Book 2: The Skinsaw Murders

“The Misgivings” – Foxglove Manor

Saturday, August 17, 2013 @ Bud’s

Day 19:

After handling the ghoul threat at the Hambley farm, the party continued south down the Lost Coast Road when they encountered a narrow path leading west toward Foxglove Manor.

The party’s in-depth knowledge of the region included much about Foxglove Manor:

• Foxglove Manor is over 80 years old, and has been the seat of the Foxglove family the whole time. Some sort of tragedy struck the family a few decades ago, and no one’s lived there since. Common rumor holds that the place is haunted.

• Foxglove Manor is known as the “Misgivings” by some locals, particularly by Varisians. It certainly has a bad reputation—sightings of strange lights in the attic windows, muffled sounds of screaming from above and below, and even rumors of a huge bat-winged devil living in the caves below the manor are but a few of the tales told about the place. The Foxglove family lived there as recently as 2 decades ago, but then a fire burned down the servants’ building, Cyralie Foxglove was found dead—burnt and dashed on the rocks below the cliffs behind the house—and Traver Foxglove was found in his bedroom, dead by his own hand. The children, including young Aldern Foxglove, were sent away to be raised in Korvosa by distant relations.

• Aldern Foxglove recently returned to live in the manor, but he had a hell of a time hiring locals to aid him in the reconstruction and repair of the old building. Until Aldern moved back in, the place was cared for by a man named Rogors Craesby  (a retired innkeeper who lost an ear in a bar fight many years ago) who came in 3 days a week from Sandpoint to air the place out, check for squatters, and make minor repairs.

• Foxglove Manor was built decades ago by Vorel Foxglove, a merchant prince from Magnimar. He and his family lived there for 20 years before the entire family perished from disease. The surviving Foxgloves of Magnimar shunned the place for 40 years, until Traver Foxglove moved back in.

• The Foxgloves have traditionally been associated with the Brothers of the Seven, a secretive gentlemen’s club based in Magnimar and consisting of merchants or thieves, depending on whom you talk to. Members of the society periodically visited Foxglove Manor at night during the years the manor  went unlived-in, perhaps to check up on the building and make minor repairs—or perhaps for more sinister pursuits.

The party had been following the narrow path for a short time when they heard hoofbeats from behind them. A pair of riders approached, accompanied by a large, sentient beast. The party readied for combat, but there was no hostile intent. One of the riders was Orik Vancaskerkin, the mercenary formerly in the employ of Nualia at Thistletop, and the other two were Veruca, a young female summoner and her eidolon Ranulf. Orik greeted the party warmly and explained that he had joined the Pathfinder Society, and that he and Veruca were on a recovery mission for a party of their fellow Pathfinders who had gone missing at Foxglove Manor.

As they all traveled together toward Foxglove Manor, nature herself appears to become sick and twisted. Nettles and thorns grow more prominent, trees are leafless and bent, and the wind seems unnaturally cold and shrill as it whistles through the cliffside crags. The path slowly rose, bending around a steep corner in the cliffs, and Foxglove Manor loomed at the edge of the world, seemingly poised for a suicide leap into the Varisian Gulf. The roof sags in many places, and mold and mildew cake the crumbling walls. Vines of diseased-looking gray wisteria strangle the structure in several places, hanging down over the precipitous cliff edge almost like tangled  braids  of hair. The  house is  crooked, its  gables angling sharply and breached in at least three places, hastily repaired by planks of sodden wood. Chimneys rise from various points among the rooftops, leaning like old men in a storm, and grinning gargoyle faces leer from under the eaves.

Out in front of the manor lay the burned, ruined remains of an outbuilding that must have been the servants’ quarters. It is impossible to tell how many floors the outbuilding that stood here once had, for all that remains are the sooty, scorched stones of its foundation. A partially collapsed stone well sits in the corner of the ruins. The water in the well was at least 100 feet down. A few sickly looking ravens were perched on the foundation stones. Oz attacked one with disrupt undead, causing a large number of carrion crows to coalesce into swarms.

Orik, Veruca, and Ranulf had already proceeded toward the manor, but the party made short work of the carrionstorms. Echo channeled positive energy, weakening them, and the melee combatants finished them off. Closer inspection of the well revealed nothing useful, though no one actually climbed down into it. The party caught up with Orik and Veruca, who were standing in front of the manor, contemplating entry.

