Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh

“No… no, I’m afraid I don’t have a blanket as such,” he admits after a moment, glancing back up toward her. “But perhaps my cloak might do for the time being, eh?”  He pulls at the edge of it slightly as he says it.

One second she’s 30’ away, the next she taking your cloak, then in a blink she’s back at the chest her baby wrapped in your cloak…

”…silence is golden golden…” she quietly sings.

Darixa make an insight check as Cook suddenly jerks from his position propped up in the opening.

The messenger looks at Esme with surrender, “The kinda vile things that happen to brave young women who happen into the company of scum.”  His jaw clamps shut and he looks down at his hands, dirty scarred neglected.

     Cook's jaw drops.  Then he does.  The little girls disappearing and reappearing several times like that rightly freaks Cook out and he forgets exactly where he is.  So when he takes a step back he’s expecting floor…. Maybe even a step down.  But there is no floor…. And the steps stopped halfway up.  Cooks backpedaling foot catches nothing but air.

     And down Cook goes.

     There is a bit of a yelp of surprise.  A quick curse. And, of course, falling.

     When Cook finally comes to a stop, hopefully not too broken or bloody but surely in a rather unflattering heap, he sees Darixa and her question eventually seeps into his rather confuzzled brain.

     “Umm… no?” Cook answers, quickly looking back up at the attic from where he fell on the second floor.  “Nope.  Not all day…”

     Cook gets back to his feet and looks sheepishly at Darixa.  “Little girl.  Up there in the attack.  Spooky little girl,” he explains.

     “Stole my cloak,” he adds as a bit of an afterthought.

(Darixa Insight: 4)

Quote from Culuril >>

(Darixa Insight: 4)

 ((Insight into… what?  The “stole my cloak” comment?  I wouldn’t say Cook is lying so much flavoring the telling of events…lol)

Darixa can’t tell if Cook is mentally doing okay or reacting to everything that’s transpired up to now…

(insight 4, inject a little chaos.)

Darixa hops back a bit, startled when Cook falls back down. "Are you... joking?" she asks tentatively. "You expect us to believe a spooky little girl up there stole your cloak?" She does seem a little worried for the man. But she looks around for wherever the messenger is that Esme and Seri have been talking with. "Hey! You don't keep any little girls up in the attic, do you?" 

Seri too is taken aback as Cook descends unceremoniously and cloak-less.  As he and Darixa converse and Esme prompts the messenger, Seri's voice grows quiet and thoughtful.  She gazes around at the wreck of the manor house all around them.

"Makaster seems to have been a mad alchemist, obsessed with turning other metals into gold," (which Seri still believes to be nonsense, but she does not press the point).  "As obsessed as a ship's mad captain might be in their pursuit of a legendary treasure or sea creature."

"He persisted to the point of insanity, until his fortunes failed, his mansion fell to ruin, and he transformed into the deranged undead skeleton we battled along with his thralls in the basement.  Procan knows, a man of such obsessions might think nothing of locking his daughter who would not be quiet in an attic until she too perished from hunger, thirst or cold, for want of a cloak, becoming a ghost who yet haunts this place above as he did below."

She pauses.  "Cook.  Did this possible daughter of Makaster speak of... gold?"

Esme is both intrigued and concerned about the mention of a spooky girl upstairs, so she climbs the stairs and tries to locate the spooky girl, hoping to approach her as a friend. "Hello there, I am Esmeralda, can I help you somehow?" She offers in a soft a gentle tone.

Lucky persuasion if relevant: 20

     “Joking?” Cook replies, slightly offended.  “Well get on up and see for yourself, if you like!  Creepy little girls with creepier little dolls… I want nothing to do with it!”  Cook brushes off the dirt he collected due to his rather madcap fall.

     “I ain’t afraid of no ghost,” Cook adds a bit defensively.  “Doesn’t mean I want to meddle with them though.  Let spooky ghosts be, I always say…”

     “Speak of…?” Cook asks, turning to Seri.  “No, no… Not as such.  Sang a little snippet of something or other about silence being golden but that is where I more or less nope’d out of the attic.”

     Cook more or less shrugs when Esme decides to climb up into the space he so recently vacated.  He offers her a boost up, if she wants it, the stairs ending halfway up and all, but he is willing to leave her to whatever she is going to do up there otherwise.  Women are better at handling little girls anyway, he mentally tells himself.  Even little ghost girls…

     “Hey!” He calls up after a moment.  “See if you can get my cloak back!  It’ll probably rain on the way back home and…”. The thought just kind of trails off.

A little girl is curled up sleeping on the floor shivering with her doll, the doll is wrapped in Cooks cloak.  Just as Esme is making her way to the little one, several spectral bats drop from the rafters landing on her.  No sooner witnessed and all of it vanishes…

That’s when you see several big fat living bats?  They also see you and release from their perches.

initiatives are;  4 Esme Darixa 3 2 Brynn 5 1 6 Seri Cook

#4 swoops at Esme 12 to hit it fails to stab or grab.

Esme’s turn.

The young Rhennee witch snarls and clutches at her enchanted finger, placing a frightening witches curse on the tiny annoying critters that strikes deadly fear into their tiny hearts.
"Have some company up here if you'd care to help out." She calls out to her companions.

(Use finger to cast Fear, Wis save 15 or frightened, should catch all enemies but the closest one I think)

Darixa’s turn.

     "I told you," Cook says triumphantly.  "I told you there was a spooky girl kid ghost!"