(More like he wants a bone to gnaw on. Emma, make a Wisdom(Persuasion) check)

Perception: 9.

Vice lets out a sigh, relieved and somewhat amused as Lancelot works on the bone. "Don't you get a taste for human bones, Lancelot." He hears footsteps running away from the door, and steps out the secret room to see Emma's nowhere to be seen. "Emma?"

((Can they hear baby's cry from here?))  

Juniper’s eyes widen momentarily in response to Lancelot’s behavior. ‘This is why we bury the dead, and I bet the parents pictured in that big family portrait would be horrified at this sight,’ the young druid reflects. ‘But a dog is a dog and a body without a soul is dust.’

“Star!,” she stage-whispers. “More reading. Why would these books be kept in a secret room?”

Juniper exits the little room and studies the letter, carefully detaching the seal to open and read it, lost in her thoughts and oblivious to Vice’s departure. 

 (Only Emma can hear the cries at the moment)

Emma examines the armour, but she fails to see what is keeping the armour together.

Perhaps thin strings or something engulfed by the cobwebs. Emma doesn't devote any more time to this matter. Just an old suit of armour, and there's a baby crying in the next room. 

Following the voice of the crying baby, Emma will enter the room from which she can hear it.

Quote from DandDSince1973 >>

Juniper exits the little room and studies the letter, carefully detaching the seal to open and read it, lost in her thoughts and oblivious to Vice’s departure. 

 (OOC: Very curious what the letter says :)

The sounds of the crying infant come from Emma's left. She stays away from the armour as she moves towards the door that the cries that are coming.

Meanwhile, Juniper begins reading the letter:

Star watches as Emma walks away, briskly ascending the stairs. Why is she in such a hurry, he wonders. He is about to follow her as Juniper calls his attention back to the new room.

Looking in, his eyes immediately focus on the skeleton. Star makes a noise of inquisitiveness. "Hmmm. I wonder what his story was. And how it came to such a tragic end." 

As Juniper opens out the letter and begins to read, Star notices the emblem on the seal. "I know that sign," he exclaims. "The same one was on the letter I was handed in Secomber. It is the sign of the Burgomaster of Barovia. Killian... In-deerovick?" He says the name extremely uncertainly. He's sure he hasn't remembered it correctly, but the names here are strange. It is like they don't mean anything at all, just sounds. You may as well grunt, or hoot.

A divet of concern appears between the young elf’s eyebrows on a first reading of the letter, and a grimace forms as she shares the contents with the others. “I can’t stand that word, ‘bastard,’ as if a newborn baby has done anything at all to deserve such contempt,” she says, reflecting that in some noble households she’s visited, the term completely lacks this undertone. However, the letter, combined with the carefully painted look of disdain from the woman who the child would know as its mother, was enough to show that this baby would grow up deeply stained by whatever had brought its parents together. One of them married to someone else.

After hearing what Star has to say, she hands him the letter, remarking with flat sarcasm, “Strahd von Zarovich. Nice guy, I’m sure.” She looks again at the secret room. Is it locked? Are the skeleton’s clothes marred or burned? Is there any sign of a struggle? Was the skeleton male or female? Is the sigil on the letter reproduced on livery or a pin or buckle on its clothing, such that one might construe the skeleton to have been a messenger? Investigation 9 

Emma tries to open the door, and if it opens, she walks into the room, searching for the crying baby.

Star reads the letter with growing unease. "Really?" he responds to Juniper. "I think he sounds terrible." Perhaps Juniper has not met many nice people in her life, and this Strahd is somehow one of the better ones. Hopefully this group will be a nice change for her.

He pulls his own letter from his pack, and rereads the name inside, before holding up the seals against each other. "Kolyan," he repeats to himself, "Kolyan Indirovich. These seals are certainly the same. Is it one man with two names? Or has one man stolen a name that is not his? Interesting." He gaze shifts to the skeleton as Juniper investigates it. "This must be the servant in the letter, yes? The owner of the house?"

Juniper answers Star’s questions.

Re: “Really? I think he sounds terrible.”

Juniper turns to scoff at the tabaxi’s joke, but one glance shows that he’s serious. “Um,” she begins, “I was being sarcastic.” Then one eyebrow dips and she looks doubtfully at him. “You… do know what sarcasm is, don’t you? Or, um, irony?” Like the irony of a bard unable to hear sarcasm or irony?

Re: “This must be the servant in the letter, yes? The owner of the house?”

