The party’s own record of our second night in the house — the fight, the ghosts, the children, and the first steps into the basement. Use it to fill the gaps in whatever you scribbled down yourself.
The clock
We restarted the night at 7:00 PM with five hours to midnight. We spent an hour forging armour, ten minutes on a healer’s kit, half an hour on chain mail and torches, and the rest exploring. By the time we stopped, deep in the basement, one hour and fifteen minutes remained.
Second floor — the last door
- The one unopened door on the study floor hid plain servants’ quarters: two straw beds, two empty footlockers, two chairs. Lily knew the look of it at once — she’s known people in service. The closet next door held nothing but maid outfits. (The pockets are there.)
- While we were there, Drew got us all comparing the keepsakes that dragged us here: her amber pendant (“supposed to unlock huge secrets of the world”), Fëanor’s star-stone (“only sentimental value”), Lily’s wolf tooth (“cures that which cannot otherwise be mended” — though Granny Effie said a lot of things), Sirius’s raven feather (“for good”). Worth noting: Sirius couldn’t actually remember how he got here — Drew suspects the vinegar-wine he drank and is keeping notes on his memory.
- We then spent an hour turning the four suits of decorative armour into two sets of scale mail — an all-hands job, cobbler’s tools and all. Sirius and Osric armoured up.
The landing fight — animated armour
Going up to the next floor, a suit of armour lurched off the wall and shoved Sirius clean over the banister — he dropped a floor, bruised but alive. Then it was a proper scrap:
- Drew greased the landing; the armour went down hard. (“That’s grease, buddy.”)
- Lily sprinted down and hauled Sirius to his feet.
- Fëanor hurled three bolts of force — “gluten-free and hypoallergenic” — and put the first dent in it.
- Sirius leapt the gap back up to the landing in one bound, sword in hand.
- Osric shoved it flat with his bare hands, then hit it with a natural 20 for a thunderous 21 damage. Where did he learn to hit like that? “I’ve been a knight for a couple of weeks now.”
- Lily finished it: slipped in behind Osric, drove her piercing awl into it on another natural 20 with sneak attack — 18 damage — and “the magic infusing the armour collapsed.” The helmet was empty. Nothing was ever inside.
- From the wreck we later salvaged a set of chain mail (half an hour’s work).
Third floor
- Master bedroom: four-poster bed, tiger-skin rug, another portrait of Gustav and Elisabeth Durst — and everything emptied. Not ransacked; just time. The grand filigree jewellery box, built for far more, held only three plain gold rings and a platinum necklace with a topaz pendant. We took them — though Lily warned, very specifically, that selling things found in noble estates “ends very badly.” Drew intends to ask her how she knows.
- Bathroom: claw-footed tub (empty, mercifully), stove, kettle, and running water from a spigot. Fancy.
- Storage cupboard: Drew turned a thick-shafted broom into a club for herself and the linens into a healer’s kit (5 charges).
- The mirror bedroom: Lancelot would not stop barking at the full-length mirror. Most of us saw only that our reflections looked… off. Lily saw the second face on the other side of the glass — and it snapped round to look at her.
The maid in the mirror
Out of the mirror stepped a ghost maid — polite, apologetic about the dust, and entirely unaware she was dead. She told us the “young master” rests in the suite nearby — the unwanted baby from the portrait, “not wanted, but loved… you could not love a child more.” Asked the year, she gave one in a reckoning none of us know — no Dale Reckoning here. When Drew gently passed the broom handle through her to break the news, she fled shrieking through the wall — but in her panic she grabbed at a hidden door, and gave it away.
The nursery
A crib under a hanging black shroud. Inside, a tightly wrapped, baby-sized bundle — still and silent. Sirius steeled himself and checked: empty swaddling cloth, centuries old. No bones. Whatever was once wrapped there is gone. The balcony beyond showed only garden and the unbroken wall of mist.
Behind the north door: stairs up — and the back side of the boarded-up door.
The attic
- The iron key from the study fit the locked attic door. Inside, a children’s room: toys, a dollhouse, two small beds — and in the beds, small bones.
- The children appeared. Rosavalda — “Rose” — and Thornboldt — “Thorn” — Durst. Rose, fierce and protective of her little brother, told us plainly: “I know what we are. We were locked in here. It got very hungry. And then we were no longer hungry.”
