" So someone or something has taken it and hidden it? Perhaps one of the shadow things? Or someone.......compelled.....to do so?"
" Who else has been in this room?"
(Care to make a survival roll for tracking? Meredith may roll with advantage following her 20+ Investigation roll.)
"Well," Ebder answers, "Varnyr, of course. And Gailby has here place there," (a small table and chair I forgot to mention, with children's & a few school books and a coloring book neatly stacked on it with writing and watercolors implements. No Shemshime book on it, you will have already determined). "And when he dares to take on my, erm, untidy working habits, Crinkle kindly straightens out the mess. Or he comes in if the fireflies need to be fed. Although I try to teach my daughter how to take care of herself, so that when not at work, she and I share chores in our rooms downstairs. Share," he continues with a wink, aside but loud enough for Gailby to hear, "meaning that I do almost all of it while she eats peanut butter sandwiches."
"That's not fair," she interjects with a pout. "I do make my bed every morning." Ebder's eyes widen a bit and with a warm smile pasted on his face, his eyes swivel to you conspiratorially with an emphatic 'nope' expression. He shrugs, then answers, conciliatorily, "Of course you do my Gailby, forgive your pa for jesting." He smiles with unconcealed paternal warmth. The moment passes quickly however as he sighs. "In a world where so many strange things can occur at any moment, we must try to laugh when we can." But you see that he fails the struggle to keep a light mood.
Erudisia now returns, finding Varnyr and Crinkle in the main reading room with the huge open book statue hanging over the table by its somewhat rusty chains, Varnyr's head down on her crossed forearms, Crinkle's big dark eyes rather motionless, the golden amber light of the fireflies entrancing him as he slowly follows their slowly drifting movements. Approaching the Bindery, Erudisia finds the others within and hears the last of Ebder's words in answer to Meredith.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
DM for Candlekeep Mysteries //Dev Horndin Curious Critters
With those shadows being mentioned again, Bellstops her search and takes the time to go deep into her arcane knowledge to help figure out what they might be and what the 'black out' was.
Meredith has already very carefully checked all the books. She had identified one stack as the three books from Varnyr’s list. The fourth book from the list, Shemshime’s Bedtime Rhyme, should have been at the bottom of that stack.
She returns to it now, a look of deep concentration on her face. Modeling her motions after her imagined movements of whoever took the missing book, she lifts up the three all at once. 'Not too heavy. But I’d need to put them down to get to the bottom book,’ she thinks. She turns, looking for a place to put them down. Nowhere on the crowded table. She bends to place them on the scrap-covered floor. Only now does she notice a square-edged depression in the mélange of cuttings, which perfectly fits the bottom book’s edges.
She takes a moment to carefully study the floor from this angle. Footprints? No. People have been all day in and out of this room. Only boot and shoe marks Meredith herself has made, or Bell’s or the others. No way to tell anything older. Dead end.
The bard stands again, her jaw set, her complete focus on the spot where the books had stood. What is she missing?
The bindery, like the other rooms, is lit by firefly lanterns. Usually, just the lanterns, although now, a few individual fireflies, freed accidentally during the fight with the shadows, drift through the chill air. And now one floats nearby, right in front of Meredith, then passes and lands atop the handle of a pair of scissors. And that is when the bard spots something unexpected. Directly under the firefly, in a tiny space between two large books, something which before was hidden reflects the firefly’s subtle light. It is inches from where the three books stood, and with them there, the reflection would have been impossible to see. But now…
Meredith reaches in and cautiously feels with her fingertip, drawing back the little object into the open.
A button of shiny brass.
“My button!,” Gailby squeaks when she sees it. “Pa! My button! It’s been missing for weeks! Why didn’t you tell me you found it?”
“Daughter. I didn’t find it. I had no idea it was there. What... how...” His confused expression is sincere and his eyes bulge, as if this tiny discovery were alone going to push his anxiety over the edge. “But it’s been missing for tendays, hasn’t it, Gailby?”
He turns to Meredith, regaining some composure as he explains. “She has a collection. Buttons. All shapes and sizes. This was one of her favorites, apparently. Certainly bigger and shinier than most of them.”
