So much noise! Smashing and shouting. Star has to briefly fold his ears flat, turning them back up in time to hear Emma's question. 

"No, I... This house is trying to tell us a story, about what happened here. And we are not listening. I think if we listen, and uncover the truth of this place, we will be able to go free. What is it we know?"

He strums his claws on the tabletop. "A man died here, in the hidden room. A woman died here, the maid, and her remains were hidden away. Perhaps one, perhaps all three children died here, though the two outside seemed more real than the spirit of the nursemaid. Perhaps they were not spirits, something else. There was a mother, and a father. We have seen no sign of them yet. There is a basement. Perhaps they are still down there. I believe all turns on the basement. We must find it."

He turns the iron key in the fingers. "And there is this key from the desk on the top floor. Only we have not found any locked..." He suddenly opens his eyes wide and dashes from the room. Sprinting up the stairs, past Kal, past the fallen armour, he goes from bottom to top and arrives at the padlocked door. He tries the key.

Emma inspects the window and sees that it is solid.

Star sprints back up the stairs to the third floor. Without stopping, he continues past the suit of armour and Kal, making his way to the nursemaid's room. Her spirit does not seem to be around, and there is no sound of a crying infant. The door to the attic is still open, and Star climbs the stairs. Then he quickly makes his way over to the padlocked room. The time Star hears the voice of a small boy from within the room, "Rock! Paper! Scissors! Shoot!"

As Star tries the key inside the padlock, it clinks noisily around the bare attic hall. Then the key turns, the padlock opens and clatters to the ground. Star then pushes the door open.

The boy's voice is hushed as the door opens, and Star finds a room strangled by the gloom. The only source of light is the warm glow from the fireplace, but it fails to cast out all the shadows. In the room,  Star finds two child-sized beds, a toy chest, and a dollhouse. The dollhouse is a perfect replica of the manor. The only window in this room is bricked up.

Then, in the middle of the room, Star spots a gruesome sight—two small skeletons dressed in tattered but familiar clothing. The smaller of the two skeletons cradles a doll as if it alone could've changed the future.

The young druid’s posture softens when Emma speaks.

Hold it together, Juniper.

“No, Emma. We’ll find a way out. It’s a puzzle, but we have smart people here.”

Keep saying it and maybe you’ll believe it too.

“Can we work together to look for hidden doors like the one upstairs? Maybe there’s another way out. Or maybe there really is a basement with another way out.”

Juniper starts searching the dining room walls just as Star bounds out the door and up the steps. 

So much for strength in numbers.

Juniper’s outburst seems to break Vice’s own anger and frustration as while. He lets his hands drop, shaking his head. “No… It’s fine. The house is getting to us, it seems like.” The corner of his lips twists wryly.

But no, he can’t give up. He looks up to where Star disappeared, wondering what the tabaxi had thought of. “I’m going to check it out.” He says, turning and heading upstairs. He pays extra attention when he reaches the second floor landing, cautious about the armor coming to life again.

Juniper abandons the idea of staying together and follows on Vice’s heels up to Star’s new discovery.

”Oh. Oh, no,” she says sadly when she sees the children’s’ bodies.

Shaking her head woefully, her eyes fall upon the dollhouse. Setting her jaw, she kneels before it and studies it carefully. Are there any rooms or doors represented in the dollhouse which we have not yet discovered in the full-sized house?

"So, they were spirits..." Star whispers. "I am no healer, but perhaps I can see how they died."

He kneels down next to them and, being as careful as possible, tries to ascertain what killed them.

Medicine?: 20

((Haha he really isn't a healer.))

As Juniper examines the doll house, a sudden chill is felt up her spine. Two children appear on a nearby bed. They are dressed the same as the children that were met outside the house and the skeletons in the room. They are Rose and Thorn. Cradling her little brother, Rose scowls and asks, "Are you here to play with us?"

What is different about the children from when they were met previously is that they are now transparent, like the nursemaid.

Juniper’s eyes remained focused on the dollhouse, until she has an answer to her question: are there any rooms modeled therein which the party has not yet discovered in real life?

”If you like, little ones. But maybe you should stay in bed and rest. You look unwell. Your complexions are so very pale compared to when we saw you outside yesterday.”

“Okay…” Vice lets out a sigh as he takes in the sight of the two small skeletons of children. He should have expected this, but seeing the tragic evidence before him is a different experience. As the children's spirits appear before them, Vice takes a deep breath and tries to be friendly to them. He crouches down and puts his hands on his knees before the spirits, his face solemn.

"We're looking for a way out.“ The half-elf says in a gentle voice, hoping to comfort the lost souls. He points towards the dollhouse, his grey eyes flicking back and forth between the children's spirits and the miniature abode. “Are your parents in the house? Can you show us where they are?"

Rose frowns at Juniper's suggestion that they look pale, "I'm not sure what you mean."

Then Thorn points at the two skeletons, "Look!"

