Runelords 11.0 - The Sanitorium

The sight of the dead orderly before them gave all four pause. Luna appeared to be somewhat stricken at how this had suddenly become deadly, while Khyrralien rather had a look of bored impatience as he waited for the others to decide what they were going to do. Eamon kept a stiff lip, though it was apparent from his demeanour that this was not the outcome he had intended; it was Virgil, as usual, who kept talking. He seemed more frustrated with their lack of cohesive strategy, and how their disarray had lead to this. Between him and Eamon, it was decided that they would push forwards and try to find the man they sought; they had been barred from the building rather forcibly, so they could only hope that they would find evidence of misdeed that would help justify their unlawful entry, and they still couldn't allow the facility to fall prey to a ghoul. As to the murder, Eamon offered to take full responsibility, and they agreed to report themselves afterwards. Luna felt bad leaving the body of the orderly in a heap, so they moved it, unmolested, to a nearby bench and covered it with a tablecloth. A quick glance revealed that there was no one and nothing on that floor: the door the wizard and the other orderly fled from was the rear exit, and they had disappeared into the surrounding forest. Finding the stairs, the group decided to go down first.
At the bottom of the stairs was what appeared to be a morgue: fresh, clean bodies were laid out on tables for investigation. A table in the corner had been set up as a study, not unlike the one they had found the wizard using at Thistletop Shrine. The desk of this one had been quickly swept off, judging by the remaining papers and objects that lay scattered on the edges; they finished the job, collecting up everything that had been missed. A large board had been set up on the wall, showing a local map marked with pins and string, and a note that labelled them as "known attacks" scattered all over the farmland outside of Sandpoint, and "probable epicenter of undead activity" where the strings met. Frowning, Virgil directed Luna to make a copy of the information to give to the sheriff. Meanwhile, the other three directed their attention to the two other doors in the room, both of which were locked.
As they waited for Luna, the door they had entered slammed shut suddenly: someone or something had been in the room with them, hiding invisibly. Now they were locked in, but none of them found this particularly distressing. They figured they may as well investigate the other two rooms before returning upstairs. Luna managed to unlock the first room, an empty bedroom for all intents and purposes, but couldn't manage the second: these locks were the same as those on the exterior of the building, and were a bit beyond what she could easily manage. Shrugging, the men broke the door down with force, and were immediately unhappy with their choices: the small room was basically a closet where zombies had been piled. With the door gone, the shambling undead milled towards the smell of the living. Deciding that they didn't want anything to do with this, they turned and fled, breaking down the door to the stairs and fleeing back to the main floor. They could hear the zombies shuffling after them, stymied only slightly by the stairs.
Back in the dining hall, they found a fire: someone had taken the effects of the orderly and set her body aflame. It was decided that someone should go upstairs, see if they could find anything of note, and warn people of impending danger. Luna looked at the fire, judged that it was on a wooden floor and presented the danger of spreading; she stayed to put it out, and Khyrralien was assigned to help her. While the other two went upstairs, a separate flight from the now-zombie infested one, Luna and Khyr blocked the zombies' path with a table and went about extinguishing the blaze with water from the kitchen, taking great care to ensure it wouldn't reignite.
As Virgil and Eamon found the second floor door locked, Virgil had an epiphany that the orderly they had killed had probably carried keys, which were certainly now in the possession of whomever had looted the body and tried to cremate it. Virgil in particular cursed their blatant incompetence as they were forced to break down another door.
The second floor was a common room edged by tiny bedrooms that were little more than prison cells. These were all empty save two, which were inhabited by two older men, one of whom was blind and both of whom were addled. Virgil spoke to them gently, but neither had any clue about a man who had been moved in a few days ago, as both seemed to have little grasp of where they were themselves. There was another staircase leading to the third floor, which they climbed.
With the fire extinguished, Khyr and Luna returned their attention to the zombies that were pressing against the shored-up door. While they had been putting out the fire, Khyr had suggested that they use it to destroy the zombies, to which Luna staunchly replied that that was not a good or feasible idea. Now, seeing that they were likely to break out eventually, Luna sighed and told Khyr to support the breaking barricade while she tossed some bombs through a gap. Khyr clapped: he knew fire was the solution. It didn't take long to destroy the zombies: they were not powerful creatures. Again feeling badly towards the dead, Luna insisted that they collect the bodies and lay them out respectfully, covering their faces. Khyr shrugged and assisted her in her task. When that was done, they went upstairs to rejoin the others.
Breaking open the third floor door, which was more heavily reinforced than the others, revealed a hallway. At this point feeling guilty for destroying every door in the building, Virgil repaired this one with magic before continuing forwards. The rooms on this hall, unlike those on the second floor, were definitely cells: reinforced steel bars made up the doors. Behind the first, they found a scrawny, ugly person with feral features and darting eyes: it was a wererat. The person whispered and chattered quietly, suggesting that he wasn't in his right mind either: Virgil took the time to explain zooanthropy to Eamon, outlining why it was a very bad idea to let someone with this sort of contagious curse out of the cage, particularly one who didn't seem to be sane. They moved on, leaving the man to his ravings.
The second cell was empty, but the third held a man in a straight jacket, writhing and looking extremely ill. He muttered and raved about the Skinsaw Man, about the blood and carnage, and about how he couldn't be stopped. It seemed he was talking to the air, and Virgil and Eamon couldn't keep his attention. When Luna and Khyr rejoined them, however, the man snapped into lucidity, staring at the woman. He lunged forwards to the bars of the cage, speaking in a fevered fury, telling her that he had a message to her from his lordship, that he had been made to remember: she was to go to his misgivings, where he had a special place for her; if she would join his pack, then he would stop the harvest in her honour. The man muttered that he was jealous of his favour towards her, and slipped back into raving. Luna blinked, taken aback and highly unsettled by this whole macabre situation, and everyone was confused by what could possibly be meant by 'his lordship's misgivings'.