“Yes! It is my favorite! And hidden there the whole time? Daddy, why did you take it?”
“No. Gailby, I did not.”
“But why is it on your worktable?”
Ebder gestures helplessly.
But Meredith hears not a word of this conversation, for she is lost in thought (the result of her Crit Survival roll), reliving the details of a particular memory. An uncle back home.
“Watch now, here they are,” Meredith’s uncle would say. This was when she was seven or eight. “They certainly like the peanuts and gristle I leave for them. And since I feed ‘em, almost every day, watch. This is how smart they are. They’ve got good manners and a sense of pride, some say. I say, they know what they like and there’s honor among thieves. Bribery in the animal kingdom, hawhaw!”
Meredith watched as the pair landed, then hopped over to the food. But before eating, the male placed beside it something shiny. They then helped themselves to the peanuts and gristle. Soon, they were off again. “Let’s look!,” her uncle said, and the pair rushed to the shiny thing, still where it lay. Her uncle picked it up between beefy thumb and forefinger, smiling.
A button.
Two black pairs of wings rustled away and the visitors' calls diminished over the hilltop…
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
DM for Candlekeep Mysteries //Dev Horndin Curious Critters
With those shadows being mentioned again, Bellstops her search and takes the time to go deep into her arcane knowledge to help figure out what they might be and what the 'black out' was.
Arcana Check: 22
Bell knows in her gut that the song -- more and more voices raised intoning the same chant -- and the shadows and the coldness and the flickering darkness -- more and more energy drawn from the material plane, away, elsewhere -- are all branches of a single tree. A dead tree if the metaphor is drawn to its logical conclusion. This is a necromantic conjuring. Of what, the young wizard can only guess at. But of one thing, she is certain. Something, somewhere hears the song. And it is coming.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
DM for Candlekeep Mysteries //Dev Horndin Curious Critters
Meredith smiled at the father and daughter, " I think your button was returned in exchange for something else shiny......"
" In my country are many birds.....but the fan tails are the smartest.....they learn everyone's faces and they never forget a slight......but they love shiny things and will even trade food or the like for them. The fan tail is a big glossy black bird with a strong beak and clever eyes.....do you know anyone around here who might fit that description?"
Ebder’s eyes shift back and forth from the door to the study room to Meredith. He lowers his voice “Crinkle’s dwelling?” He now glances at Gailby, a father needing to or desiring to demonstrate good behavior in front of his child. “No, no. No, I can’t do that. We all… all of our quarters are in the bottom floor. We’ve all lived here for two years, ever since…”
“Since momma died,” Gailby cuts in.
“Since your mother died, daughter. Yes… but the point is, we live together like a family, but we’re not family. Neighbors. And strong fences make good neighbors. Our rooms are… our own. No, you must ask Crinkle to see his room.”
Suddenly, the firefly lights all diminish to nothing, leaving the room in darkness. A deathly voice in the distance sings the Shemshime rhyme, and now there is nothing you can do to resist. You are all singing it. And as the lights now begin to flicker on and off in a strobing, terrifying display, you find yourself filled with an undeniable rage, attacking the nearest person to you. Grabbing, tearing at clothes. A distant torrent of screams and yells through the cellar’s door high above you, opening onto the Court of Air, tells you that a melee has broken out among all the inhabitants of Candlekeep.
(OOC: I’m not really in favor of this type of thing – loss of agency – but it’s in the module. I’m going to rule that nobody inflicts actual damage to anyone else and no spell slots are used. You can narrate what your character does during this episode.)
When everyone recovers and the lights return to normal, three things are apparent. First off, it’s even colder. Second, and of great concern to Ebder, Gailby is no longer in the room. Third, Crinkle is no longer in the reading room. No one noticed where the girl and the kenku went, so bent were you on dishing out uncontrolled violence.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
DM for Candlekeep Mysteries //Dev Horndin Curious Critters
The intrusive urge was a needle of ice, piercing the warmth of Bell's own thoughts. It tried to lay a sterile, gray blanket over her mind’s vibrant garden, turning memories into muted stone and desires into hollow echoes. The shock of the mental assault made her gasp for breath. With every chilled, wheezing breath, she fought to turn the soil, to find a single seed of her true self buried beneath the permafrost. The effort made her head feel like a bell rung by an iron hammer, the pain a desperate reminder that she was still there, fighting.