The party forced open the front door, revealing a high-ceilinged entrance hall with a large monster on display in the center of the room, a twelve-foot-long creature with the body of a lion, a scorpion’s tail fitted with dozens of razor barbs, huge batlike wings, and a deformed humanoid face. A smell of burning hair and flesh lingered in the air. Lying on the floor were the corpses of the hopelessly undergeared Pathfinder party Orik and Veruca were tasked with recovering. Wanga stood watch in the entrance hall while the party assisted them in hauling them outside. The party relieved the dead Pathfinders of their wayfinders, and Veruca offered the use of a clear spindle ioun stone to protect against evil compulsions, which Nymeria used.

As Orik and Veruca loaded the bodies onto their mounts, Wanga heard what sounded like sobbing coming from somewhere upstairs. The party went up the staircase to the right, and began exploring the second floor.

Aldern’s bedroom featured a child-sized bed, a chair next to a toy box, and a looming stone fireplace big enough for a child to get lost in. Upon entering the room, Echo became convinced that her parents were trying to kill each other, and that whichever of them survived would be coming to kill her next. She had a vision of her mother wielding a torch, and her father, festering with tumors and wielding a long knife, both struggling to kill each other. The vision passed, and Echo suffered residual effects of mind numbing terror (2 Wisdom damage) which she was able to get rid of by channeling positive energy.

 

The large musician’s gallery featured two padded chairs and a long couch facing a wide alcove lined with stained glass windows depicting a diverse array of animals and plants, from north to south:

a large pale and ghostly scorpion

a gaunt man holding out his arms as a dozen bats hung from them

a moth with a strange skull-like pattern on its wings

a tangle of dull green plants with bell-shaped flowers

a young maiden sitting astride a well in a forest while a spindly spider the size of a dog descends along a string of webbing above her.

The party identified all five of the subjects in the windows as classic spell components for necromancy magic, and having ties to several known lich apotheosis formulae.

A guest bedchamber was entirely caked with a thick, spongy layer of dark green, blue, and black mold. Oz heard a child’s face, quivering with fear, ask “What’s on your face, mommy?” and felt as if his face had suddenly erupted into a tangled mess of tumors and boils. He resisted the urge to claw the offending sickness from his skull.

An upstairs washroom contained an iron tub, the floorboards in the middle of the room sagging with its weight. Mackintosh “acrobatically” stepped into the room, triggering the floor’s collapse. Mackintosh managed to catch himself from falling as the iron tub and the broken floor fell into the room below, breaking through THAT floor, and finally coming to rest twenty feet below. They heard squeaking emanating from the place where two washrooms’ worth of tubs and floors came to rest, but it soon subsided.

The master bedroom, a once fine chamber, had been destroyed. The bed was smashed, the mattress torn apart, walls gouged as if by knives, chairs hacked apart, and paintings on the walls torn to pieces, with one exception. A portrait hanging on the northwest wall seemed to have been untouched, although it hung backward, its unseen subject facing the wall. Oz used mage hand to turn the portrait around, revealing a beautiful dark-haired Varisian woman in a thoughtful pose. Upon seeing the portrait, Echo experienced a wave of sadness, and Mackintosh felt a wave of fear. Lisanji became filled with an overwhelming hatred of women, and felt a brief compulsion to attack Nymeria, but she managed to control her fury before actually attacking.

