Situation Report Seven

General Summary

As dawn rises over The Shudders, we listen at the Southern door in our hidey-hole and hear nothing. Cherry successfully picks the lock and we discover another stairway heading down. We enter a basement and sneak south where, behind a closed door, we hear some strange heavy breathing and sounds of wood thumping and scraping. The door leads to a short corridor where we find a gruesome operating room behind a north door. The room to the south opens into a similar place, but one that contains the breather – a decaying massive lunk who seemed to be operating on a similar looking corpse. The hulk lumbers towards me. My bolas attempt fails to entangle it and I slam the door closed. Back and shoulders burning, I just manage to hold the door firm while the lumbering travesty pulls against it. The thing stops for a few seconds, which provides enough time for Cherry to lock the door. By Charon, what happened in this place?
A Western room contains a burned and scorched remains, the floor is covered in bone fragments from a few skeletons, ash and blackened timbers. Motes of soot hang in the still air. While scouring the ash pile we notice that the four skeletons are those of children; Sylke spots a thigh bone with regular marks (writing?) on it and we take it to examine more closely later.
As we enter a wider passage, Ugnan spots a tiny 1/2 ft. tall blue creature peek around a corner at us, turn about and run off, hand clutching a metallic object. I chase it around a couple of corners, bravely followed by Sylke, but the corridor stops at a dead-end, with a few doors leading off. Where has that damned thing gone?
We give up, backtrack to a locked door, which Cherry successfully unlocks. Behind it is a smashed up prison area – we search it. During the search, Sharna gets spooked by the blue-tinged miniature thing and we opt to lock ourselves in the prison while we search it. Aside from a hole dug into the stone and rock of the floor, excavated tragically with a worn-down spoon, we find nothing except for some nicely decorated antique playing cards, which we pocket. A ledger on the table contains eight entries referencing the eight cells.
Further down the corridor we come across a little apothecary room stocked with some old poison and herb stocks, which Ugnan gleefully stores for later. We also discover a very fine set of apothecary scales; Ugnan carefully wraps and stores the set in his pack, protected with cloth.
The next room contains an empty coffin on a table and feels very damp. Six urns sit on a table, individually numbered. A set of tarnished, but high-quality, surgical implements are discovered, together with its own tool-roll; Ugnan takes these too. I wonder if he can do brain-work yet with all this medical stuff?
Back to the Northern passage we find an old library, although discover nothing of interest. Ugnan hears a faint woman's voice plead, "me, me". When I dash out into the corridor to take a look that slippery blue bastard isn't anywhere to be seen.
Entering the final door up the Northern passage reveals an empty room, which leads, through a door to the East to a larger room with wide stairs up to the ground floor. We all hear a young female voice now saying, "don't forget me, don't forget me". It is coming from the damp room. We head back to it and Sylke scours the ledger and finds a single female name: 'Lyssa 13, red square, red triangle, red circle, numbered two'. I heft Urn Two, discover it is made of lead, and scrape the wax off to un-stopper it. As I move to open the Urn, it faintly moves. Sylke realizes that lead is used to disguise magic or fey creatures. As I put the urn carefully down, Ugnan notices that the water dripping onto the floor crudely spell the words, 'help me'. I pick up and empty the contents of the Urn into a bowl. Pure water splashes out of the Urn, together with a fist-sized sapphire. The water coallesces into a tiny little feminine human form composed of the water, standing on the sapphire and reaching out with open arms! Cherry has a brain-wave and reaches out to pick up the tiny little water elemental, suggesting that Cran smashes the blue sapphire. Cran does this and the tiny water creature is freed from the power of the sapphire and can finally speak with us.
Lyssa relays a tragic story of confinement, having been captured decades ago by the evil practitioners in this dark place, while she went to assist one of the poor dead children down here. Poor mite. She also demonstrates her ability to act as a telepathic conduit that enables us to converse at range. Now that could be handy.
Lyssa is able to read the tiny writing on the bone Ugnan kept and it says, 'Bone property of Queen Mab', (over and over). Sylke recognizes that Mab is The Queen of The Winter Court of the fey.
Hmm, this world is complicated!

Report Date

15 Jun 2018

Primary Location

Sel-kai