Does the shadow have a name? SHEMSHIME Causes grief, avoids the blame SHEMSHIME
Her hands, once her own, now clenched into fists by another’s malice. Bell could feel the resistance, a tremor running through her muscles like a trapped animal. The strident urge to strike out at friends was a brand of fire on her nerves, but her own will was a counter-force, a cold, unyielding wall. It manifested as a deep, physical shudder, a rejection that made her arms tremble violently, refusing to obey. Tears of frustrated rage ran down her face, a silent protest from the part of her that was still free.
Does the shadow have a name? SHEMSHIME Causes grief, avoids the blame SHEMSHIME
The whisper in her skull promised peace if she would just yield, but the sight of the oddly distored faces surrounding her was a shock to the system. It was not logic or a spell that snapped the connection — it was a scream born of pure, primal love. The illusion of control shattered like glass, and the dark whispers were drowned out by the thunder of her own heartbeat. The feeling was a wild, glorious release, a return to self so potent it felt like being born anew, with every nerve ending screaming in triumph.
"This I shall not abide!" she screamed as the mysterious force was rejected from her mind.
Despite the triggered enchantment of his flashing headband, Little One’s eyes fill with the age-old destructive anger of his kind. He fights it, as do you all, trying to hold back, but the murderous rage is boundless. Like a zombie, he steps forward, towering above you, raises his fists, and they plummet down like meteors from the sky, smashing tables and shelves, benches, whatever lay in his path. He grunts out the Shemshime rhyme against his will, his teeth bared with effort. But he fails to control it.
Ebder is on Little One’s back, arm around the ogre’s tree-trunk neck, batting and clawing, stabbing with scissors, but the ogre’s thick skin is impervious to these feeble attacks.
Varnyr is on her knees, weakly screeching and throwing at you fallen books, an empty fruit plate, whatever she can find. Breath rakes in with the exertion, and at the end of it, she keels over, faint with exhaustion.
Finally, it is quiet again and you all lie on the floor, hands on your ears to shut out the rhyme. You realize Gailby and Crinkle are gone.
“They must have fled downstairs,” Ebder groans. “What a terrible sight for a child to behold!”
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
DM for Candlekeep Mysteries //Dev Horndin Curious Critters
Meredith tries to gather her wits glad that her enraged self did not have the presence of mind to wield anything more deadly than her decidedly unimpressive fists and elbows.
She makes a face as she takes in the purplish bruise across Erudisias cheek that she is fairly certain she is responsible for......
" Uh........oops.........yes, anyway...lets head downstairs."
Bell wads up a bit of scrap leather into her hand and casts the cantrip Light to help brighten the place since the fireflies do not seem to be doing the job right now.
"If we do not find the source soon, that last invasive attack will only be worse. Plus, can't you feel it? Whatever it is, it is pulling more and more energy to itself. At this rate, we will be flash frozen husks by morning."
For a moment, a single moment, quicker than a flash and longer than eternity, Erudisia is surrounded by shadow. Every eye is darkly turned towards her, every face is cruelly contorted, and all the world is red, red, red…
When the moment passes, and she is herself again (except for her voice, as her tongue pours forth rhyme and malice without direction or thought) her face stings, her dress is torn, and the tattoo of House Odewright that is formed across the back of her left hand and center-most three fingers is deformed. A jagged cut bisects the body of the crest, and blood drips onto the floor.
“I am … I am sorry.”
Flashes of what truly transpired spark in her mind, and of who did what and to whom, as she looks from face to face. Unwanted comprehension.
Down the twisting flight of stone steps you tread, Ebder following close behind, concern wracking his dour features.
“I stay with Varnyr,” Little One had said, remaining with the unconscious head clerk, and you see in his posture the guilt he feels over his rampage. Guilt and fear that next time he might break more than shelves and chairs.