The man seemed to have little else to offer, having slipped back into madness and getting weaker every passing moment. Luna slid down to the floor and watched him: she muttered that he was going to die and there was nothing they could do about it, and it was wrong that someone just die, ill and alone, with no one to mark their passing. Since she seemed intent on watching him as he passed away, the others moved towards the final door in the hallway. Breaking it down like the others, they found an office: Erin screamed for mercy in the rear. They tried mostly unsuccessfully to calm her down, as she was convinced that they had come to kill her. She did manage to explain that she had no idea what had been going on in the basement: the sanitorium had been down on its luck and running out of money, when a woman named Koume Kamun arrived and offered to financially support the facility in exchange for undisturbed use of the basement. This had happened about six months earlier; she had arrived with two others, who had been put to work as orderlies, and there had been no issues. When asked about a possible fourth person, she claimed ignorance; they still had no idea who might have locked them in the basement. Erin swore her innocence and pleaded to not be hurt, regardless of how many times they promised they weren't going to harm her. 
Eventually, they agreed that the sheriff needed to be brought in: they had uncovered evidence of some sort of zombie-manufacturing facility, ostensibly run by one of Nualia's hired accomplices. Eamon and Khyrralien left to hike back to town to fetch him, while Luna and Virgil maintained watch over the scene. Luna quietly observed while the ill man eventually fell unconscious, succumbing to his disease. When he regained consciousness some time later, now a ghoul bound in a straight jacket, it was obvious that he was still insane, muttering and raving. Meanwhile, Virgil kept an eye on Erin; she stayed huddled in her office, afraid of the man who watched her and for the outcome of herself and the sanitorium. 
Hours later, the pair returned with Sheriff Hemlock and some guards, who secured the facility and took statements from everyone involved. They gave him the notes that they had gathered off the table, though they didn't mention the other various objects and jars they had unwittingly scooped up, and directed his attention towards the map outlining what were implied to be attacks on nearby farms. Hemlock was unsettled; the farmers didn't often come in to Sandpoint unless it was to market, and they handled their own affairs generally. He hadn't heard any news from them in a while. They also mentioned the message they had received from the inmate, and they were pleasantly surprised when he professed to know exactly what the misgivings were. According to him, the Misgivings was a local name attributed to a coastal manor some miles outside of Sandpoint, widely believed to be haunted. About two decades ago, the servants' quarters burned down; in the aftermath, the lady of the house was found dashed on the ocean rocks off the nearby cliffside, her body burned, and the lord was found in his room, where he had stabbed himself to death. The manor had been subsequently abandoned. He mentioned that the house's proper name was Foxglove Manor, and would be the property of Aldern Foxglove, whom they had met some scarce weeks ago. Aldern was a child when this had happened, and had been moved away after the deaths of his parents. 
It was decided that the four adventurers would need to visit the farmsteads outside of Sandpoint to see what their current state was, as well as go to the Misgivings and hopefully put an end to the madness being perpetrated by the undead murderer. However, there was the matter of the murder that they had sorrowfully admitted to. Hemlock's decision was to give them some leniency, as he knew adventuring often turned to violence and they had already rendered a great service to the town. The keystone of his decision, however, was the admittance that whatever was murdering people currently was well beyond the skill levels of his staff, and he needed them to find and deal with the ghast that was plaguing the town. He told them that he would have to take them in for the night to be processed, and then they could pay their own bail and carry on working for the guard until proper legal proceedings could be sorted out. Eamon tried to state that it was purely his own misjudgement, and that the other three shouldn't be arrested for his mistakes, but Hemlock shook his head and explained that they were all accessory to the crime, and that in cases such as this, the group is responsible for all crimes committed by an individual: they would all be under arrest. Only Luna took this poorly; Khyrralien's and Virgil's lackadaisical responses suggested that this was not the first time they had been arrested. 
The group walked back to Sandpoint as night fell, where they were processed at the police station and put in holding cells for the night. They had their weapons taken from them, but they were allowed to keep their other belongings, as this was more of a matter of good faith than a proper arrest. As they sat in individual cells, Khyrralien struck up a friendly conversation with the other tenant: a sailor who had had a bit too much to drink. Virgil realised that he was now unable to meet with Shadliss as he had promised, and polled the others on whether it was a good idea or not to tell her where he was. Luna groused at him angrily; she was upset at now having a serious criminal record, and was in no mood for him at all. Eventually, he decided to be evasive, and instead just wrote a letter saying that he was regretful that he couldn't be back this evening. Calling one of his ravens down to the small cell window, he passed the note through and instructed it to take it to Shadliss. This began a series of written exchanges, where Shadliss insisted on knowing where he was and suggesting that the raven, whom Shadliss had apparently named Romeo, knew more than a regular bird should be capable of understanding. 
Eventually, Virgil relented and told her that he was in jail, and Shadliss very quickly came to the cell window to talk to him. He tried to reassure her when explaining the day's events, but her shaky composure and Luna's shouted complaints did little to aid him. He did manage to assure her that this was just a formality, that he wasn't really under arrest, and that he would be out in the morning. She said that she would meet him first thing in the morning, and he tossed out another gem for her to have, apologizing for this and saying that things would be ok. As she left to get some sleep, Virgil felt the curious sensation that came from changing alignment: he had done enough good to now register as neutral. Between this and the taste of Luna's anger, Virgil was elated, and gladly joined in on the rousing songs being sung by Khyrralien and his drunk friend. 
Category:Rise of the Runelords