Session 2-2: Fall of the House of Ravinger
Activity Log - From grief, a greater tragedy born
General Summary
It has been a fortunately uneventful week since rescuing Good Bill’s mother, Savilla, from The Black Road. My friends and I are finishing our night shift at the hospital and are about to get some much needed rest when a courier arrives as we are leaving with a letter from Uncle Dayne. Despite the…low opinion they have of him, curiosity and the chance for profit frequently won out over simply ignoring his summons, so we head to his office immediately. There, we find him speaking to a tall, dark haired and sullen man. Though well-dressed he did carry a mace at his side, somewhat unusually for most of our clients. Seeing us enter, Dayne very quickly goes into his sales pitch, using the article Bogrom wrote to talk up our abilities. It seemed he needed little convincing, introducing himself as Dieter Ravinger, son of Ellis Ravinger, owner of the Whisperveil Cemetery. He explains that his cemetery has been overwhelmed with corpses from the fire at the Counting House seven weeks ago, at which he and his brother Liam were also caught in. Sadly for him, he perished where Dieter barely survived. Of late, bodies have gone missing from those that were coming in from the city after the fire. Dieter, who is to inherit the cemetery as the remaining son of Ellis, wants us to investigate who is stealing these bodies discreetly. His father is not to know we were hired by him for this task. Lacking any journalist tag-along, we agree. We decide to go to Time Piece’s now open “Very Safe Magic Shop”, and find her to be just as eccentric, if not more so, than Tea Kettle. Her goods, however, are legitimate, though whether they were legitimately come by is a different matter. After we make our purchases, we meet back up with Dieter and travel to the Whisperveil Cemetery together. I did not like that coming to the cemetery was becoming a habit for us since our last visit was just a week ago for Trevor’s funeral. We see several gravediggers hard at work at the plots for those that perished in the fire. Currently one funeral is being held though it is not for a victim of the fire. As we approach the cemetery office, I notice one of the employees, a weasel looking man, staring side eyed at our group and scowling to himself. Inside, Dieter is greeted by the cemetery office manager, a river halfling named Jilafira Cherrylear. Dieter introduces us as friends of his from his days soldiering in Beldon, coming by to visit after hearing of his near brush with death weeks earlier. The cover was for the benefit of keeping the job from Ellis, and we were coached on the way here to hold to that story. Jilafira seemed very happy that Dieter had friends that visited, noting his gray mood in the time since the fire. Dieter asks to see the ledger for the cemetery, wanting to check the incoming numbers of the last week or so. Though very helpful, Jilafira is a sharp woman and definitely suspects something. TK and Cojitron inspect the ledger, which has a number of details about the incoming bodies, where they are from, and even what sort of damage they sustained at the time of death. Our eagle eyed companions noted that of the large number of bodies that came in, nine had gone missing. This much we knew, but they noticed that based on the description of their conditions, they were among the least damaged. Minor surface damage that left the corpses looking much as they were in life, based on the notes of the mortician. While the two of them were studying the ledger, Horick and I went outside and did our own looking around the cemetery. Horick studies the areas around the graves of the stolen bodies, finding large footprints moving around the area of the holes that were dug up. Following them to the edge of the cemetery to the fence, he spots evidence of whoever stole the bodies, hurling them over the fence onto the other side. Such a feat of strength is beyond most normal people. I discreetly use the mana gauge on the defiled graves to see if there is any lingering magic. That turns out to be a dead end; whatever damage done by the fires of Stryxis have largely faded, so we could not follow such a trail. While I am doing this, the scowling man approaches to ask why Dieter brought us here. I answer that we are soldier friends of his, and though somewhat surprised by that story, he then responds rudely that Whisperveil is no place for non-humans, living or dead. I avoid arguing with the unpleasant gravedigger and leave to go back to the office after Horick finishes up his sniffing around. Dieter approaches us on our return to ask how the investigation is going. Horick tells him in no uncertain terms that whoever has been taking the bodies have dragged them over to the fence and hurled them over somehow with sheer brute strength. Dieter takes this in stride and ponders this new information. I add that while we were looking around the surly gravedigger approached me and was rather rude about our…non-human backgrounds. Dieter sighs and remarks that this Locklander, Odo Radeh, had been working for his father for many years and was good at his job despite his unpleasant demeanor and ugly views. He would have a word with him to stay out of our ways. I catch a glimpse of Dieter talking to Odo a moment later and, reading their lips, find that Dieter is pressuring Odo to leave us alone