Rose turns to look at where Thorn is pointing, "Oh, yeah. We died." Rose sounds saddened, but not too surprised. Then when Vice asks about their parents, Rose gets up from the bed leaving Thorn by himself. She walks over to the doll house and points out a secret door that leads to a spiral staircase. The secret door is in the attic in a room that looks like it is used for storage.

"They are in the basement dealing with a monster. That's the way down to the basement. They would lock us in this room for our protection."

Left alone downstairs, Emma will shortly follow after the others. "Pelor's light!" She exclaims once she sees the skeletons and the ghosts. By this point, she's not as startled by the sight as she would have been before, but still, more than, so it seems, anyone else in the room. "But... bones." She points out once she's calmed down. "It must have been a very long time ago. I don't think the parents are there... anymore." Then, with a somewhat eased tone, she adds: "Not the monster, either. Right? Even if the house fixes itself and creates food on its own, it takes a very long time for... for the flesh to..." Emma doesn't finish that sentence, the sickening thought makes her want to puke. "Nothing could live here for that long."

Vice’s brows furrowed in thought, he kneels down in front of the dollhouse and trailing the secret stairway Rose pointed out, following it with his finger down to the basement. "Not alive, but..." He murmurs, his voice trailing off as he considers what he's seeing. “What if the parents’ spirits are haunting the house, and they are not letting us leave?”

Seeing Emma is already distraught, he doesn’t want to share the disturbing thought with her. So instead he whispers to Juniper, his face hard, the gravity of the situation is weighing heavily on him. “I think the parents may have locked children in here to starve. For some reason, they never made it out the basement.”

Rose turns away from the doll house to Juniper and Vice, "We were so very hungry, but no one came when we cried. Then the hunger went away, and we grew very cold and went to sleep. Our nanny was supposed to come check on us if we were ever locked away for too long. But our brother, wasn't with us.

Oh, please! You must find out what happened to our brother Walter. We were locked up here, but Walter was crying. I don't know why he was taken or who took him. I worry that he might be in danger."

“Thank you Rose,” Juniper says, her tone a mixture of wariness and sympathy, sitting on her calves before the dollhouse.

“But Rose, so sweet and strong, Rose. We saw you yesterday, outside. Do you remember? Was that actually you? Or someone else wearing your appearance as a cloak?

“We have already checked on Walter. I don’t know if what we found was… good news or bad. There was no… skeleton in his room…, although, I’m sorry, child, your nursemaid has also passed.

“There has been ghostly crying in the house, as if Walter’s spirit has been cleaved from its vessel, but remains near, unwilling or unable to move on. Like yours and your nursemaid’s.

“I am so sorry.

“Is it possible that the monster left the basement and that Walter… is or was in the creature’s clutches?

“Also, I hesitate to say it, but…is it possible that your parents, that the monster… got them? And that your parents left you locked here despite your cries for help because they were captive in the basement?

“We have not heard or seen their ghosts. If the fate of all the souls who lived here is to… linger, their spirits have escaped that destiny. We should be glad for them if that’s true.

”But they may yet live. And if they do, I hesitate to think of what power on Faerûn would have kept them from freeing you from certain death in a locked room, poor brave children.”

Rose and Thorn listens quietly to Juniper's explanation of events. It doesn't seem like they are fully grasping everything that is being said. Finally once Juniper has finished, Rose speaks up.

"I don't remember meeting you before."

The words seem to hang in the air for a moment.

"No, me," adds Thorn as he interrupts the silence.

"But we still hear the monster in the basement. Please will you go look!"

“The monster can’t hurt you now.” Vice says, his voice low and somber, weighed down by the weight of the scene before him. At least he doesn’t think so. He didn’t believe there was an actual monster in the basement at first, but now the possibility seems more and more likely.

To others, Vice adds more quietly. "We should... we should put the children's bodies to rest, along with the maid, if we can find a way out.”

Kal follows the others after Star when the tabaxi races past him, listening in silence as the children tell the group what happened to them.  "I agree," he says to Vice.  "But first is finding the way out in the first place.  I think the next step is to go down to the basement and see what's there."

He takes a closer look at the dollhouse, looking over the rest of the house to see if he spots any differences between the dollhouse and the actual house they've been exploring.  He then examines the basement to see if he can learn anything, figuring anything they can learn before they go there could be useful if they do find a monster.

Juniper nods when Vice suggests a proper burial for the children. Her eyes well up looking at the little skeletons.

“This needs to end.”

She rises, looking to the others to come with her. Walks toward the secret door to the spiral staircase to the basement and tries to open it.

As the group begins to leave, Rose and Thorn begin sobbing.

"Don't leave us!" cries Rose

"Please!" sobs Thorn

Rose walks up to Juniper as if to hug her whilst Thorn approaches Vice.

@Juniper(DandDSince1973) and @Vice(WhiteByakko)