern.

The next morning they head out and start their assault on the mansion, fresh, with back up and a new plan.

When they get to the mansion, they have the two eager wizards and 4 reluctant priest cast Protection from Evil on them with a Bless added in for good measure. They leave Tykor and Nikos outside with the guards and low level casters while the party goes in as a tight knit team. They search most of the first floor and finding nothing, head up to the second floor, believing this to be where the finger is currently pointing.




Up on the second floor, the party moves around the south of the central balcony that has a view down to the first floor grand hall. The spirit floats through a west wall and telekinetically grabs Otep and flings him across the hall, slamming into a wall at the top of the stairwell.

Lutheo, mounted on his ridding dog charges forward and attacks the wispy spirit. He hits twice, both times him imbibing his attack with the smite of his faith. The spirit first tries to posses Lutheo but is rebuffed by the Protection from Evil and then it recoils from his vicious attacks and flees down the hall and through a wall. Otep calls for Akronos to Haste him and he races back to find the spirit. 

The party pursues the ghost but can't find where it went. They search much of the second floor and end up finding stairs going up to the third-floor. The third floor is apparently the servants quarters with smaller and sparsely furnished rooms but no ghosts or other undead.

Having spent a good deal of time already the party decides to head back outside and update the waiting crew and get a refresher on the protection from evil spells.

They have determined that the finger must be pointing to the basement so they re-enter the mansion and head straight downstairs.

They walked down the wide stairway from the Butler's pantry off the dining room into a large open landing at the bottom of the stairs in the basement.

The finger is pointing straight ahead cross the open landing area into what appears to be the servant dining room.

Apparently, the ghost has organized his minions in an ambush for the party and they get attacked from all sides when they get to the dining area. Zombies with blue glowing eyes and the undead that whispers madness straight into the brain and the ghost that flings them across the room with telekinetic thrusts all attack.

Otep, Ceress and Lutheo have a field day with slaughtering zombies as they come. Theren throws a fireball into a grouping of zombies and provides timely support to party members, healing and assisting with damage. Lutheo has apparently become the favorite target of the ghost and the spirit that whispers madness. He's often flung across the room and into a wall or the target of the whispering madness in addition to zombie attacks.

Akronos unleashes a powerful crowd control spell of a raging storm with lightning bolts striking his foes, blocking off and delaying some of the assailants.

Lutheo uses the Sumerack shield to protect them from an onrush of undead until they can deal with the ones surrounding them.
Both Akronos and Theren figure out that they need to wait and attack the ghost or whispers of madness undead with ranged spells as they appear through walls but the distraction of zombies attacking them makes this difficult. It does identify to their enemies who can hurt them for a distance and they suffer extra attention from the ghost for this knowledge.

As the bodies of the zombies are piling up at the party's feet they are suffering serious injuries themselves. Each member of the team gets down to within daggers cut of death. After a massive raging battle, they have finally killed all the zombies but the ghost and whispering undead are still alive and attacking them with sniper like tactics floating through walls, assaulting from a distance and then disappearing back through walls.

The party deploys the snatch pit and start throwing zombie bodies in it in an attempt to get them all out of the building so they won't have to battle the same ones again the next day.

Theren frantically screams at them to get into the pit and he will get them out of the mansion. Each party member grabs one last zombie body and jumps into the pit on top of a pile of undead corpses. Theren zips up the pit and runs for his life, making an Expeditious Retreat. The spirit was hiding out of the room when Theren fled so it takes it a little while to track him down, but by that point Theren has a big enough lead that he makes it out of the mansion with the pit containing all of his companions and the 17 zombies that killed that day. 

The party decides that they need to rest and recover since they are all on the verge of death and tapped out of spells and abilities. They decide to go back to town where their inn keeper is preparing a large victory feast for them at Therens earlier request.

First they strip the bodies of any magic items and then ask Tykor if he can burn them with his great magic. He shrugs and is happy to give it a try, but instead he causes Theren to move very slowly for a while. They give up on asking Tykor for help and burn them the old fashioned way (after letting the wizards Santiago and Salazar strip them of resalable gear).

Otep and Ceress decide to stay behind and guard the mansion but the rest of the party and their hired underlings return to town. The two wizard brothers want to stay with the party as much as possible but the clerics return to their church and the guards check in with their captain.

That evening Theren, Akronos and Lutheo have a wonderful dinner and are joined by the wizards brothers, Nikos, Tykor and General Thomas Harn who is duly impressed that the party is still alive and has made progress instead of his first though which was the two had died and the rest escaped. That would have been an accomplishment compared to past attempts, but this is truly amazing.

The next day they gather up their hirelings and head back to the mansion to find Otep and Ceress well rested and ready to go at the last remaining haunts in the mansion.

After getting Protection from Evil they leave the hirelings outside, enter and check the finger and start hunting down the remaining undead. They check the basement but they aren't there. The check the first floor and don't them them there either. On the second floor the finger is still pointing to the west, across the open foyer to the first floor below. The party splits into two groups with Otep, Theren and Lutheo going south around the balcony and Akronos and Ceress going north.

The spirit emerges through a wall and attacks Lutheo, flinging him over the balcony, slamming him into a pillar and plummeting down to the first floor. The undead causing the whispering madness attacks as well and then flees through the walls. The chase is on with the spell casters holding spells and attacking the spirits when they come out of the walls but sometimes the spirits emerge further away in the darkness of the deserted mansion and are hard to spot before they attack.

The hunt and counter hunt is on and this is where session #28 ends.