Also, what do you want to do with the statue that followed you up the stairs?

I've also spent some time with the fancy ax, any additional insights?

Yes. It’s Reejarim, the Axe of Long Strides. It’s +1 and a +5 to your base move when equipped. 

Consider it equipped

OK, folks, should we head back down to the basement of doom and try to get to the bottom of this.  Barnaby, what are we doing with that statue?

You should now have a handout for the axe.

Kif, perhaps you could cut the entire hand off the statue. That way we will get the orb without having to touch it. 

Meanwhile Barnaby will spend the first hour of the morning studying the orb trying to understand any more about it. 

Arcana with inspiration: 11 18

Portent rolls: 12 5

Training roll for revenge:  12

Føpé will attempt to do some push ups before breakfast. Athletics check: 17 

Barnaby, you study it for a time and you begin to piece some things together. 

You recall this letter, from the study in the library:

Quote from ds3272>>

Close inspection reveals that the skeleton belongs to a human who triggered a poisoned dart trap. Three darts are stuck in the dead adventurer’s armor and ribcage. The dart-firing mechanism inside the chest no longer functions.

Clutched in the skeleton’s left hand is a letter bearing the seal of Strahd von Zarovich, which the adventurer tried to remove from the chest. Written in flowing script, the letter reads as follows:

My most pathetic servant,

I am not a messiah sent to you by the Dark Powers of this land. I have not come to lead you on a path to immortality. However many souls you have bled on your hidden altar, however many visitors you have tortured in your dungeon, know that you are not the ones who brought me to this beautiful land. You are but worms writhing in my earth.

You say that you are cursed, your fortunes spent. You abandoned love for madness, took solace in the bosom of another woman, and sired a bastard son. Cursed by darkness? Of that I have no doubt. Save you from your wretchedness? I think not. I much prefer you as you are.

Your dread lord and master,
Strahd von Zarovich

The chest contains three blank books with black leather covers (worth 25 gp each), three scrolls (bless, protection from poison, and spiritual weapon), the deed to the house, the deed to a windmill, and a signed will. The will is signed by Gustav and Elisabeth Durst and bequeathes the house, the windmill, and all other family property to Rosavalda and Thornboldt Durst in the event of their parents' deaths.   

The shelves are packed with tomes describing fiend-summoning rituals and the necromantic rituals of a cult called the Priests of Osybus.

Your Detect Magic, cast as a ritual, detects nothing other than the aura of transmutation and illusion that permeates this place. 

Edit: and it also detects the magic you would expect from the described scrolls. 

You know that what you are studying is a scrying device of some limited kind, and you recall that Ireena felt the presence of Strahd when you touched the crystal orb. Perhaps the cult worshiping in this dungeon was something he wanted to keep an eye on, and this device is the "eye" with which he did so. 

You suspect that this is a device for either communicating directly with Strahd or, perhaps, just allowing him to peek through whenever he feels like it (or whenever it's activated somehow). You haven't seen any sign, though, that he treated the cult with anything other than disdain.

While Føpé slept in the night, he left his shirt over the orb freeing up his sleeping roll and blanket for sleeping.  Watching Barnaby study it while doing pushups, Føpé thinks we need to destroy it.  Burn this house down.  The only mystery we need to solve is how to end this evil.  This place is evil. 

I'm not sure we need a hotline to Strahd, which this thing seems to be.  Of course he didn't seem to have any problems knowing who we were and where we were when he 'visited us in the village. Maybe we should just leave the statue and stone up here so he has a nice view then get on with the rest of the basement. Maybe we can just burn the place down around him later 

Barnaby gives a dejected look at the blanketed orb.

I’m sure that if I worked with it a bit I could disconnect it from that fiend and put the orb to good use, but, I suppose this is neither the time nor the place. Lead the way Kif. 

You make your way back down to where you left off, and push past the Mimic's remains. You enter a small room that was probably a meeting room or den for the cult leadership. A chandelier is suspended above a table in the middle of the room. Two high-backed chairs flank the table, which has an empty clay jug and two clay flagons atop it. Iron candlesticks stand in two corners, their candles long since melted away.

Roll a Perception check. If you get a 10 or higher, read this:

Perception 19

8  perceptin'

Perceval: 17 

Edit: Dick.

I see nothing in here. Let us move on to a more useful room.

Onward and westward to the next room

This room appears to be the quarters of the cult leaders. There is a large wood-framed bed with a rotted feather mattress, a wardrobe containing several old robes, a pair of iron candlesticks, and an open crate containing torches (Hooray!!!!) and a leather sack inside it. At the foot of the bed is a footlocker. 

Please describe what you do, and roll your Perception/Whatever checks, as appropriate. 

Looking around the room for anything out of the ordinary 17 perception

Looking at the footlocker, without touching to see if there are any traps  10 investigation

Since I have been rolling crap on every perception roll so far I'll step back without touching anything to let others do what they will as well

edit: see