So we don’t sleep too well in the outbuilding. Turns out that the strange noises that we heard in the manor are present in the playhouse, too. It’s not like we were under any serious threat, but a bad night’s sleep is a bad night’s sleep. I suppose we’ll get used to it. From my point of view, the sooner we end the haunts in the manor, the sooner we’ll all sleep easier. At least my companions seem dedicated to the cause. Ev is laboring under the assumption that when we clear the manor of evil spirits, she’ll turn back from and innie to an outie. I’m not holding my breath, and if you want my honest opinion, I’d wager half my estate that Ev doesn’t really want to change back, either.
Today we decided that we were going to check out one of the towers. So we go back in through the service entry to that long western gallery with all of the pictures. We decide to jot down the names under the portraits, hoping we can learn a little bit about them. If the pictures come to life, maybe some of them will have useful information. Otherwise, I’m good to burn them. The others said I was “horrible” for making such a suggestion. As if art has rights.
Well, we stumble upon a wing that seems to contain the high-status bedrooms. One of the past lords was clearly a hunter. I could tell that by the ghostly hunt, complete with horses, hounds, and drunken nobles, that rode through the room while we stood there watching. Sorel tried to communicate with them, but it was as if we were not there. Just as well, if you ask me. There was a corpse holding a hunting horn on the bed, but anything of value there was long rotted away.
We had to deal with a strange monster in the next room—an animated anthropomorphic fungus. It drained the heat out of us when we got too close to it, so we had to pepper it with arrows. Aleandra’s poleaxe came in handy too. Turns out the fungus was guarding another noble bedroom, this one with more interesting stuff. A shield was not magical but clearly valuable. There was a suit of full plate, loaded with a spring trap in the visor, designed to take my hand off. I’m too fast to fall for such amateurish garbage, though.
We find that there is no clear access to the tower, so we figure there has to be a secret door. Just to be sure, we search all possible ways in. We come across a mead hall that was filled with webs. Naturally, we suspect spiders. And there sure were a lot of them. Sorel goes nuts with a flaming sphere, which ignites a lot of the webs. Qual, Ev, and Aleandra jump joyfully into the slaughter, and I choose to hang back and twink the vermin with my little bow, which was more than enough firepower for the job. Then a half-dozen zombies lumber onto the scene, which would normally not be much of a challenge, but were pretty much had our hands full with the spiders already. So they got in closer to use than we would like, and the amazon babes got nicked up pretty badly in the fight. Did I mention they looked sexy even when covered in blood? Don’t look at me like that. I bet you have your kinks, too.
Well, still no entry to the tower, so we begin the tedious search for secret doors. We finally find what we were looking for (around lunchtime, I might add) in a closet off of fungus-dude’s bedroom. We find stairs up, but there was still a big blank space on our map where the ground floor of the tower was supposed to be, so we figured we missed yet another secret door. Again, it’s something I will probably value when I move into the place, but it’s annoying as hell now.
We did find stairs up though, which led to a guard room of some kind. In it, there was a small army of skeletons, led by three wights. The manor had been a cakewalk up to this point. The skeletons were easily dealt with, since Qual and Aleandra always kept blunt weapons in reserve, and I did my part once I could get my hands on a club. Ev was an expert at fighting the undead, so with help from Sorel he tried to take out the wights. They were tough, though, and Ev, Qual, and I each took hits from them that left us feeling like a bit of our souls had been ripped away. When we finally won our way through (the remaining skeletons collapsed when we took out the three wights), we were pretty messed up. We decided to press on, over the objections of me and Ev.
There was a trap door up to the next level. It was trapped, and I had to take my time disarming it. Above was some kind of magical lab. There were a bunch of little artificial men running around. Turns out that one of them had discovered the secret of duplicating himself and went nuts. I checked out the book he used to see if I could duplicate Aleandra again. Turns out all I did was create another little artificial man. Naked, no less. While that might be someone’s idea of kink, it leaves me a little cold. Anyhow, a good kick was all it took to take out these little dudes. We felt good about an easy fight after the wights. Some might say that stomping on little self-aware humans is sick. Those people who would say that have never had the opportunity to try. It’s fun. Really.
The next level up was some kind of menagerie, with magical cages folding a beaver, a giant frog and monkeys. I do love watching monkeys. Aleandra says it’s because I admire their sophistication. I think it’s because I laugh when they throw poo. They totally freaked out because of my tiger face, and I thought that was kind of funny too. There was some kind of magical portal in this room, but we held off on going through, as there was still a level above us.
Well, the trapdoor to that level was blocked by a corpse, so we needed the strength of Qual to push it off and clear the way for us to ascend. The top level was something of a charnel house, with dead bodies everywhere. There was a big pile of treasure at the far end of the room, and chained to it was the most pathetic human I have ever seen. I don’t think I’ve ever seen more diseases crowded onto one person. Ev tried to talk to him (she’s been downright maternal ever since she lost her elven winkie), but he just lashed out at her. Little bits of filth clung to her skin (a problem with the old chainmail bikini, but I swallowed my objections) and we all knew that she was carrying some filthy disease. Well, we knew that after this, we would have to head back to town again, even if it meant getting there after dark.
Well, the treasure was primo. Lots of coin and some gold rings, plus a carved ivory statue that was worth a fortune.
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