and that we were his guests and friends here to visit and do him a favor. As well, he ordered him to keep this all from his father. Despite Odo’s protestations, he gave in. Eventually Cojitron and Tea Kettle finish their examination of the ledger and bring their findings to Dieter, discovering that all the bodies buried recently have been human (98 in all recently), with four in particular being within the last few days. Dieter, thinking this over, waves us to follow him to the mortuary, where he speaks with the apprentice mortician’s assistant, a Talboti native named Migonnette Drivinod. She was being trained to eventually take over the job. Dieter asks her to show us the next human slated to be buried that was the least damaged. She seemed confused by the request but did so. Asking her to leave, Dieter uses strange magic to allow him to speak with the spirit of the corpse once Migonnette departs. Unfortunately, the deceased had little of use he could tell us, other than the manner of his death via smoke inhalation. There was nothing linking him to the other disappeared bodies, and he had no enemies in life. It seemed the only links were his human background and low physical disfigurement at death. Dieter wanders off to speak with his father Ellis some more, and bids us continue our search until evening, when we would hatch a plan to catch the corpse thief in the act, using the fresh corpses just buried as bait. Gruesome though that sounded, it was bound to happen again. While in the office, we are approached by two men and a hound named Tomkin Whitby and Perry Ives, who worked security as well as dig graves. The dog, Splash, was also a guard here and owned by Tomkin. Tomkin and Perry speak with us excitedly, as we follow the same cover story that we were friends of Dieter that soldiered with him in Beldon for a time, here to visit him after his near death at the Counting House. Impressed by our tale, they remark that it was good that Dieter had people to rely on, considering that he had always been a bit of a loner and that the passing of his brother Liam in the fire had made him very melancholic. Both had been in the same fire but only Dieter survived, much scarred it seemed. They also speak poorly of Odo but have to follow his lead considering his seniority, though they said they would be rooting for us when we tell him we promised Dieter we would help him find this thief. Oh, and to keep it a secret from Ellis, of course. They must care about Dieter’s well-being because they readily agree to do so. As night nears, rain begins to fall. Dieter informs us that the majority of the staff have left for the day and all ceremonies were completed. The cemetery hearse driver Birch had just dropped off ten more corpses for the cemetery to prepare, and after she left, it was just us and the security staff. Telling Dieter our plan, he agrees to it and we take positions not far from the freshly buried corpse of one we flagged for potential robbery. We did not have to wait too long in the unpleasant, rainy evening before we spotted an immense, shadowy figure climb the fence at the western perimeter and head towards the grave we were staking out. There, the figure removed a large shovel from his oversized cloak and began digging abnormally quickly. What would take a few strong men an hour he was poised to do in less than half that time alone. Horick rushes in, intent on stopping it in its tracks. Seeing us, the figure becomes aggressive and lashes out, nearly taking Horick’s head off with his shovel. The fight began and though outsized, was brought low by our ambush after a few exchanges. Removing the cloak, we find that the figure is a terrifying patchwork of body parts and limbs cobbled together by heavy stitching and illuminated slightly by residual, coursing electricity. This discovery horrifies us as we realize what had happened to the bodies that had been stolen, and Dieter, confused and outraged, catches sight of another large figure near to the fence, likely another one of these creatures and the accomplice of the one we slew. It turns and flees to escape the cemetery. I loose an arrow at the fleeing giant, destroying the lantern it was carrying, much to my chagrin. The rain made it difficult to see, but I outpaced my friends as we chased after it. Vaulting over the fence not far behind the thing (who had leapt over it itself), I managed to catch up to it and almost regretted it, as it towered over me and attacked me with its shovel. I took several serious wounds, falling to the ground in pain. Fortunately, that bought the others enough time to reach the wagon it tried to escape in and TK fired a spell at one of its wheels, making it unusable. They then turn their attention on this second monster and manage to bring it down after a fierce battle. TK restored some health to me and, while I painfully tended to my remaining wounds, Cojitron set the wagon wheel back to working order with their magic. Dieter investigates the corpse of the flesh golem and, warning us beforehand, uses his magic to animate the dead thing. Pulling the cloak from his pack that he took off the first thing we laid low at the cemetery, suggested we use the wagon to travel back to its origin point. TK and Cojitron, in an odd bit of inspiration, decide to disguise themselves as one of these things with a kit and said spare cloak, while the animated monstrosity raised by Dieter