A stone fireplace sat in the northwestern portion of the gallery. Paintings hung on the walls to the north and south, each covered over with a thick sheet of dusty cobwebs obscuring the subjects from view. The party cleared the cobwebs from the paintings, revealing portraits of the Foxglove family, each with a plaque identifying those pictured within. The three to the north depict Vorel and Kasanda Foxglove and their daughter Lorey. Vorel is a tall middle-aged man with long dark hair, a clean-shaven face, and dark blue noble’s clothes, while Kasanda is a stern-faced brunette woman with wisps of gray in her short hair and a flowing blue dress. The five to the south show Traver and Cyralie Foxglove, their son Aldern, and their two daughters Sendeli and Zeeva. Traver, like Vorel, is tall and thin, but with an even narrower face and a thin mustache. Cyralie is a young woman with long red hair and an impish smile. Upon cleaning the cobwebs from the last portrait, The temperature in the room immediately dropped. Breath frosted in the air and fingers of rime slithered across the walls. The figures depicted in the portraits suddenly shifted from paintings of living people to those of dead folk. Kasanda and Lorey slumped into misshapen, tumor-ridden corpses. Traver grew pale as a long cut opened in his throat and blood washed down over his chest. Cyralie blackened and charred, and her arms, legs, and back twisted as if broken in dozens of places. Aldern’s flesh darkened with rot, his hair fell out, and he deformed into a ghoul-like monster. Both Sendeli’s and Zeeva’s portraits frosted over, but remained otherwise unchanged. Vorel’s entire portrait, frame and all, erupted into a sudden explosion of fungus and tumorous growth. This wave of fungus and disease washed over the entire room in seconds before the room suddenly reverted to normal. Afterward, Mackintosh noticed tiny splotches of mold and tender red bumps on his flesh, but no one else noticed.

Beyond the gallery lay another bedroom, whose furniture, though dusty and unkempt, did not exhibit any major signs of water or mold damage. The one exception was a dark stain on the desk near the northern window. Hildabrandt noticed that there was a silver-handled dagger on the desk, where she was sure there was nothing on the desk but some wooden debris. Suddenly, she was overwhelmed with the conviction that she had just killed the person that she loved most, and became filled with guilt and despair. She could not resist the compulsion to walk over to the desk and cut her own throat with the dagger with a coup de grace. Blood spurted out of her neck, contributing to the dark stain on the desk, but she managed to banish the suicidal compulsion andbarely survived, recovering from the wound with the help from some curative magic.

The party then continued upstairs to the attic, where the sobbing grew slightly louder. A workroom containing a large number of wooden planks, rope, and other repair supplies had a ceiling which sagged noticeably, and through which patches of the sky above was visible. Several storerooms contained old furniture, sheets and linens, boxes and crates, and other items of little value. The ceiling of a loft angled down steeply, leaving only four feet of headroom to the southeast, with a cot and a dresser as the room’s only furnishings.

The sobbing grew louder, and the party traced the sound to the northeasternmost room, behind a locked door. Just as Nymeria worked the lock open, Wanga broke down the door. Either way, the party was coming in. The room beyond was cold and damp with an old armoire standing near the east wall. The ceiling sloped down to only four feet high to the northeast, leaving little room for a small window. A full-size mirror in a dark wooden frame of coiling roses leaned against the wall, angled toward the tiny window. The sobbing was coming from a large bundle of cloth in a corner of the room.

The party unwrapped the bundle, revealing a terrifying, female, undead creature: Iesha Foxglove, murdered by her husband Aldern, had risen as a revenant, and had become consumed with a powerful desire for vengeance. However, she was stricken with self-loathing by the sight of her own reflection in the mirror. Moving the mirror allowed her instant recovery, and she stood up and unleashed a baleful shriek, crying out “Aldern! I can smell your fear! You’ll be in my arms soon!” Several of the party members cowered in fear as Iesha began a relentless march toward Aldern.

The party opened a door across the hall from Iesha, and heard the sound of pages rustling, as if a book were being read quickly. Just then, Hildabrandt experienced a vision, dozens of memories of expeditions, sea voyages, and travels to exotic locales racing through her mind. As the memories built momentum, they became increasingly infused with a sense of bitter disappointment and regret, and she became increasingly aware that she was receiving memories that never were, memories of fantastic discoveries that Traver Foxglove could have made had he not chosen to settle down with a shrill harpy of a wife. She resisted the effect of the haunt that would have dealt her Wisdom damage.

As Iesha continued out and down the hall, Mackintosh opened up the door to the observatory, which the party had skipped in favor of investigating Iesha’s room. The observatory contained a desk and a chair. A battered and ruined telescope lay on its side near the desk and a large trap door in the roof had been tied shut by several lengths of rope. Chimneys rose to the west, while to the east, two intricate stained-glass windows were set into the wall.

The northern window depicted a dark-haired woman with pale skin, large green eyes, and a black-and-red gown; with both hands she wielded a jagged iron staff.

The southern window’s lower half had been broken and patched with canvas; what remained of its upper half depicted a handsome man dressed in regal finery and a crown of ivory and jade. Small scorch marks marred the wood near the broken window, through which steep cliffs and the Gulf of Varisia were visible.

