Jim calls over to Razi, "You know Raz, little Thorn here has just the most amazing toy. He should go inside the house and show you? What do you think? You want him to go inside to you, where it is safe and show you his toy, right?"

He then turns back to Thorn and gives him a little wink.

"Why don't you go on in there and show your toy off to my friends?"

(Persusasion: 20)

sits down and rests a bit 4

"Anyone ask those kids about the sword hanging on the wall?

ooc: I tried to do it from my PC page, didn't seem to work

((I rolled a 5 on my sheet. The short rest wasn't rolling the hit die for some reason.))

Nelyna sighs as she relaxes in front of the fire. She was worried about Caine, but he seems to be feeling better after drinking the spoiled wine. From just outside the room she can hear voices. Curious, she joins Razi and Jim with the children.

"Did I hear someone say they have a toy? I love toys!" Nelyna says, her eyes sparkling. "Why don't you come sit by the fire and show me?"

As Sleet makes another comment about the sword, Nelyna finally asks the question on his behalf. "Does that sword belong to your parents? Could we perhaps borrow it to fight the monster?"

Caine hops up out of the chair he's been dozing in, glances at the wine and thinks about taking it with them.

"Could get a few free meals out of a tavern swapping out wine with that stuff," Caine says but then decides to leave it behind.

He hooks the hand crossbow to his belt and grabs a quiver of bolts. "From the looks of this place, I don't think they'll be missed."

"As weird as these kids are, they're no help at all," Caine says to the others. "Let's try some of the other doors down here first and then head upstairs if we don't find anything."

Caine leaves the 'wolf den' and goes back into the main hall with the stairs and looks at the other doors (there was the entrance, the den, and three others right?).

He whispers a rhyme under his breath, his finger moving between doors, finally he settles on one at random. He walks up to it and listens for any sound on the other side.

Perception: 6   

If he doesn't hear anything he opens the door and takes a look inside.

Razi speaks low to the others so the children near the entrance cannot hear him.  "How could a home have a basement, but the children who live there never see it or know where the passage down exists?"

He gets up from his chair, stetches, and reactivates light on his hammer.  "When you all are ready I think we should sweep this home and see what is really going on.  I have a terrible feeling that there is a dark secret lurking before us."

He follows Caine as he begins to search.

"Just a moment," Jim replies to Caine.

Then Jim looks at both children meet their eyes and smiles warmly.

"Too scared to enter your own home, are you? Even with us here to protect you? You see I think something serious happened here. Probably something that you both are too young to understand."

He pauses for a moment.

"However, I have spent a lot of time reading about magic. So I know a thing or two about the occult."

Jim then stands up, and before Thorn can even react, Jim picks him up and carries him into the house.

Nelyna covers her mouth in surprise as Jim picks up the little boy and brings him into the house. Oh, she has such a bad feeling about all of this. While Caine and Razi examine one of the other doors, she approaches the little girl, Rose.

"It's ok, sweetie," she says, cooing almost. "We won't let anything bad happen to you. Come inside where we can protect you. Please." She reaches out to take Rose's hand, gently trying to lead her inside. "What Jim said is true. He knows a lot about magic and so do I. Did you know I can use magic? I promise I'll use my magic to protect you."

Persuasion - 3

((Actually a 7. The dice roller wasn't letting me use -1))

Seeing what's happening at the front door with the children, Razi places a hand on Caine's shoulder to pause him. 

He is torn between his compulsion to protect the children, and the fact that he shares some of Jim's concerns about what his happening here.  However he cannot overrule his protective instincts.  He moves back toward Jim.  If Thorn begins to panic or is otherwise distressed he will try to get Jim to put him back down (diplomatically).

grabs the sword off the wall to get the feel of it and evaluate the balance and feel of it... and then hang it back on the wall

"Are we going to go look for the basement?"

Caine doesn't go any further into the kitchen for now. He looks back at Razi and the commotion by the front door.

"They're old enough to look after themselves," Caine says. "I was working the streets of the Field Ward by the time I was their age."

But he still waits for the others to do what they're doing with the kids.

"Sooner we find their parents and whatever this monster really is, the sooner we can find a decent place to get a drink."

“Oh my.”

Jim falls to his knees, "I knew it."

Caine turns from the kitchen at the scream but the sound of the door slamming and locking causes him more concern.

"What in Faerun was that?" Caine says, walking across the room and testing the door. A cold sweat runs down his back, but he does his best to hide it and ignore what feels like looming shadows in every corner. "All agreed that if we run across those two again we don't touch them?"

He rattles the door again.

Nelyna blinks and almost stumbles backward as Rose disappears before her very eyes. One moment she is reaching out to take the girl's hand, and the next she is gone. What sort of dark magic is going on here? She wonders if they were somehow taken by the monster...or perhaps they never really existed in the first place. A cold feeling settles into her stomach as she considers the possibility that the children were nothing but an illusion, bait to lure them into this house. 

"This is not good at all," she mutters quietly.

Since they are locked in, there doesn't seem to be much left for it but to keep exploring the house until they destroy whatever dark presence has trapped them. Nelyna joins Caine at the kitchen doorway. She peers inside. It seems like an ordinary kitchen. The dumbwaiter catches her attention. Does it lead below? 

Jim looks up at Caine, "The children are dead. I thought they were ghosts at first until Thorn passed me his toy."

He pauses for a moment looking at his surroundings.

"Does this house look like it's lived into you? It's long been abandoned, just like the rest of the houses around here. I don't know what happened here, but there's no chance they were still alive.

Look I grew up on the streets, but one thing I know is that for you to survive, you need to at least be able to pickpocket people and steal. There doesn't seem to be enough people to steal from in this town to survive.

Whatever happened here, the children were too young to realise. They probably don't even remember dying."

He then gets up to his feet.

"Although, I intend to find out just whatever happened to those kids."