would be the other. The wagon was uncomfortable and uncovered, as it only needed to haul bodies, but I hid within it as we boarded and Horick took the reins and coaxed the horse back to its home stable. We reach a large, gated manor and approach the front. Dieter becomes strangely silent once he sees the estate, though he orders his animated giant to knock on the front. A hooded figure approaches and opens the gate, scolding the huge zombie for not remembering that it was supposed to go to the back of the manor with its delivery. The figure reveals himself to be Odo, the Locklander from the Cemetery. He was an accomplice this whole time. Odo returns inside the house while the wagon travels around the back where a cellar door awaited. Dieter turns to us and tells us that we were to wait here while he went in alone to discover what was going on. He then ordered his zombie to open the cellar door, following behind him downstairs. Deeply concerned and suspicious at this turn of events, we decide to break into this manor ourselves from the front. I find a window I can pick and open and we sneak inside, finding ourselves in the foyer. Large tracks matching those of the patchwork creatures we had fought earlier have been left behind. The house seems otherwise quiet at the moment, but even in the gloom we could tell it was lavishly adorned. We make our way to the library and find rows of books about medicine and biology. As well, we notice the crest above the library shelves, one belonging to the Ravinger household. Our fears confirmed, we piece together that Ellis had been the one stealing from his own cemetery. The question is what Dieter’s role in all this was. Was he truly ignorant of his father’s actions? Among the items in an adjoining room are several vials of a strange liquid marked “memory enhancement”. We collectively sneak upstairs to continue our search. TK and Cojitron, looking over the liquid, surmise that Ellis was somehow creating these living flesh golems from the body parts of the human corpses he was stealing, powered by electricity by some unknown means, and injected with this strange memory alteration serum, but to what end? He must have a lab or place to conduct this unnatural and nightmarish work. We find a large door near the stairwell. Strange crackling noises come from behind, with Odo standing guard. Our attempts to stealthily catch him off guard, and before we can warn him away, he draws his sword and lunges at us, determined to keep us from what we assume is the lab. Horick shows no restraint and cuts the Locklander down with Bonk. Drawing our weapons cautiously, Horick unceremoniously kicks open the door. What we find shocks us to our core. The room is filled with strange and advanced machinery that hums with barely contained lightning. The central device that dominates this equipment flares with energy, ready to be unleashed. Next to it is Ellis, along with Dieter, who by his blank expression has become something of a thrall to his father, and a huge, hulking patchwork golem that puts even the others we’ve encountered to shame. Ellis proclaims that we had to be done away with so he can continue his work of returning his sons to him after their tragic loss in the fire; he had succeeded in rebuilding Liam, the giant before us now, using the bodies of those coming into Whisperveil, and has nearly perfected the memory altering formula he has been using on Dieter, who also perished in that same fire, much to our shock. Bringing back Dieter was less complex as he did not suffer as much bodily harm in the fire, but his mind had to be made pliable and so he’s been injecting him with his formula for weeks now. I try to beseech Ellis to quit this mad plan of his, but he refuses to relent; he was beyond distraught with grief and his actions were all but justified in his own mind. When we arrived at the estate and Dieter went alone to confront his father without us, he discovered his plans and protested the dark crimes committed for his and his brother’s sakes, but succumbed to the memory altering drug used on him. Now he would overwrite the last several days, along with his hiring of us to investigate the missing corpses, as he regretfully plans to bury us along with the evidence. He activates the machine and lightning fires from it, arcing across the room and making it dangerous to cross inside. This awakens two more flesh golems from their gurneys in the lab and they make their way over to us. Dieter casts a spell that surrounds him with swirling, deadly energy, and he follows the golems into battle with his mace drawn. I enter the room, dancing through the bolts of lightning flying from the machine as best as I can, and reach the other side while Horick and the others hold our attackers at bay. Liam remains at his father Ellis’s side, but I succeed in sneaking around and attempted to force him to shut the machine down and to give up quietly. My attempt falls flat as he once again refuses and orders his son to kill me. I avoid several blows from the giant but one connects and, having not fully recovered from my earlier wounds, succumbs to Liam’s monstrous strength. On the other side, Horick battles the flesh golems and manages to bring one down, with Tea Kettle’s spells launching a line of caustic, stinging acid into them. He also carefully makes his way into the lab with the intent of shutting down the lightning machine. All