A Curse of Strahds [IC]

When you enter the room containing the secret door, you see a dusty chamber packed with old furniture (chairs, coat racks, standing mirrors, dress mannequins, and the like), all draped in dusty white sheets. Near an iron stove, partially underneath one of the sheets is a wooden trunk.

The secret door is in the east wall. When opened, it reveals a narrow spiral staircase made of creaky wood contained within a 5-foot-wide shaft of mortared stone. Thick cobwebs fill the shaft. (Visibility in the staircase is reduced to 5 feet.)

I will ready my crossbow, while staring at Lae as if expecting him to go first.

Lae readies his mace and begins the descent down the spiral staircase.. “Let’s crack this monsters skull, shall we? Oh... and last one down check that trunk for anything useful would you?”

(Marching order? Lae, Zennas, Zander...Necros, do you want to go last, or do you want Embir to go last?)

Necros follows Zander down the stairs. Embir goes last, but hearing Lae's suggestion, walks over and pulls the sheet up, disturbing the dust. She opens the trunk and immediately wishes she hadn't. In the trunk, she finds the skeletal remains recognizable from the previous battle as those of the family nurse maid, wrapped in a tattered bedsheet stained with dried blood. Upon closer inspection, Embir finds the woman was stabbed to death by multiple knife wounds. Fighting back the urge to vomit, Embir leys the trunk slam shut and hurries to follow Necros down the stairs.

You travel down the stairs for about 50 feet. You know you have gone down through the whole house and below by the distance the staircase has taken you. Once you reach the bottom, a narrow tunnel stretches southward before branching east and west. The tunnel is carved from earth, clay, and rock. It is 4 feet wide by 7 feet high with timber braces at 5 foot intervals. From the moment you arrive, you hear an eerie, incessant chanting echoing throughout, but with the stone walls and acoustics, it is impossible to gauge where the sound is coming from.

Well there's that chanting again. I don't like splitting up so shall we all head East, see what's there and then come back?

“That sounds like a good idea Zander... this place might be trapped though, so let’s go slow.”

Lae heads down the east path keeping an eye  out for dangers ahead of the group.

Five feet down the eastern path, another path branches to the south. You can tell the path you are on turns north five feet beyond this other branch.

“HHrm.. should we continue north?”  Lae asks over his shoulder.

Sure, but let's look down the south path, whoever can see in the dark, as we walk by.

You can tell that 10 feet down the south path it branches east and west again. The north path leads down a small staircase into a room. A wooden table and four chairs stand at the east end of this room. To the west are four alcoves containing moldy straw pallets.

Lae looks around the room in an attempt to see what it was used for and to find any evidence related to the “monster”.

I hope this place doesn't end up being a maze... Let's try to keep track of where we've been, just in case.

You think this was used as some kind of sleeping quarters. There is another exit to the north of the room which turns west after ten feet.

Onward, I suppose.

You follow the tunnel forward then west and down another short staircase into a larger room. A 4-foot-diameter well shaft with a 3-foot-high stone lip in the center of the room descends 30 feet to a water-filled cistern. A wooden bucket hangs from a rope-and-pulley mechanism bolted to the crossbeams above the well.

Five side rooms each contain a wood-framed beds with a moldy straw matress and a wooden chest (like a footlocker). Each chest is secured with a rusty iron padlock. (Two of the rooms are on the east wall, 1 on the north, and the other 2 are on the west wall. Another exit to the main room is to the SW corner of the room.

"I can start busting locks to footlocker, but it could take some time to get thought all 5 of them. Probably not much in them, but I guess it can't hurt to peek at one."

Zennas makes his way to the first one on the west wall. 

Sleigh of hands: 20 

You easily pick the lock and find a pouch containing 11gp and 60 sp. Upon closer inspection, you believe the pouch may be made of human skin.

I will take the 11gp and 60sp, but don't quite have a need for the skin sack, I will move on to the next footlocker on the west side. 

Sleigh of hands: 17 

You also easily open this one. Inside, you find 3 moss agates (worth 10 gp each) in a folded piece of black cloth.

Finding anything useful?