GIles fastens the strap back holding his crossbow, instead he reaches into his pouch and pulls out his coin, holding it in his hand, praying for guidance.  “Dear Lady, let me see through this damnable mist, find my companions, and get the hell away from danger!”  He pauses for a second when he hears the voice.  “Jhon?”  He tries to go toward the sounds of Burr and Soren, and where he heard Jhon’s voice.  

Perception (with guidance) : 20 + 1 

Burr, Soren, Giles:

Burr and Giles each begin walking cautiously through the mists, toward the direction each thought they heard Jhon's voice.  Visibility is near zero.  There are still the sounds of movement around, though muffled, almost ghostly: padded feet; panting; the occasional growl.

Then, all three feel the ground lurch.  It is akin to stepping into a canoe and nearly falling over the side.

Just like that, the fog begins to dissipate around Burr and Giles.  Almost immediately a shape drifts into focus... Soren, shield raised high, eyes alert.  Burr and Giles spot each other as well, approaching Soren from opposite directions.  Just a few strides more and you are all together again.

As quickly as it came, the mists disperse.  Visibility stretches to 30'... then to 50'... soon there is little more than whisps along the ground and enough clinging in the air to obscure visibility past 200'.  As the fog clears, the air becomes breathable again.  Though not quite sweet.  There is something different.  Gone is the scent of fresh-tilled earth.  It is replaced with a musty odor of decay, like the leaf litter of an old forest.  And that's not all that has changed.

Looking around, there is no sign of the barn.  Or the farmhouse.  You are standing in a road - more than a simple trail but one that looks to receive only occasional wagon traffic by look of the ruts and washouts.  You're in a forest.  It still looks about like late afternoon, but the thick cloudcover overhead makes it difficult to say for sure.  The air isn't quite as chilly as before.

At first, there is no sign of Zefla or Jhon.  Then Giles spots Zefla.  She looks asleep - or dead - and is nestled in the crook of a small, ornamental tree, about 4' off the ground.  It is one of a pair of trees that sit beside a path forking off from the road.  It goes around a bend and there is the vague outline of a very large house or manor just visible in the fog.  Hammered into the ground next to Zefla's little tree is a wooden sign.  Someone has carved - 'Haunted: Keep Out'.

Before Soren can say anything about it, Burr sees the grisly artifact on the ground at Soren's feet.  In the middle of the road lies the head of Jhon the squire; eyes closed as if in sleep.  One can only wonder what has become of the rest of him. 

As if to reinforce that thought, a low howl shatters the quiet.  It is followed by another... and then a third.  The last howl lingers long on the air, mournful and sweet but also utterly terrifying.  It sounds as if it is very near.

"His head was cut off," Soren stammers, realizing belatedly how stupid he sounds as he repeats the obvious.  "I did not see what did it.  Something big, perhaps bigger than the werewolves we fought.  And fast.  He never had a chance, the overeager cub.  I... I closed his eyes.  I do not know why."

Soren shakes himself like a dog, as if trying to rid himself of his strange new surroundings.  "We cannot stay here, so close to the site of a kill."

If Giles points out Zefla, he rushes over to try to rouse her gently, reaching out to seemingly distant nature spirits to guide him.

If she does not rouse, Soren tries to identify what is wrong and whether Burr can safely carry her, but his hurrying gets the better of him and he is too distracted by the howling to keep his eyes and hands steady.  Medicine plus Guidance:  8 + 1 = 9

"One direction or another, or into the house better maybe.  I don't know what haunting can be worse than those twisted man-wolves."

Burr didn't hesitate and scooped Zefla up, " Spooks or Wolf-things?"

He began carrying her towards the manor....fairly sure she would smack him round the head if she woke...

Giles hurries along with Soren and Burr to examine Zefla and see the nature of her condition, why she is asleep, unconscious?  He prays quickly to Tymora for guidance to sort it out.  (Medicine check plus guidance :  7 - Nat 1 + 4, 2 from guidance).  Like Soren, Giles can’t really figure it out.  “Let’s just carry her with us until she wakes up.  We’ve started down this path, we must see where it leads… poor Jhon, he should have stuck with us instead of running off on his own.”

As they walk, Burr starts feeling Zefla stir as he carries her.  Her body becoming tight and rigid as she seems to be pulling herself tighter into a ball.  They hear her murmur.. "no..no..no"

She slowly opens one eye halfway and takes a second to realize she is being carried by someone as they walk along a path and the fog is gone.  She pops her eyes open and looks up to see who has her, "Hey now!  Oh, it's you." and she pushes herself out of his arms and lands deftly on her feet.  She stands there, looking around trying to take it all in.  