- What else she told us: the monster in the basement is their family’s doing — their mother brought “bad sorts” into the house who “did magics.” The baby is their half-brother. Their mother spoke of “using him” — something about innocence and sacrifice — and took him down to the basement. They screamed. It didn’t matter.
- Rose’s request: “Bury our bones. Set us free.” Drew wrapped the boy’s bones with a toy soldier and the girl’s with a doll, in separate bundles, now on her belt. Rose’s parting words, on the subject of Thorn’s bones: “If you hurt him, I will haunt you till your dying days.” Fair.
- The dollhouse is a perfect replica of this house — with the secret doors and passages clearly labelled. Sirius spotted it (“posh people stuff”); Drew and Fëanor copied out a map. The void we’d noticed in the floor plans is a hidden spiral staircase running top to bottom.
- In the attic servant’s room we found a skeleton in a maid’s outfit — and the ghost maid returned, lucid now: “You’re right. I’m dead.” She confirmed the mistress took the baby below, that she was never allowed in the basement, and that — in her own words — “honestly, it’s a cult.” The master, she thought, was reluctant; it was mostly the mistress. She asked us to take her bones too (to be buried a polite distance from the children). Three bundles on Drew’s belt now.
- A spare guest bedroom stood made up and never used.
Down the secret stair — the basement
Before descending: Osric donned the chain mail and passed his scale mail to Fëanor; the leather went to Drew; ten torches were made; and Sirius wreathed himself in Protection from Evil and Good — a golden shimmer, and spectral raven wings at his back.
The spiral stair ends in a dark, narrow earthen tunnel, branching east and west. And from the west, unmistakably: the sound of a baby crying. Sirius’s assessment — “obvious screaming baby trap, I’ve read this novel” — carried the vote, and we explored the other way first:
- Cult quarters: a table, four chairs, four alcoves with moldy straw bedding. Somebody slept down here. Several somebodies.
- The well room: a stone-lipped well over a water-filled cistern, bucket and pulley, and five better-appointed alcoves, each with a small chest:
- 11 gold, 60 silver
- Three moss agates
- A black leather eyepatch with a carnelian sewn into it, and a grimy notebook — a journal of named people, their descriptions, and experiments performed on them. Every entry: “unsuccessful.” One had tried to “sever religious connection with ritual.” Failure. One — a rogue — “cut off legs, didn’t work.”
- An ivory hairbrush with silver bristles
- A silvered short sword — Fëanor finally got rid of the enormous windmill longsword (Sirius carries it now) and the silvered blade went to the front line.
- Fëanor threw the notebook down the well. Sploosh. The bourgeois keep no records in our party.
The baby is still crying in the dark, to the west.
Where we stand
- The clock: 1 hour and 15 minutes to midnight. We are in the basement well room.
- Armour: Sirius — scale mail; Osric — chain mail; Fëanor — scale mail; Drew — leather. (Lily trusts her own quickness.)
- Gathered this session: chain mail, 2× scale mail, a club (Drew), healer’s kit with 5 charges (Drew), 10 torches, 3 gold rings, a platinum necklace with topaz pendant, 11 gp + 60 sp, 3 moss agates, a carnelian eyepatch, an ivory hairbrush, a silvered short sword, a map of the house’s secret passages — and three bundles of bones we have promised to bury: Thorn, Rose, and the maid.
- The argument we haven’t settled: the verse says bring the beast a gift. Sirius’s vows say a paladin doesn’t parley with demons “except through steel and righteous fury.” Fëanor suggested the necklace. Lily pointed out what the last “gift” was: a young innocent. The dog is not on the table. (Drew has been clear about her priorities: “I’d rather sacrifice a baby than the dog.”)
Questions on our minds
- What is crying in the western passage? It cannot be a baby. Can it?
- What gift could soothe the beast — and will Sirius allow us to offer one at all?
- What were the cult’s “unsuccessful” experiments for? What were they trying to sever?
- Who emptied this house of its valuables, so neatly, leaving everything ordered?
- Where is the baby — and what did the mistress do with him in the basement?
- Will burying the bones truly free Rose, Thorn, and the maid — and can we even leave the grounds to do it?
- Was throwing the only written record of the cult down a well… wise?