Juniper’s dark eyes fall as she listens and thinks. “Well, yeah, the father in the portrait seems to be the person that this Strahd wrote the letter to. But. I mean, the kids we met said their parents were downstairs. Plural. So if they were right, then daddy is alive and well, not a dusty skeleton. So has the father even seen this letter?”

As Vice turns back from the empty, he catches the tail end of the conversation. He breathes a laugh at Juniper’s reaction to Star’s comment. “He just doesn’t think you’re the sarcastic type. I mean, I know I don’t.”

He turns to Star, more serious, knowing Star was at the door when he heard the footsteps going away. “Emma’s gone. Do you know where she went?”

Vice takes the letter and reads it, his brow furrows deeper as he scans the lines. Finally he finishes with an exhale. “I knew there’s something going on. That’s what the children heard from the basement, the monster. They’re the screams from their victims.” He points to the line where it says however many visitors you have tortured in your dungeon. “We need to leave. It’s not safe in here.” He whispers urgently.

Juniper looks flatly at Vice as he explains his theory about Star’s reply, ready to deliver a cutting reply about being pigeonholed by near-strangers, but when her gaze falls on the half-elf’s gray eyes she swallows her words and changes course. “Okay, sure that’s… probably what happened,” she answers, smiling weakly. “Star, is that what you meant?”

In answer to Vice’s interpretation of the words about a dungeon, her brow rises high and she nods vigorously. “Yes. And what about where he writes about a sacrificial altar?? What exactly is going on downstairs?,” she hisses, still unwilling to speak in a regular voice due to the overall creepiness of the place. But when Vice suggests they leave, she responds, “Yes, but, we need to find a way out first.”

Ah yes, sarcasm. Saying one thing while meaning the opposite. Star was familiar, but it was so seldom used by his people that he had almost forgotten. Life could be hard enough without hiding your meaning. Irony he was much more familiar with - when a character in one of his stories was unaware of their situation and the audience waited for them to discover it. He wasn't sure what the relevance was here though.

Something strange happens in the look between Juniper and Vice, and Star feels that perhaps now is not the time for a lengthy explanation, so to Juniper he simply responds "I... yes?", as much a question as an answer.

In answer to Vice's question he responds "Emma went up the stairs. Perhaps the books did not interest her. I agree about the basement, perhaps there are people there we can rescue!" He seems excited at the prospect. "We should get Emma and Kal and investigate."

"Strahd," Kal says.  "I've heard that name.  Before the wolves showed up and you guys saved me, a few hours earlier, a man appeared out of the fog and asked if I was a friend of Strahd. He thought I might be a trick of Strahd's, trying to confuse him.  And warned me that Strahd has minions everywhere."

Kal thinks back for a moment, trying to remember the rest of the encounter.  "He said if I was ever in need of help, to search for Vladmir Horngaard at Argynvostholt."

Vice looks between Star and Juniper, feeling like he needs to explain. "I just meant you're very nice, you know. Not the sarcastic type." That somehow made it worse. Vice winces when Juniper's bright eyes turn to him, he smiles a little embarrassed, and returns reading the letter. "Not as nice as this Strahd." He mumbles. 

After listening to Kal's encounter with the stranger, the furrow between his brows deepens. How do the werewolves and the Dursts and the Vistani all play into this? "I don't know if there are others, but we have to help the children get out of here." Vice says, "Let's go get Walter then decide what to do."

Quote from WhiteByakko >>

"Not as nice as this Strahd." He mumbles. 

 Star smiles, and points a clawed finger at Vice. "Sarcasm," he says happily. "Yes, let us get the baby. Perhaps Emma already has him. She acts very strangely, even for a human. She is startled easily, like a small deer that hides in the undergrowth."

Juniper investigates the secret room, but is not able to determine much of anything from its contents. Although, she does see that the chest is unlocked. It might contain something that could be of use. However, it would also be theft to take anything that lied within.

@Emma(FireCat5)

Just as Emma reaches for the door, you pause, craning your ear. The wailing of a newborn echoes throughout the suite. A young woman tries to quiet the child, poorly singing a lullaby. Gently, she teases open the door, finding no one inside. Instead, the cries come from behind a thin door to your right. "Hush little baby," the woman sings, "don't say a word. Mama's gonna buy you a Blinsky toy... And if that toy don't work... Walter, stop crying. Please, stop crying. Morninglord's light, please just stop crying."

When Emma steps into the room she cobwebs everywhere in this room: along the windows, between the the posts of the bed, stretched across the wardrobe. Even the mirror set into the wall is draped in the eerie silk. Gloomy, dust-choked air haunts this place like a distant memory. Walter's wails come from behind a door to her immediate right.