are bombarded by Dieter’s dangerous spell, however, and it is looking very grim. Cojitron takes a chance and rushes toward Dieter, surviving the lightning and spells flying every which way, and casts a protection spell upon him, hoping that it would help bring him to his senses. With the dweamor’s help, he is able to shake off the mind serum’s effects and realize immediately what was happening. He deactivated his damaging spell and makes his way over to Liam and Ellis, though not before throwing a bag of coins at Cojitron, paying us for a job he was considering successfully completed. He manages to make his way to Liam and interject himself between my prone body and his brother, yelling at him to stop and for his father to end the madness. Ellis continues to stubbornly refuse to see reason, but Liam is confused and stops his attacks for the moment. Dieter takes this pause to cast healing into my wounds, allowing me to stand and back away from the immediate danger. In the confusion and amidst Tea Kettle’s eventual successful attempt to stop the machine, Ellis starts a fire that begins spreading across the floor, desperate to be rid of us. Dieter begs him to stop while Liam, fearful of the flames from the memories of his terrible death, panics and it takes a great amount of effort to keep him from lashing out and doing more harm. This gives Horick an opening to attack Ellis and bring him down. As he is about to deliver a last blow, Dieter intercedes and tells Horick to spare him and Liam, who is beside himself with panic from the fire. Dieter promises that everything was ending tonight one way or another and that he would take his family and flee, never to cause any trouble again. The normally action driven Horick hesitates, but this brief breakthrough is short lived as Tea Kettle and I, in a vain attempt to put the fire out, throw unmarked liquids from the lab onto the flames after wrongly deducing that they would suppress it. I fight my way to where Cojitron waited outside the lab door and, with the fire raging out of control and too much for the others to make it through, the two of us spot Liam picking up Dieter and Ellis and crashing out the window. It seemed that Tea Kettle, thinking quickly, had cast feather fall on the group of them and he and Horick together with the Ravingers made it to the ground safely. Cojitron and I ran outside and met them there, watching as the Ravinger estate went up in flames and with it, all the crazed experiments and equipment Ellis possessed. All, save for the one vial of memory fluid we had taken earlier. Tea Kettle pulled from his jacket a book with a red moth imprinted on it that Ellis had dropped upstairs. In the senior Ravinger’s ranting and raving, he had revealed that a masked man sounding not dissimilar to the Bishop of Sytrix we fought several weeks ago had given it to him and that is what drove him to perform these awful experiments in creating these cursed living brutes. It was all in the service of bringing back his beloved sons. The moth emblem on the tome certainly was a match for those spreading the plague of undeath at that time. Dieter thanked us briefly and made good on his promise, disappearing into the storming night with Liam and their unconscious father in tow. He did leave a warning to destroy the book so that no one could follow his father’s work. We had no interest in even looking within its dark pages, and quickly threw it on the burning inferno that was the Ravinger estate. Watching for a few moments more to make sure nothing else emerged from the fire, we made our way back home, the tragedy of the night finally over. The End for Now, ~Bayour S.
Rewards Granted
- 300 aurins paid by Dieter Ravinger on the completion of the investigation
- A vial of memory altering serum created by Ellis Ravinger
- A tome with the emblem of a moth, detailing the process for creating living flesh golems. Destroyed.
Missions/Quests Completed
- Uncovered who was behind the theft of corpses from Whisperveil Cemetery
- Stopped Ellis Ravinger from continuing his harvest of corpses for his experiments
- Destroyed the equipment and research inside the Ravinger estate, albeit unintentionally at the time
Character(s) interacted with
- Dieter Ravinger, surviving son of Ellis Ravinger. Discovered to have perished in the fire and brought back through unnatural means
- Ellis Ravinger, owner of the Whisperveil Cemetery. Lost both sons to the Counting House fires and approached by a masked individual with the means to restore both
- Liam Ravinger, deceased son of Ellis, having died from terrible burns in the Counting House and reborn as a patchwork flesh golem
- Jilafira Cherrylear, river halfling cemetery office manager. Sharp eyed and perceptive
- Odo Radeh, Locklander and senior gravedigger at Whisperveil. Ellis's accomplish and deeply prejudiced
- Birch Shellund, half elf hearse driver for Whisperveil
- Tomkin Whitby, human security guard and Whisperveil gravedigger. Friendly and concerned for Dieter
- Perry Ives, human security guard and Whisperveil gravedigger with Tomkin
- Splash, guard dog owned by Tomkin
- Mignonnette Drivinod, human from Talbot that works as the apprentice mortician at the Cemetery.
Related Reports
Notes
The influence of The Faceless Court remains; why the masked individual chose Ellis to bequeath such terrible knowledge is a mystery. Ghal Pelor is still in danger from this cult.