At the bottom of the stairs is a corridor some 50’ long. As you traverse it, there is silence… following the episode of uncontrolled violence, everyone firmly controls their voices. Fireflies in lanterns light your way. At the corridor’s end, a kitchen with a stove in one corner, a narrow pantry door to the left and a doorway, door slightly ajar, to the right. Beside this doorway, an old square of wool hangs from a thin dowel, the word “Home” cross-stitched artfully upon it in fading letters.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
DM for Candlekeep Mysteries //Dev Horndin Curious Critters
At Erudisia’s touch, the door creaks farther open. Beyond it is a dark hallway, 45’ long, with a door at its far end and three doors along each wall (7 unopened doors in total). Lanterns from the kitchen cast a long trapezoid of amber light on the corridor’s floor and one wall, allowing Erudisia to make out, pooling in thick unctuous curls in the corners, a turgid swirl of dark mist tracing along the floor. Firefly lanterns ensconced between doorways offer no illumination and there is no answer to her call.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
DM for Candlekeep Mysteries //Dev Horndin Curious Critters
As Erudisia and Meredith examine the hallway from one end of the kitchen, Bell hears a sound at the other end, coming from the pantry. She and Ebder exchange a glance. He heard it too.
The pantry is an 8’ square space with tall terra cotta crocks of grains and legumes under shelves holding spices and snacks (they seem to favor corn crisps). A water barrel stands in one corner. There is only a 3’-wide space in the middle of the pantry for one to step. The rest is all dark corners.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
DM for Candlekeep Mysteries //Dev Horndin Curious Critters
The first door on the left leads to a small dining room with six wooden chairs around a sturdy old table. Across the hall from it is a bedroom which could be another wing of the library for all the books packed into the shelves that line the walls. Two five-foot-tall candlesticks in the middle of the room have magical flames flickering atop them—a welcome reprieve from the relatively dim light of the firefly lamps.
The room includes a large cushion of the kind elves sometimes sit upon cross-legged when in a resting trance, an armoire, and a green velvet reading chair.
The curling dark mist from the hallway seeps into these rooms when you open each door.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
DM for Candlekeep Mysteries //Dev Horndin Curious Critters
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(Care to make a survival roll for tracking? Meredith may roll with advantage following her 20+ Investigation roll.)
"Well," Ebder answers, "Varnyr, of course. And Gailby has here place there," (a small table and chair I forgot to mention, with children's & a few school books and a coloring book neatly stacked on it with writing and watercolors implements. No Shemshime book on it, you will have already determined). "And when he dares to take on my, erm, untidy working habits, Crinkle kindly straightens out the mess. Or he comes in if the fireflies need to be fed. Although I try to teach my daughter how to take care of herself, so that when not at work, she and I share chores in our rooms downstairs. Share," he continues with a wink, aside but loud enough for Gailby to hear, "meaning that I do almost all of it while she eats peanut butter sandwiches."
"That's not fair," she interjects with a pout. "I do make my bed every morning." Ebder's eyes widen a bit and with a warm smile pasted on his face, his eyes swivel to you conspiratorially with an emphatic 'nope' expression. He shrugs, then answers, conciliatorily, "Of course you do my Gailby, forgive your pa for jesting." He smiles with unconcealed paternal warmth. The moment passes quickly however as he sighs. "In a world where so many strange things can occur at any moment, we must try to laugh when we can." But you see that he fails the struggle to keep a light mood.
Erudisia now returns, finding Varnyr and Crinkle in the main reading room with the huge open book statue hanging over the table by its somewhat rusty chains, Varnyr's head down on her crossed forearms, Crinkle's big dark eyes rather motionless, the golden amber light of the fireflies entrancing him as he slowly follows their slowly drifting movements. Approaching the Bindery, Erudisia finds the others within and hears the last of Ebder's words in answer to Meredith.
DM for Candlekeep Mysteries // Dev Hornd in Curious Critters
Meredith Tracking/Survival Roll- 17
Bell
With those shadows being mentioned again, Bell stops her search and takes the time to go deep into her arcane knowledge to help figure out what they might be and what the 'black out' was.
Arcana Check: 22
Meredith has already very carefully checked all the books. She had identified one stack as the three books from Varnyr’s list. The fourth book from the list, Shemshime’s Bedtime Rhyme, should have been at the bottom of that stack.
