Session 22 - Foxglove Men are Terrible

General Summary

  As Jayvielle rose to his feet, the Saviors of Sandpoint gathered together to reassess and get their bearings. They would ascend to the second floor of Foxglove Manor to try and find the source of the sobbing that they had heard earlier. The house itself felt like it was against them, so if someone was trapped in here they had to find them.   Investigating the rooms upstairs revealed clues as to the source of the hauntings in the house. However, those clues came at a cost.  

• In one of the children's room upstairs, Kilgor experienced the memories of a child who watched their parents trying to kill each other. The mother swung a torch at the father, whose face and neck was covered with tumors. The child was terrified that whoever survived the battle would kill them next.
• In the musician's gallery, Kumiko recognized the images depicted in the stained glass windows as spell components used in necrotic magic, specifically lich apotheosis formulae.
• What was once the master bedroom was now clearly destroyed by someone filled with anger. Kilgor heard a whispering voice ask “What do you get up to down in the damp darkness below?”
• In the gallery, Kumiko wiped away the dusty cobwebs over the paintings in the room. It revealed portraits of the previous tenants of Foxglove Manor. The three to the north depicted Vorel and Kasanda Foxglove and their daughter Lorey. The five to the south showed Traver and Cyralie Foxglove, their son Aldern, and their two daughters Sendeli and Zeeva. Each painting bore a plaque that identified those pictured within. However, when all of the portraits had their cobwebs cleared away, the temperature in the room dropped dramatically. The figures depicted in the portraits suddenly shifted from paintings of living people to those of dead folk. Kasanda and Lorey slumped into misshapen, tumor-ridden corpses. Traver grew pale as a long cut opened in his throat and blood washed down over his chest. Cyralie blackened and charred, and her arms, legs, and back twisted as if broken in dozens of places. Aldern’s flesh darkened with rot, his hair fell out, and he deformed into a ghoul-like monster. Both Sendeli’s and Zeeva’s portraits frosted over but otherwise remained unchanged. Vorel’s entire portrait, frame and all, erupted into a sudden explosion of fungus and tumorous growth. This wave of fungus and disease washed over the entire room in seconds, washing over Kumiko and Cloud before the room suddenly reverted to normal. Unfortunately, Kumiko and Cloud were both infected with... something.

  Once again, the party tightened up and began talking about what they had found. They concluded that the solution to the mystery of Foxglove Manor was downstairs. So they remained together and explored the basement. After dispatching swarms of rats, they discovered Vorel's Workshop. Jayvielle leafed through one of his books and was flooded with visions, visions of Vorel researching lichdom, gathering materials, drinking it, and beginning to rot away. However he was then struck with sensations of sadness of a loved one doing such a thing to themselves, and rage that he was stopped before finishing the ritual.   They continued down a hallway and found piles of broken stone, dirt, and a few ruined pickaxes. The floor in the middle of the room was torn up to reveal an ancient set of stone spiral stairs much older than the surrounding basement that descended deep into the bedrock below. A foul stink, like that of rotten meat, wafted up on a cold breeze from the darkness.   Kilgor stepped on the stairs and had a vision of Aldern Foxglove swinging a pickaxe onto the floor. When he broke through, ghouls flooded out and grabbed him. They pulled him below and then attacked Kilgor briefly before disappearing.

Missions/Quests Completed

• Aldern Foxglove killed his wife in the house.
• Traver Foxglove became infected with something and killed his wife Cyralie.
• Vorel Foxglove tried to become a lich but his wife Kasanda interrupted the ritual.
• Based on the visions and morphed portrait, has Aldern become a ghoul of some kind?