As soon as the party entered the room, Wanga, who was still cowering in fear in Iesha’s room, suddenly felt uncomfortably hot, and seconds later, believed that he had caught fire. He felt a compulsion to throw himself out the window to put out the flames, but his supernatural fear overwhelmed the compulsion.

As Iesha made her way down to the first floor, the frightened PCs recovered and caught up as the rest of the party followed her, determined to observe but not interfere. When the party reached the entrance hall, Wanga again smelled the acrid stench of burning hair and flesh, but this time, the manticore lurched to sudden life, erupted into flame, and lashed out at Wanga with its burning stinger, but it missed horribly, and caused no further inconvenience.

Iesha proceeded east into a hall, where a rather gruesome antique, apparently a mummified monkey head, hung on the northern wall, its tiny mouth gaping. A bellpull extended from the monkey’s gaping mouth, and a ratty throw rug partially obscured a foul stain of dark-colored mold on the floor. The party moved the rug, and Iesha paused over the moldy stain, a swirling pattern of dark blue, sickly green,and black mold that grew in a spiral, looking almost like a bird’s-eye view of a spiral staircase descending downward, each step littered with skulls and bones. Iesha stood staring at it for several moments while the party discussed what to do. The monkey head radiated faint abjuration magic. Wanga pulled the bellpull and the head, a hungry decapitant, gave out a shrill simian shriek akin to an alarm spell.

Iesha then unleashed another baleful shriek, terrifying some of the PCs, and began smashing and clawing at the stained floorboards with her claws. Her slow progress allowed all frightened PCs time to recover, and they also took the time to cast some buff spells before helping her tear through the floor. Finally, the floor had a large enough opening to pass through, Iesha climbed down through the rough hole in the floor, and the party followed.

Piles of broken stone, dirt, and a few ruined pickaxes lined the edges of the room below.  The floor in the middle of the room had been torn up to reveal an ancient set of stone spiral stairs, obviously of much older construction than the surrounding basement, winding deep into the bedrock below. A foul stink, like that of rotten meat, wafted up on a cold breeze from the darkness. Iesha went down the stairs, and the party followed. As Echo set foot on the stairs to descend, she experienced a sudden vision of Aldern, sweaty, filthy, and wild-eyed, digging away at the stone floor of this room. With each swing, he grunted out two words: “For you” and Echo knew he was speaking of her. As the vision ended, she saw Aldern break through into the room as a horde of shrieking ghouls rose up to pull him into the darkness before turning their lambent eyes on to her. Before the ghouls could reach her to tear and bite at her flesh, she shook off the vision.

The stairs ended in a limestone cavern. The walls dripped with moisture, and swaths of black and dark blue mold grew in spiraling, tangled patterns on the floor, ceiling, and walls. Rubble and broken bones cluttered the floor, and a rhythmic sound, like the breathing of some immense creature, echoed through the cave. In an alcove in a tunnel, the mold grew particularly thick. Several pickaxes were tossed into the corner of the room, one of them particularly well-made, though covered with yellow mold. Wanga cleared the mold with spark and the party retrieved a heavy pick +1.

Iesha proceeded west through the tunnel, past a few ghouls that ignored her completely, but which attacked the party on sight. Oz charmed one, and sent it up and outside to wait for him, and the party made short work of the other ghouls, who put up feeble resistance.

Further into the cavern, Iesha passed a side room containing more ghouls which the party destroyed with extreme prejudice, as Iesha continued through the cramped tunnel into a vertiginous gulf, a cathedral-like cavern with a roof arching thirty feet overhead and dropping into a sloshing pool of foamy seawater fifty feet below. A steep stone ledge wound down into these surging depths, its slope glistening with moisture and mold. A stone door stood in the northwestern wall about halfway down the slope. Four goblin ghasts stood at the edge of the pool below.

As Iesha made her way down the ledge toward the stone door, Lisanji jumped down into the room with the goblin ghasts, and slew the closest one nearly instantly. Hildabrandt cast aqueous orb on the three remaining, and as they became engulfed in the rolling sphere of water, she sent them far below, to the bottom of the sloshing pool of seawater, where they were never heard from again.

When Iesha reached the stone door, she began attempting to smash through it as she attempted to smash through the wooden floor in the manor above. Before long, she had breached the door and rushed into the room to destroy her murderer.