She returns to it now, a look of deep concentration on her face. Modeling her motions after her imagined movements of whoever took the missing book, she lifts up the three all at once. 'Not too heavy. But I’d need to put them down to get to the bottom book,’ she thinks. She turns, looking for a place to put them down. Nowhere on the crowded table. She bends to place them on the scrap-covered floor. Only now does she notice a square-edged depression in the mélange of cuttings, which perfectly fits the bottom book’s edges.
She takes a moment to carefully study the floor from this angle. Footprints? No. People have been all day in and out of this room. Only boot and shoe marks Meredith herself has made, or Bell’s or the others. No way to tell anything older. Dead end.
The bard stands again, her jaw set, her complete focus on the spot where the books had stood. What is she missing?
The bindery, like the other rooms, is lit by firefly lanterns. Usually, just the lanterns, although now, a few individual fireflies, freed accidentally during the fight with the shadows, drift through the chill air. And now one floats nearby, right in front of Meredith, then passes and lands atop the handle of a pair of scissors. And that is when the bard spots something unexpected. Directly under the firefly, in a tiny space between two large books, something which before was hidden reflects the firefly’s subtle light. It is inches from where the three books stood, and with them there, the reflection would have been impossible to see. But now…
Meredith reaches in and cautiously feels with her fingertip, drawing back the little object into the open.
A button of shiny brass.
“My button!,” Gailby squeaks when she sees it. “Pa! My button! It’s been missing for weeks! Why didn’t you tell me you found it?”
“Daughter. I didn’t find it. I had no idea it was there. What... how...” His confused expression is sincere and his eyes bulge, as if this tiny discovery were alone going to push his anxiety over the edge. “But it’s been missing for tendays, hasn’t it, Gailby?”
He turns to Meredith, regaining some composure as he explains. “She has a collection. Buttons. All shapes and sizes. This was one of her favorites, apparently. Certainly bigger and shinier than most of them.”
“Yes! It is my favorite! And hidden there the whole time? Daddy, why did you take it?”
“No. Gailby, I did not.”
“But why is it on your worktable?”
Ebder gestures helplessly.
But Meredith hears not a word of this conversation, for she is lost in thought (the result of her Crit Survival roll), reliving the details of a particular memory. An uncle back home.
“Watch now, here they are,” Meredith’s uncle would say. This was when she was seven or eight. “They certainly like the peanuts and gristle I leave for them. And since I feed ‘em, almost every day, watch. This is how smart they are. They’ve got good manners and a sense of pride, some say. I say, they know what they like and there’s honor among thieves. Bribery in the animal kingdom, hawhaw!”
Meredith watched as the pair landed, then hopped over to the food. But before eating, the male placed beside it something shiny. They then helped themselves to the peanuts and gristle. Soon, they were off again. “Let’s look!,” her uncle said, and the pair rushed to the shiny thing, still where it lay. Her uncle picked it up between beefy thumb and forefinger, smiling.
A button.
Two black pairs of wings rustled away and the visitors' calls diminished over the hilltop…
DM for Candlekeep Mysteries // Dev Hornd in Curious Critters
Bell knows in her gut that the song -- more and more voices raised intoning the same chant -- and the shadows and the coldness and the flickering darkness -- more and more energy drawn from the material plane, away, elsewhere -- are all branches of a single tree. A dead tree if the metaphor is drawn to its logical conclusion. This is a necromantic conjuring. Of what, the young wizard can only guess at. But of one thing, she is certain. Something, somewhere hears the song. And it is coming.
DM for Candlekeep Mysteries // Dev Hornd in Curious Critters
Meredith smiled at the father and daughter, " I think your button was returned in exchange for something else shiny......"
" In my country are many birds.....but the fan tails are the smartest.....they learn everyone's faces and they never forget a slight......but they love shiny things and will even trade food or the like for them. The fan tail is a big glossy black bird with a strong beak and clever eyes.....do you know anyone around here who might fit that description?"
" Can you take me to Crinkles dwelling?"
Ebder’s eyes shift back and forth from the door to the study room to Meredith. He lowers his voice “Crinkle’s dwelling?” He now glances at Gailby, a father needing to or desiring to demonstrate good behavior in front of his child. “No, no. No, I can’t do that. We all… all of our quarters are in the bottom floor. We’ve all lived here for two years, ever since…”
“Since momma died,” Gailby cuts in.
