Leftenant dashes outside and loses his stomach contents after crossing the door’s threshold. The sight, the smell, and the lingering effects from the disorientation are enough to overwhelm him.

“Ugh, sorry” he says upon returning to the group. He drinks a bit of water from his water skin to rinse out his mouth. If the lighting is bad, LT will light a torch to illuminate the area. In his other hand he pulls an ax from his belt. The Ranger then moves to cover the eastern door and stairs, watching for any dangers. 

Glyp looks at the exploded corpse, his head sinking a bit into his shell. He glances over at Pando, clearly nervous about sending him away, and responds to Lyra "I... think Pando can keep an eye out for things around us, but I'm not so sure he'll be able to fly around that easily inside. Also, a bird flying around might be a bit more conspicuous than we want right now. Here, let me take a few minutes and then I can see if there's anything magical going on around here."

He settles down on the floor, his back facing the disgusting mess, and works on the ritual to cast Detect Magic

Despite herself, Lyra swallows.  With effort, she keeps her voice calm, though pitched low (and her harmonica silent, for now).

"Never have I seen or heard the abstract ideal of evil stated quite so... eloquently.  'Be unbound from moral tethers. Do as you will, to whom you will.'"

She shakes her head.  "Apologies, Glyp, my idea was for Pando to scout while we were outside.  Understandably, seems riskier in here..."

Glancing at LT and the others to check if they seem recovered and ready to continue, Lyra murmurs, "with care, we must steady on, not succumbing to the horror of this awful place, a horror which many of us may have played an unwitting part in bringing forth a fortnight ago.  For when you gaze into the Abyss, the Abyss gazes back into you.  Yet to reach the light, we must first pass through our own shadows.  Do not be deterred, friends."

"Which way then?  Rooms to the sides, stairways up, or hallways onward?"

As she waits for the others to respond, she looks upon the paintings at the end of the foyer for any familiarity or clue about the denizens of this place.

Kalamin grimaces at the grisly sight, but moves further inside all the same. "With a value like that, I suppose it's safe to presume that evil had a home in this town long before what's transpiring now took hold." Gross as it may be, he leans down to inspect the half blown up corpse, as well as through some of the viscera to see if he can find identifying items.

Once that's done he presents any findings to the others before moving on. "Start on the room to the right, work our way through counterclock on the first floor before heading up?"

Investigation: 18 (with Guidance)

Cupping a hand over her mouth and nose to filter the stench, Ilya reaches out with her other hand to tap Kalamin as he searches through the mess to impart Guidance. Muffled through her hand, she speaks. "That's as good a plan as any." 

OOC: DM, let me know if you'd like to skip an investigation / perception check or something like that for me to take the time to cast Detect Magic

Kalamin
Buried in a pile of guts you find another amulet, nearly identical to the one you had found earlier in a tavern room.

As Lyra looks towards the painting at the end of the hall, she wouldn't see anything that strikes her as familiar. There are three, and the two on the sides seem fairly normal at first glance. A beautiful garden with vibrant flowers, and scene of a grand ballroom. A more focused inspection reveals unsettling details. In the foreground, plants are withering and dying. The water from a stream running throughout is dark and tainted. Hidden among the decaying flora are faint, ghostly images of anguished and twisted faces. In the ballroom painting, figures frozen in mid-dance wear expressions of terror and sorrow. The chandelier above them is shattered, with shards of glass falling upon them. In the center is a portrait of the presumed lord of the manor: a tall and imposing figure, dressed in a richly embroidered coat dyed a deep burgundy. His face is pale and gaunt, with sharp features, and his eyes are dark and deep set. They seem to hold some unnatural gleam.

You all move into the room to the right, with the exception of Glyptemis who is in the processing of ritual casting a spell.

Another "fight" - if it could be called that - happened in this room. There are two more corpses, one which seems to have died from a stab wound. The other has its head twisted around to an unnatural angle.The room itself is quite large, almost the entire southern wall is filled with windows. A fireplace sits on the east wall, with a pair of chairs and an end table sitting atop a strange seemingly leather rug. A suit of armor has been placed on a stand next to the fireplace, though the blade it was holding has long since clattered to the floor in front of it. Bookcases filled with books, scrolls, and loose papers line the northern wall, surrounding a pair of desks covered in documents. A wooden door sits next to the bookshelves.

A larger desk lies to the south, with an ornate chair seated behind it. Cabinets and cupboards take up most of the empty space along the walls, and a single small chest with a padlock sits in a corner at the southern end of the room.

Lyra points the others at the disquieting details she notices in the paintings.  Her melodic voice is quiet.

"If I were to imagine what a vampire looks like, that may just be it," she murmurs, gesturing toward the central painting.

"Do vampires usually mutilate their prey like so?"

Doing her best to avoid going near the corpses, Ilya steps further into the room. Her eyes are almost immediately drawn to the desks, which she moves towards. After taking a closer look at the documents spread across them, she takes a quick survey of the bookshelves to see what kind of books they contain.

"Lord Silvermane I take it." Kalamin says, following Lyra's gaze to the portrait at the end of the hall. Before moving into the next room, he drops the amulet he found next to Glyptemis. "Looks like this group doesn't like the idea of being divined on...Find enough of their bodies and we might just have one for all of us."