"Where?  Where are we?  Where is the barn, the farmhouse?  The cursed werewolves?"  and her eyes land on the creepy looking manor while she waits for the others to fill her in.

"From what I sensed, it easily could have been us instead of Jhon," Soren answers Giles.  "Whatever big creature took his head off in the mist..."  Soren still has trouble getting over that.  Not the gruesomeness, but the sheer unnatural waste of projectile decapitation, rare among mammalian predators.

But as he sees Zefla stir and land on her feet, Soren briefly can't help grinning briefly.  Like a cat.

Nevertheless, Soren's voice is somber.  "Somehow, we are somewhere different.  Nowhere near where we were before, I don't think.  The trees are different, the ground, the air.  But the werewolves are still all around - you can hear them.  Something, maybe a big one, killed the overeager pup, sadly.  We cannot stay here in the open.  Not that I like strange man-houses.  It says it is... haunted?  I still think sheltering there may be our best choice."

Continuing to try to reach for Silvanus' Guidance, somehow more distant now, Soren senses for threats and hazards as they approach the manor.  Or even any clues related to current habitation by any type of creatures.  Trying to use sight, sound and scent all together as he has been taught.

Soren Perception plus Guidance:  25 + 4 = 29

The misty woods feel threatening and oppressive as the group slips up the path toward the shrouded manor.  The path at their feet turns to crushed gravel and soon a stately, if disheveled home comes into view.  

It sits on a raised bit of land that would be presumptuous to call itself a hill, but nevertheless keeps it a little higher and dryer than the damp forest floor.  It is a narrow, tall home with four stories, complete with exterior balconies outside some of the upper floors.  Its windows are dark. It has a gated portico on the ground floor, and the rusty gate is slightly ajar.  It looks abandoned.  The home is surrounded by a garden of small trees, similar to the two out by the road, and the garden is in turn surrounded by a stone wall; decorative, only.  It is low enough to step over, were there not an opening where the path winds up to the front door.

The remains of what may have been a small barn or a carriage-house sit adjacent to the garden.  Whatever had once stood there, a handful of charred timbers stand as evidence that a long-ago fire was the end of that building.

Soren:

 Approaching the front door and entering the portico, you find the heavy oak front doors are locked.

Soren stops in his tracks for a moment, certain of it now.  He scowls, his voice sounding strangely hollow.

"I am sure of it.  We have been magically transported.  Nowhere near any location I have ever seen on the Sword Coast from my home in Neverwinter Wood down to Daggerford.  This undernourished beech forest itself tells the tale, as if neither the soil nor the hidden sun allows nature to be robust."

He begins to walk again, spurred by the howls from the forest.  "Silvanus himself feels distant here.  But his grace showed me no immediate threats other than the werewolves out there.  At least not outside this seemingly abandoned house anyway.  Can one of you open the lock?  Or should we knock?"

Burr did not understand the talk of being transported and felt it likely any questions he asked would only lead to more troubling answers.

Burr lifted his maul, " I can knock."

" Damn! My armours still back in the barn!"

" Here I am tramping the woods in naught but me gambeson...."

Giles replies to Soren, “I feel it as well, something is off, something in my bones feels it.  I can’t pick the lock, and it looks too heavy for me to pull open.  I am sorry.  Zefla, are you alright?”  Giles puts on a dour look and holds a hand to pull down her lower eyelid, looking at her sclera as if to look for jaundice or somesuch, still puzzled by why she fell asleep.  

Zefla smacks Giles's hand away before he can touch her and glares at him, "I am just fine, sir.  Please keep your paws to yourself."  She looks around considering Soren's words about the woods.  "Well, what about Sir Rowan and miss fancybritches?  Did they, what did you call it, transport too?"

She looks at the heavy wooden door.  "So we want to break in instead of knock?"  she shrugs, "I'm good with that."  And she pulls out her thieves tools, and works them into the lock..

Sleight of Hand  16

Zefla works on the lock.  It takes perhaps a little longer than she would have liked - probably owing to the age and disrepair of the locks.  Eventually she hears the satisfying click and the doors open.  A fresh chorus of howls erupt from the darkening woods behind you as you slip inside and close the doors.

[The interior of the house is dark.  Most of the rooms have oil lamps in them which can be lit using tinderboxes.  Alternatively, you may use magical means to light your way.]

Passing through the doors you step into a grand foyer.  Hanging on one of the walls  of the foyer is a metal shield emblazoned with a coat-of-arms (a stylized golden windmill on a red field), flanked by framed portraits of stony-faced aristocrats.  A wooden plaque beneath the shield reads, 'Seasons turn, the wind remains.'  Mahogany-framed double doors leading from the foyer to the main hall are set with panes of stained glass, with a similar design as the shield; a windmill on a hill with an orange sunset in the background.

