The Spice Merchants Of Sel-kai: Part Seven

General Summary

Cherry returns with a comprehensive mental image of the ground floor and with a good idea of the location of Deltar/Aenor's office. Though the companions know that this is the focus of their investigation, they decide that it would be prudent to check the basement first for nasty surprises; the office is guarded by a chain-smoking heavy set and well armed man, moreover, other men occasionally wander the corridors. Not wishing to get trapped and certain that they need escape routes, the party head down into the basement through a locked door.
The air below is dry, cool and somewhat stale. As the noises of the now awakening streets of Sel-kai fade away, Cran and the others are very aware that they are quite alone down below street level and room after room is empty. Everywhere they look they find signs of the rather unpleasant past practices that gave The Shudders its horrible reputation: gruesome operating tables, surgical instruments and manacles fill room after room. The gloomy atmosphere clearly begins to play on everyone's nerves and when the party first hear what sounds like heavy breathing behind a closed door, they are quick to ready weapons and spells, fearing the worst.
What lies beyond the door is deeply unsettling and not at all what they expected. An enormous and grotesquely misshapen man is bent over a table "attending" to an equally deformed woman. Reacting to the light of Sylke's spell, the clearly blind creature lumbers towards the door making totally incomprehensible sounds. Cran hurls a bolas at the creature and then slams the door shut. With mere seconds before the thing gets to them, Cran wedges the door and Cherry deftly locks it, sealing the thing in.
Reluctant to face the colossus, the party retreat and, after locking a second door to secure the creature, they move on.
A large room in the centre of the basement, badly damaged by fire seems to have been witness to the suicide of three young children based on the skeletal remains and the way the doors were wedged from inside. More disturbingly a number of the bones seem to have been engraved with minuscule writing.
Cells that once held some of The Shudder's most dangerous inhabitants are empty but the party find a crude "ledger" that indicates that 6 of the 8 cells perhaps held inmates shortly before the asylum was mysteriously abandoned. Next to the names of the inmates are a number of odd symbols, some form of "code" perhaps to indicate the status of the cell's "guests"?
As the party near the western portion of the basement's rooms, Ugnan catches a glimpse of a tiny ice-blue figure at the far end of one of the wider corridors but try as the others might they fail to find any sign of Ugnan's creature. Muttering and clearly beginning to succumb to the atmosphere in the basement, Cran tightens his grip on his battleaxe, violence is probably imminent.
The discovery of an oddly damp chamber adjacent to what was once an apothecary's work room does nothing for the hulking warrior's nerves and even the stoic Ugnan is now beginning to look "frayed". As the party move through an abandoned library, a number of them hear a muffled and distant female voice calling faintly for help, "Release me!"
Following the sound of the tiny voice, the party return to the damp chamber and investigate the 6 lead urns that sit in a corner of the room. Sealed with wax, the six urns are numbered 1 through 6. Consulting the guard's ledger, only inmate 2 was female and with that precious piece of information, Cran gingerly opens the urn simply labeled "2".
There is no rush of … anything but, liquid can be felt sloshing around inside and there is the tell-tale "clink" of an object. Cran carefully pors the liquid into a copper bowl as the others retreat to the edges of the room. A small blue gem falls into the bowl and as the party watch a tiny water elemental begins to form. Guessing that she is trapped by the gem, Cran cracks open the elemental's prison and "Lyssa" is released.
The water spirit is grateful and seems to want to thank her rescuers; she says that she was trapped in a macabre ritual many years ago and had been used to both keep the water fresh and disease free in the asylum as well as to provide limited oracular visions. When asked, she tells the party that more of her "kind" were experimented with but none could be bound and captured as she was; she confesses that she was "weak" and became far too involved with the young girl who was imprisoned in cell 2 and then later tortured and killed by the asylum's "surgeon". When the odd bones with their tiny engravings are shown to her, she is able to confirm Sylke's suspicions that they have been marked and engraved quite deliberately by a supernatural agent. The writings repeat over and over again, "I belong to Queen Mab, I belong to Queen Mab"

Report Date

16 Jun 2018

Primary Location

Sel-kai