In the room, he goes to work on the on the other two bodies, moving them out of the way and searching them over for personal effects.

Leftenant holds at the door to the next room, standing in the entry chamber, watching over Glyptemis. He hopes that between the Birds Eyes and his, no harm will come to the wizard in particular or the group in general. To him, the manor is far from cleared for exploration and he mentions as much as the other three move past.

The veteran whispers, ”We can either proceed to fully search each room we come across and risk any remaining occupants raising an alarm at our presence. Or clear most of the manor to perform a thorough search with relative safety. We risk missing something or running out of time with that approach though.”

As Ilya glances over the desks, among the mess of documents on the desks are two things that stand out: a journal overfilled with pages, and a book bound in dark leather with weathered pages. A glance through a few pages reveal it's written in a language that uses flourished runes as its alphabet - none of you would recognize the language. The first page of the journal is named for one Sebastian Silvermane II, oddly dated over a 120 years ago. In the portrait, the man you saw was most definitely human.

Some of the documents are hastily scrawled notes, like passages from some religious tome. A few examples:

And when I had heard the voice of him who stood in the altar formed like a bowl, I questioned him, desiring to understand who he was.

He answered me in a weak voice saying,

"I have stepped beyond the Floe of Dreams - stood before the Nameless Ones within their own desolate domain.
I have endured their intolerable force, across unimaginable time.
I have seen their infinite dying worlds, murdered the Great Winnower herself.
I am Sotos, Grand Seidrarch of Abaton. Know that our paradise approaches.
And with our own gifted control shall we birth it."

...and Sotos stood amidst the smoldering ruin that was the gateway to paradise, Abaton. Once more in the guise of a man, humbled before the ravages wrought by His enemies. He looked about Him, and saw the suffering brought about by those He had once wished freed. Then Sotos called his Thaumavor to him, and together they sat for a time together within the heart of the Behemoth. They spoke of the darkness to come, the Fall of Abaton.

The four Thaumavor rode forth from that place. Magdha the Highblood, Thalor the Speaker, Vesha the Coiled Shadow, and Kalron the First Spear. Before them lay the long road to immortality. Before Him lay the short path to ruin, and His fall...

And this shall be a sign unto you: that when the Vale of Dusk is come, and the Thorn of Celestia is held once more in the hands of the Faithful, the Sorcerer-King Sotos shall be birthed again upon the world in fire and blood.

On the other desk is a map of what looks like Imane...But the borders and names are none you recognize. Other loose documents look like invoices.

As Kalamin searches the bodies, you again find an amulet around the neck of one of them - the young man whose head seems to have been twisted around. He was also armed, a pair of daggers hiding tucked beneath his tunic. You see a hand-crossbow nearby. The other corpse carries almost nothing, save for a plain silver ring and the clothes they wear.

Around the time these two surface investigations have finished, Glyptemis concludes his ritual spell. The amulet Kal handed him, as well as the one he has just found would both give off a faint magical aura to the tortle. He would feel the presence of the arcane within the small chest in the room as well.

"You think whoever was left behind would leave corpses everywhere?" Ilya asks the ranger as she begins to look over the documents on the desk. "I think we're alone here."

After a few minutes, when she has digested all of that information, she gathers the journal, the tome, and a stack of the documents.

"I'm going to hazard a guess that these notes are translations out of this tome written in a language I can't read...Also have his journal here. I'm sure it's filled with perfectly normal diary entries." She says dryly, passing it off to any who might be interested in taking a peek. "And this map is strange, the lands are unrecognizable to me. Was he working on a piece of fiction perhaps?"

Ilya

With a frown, Ilya continues. "It's a strange mythos for certain. There is reference to a Magdha the Highblood, she was mentioned in Thalorin's journal wasn't it? But if this is real, it has to be old, or obscure. I'm by no means a scholar, but I don't shy away from libraries." 

She lists off some of the other names. "Sotos, Grand Seidrarch of Abaton. Thalor the Speaker. Vesha the Coiled Shadow. Kalron the First Spear. The Great Winnower. The Nameless Ones. Mean anything to any of you?"

"With the one we've given Ilya, we're up to three amulets now." Kalamin announces as he pulls it from around the corpse's twisted neck. "And I think her assessment is right, it's unlikely there's anyone home still."

He listens to the names listed off, and shakes his head. "Don't ring any bells."

"Magdha the Highblood...Are there any other references to her in those notes?"

Religion: 8

Kalamin

Ilya's eyes flash, and she begins leafing through the documents. "Let me take a closer look..."

Investigation: 12

Ilya
You find some more isolated mentions of Magdha in the documents. Within the passages, you begin to get a sense of who she was in the context of this Sotos, who appears to be the focal point of the mythology. Initially she came to him as a great enemy - Sotos was a slave to her culture, in the midst of leading an uprising.

There is a brief passage that mentions Sotos came to her in her bedchamber to speak with her - words that are known only to the two of them. Her hatred of him vanished, and she turned against her own people to join his cause. Their union is spoken of with reverence, and eventually she would become his queen.

You also find passages describing her "gifts" to Sotos, fashioned from her own flesh, blood, and bone. Among them, you find reference to the Thorn of Celestia once more, describing it as a staff of bone decorated with ornate patterns.