“Since your mother died, daughter. Yes… but the point is, we live together like a family, but we’re not family. Neighbors. And strong fences make good neighbors. Our rooms are… our own. No, you must ask Crinkle to see his room.”
Suddenly, the firefly lights all diminish to nothing, leaving the room in darkness. A deathly voice in the distance sings the Shemshime rhyme, and now there is nothing you can do to resist. You are all singing it. And as the lights now begin to flicker on and off in a strobing, terrifying display, you find yourself filled with an undeniable rage, attacking the nearest person to you. Grabbing, tearing at clothes. A distant torrent of screams and yells through the cellar’s door high above you, opening onto the Court of Air, tells you that a melee has broken out among all the inhabitants of Candlekeep.
(OOC: I’m not really in favor of this type of thing – loss of agency – but it’s in the module. I’m going to rule that nobody inflicts actual damage to anyone else and no spell slots are used. You can narrate what your character does during this episode.)
When everyone recovers and the lights return to normal, three things are apparent. First off, it’s even colder. Second, and of great concern to Ebder, Gailby is no longer in the room. Third, Crinkle is no longer in the reading room. No one noticed where the girl and the kenku went, so bent were you on dishing out uncontrolled violence.
DM for Candlekeep Mysteries // Dev Hornd in Curious Critters
Bell
The intrusive urge was a needle of ice, piercing the warmth of Bell's own thoughts. It tried to lay a sterile, gray blanket over her mind’s vibrant garden, turning memories into muted stone and desires into hollow echoes. The shock of the mental assault made her gasp for breath. With every chilled, wheezing breath, she fought to turn the soil, to find a single seed of her true self buried beneath the permafrost. The effort made her head feel like a bell rung by an iron hammer, the pain a desperate reminder that she was still there, fighting.
Does the shadow have a name?
SHEMSHIME
Causes grief, avoids the blame
SHEMSHIME
Her hands, once her own, now clenched into fists by another’s malice. Bell could feel the resistance, a tremor running through her muscles like a trapped animal. The strident urge to strike out at friends was a brand of fire on her nerves, but her own will was a counter-force, a cold, unyielding wall. It manifested as a deep, physical shudder, a rejection that made her arms tremble violently, refusing to obey. Tears of frustrated rage ran down her face, a silent protest from the part of her that was still free.
Does the shadow have a name?
SHEMSHIME
Causes grief, avoids the blame
SHEMSHIME
The whisper in her skull promised peace if she would just yield, but the sight of the oddly distored faces surrounding her was a shock to the system. It was not logic or a spell that snapped the connection — it was a scream born of pure, primal love. The illusion of control shattered like glass, and the dark whispers were drowned out by the thunder of her own heartbeat. The feeling was a wild, glorious release, a return to self so potent it felt like being born anew, with every nerve ending screaming in triumph.
"This I shall not abide!" she screamed as the mysterious force was rejected from her mind.
Intelligence Check: 22
Despite the triggered enchantment of his flashing headband, Little One’s eyes fill with the age-old destructive anger of his kind. He fights it, as do you all, trying to hold back, but the murderous rage is boundless. Like a zombie, he steps forward, towering above you, raises his fists, and they plummet down like meteors from the sky, smashing tables and shelves, benches, whatever lay in his path. He grunts out the Shemshime rhyme against his will, his teeth bared with effort. But he fails to control it.
Ebder is on Little One’s back, arm around the ogre’s tree-trunk neck, batting and clawing, stabbing with scissors, but the ogre’s thick skin is impervious to these feeble attacks.
Varnyr is on her knees, weakly screeching and throwing at you fallen books, an empty fruit plate, whatever she can find. Breath rakes in with the exertion, and at the end of it, she keels over, faint with exhaustion.
Finally, it is quiet again and you all lie on the floor, hands on your ears to shut out the rhyme. You realize Gailby and Crinkle are gone.
“They must have fled downstairs,” Ebder groans. “What a terrible sight for a child to behold!”