The air in the damp cavern within reeked of a horrific stench, a foul combination of decay. brine, and mold. The cave contained a rickety table, its damp surface cluttered with all manner of what appeared to be garbage: empty bottles, bits of paper, and more, lying in neatly organized rows. A painting leaned against the far side of the table, facing a large leather chair that sat nearby. This chair’s high back and cushion were horribly stained by smears of rotten meat and its arms were sticky with blood. A smaller table sat against the southern wall, its surface heaped with plates and platters of rotten, maggot-infested meat. The horrific stench of the room seemed strongest to the west, where the cave’s wall had been overtaken by a horrific growth of dark green mold and dripping fungi. At the center, a patch of black tumescent fungus grew, its horny ridges and tumorlike bulbs forming what could almost to be a human outline. What appeared to have once been an exquisite puzzle box the size of a man’s fist lay smashed on the ground at the fungoid shape’s feet.

Aldern Foxglove, once a handsome and cultured nobleman, was now condemned to an unlife of unending hunger, driven to eat the flesh of those he once might have called friends. His transformation into a ghast has ruined his mind, yet his former personality was not completely destroyed, at least, not at first. When confronted with the revenant of Iesha, he shrieked out in grief and fell to his knees to beg forgiveness from his murdered wife. For a moment, as Iesha caressed Aldern’s sallow cheek, it appeared that she may have been willing to forgive, yet a moment later, she shrieked in rage and attacked.

Iesha lashed out with one filthy claw, grabbed Aldern and crushed him in a grapple. The party gathered close to observe and assist in destroying the vicious murderer. Aldern drew a wickedly sharp, +1 war razor and sliced, clawed, and bit at Iesha, but his attacks did little damage. The party joined in, with Mackintosh, Lisanji, and Nymeria each dealing heavy blows to the grappled ghast.

Upon seeing Echo, Aldern’s eyes widened in fear and delight, proclaiming “YOU! You’ve come to me! I knew my letters would sway your heart, my love! Let us consummate our…our…HUNGER!”

Iesha continued ripping into him with her claws, unleashing a final furious, hateful assault that left Aldern’s head nearly severed, and his entrails strewn all over the filthy room. The murderer was destroyed. As Iesha finished tearing Aldern’s remains apart, she let out a chilling shriek and, her vengeance fulfilled, collapsed into a heap, restful at long last.

A closer inspection of the collection on the table showed that the items carefully placed were those that had been stolen from Echo over the past week or so, mundane things like used potion bottles, scraps of paper, a clump of hair harvested from a hairbrush. The only thing on the desk that were not taken from Echo was a stack of charcoal drawings on water-damaged parchment, depicting her in various erotic poses. Echo quickly snatched them up and put them away before everyone could get a thorough look, but a brief look was enough.

The portrait leaning against the table’s far side is of Iesha, but Aldern has used his own waning artistic skills in a clumsy attempt to repaint the portrait with blood and bits of runny rotten flesh into a caricature of Echo.

Mixed in with these drawings was a letter written in a graceful hand:

Aldern, You have served us quite well. The delivery you harvested from the caverns far exceeds what I had hoped for. You may consider your debt to the Brothers paid in full. Yet I still have need of you, and when you awaken from your death, you should find your mind clear and able to understand this task more than in the state you lie in as I write this.

 You shall remember the workings of the Sihedron ritual, I trust. You seemed quite lucid at the time, but if you find after your rebirth that you have forgotten, return to your townhouse in Magnimar. My agents shall contact you there soon–no need for you to bother the Brothers further. I will provide the list of proper victims for the Sihedron ritual in two days’ time. Commit that list to memory and then destroy it before you begin your work. The ones I have selected must be marked before they die; otherwise they do my master no good and the greed in their souls will go to waste.

If others get in your way, you may do with them as you please. Eat them, savage them, or turn them into pawns–it matters not to me.

