January 23, 118 SE
Having dispatched of the mage, Kaplan drags the corpse back to where the rest of the party are gathering. Grrrr, Elvish and Calanon are all badly injured and unconscious; the rest of the party are battered but intact. Looking over the mage's body, they see that he is a human, and underneath his robes he has many tattoos of necromantic sigils. Ellyanna takes his spellbook, and they also find, inside a pocket of his robes, a black pearl covered in mystic runes, which they also take.
Grrrr and Elvish are too badly injured to be easily moved, but the party is in a cemetery - nearby, they find two carts designed for transporting corpses, which should be sufficient to move the two injured adventurers without too much roughness. Ellyanna and Dark Star pull the two carts, while Kaplan slings Calanon over his shoulders, and the group retreat back to their fortified position back in the town.
Between pulling the carts through the snow and Kaplan carrying Calanon and his gear, the going is slow, and it takes about an hour to get back to the house. Shortly after they arrive, Calanon regains consciousness. He heals Elvish and Elvish then heals Grrrr, so everyone is again up and moving. However, both Elvish and Grrrr are still very badly hurt; their armor is ruined and they are very weak. They'll need a week or two of bed rest in order to recover their full strength.
It's getting fairly late, and Elvish and Grrrr's injuries will slow their travel greatly, so the group decide to rest for the night and set out the next day. Kaplan spends some time erasing their tracks around the house, in case anyone from the cemetery tries to track them.
January 24, 118 SE
Before leaving, the party decide they should retrieve the mage's corpse, so Dark Star and Kaplan head back to the cemetery, leaving Calanon and Ellyanna to guard Grrrr and Elvish. When they arrive at the mausoleum, they see that the undead guards have not been replaced. Dark Star decides to risk investigating the mausoleum before they leave.
Peering in, he sees that the guards are indeed gone, and he starts making his way down the stairs. He travels past the alcoves where they fought the shadows, and all the way to the end of the stairs. He arrives in a small entryway, a room whose walls are entirely covered in carvings of screaming faces. Across the room is a set of huge, bronze double doors. One of the two doors has been smashed off its hinges. The door is lying in the next room - it has been smashed in by someone breaking in, rather than someone breaking out.
Dark Star decides not to risk going further on his own, so he returns to the surface, and he and Kaplan cart the mage's corpse back to the house in Frosthaven. Once they rejoin the rest of the party, they head out back to their cabin in the woods. Carting Grrrr and Elvish again slows them down, and it takes most of the rest of the day.
January 25, 118 SE
With their injured companions in a place of relative comfort and safety, the party decide to return to Frosthaven to investigate the shrine below the mausoleum. Leaving Calanon behind to care for Grrrr and Elvish, the rest of the group head back to the town, return to the mausoleum, and head down to where Dark Star ended his search the previous day.
They are hesitant to step past the bronze doors, as they are covered in death curses written in High Imperial, the language of the 1000-year-gone First Empire. However, Dark Star steps through and appears to suffer no ill effects, so Ellyanna and Kaplan follow shortly. Ellyanna investigates the broken-off door, deducing that it seems to have suffered from a single impact, about the size of a fist, as if an impossibly-strong person simply punched it right off its hinges.
Beyond the bronze doors is the shrine itself, which is a large room filled with rows of benches and a bloodstained altar at the back. The walls are covered in scenes of torture and death, and from the ceiling hang chains ending in human skulls. An organ made of bone sits in the back corner, and three doors exit the shrine in various directions.
Dark Star decides to try playing the organ, picking a key and pressing it. The organ emits a low tone, so loud that it shakes the entire room. He quickly releases the key, and in the comparative silence that follows, they hear the faint sound of someone calling for help.
The voice seems to be coming from a door to the left, so they open it and head through. Beyond the door is a passage leading to a four-way intersection. They voice is coming from the left passage, which shortly ends in a door. Beyond the door is a room that appears to be a prison of some sort; manacles line the walls, and two people are locked up in the room.
The two prisoners look like townsfolk; they are a man of about fifty years age and a woman who looks to be about twenty. Both seem to be in pretty bad condition, though the man is better and is at least able to speak. He introduces himself as Gelden and the woman as Kira. Kaplan recognizes Kira, but doesn't recognize Gelden, which makes him a bit suspicious.
The party question Gelden and Kira, and they explain that there were originally eight other prisoners. On the morning that the undead attacked, at first they were simply rampaging through the town, but at a certain point, they stopped for a few seconds, then started to grab townsfolk and bring them back to the mausoleum. Over the last week or so (both prisoners have only a vague idea of the time that passed while they were imprisoned), the other prisoners were taken away one by one and never returned. The party consider the fact that eight prisoners vanished, and they fought eight fiendish creatures - it seems unlikely to be a coincidence.
Despite Kaplan's suspicions, they free the prisoners, who need help walking as they are too weak. They take them out to safety, then continue investigating the shrine. Back at the four-way intersection, they head straight through it, and arrive at the large room dominated by a magical circle. In front of the circle is a podium, and sitting on the podium is a grimoire of some sort. Dark Star is able to read the book, which is written in High Imperial, and finds that it is a ritual book that covers the summoning of various fiendish entities. They take the book.
A side passage out of this room leads to another, smaller, room, which contains three large chests. Opening the chests reveals that they are full of coins; mostly copper and silver, but with a smattering of gold as well. The party take the treasure.
The party decide that they've discovered enough for now, and that they need to take Gelden and Kira to safety. The trip will again be slow, because both ex-prisoners are very weak and need help walking. They exit the shrine, leave Frosthaven, and head back to their cabin in the woods.
Back at the cabin, Kaplan interrogates Gelden and Kira, who clarify their story and give as much detail as they can. He still doesn't recognize Gelden, but Kira seems to know who he is, which alleviates his suspicions. Ellyanna studies the dead wizard's spellbook, looking for magic that she could learn for herself, while Dark Star studies the grimoire. It contains instructions for summoning about a half-dozen different types of fiends, including the small, pudgy devils that they fought earlier. They are called "manes", and the ritual described calls for the sacrifice of a human being for each one that is summoned.
The party decide that it's time to return to Duskveil and report in; with Grrrr, Elvish, Gelden, and Kira in various states of injury and exhaustion, the trip will be slow. They decide to set out the next morning.
January 27, 118 SE
Having travelled the last day and a half, the party finally arrive back at Duskveil. They head to the mayor and explain their findings. He rewards them with the gold as promised, then they consider what their next steps should be. They decide to gather together the leaders of all the nearby towns in order to form a council and decide their course of action together.
After finding temporary housing for Gelden and Kira, the party settle down at the inn. They'll spend the next week or so waiting for the council to be called, and waiting for their injured companions to recover.
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