DM for Candlekeep Mysteries // Dev Hornd in Curious Critters
Meredith tries to gather her wits glad that her enraged self did not have the presence of mind to wield anything more deadly than her decidedly unimpressive fists and elbows.
She makes a face as she takes in the purplish bruise across Erudisias cheek that she is fairly certain she is responsible for......
" Uh........oops.........yes, anyway...lets head downstairs."
Bell
Bell wads up a bit of scrap leather into her hand and casts the cantrip Light to help brighten the place since the fireflies do not seem to be doing the job right now.
"If we do not find the source soon, that last invasive attack will only be worse. Plus, can't you feel it? Whatever it is, it is pulling more and more energy to itself. At this rate, we will be flash frozen husks by morning."
For a moment, a single moment, quicker than a flash and longer than eternity, Erudisia is surrounded by shadow. Every eye is darkly turned towards her, every face is cruelly contorted, and all the world is red, red, red…
When the moment passes, and she is herself again (except for her voice, as her tongue pours forth rhyme and malice without direction or thought) her face stings, her dress is torn, and the tattoo of House Odewright that is formed across the back of her left hand and center-most three fingers is deformed. A jagged cut bisects the body of the crest, and blood drips onto the floor.
“I am … I am sorry.”
Flashes of what truly transpired spark in her mind, and of who did what and to whom, as she looks from face to face. Unwanted comprehension.
“I … We must stop this, soon.”
" Downstairs.....now.", Meredith says bluntly getting more than a little peeved at whatever this Shim-thing is.....
Down the twisting flight of stone steps you tread, Ebder following close behind, concern wracking his dour features.
“I stay with Varnyr,” Little One had said, remaining with the unconscious head clerk, and you see in his posture the guilt he feels over his rampage. Guilt and fear that next time he might break more than shelves and chairs.
At the bottom of the stairs is a corridor some 50’ long. As you traverse it, there is silence… following the episode of uncontrolled violence, everyone firmly controls their voices. Fireflies in lanterns light your way. At the corridor’s end, a kitchen with a stove in one corner, a narrow pantry door to the left and a doorway, door slightly ajar, to the right. Beside this doorway, an old square of wool hangs from a thin dowel, the word “Home” cross-stitched artfully upon it in fading letters.
DM for Candlekeep Mysteries // Dev Hornd in Curious Critters
“Hello?” Erudisia knocks, and if the door is not opened further then seeks to open it herself, looking inside for an occupant.
At Erudisia’s touch, the door creaks farther open. Beyond it is a dark hallway, 45’ long, with a door at its far end and three doors along each wall (7 unopened doors in total). Lanterns from the kitchen cast a long trapezoid of amber light on the corridor’s floor and one wall, allowing Erudisia to make out, pooling in thick unctuous curls in the corners, a turgid swirl of dark mist tracing along the floor. Firefly lanterns ensconced between doorways offer no illumination and there is no answer to her call.
DM for Candlekeep Mysteries // Dev Hornd in Curious Critters
Meredith followed, lighting her lamp.
As Erudisia and Meredith examine the hallway from one end of the kitchen, Bell hears a sound at the other end, coming from the pantry. She and Ebder exchange a glance. He heard it too.
The pantry is an 8’ square space with tall terra cotta crocks of grains and legumes under shelves holding spices and snacks (they seem to favor corn crisps). A water barrel stands in one corner. There is only a 3’-wide space in the middle of the pantry for one to step. The rest is all dark corners.
DM for Candlekeep Mysteries // Dev Hornd in Curious Critters
With her light lit, Erudisia lets Meredith go first (how kind) and begins to walk deeper into the dark corridor with her.
ERUDISIA and MEREDITH
The first door on the left leads to a small dining room with six wooden chairs around a sturdy old table. Across the hall from it is a bedroom which could be another wing of the library for all the books packed into the shelves that line the walls. Two five-foot-tall candlesticks in the middle of the room have magical flames flickering atop them—a welcome reprieve from the relatively dim light of the firefly lamps.
The room includes a large cushion of the kind elves sometimes sit upon cross-legged when in a resting trance, an armoire, and a green velvet reading chair.
The curling dark mist from the hallway seeps into these rooms when you open each door.
DM for Candlekeep Mysteries // Dev Hornd in Curious Critters