                            — Xanesha, Mistress of the Seven

On Aldern’s body, the party discovered the following:

+1 Keen War Razor
Ring of Jumping
Ring of the Savage Beast
Stalker’s Mask
Hourglass of Last Chances
Stone Salve
extravagant noble’s outfit
cameo containing Echo’s portrait
large iron key
small iron key

The party inspected the fungus closer, and discovered a chime of opening (5 charges). The fungus comprises the remains of Vorel Foxglove–after his wife disrupted the ritual he was performing to become a lich, the necromantic energy lashed back and destroyed his physical body, transforming it into the embodiment of contagion and corruption that grows on the wall here. The fungus burns readily, but regenerates over time. Echo cast consecration, which seemed to help in slowing the regeneration, but a permanent solution is beyond the party’s abilities at this time. Possibly higher-level spells or completion of some special quest can banish Vorel’s manifestation forever.

The shattered box on the ground is the remains of Vorel’s incomplete and ruined lich phylactery, and is the same box as the one depicted in the stained glass windows throughout the upper floors of the manor.

The party then backtracked and explored areas of the manor that were missed on the way down.

The party discovered a side cavern strewn with half-eaten carcasses reeking of rotten meat. Among the carcasses was an adamantine longsword and a hat of disguise. Knowledge (local) reveals this to be the body of a notorious one-armed bandit named Shaz “Redshiv” Bilger, suspected of organizing the robbery of nearly two dozen merchant convoys along the Lost Coast Road over the past decade. Proof of his demise presented to the law at Magnimar is worth a significant gold reward.

In the basement above the natural cavern was some sort of arcane workshop, although it now lay in ruin. A row of soggy books sat on the northern end of a workbench along the western wall. At the other end of the workbench, what looked like three iron birdcages sat, each containing a dead, diseased rat. To the east, two stained-glass windows loomed.

The northern window depicted a thin man with gaunt features drinking a foul-looking brew of green fluid.

The southern window showed the same man, but in an advanced state of decay, as if he had been dead for several weeks. His arms raised and head thrown back in triumph, his rotting body turns to smoke and spirals into a seven-sided box matching the puzzle box found in Aldern’s room.

A wine cellar contained two wine racks, their shelves empty and dusty, with mounds of broken bottles cluttering the floor. A hinged and hidden compartment in the back wall hid a nook containing eight fine vintages of wine from the famed Vigardeis vineyard in distant Cheliax, each bottle worth 100gp.

A kitchen contained a large oaken table, its surface covered with moldy stains and rat droppings. Shelves lined the walls, and an oversized fireplace dominated the northeast portion of the room. The shelves in the southwest wall were in a much greater state of disarray, with two one-foot wide cracks in the wall near the floor leading south into the earth beyond the basement walls. The cracks lead to short tunnels to a oantry, the home of several rat swarms.

A dining room on the main floor contained a mahogany table surrounded by chairs. Twin fireplaces loomed to the west, while to the east, stained-glass windows obscured what could have been a breathtaking view of the Lost Coast. Each window depicted a monster rising out of smoke pouring from a seven-sided box. From north to south:

A gnarled tree with an enraged face

An immense hook-beaked bird with sky-blue and gold plumage

A winged centaurlike creature with a lion’s lower body and a snarling woman’s upper torso

A deep blue squidlike creature with evil red eyes

It was an unusual design choice to fit the rooms with arguably the best view of the Lost Coast with stained glass windows one cannot see through. This suggests the images are important, possibly constituting a set of clues as to Vorel Foxglove’s motivations and priorities. These stained glass windows commemorate Vorel’s path toward becoming a lich. These windows depict the construction of Vorel’s phylactery, made from body parts harvested from four exceptionally long-lived monsters: a treant, a roc, a sphinx, and a kraken. The runes on the box are necromancy-related, and the monsters seem not to be emerging from the boxes, but rather being drawn in, and their snarling visages express not rage, but rather fear.

Treasure

+1 heavy pick
adamantine greatsword
Chime of opening (5)
hat of disguise

New Treasure System

Each player should be equipped with the equivalent of:

+2 enhancement bonus (or equivalent) on armor
+2 enhancement bonus (or equivalent) on weapon (“+1 ghost touch” is +2 equivalent, as is “+1 keen” and “+1 furious”)
+2 resistances to Fortitude/Reflex/Will (as from a cloak of resistance)
+2 deflection bonus (as from a ring of protection)
+1 natural armor bonus (as from an amulet of natural armor)
+4 bonus to a single stat, or +2 bonus to three stats (as from a headband or belt)

Advancement

The party should be level 7 after completing The Misgivings