Past the stained-glass doors, a wide hall runs the width of the house, with a black marble fireplace at one end and a sweeping, red marble staircase at the other. Lying on the floor in front of the fireplace is a longsword with a windmill cameo worked into the hilt. Above it, on the wall over the fireplace are a pair of hooks that look like they may have once held the blade as a decoration.  The wood-paneled walls are ornately sculpted with images of vines, flowers, nymphs, and satyrs.  A number of these board have been torn free, revealing the studs behind them.  Its likely these are some of the boards used in nailing shut the front windows.  The decorative paneling follows the staircase as it circles upward to the second floor.

Four closed doors line one side of the hall.  On the other side, an open door leads into a room at the front of the manor.  

This oak-paneled room looks like a hunter’s den.  Mounted above the cold, empty fireplace is a stag’s head, and positioned around the outskirts of the room are three stuffed wolves.  Two padded chairs face the hearth, with an oak table between them supporting a cask of wine, two carved wooden goblets, a pipe rack, and a candelabrum. A chandelier hangs above a cloth-covered table surrounded by four chairs.  Two locked cabinets stand against the walls.  The two front-facing windows have been covered over with panels stripped from the main hall and nailed shut.  In one corner of the room, animal furs are filed as if someone or something had been sleeping there.

The house is silent.

" This is a very nice house."

He headed over to have a look at the pelts.

Soren feels disoriented.  First attacked by werewolves, then transported to some wholly different place, and now inside this strange house... he listens and smells for the sounds or scent of werewolves pursuing just outside the door they entered.  They may have chased us into this den to surround us.

Perception plus Guidance to sense for werewolves approaching the house:  24 + 3 = 27

Only if and when he believes they are safe for the moment, he stares at the windmill emblazoned on the shield, having seen one or two windmills on his journey south to Daggerford, but never having understood the purpose behind their turning.  Shaking himself and looking for something more familiar, his eyes settle on the wood-paneled walls and the sculpted vines, flowers and fey creatures.  Soren smiles.

Feeling more comfortable, and always one who understood the concept of territory but not necessarily property, he continues to wander around, like a cat in a strange habitat.  "Does anyone want that longsword there on the floor?  Looks like it fell off from above the..."

With a start, Soren remembers what fireplaces are built to contain and quickly moves on to the hunter's den before his fear rises up again.

"There are some locked cabinets here.  Zefla, you were so good with the entrance to the house.  Would you like to try your hand at these?"

Soren:

 Burr examines the pelts.  It's a mix of differnt animals, it looks like.  They aren't suitable for clothing, more like throw rugs or something to tuck around wealthy types' shoulders if it gets chilly in the den.  There is nothing hidden under the pile, but looking more closely you are convinced someone bundled this up to make a soft, warm bed for themselves.

Burr thinks to himself it looks comfortable indeed.

" Be wary, there are likely squatters here....or perhaps the owners...if they are somewhat odd."

Giles feels that this is damn odd, squatters, in this place, surrounded by werewolves?  “Any sign of scratches on the walls, like the werewolves made a den out of this place?  Where the hell are we?  Something… doesn’t feel right.”  He pulls out his dagger and you see the hairs on his forearms are erect, he twitches his fingers.  Afterwards, you see him reach his hand down to his pouch, feeling for the outline of his coin and feeling reassured, his lips move without speech like his is saying a quiet mantra to himself a few times.  He looks at the tip of his dagger and says, Illumio!, causing a yellowish / white light to appear at the end of his dagger, illuminating the hall.  He turns, looking, taking everything in.  

After a time, Soren announces:
"I think the howling outside is merely a pack of gray wolves, not werewolves.  Similar to what I have heard since my childhood.  Not that we wish to fight wolves either, but they seem unlikely to enter the house.  Of course, the werewolves could be here too and staying quiet, but they had a... distinct scent which I do not detect right now.  As unsettling as this house is and despite the disturbing sign outside, I think it best to stay in here."

He stands next to the locked cabinets in the hunter's den and will cast Guidance to assist Zefla if she attempts to pick the locks.

Zefla scoops up the longsword as they head through the main hall.  She takes a look at it before putting it away, checking to see if it has anything peculiar on it.  

As she follows the rest into the den, she goes over to one of the wolf statues at looks it square in the eyes.  Then pats it on the head and sees what Burr is looking at.  "Squatters eh?  I wonder why they wouldn't find a bed or something upstairs?  And what about these windows?  Why were they boarded up like this?"

At Soren's comment, she gives a little bow and pulls out her thieves tools again to see what she can do about the locked cabinets.

Sleight of hand w/guidance  16 + 2