The Haunted House

13 Marpenoth, The Year of Twelve Warnings (1494 DR)

The Haunted House, 4 miles north of Saltmarsh, The Sword Coast

Edmont Patch looked at the deed to his newly acquired mansion.
All looked in order. It took a week for the deed to be found. During that time, Edmont and the others in his adventuring party kept themselves busy in town carousing or working jobs that helped pay for their living expenses.
As soon as Edmont received the deed, Gellan Primewater, one of the town's council members offered to buy the mansion from Edmont for the princely sum of 7,000 gold pieces. Primewater tried to convince the aspiring pirate of the cost of maintaining a mansion. He also noted the mansion would need a lot of work to make it livable again considering it had been abandoned for twenty years.
But Edmont could no be persuaded to sell.
As soon as they were ready, the group made their way to the mansion. As soon as the group left Saltmarsh, a large group of townsfolk followed began to follow them. Some of the townsfolk could be heard taking bets on which one of the party members would survive the horrors of the haunted mansion. Others cheered them on.
However, when the group came within sight of the dilapidated mansion, the crowd quickly turned and headed back to town but not before most of them gave the daring adventurers the holy sign of Valkur, patron of sailors, a deity worshipped by most of the people of Saltmarsh.
The adventurers felt a chill run down their spine. Although it could have been the cold sea air.
**
When the crowd left, the group made their way towards the mansion.
The decrepit house sat on the highest ground in the area. Around it, a stone wall had crumbled in many places, exposing the interior grounds. An ornate metal gate lay open al the end of the road, swaying slightly in the wind. Wild flora grew throughout the inner yard, but all the years could not hide the evidence of a well-tended garden that once sat there. Near the house, the rotted wooden roof of a water well rose out of the tall grass.
The group made their way inside, entering through the front door which was unlocked. It was then Edmont realized he was never given a key to the mansion. As an expert in dealing with locks, Edmont didn't feel the need for keys. However, he made a mental note to have a set of keys made once he moved into his house.
The front door opened onto a musty, dirty entrance hall. To the left, a corridor led into the west wing of the house. The walls were bare and bits of smashed furniture lay upon the floor. Ahead, another corridor led toward the rear of the house.
A staircase on the eastern wall climbed to the next story, reaching it at a balcony that overlooks the entrance hall along its north and west sides; the stairs appeared safe to climb, though the balcony rail was broken in several places. Under the stairs at the north end of the hall, a third corridor led east.
The group moved towards the rear of the house.
They entered a dining room. At one time a long table stood in the center of this room; now it lay broken on the floor. A broken chair sat against the wall between the windows, and there was a heap of broken dishes in the northwest corner.
Edmont began to wonder how much it would cost to repair the old house. Xander even questioned whether or not Mr. Primewater's offer tp purchase the property should have been further considered.
Nevertheless, the group moved on.
Across from the dining room, they entered a dusty withdrawing room. Two stuffed armchairs stood near the fireplace of the room. The covers of both had been torn and the stuffing had been pulled out, but the wooden frames were intact. A broken table lay on the floor near the north wall.
Ahroheim noticed a loose brick above the fireplace. As he touched the brick, a swarm of spiders suddenly emerged from inside the fireplace and crawled over the sorcerer.
The group dealt with the spider swarm. Ahroheim suffered a few small bites but none the worse for it.
The narrow hallway led to two doors. One led outside to an overgrown garden with a well.
Ahroheim was the first to reach the well. The well's shaft. which descended 20 feet, still contained clean water.
Suddenly the high elf felt something prick his leg. Looking down, he spotted a snake that had bitten through his leather boot. He felt a sharp pain in the area where he was bitten but didn't think the snake's venom--if it was poisonous--wasn't spreading further to the rest of his body.
A second snake emerged out of the thick grass.
The two snakes were easily dispatched. Before going back inside the house, the group noted how Ahroheim was seemingly attracting all of the animals inside and outside the house.
Inside, the group entered a room that served as the house's kitchen. This kitchen was dirty and damp, with patches of gray mold and cobwebs on the floor, walls, and ceiling. In the southwest corner was an iron cooking equipment with a chimney above. Next to it, under the window, was a cracked and discolored stone sink. To the right of the sink, a small, closed wooden cupboard was fixed to the wall about five feet above floor level. Against the far wall, a flight of wooden stairs led upward from west to east; the woodwork of the staircase was decayed, and a few of the treads were missing. A door stood on the east wall.
As the group examined the kitchen, a giant centipede emerged from a hole in the foundation beneath the kitchen. Two skittered out of the drain. The fourth one fell out of the cupboard.
The group killed all but once centipede which disappeared through a hole in the kitchen floor.
Before moving on, Xander found a set of boot prints. The prints led from the front entrance and continued through the kitchen to disappear under the east door. The prints looked like they were recently made. A few days old perhaps.
"Well, someone's been here not that long ago," Edmont said. "And in my book, that be called 'tresppasin'."
The group decided to follow the boot prints and find out who had recently entered Edmont's mansion.

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NOTE: Players' schedules and life changes had, unfortunately, put an end to this short-lived module. I am considering altering the last session, The Haunted House. The adventurers were never heard from again which further added to the mystery of the Haunted House. This could pave way for another adventuring group to explore the house and continue the mysteries surrounding the town of Saltmarsh.

Session played on July 10, 2020