S9 - The Haunted House Session 1

The party entered Qadib, the city of alchemists.

Gamal (Callum's character) visited his family, dropping off his money to wife Emira, and promised his son Zamir that he would return with the Staff of Heaven, an old Kusan relic.

Artamir visited the Sultan's palace to look for work, and took up the work to help an alchemist and investigate a haunted house in the city.

Artamir visited the alchemist, Na'im, who had blown up his lab and lost his materials. He promised Artamir 300gp to find the Golden Kzbrt, a rare herb of many small leaves, that grows only on the peaks of the mountains to the east of Qadib. If Artamir takes longer than a week to do the job, he only gets 200gp.

The party went to the haunted house.

## Haunted House

Inside, there was a droning ugly music playing, causing them to be vulnerable to sanity damaging effects while they are exposed to it. It is possible to cover your ears etc to not hear the music and remove the effects.

### Ground Floor

##### G2 - Shrine

* This room is a shrine to the ancient ancestors of whichever Kusan lived here thousands of years ago. It has been preserved as a historical relic. The incense still burns. There is some kind of slithering along the end wall. **Nyx shot it, and it scurried into a crack in the wall. The room then filled with smoke as the party fled.**

##### G3 - Garden

* The room is filled with magically preserved plants. **As Artamir entered the room, the torch light reveals the plants to be withered and dead. The players hear a voice, saying that [the speaker] is under the ground.** If the players dig, they will fall through the floor into the East Crypts of the Basement Floor.

##### G4 - Collapsed Room

* The room is a hallway that leads to a ballroom and antechamber.
* The room is completely collapsed. **Artemir dropped his torch down and saw a slithering thing recoil from the flame, 30 ft below.**

##### G5 - Bloody Room

* The room was once a study, but has been torn apart, and is covered in blood.

##### G6 - Dining Room

* The room contains a small table with a crystal. Looking deeply into the crystal will give an image of something else in the house. The crystal shows the viewpoint of the monster lurking the house.
* There is also a secret door leading to the mystic elevator.

##### G7 - Storage

* The room is filled with sundries and rugs. Behind the rugs is a wall that has been smashed in, with a Kusan inscription above. behind the wall is a set of stairs leading to the basement.
* There are 3 men hanging from the ceiling, blood dripping from them. **Gamal saw them.** The bodies and evidence of bodies will be gone when they check the room again.

#### Upper Floor

##### 1-1 - Entry to Floor

* This room has a door to the mystic elevator.

##### 1-2 - Collapsed Hallway

* This hallway is partially collapsed, requiring a DC 12 Dexterity Check to cross safely.
* The hall leads to a bedroom.
* The hall is above the ballroom downstairs.
* The hall has dried blood on the floor.
* The hall contains a letter written by the owner of the house, stating that he will escape this place through death, and wishes better luck to anyone who finds this letter. **Artamir read the letter and currently has it.**

##### 1-3 - Bedroom

* This room contains a partial skeleton near a previously hidden wall safe. The skeleton had been wielding a broken spear and had failed to apply a fire paste (still available for use).
* The wall safe requires thieves' tools and a DC 16 check to open. Inside there the music box, creating the sanity damaging music (it was activated to keep people away). There is also 608gp, 954sp, 111cp in coins.

##### 1-4 - Music Room

* This room contains musical instruments for servants to play for those in the bedroom.
* There is a pedestal that would have contained the music box, and is currently empty.

##### 1-5 - Training Room

* This room contains weapons and dummies for combat training.
* There is a shelf with 4 strengthening oils, 3 fire pastes, 2 stamina potions, and 5 health potions.

##### 1-6 - Study

* This room contains books, scrolls, letters and diary entries.
* The diary entries reveal the owner of the house to have been believed there was some deeper mystery to the house.
	+ He discovered in the store room one day, an inscription on the wall. He presumed there was something behind it, and smashed the wall down, finding a basement floor.
	+ In the basement floor there was a crypt of some kind. Spending time down there, he found several Kusan artefacts. Experimenting with them, he discovered them to be of great value. One of the artefacts, a broken orichalcum sphere, he could never identify, save for a magi telling him that it exercised control over an entity linked to it.
	+ He experimented with trying to repair the sphere and performing rituals as shown in images in the ritual room. One day, the sphere came together.
	+ He kept experimenting with the sphere, but nothing seemed to happen. He will attempt it again tomorrow.
* Other letters have people asking about his isolation, and firing his servants, and allegedly aloof and strange behavior.

##### 1-7 - Hallway

* The hallway is covered in junk, requiring 5 rounds to cross, or DC 16 Dex check to do in 1 Action. **Gamal cleaned the junk, freeing the space.**

##### 1-8 - Servant's Quarters

* There are beds, shelves and cupboards all around the room. There is a man, one of the men who came to investigate the house, named Mahdi, who has been driven insane by the horrors and the music.

##### 1-10 - Worship Room

* The room has carpets and an alter.
* The flesh monster is here, and will attack the player's on sight. **This happened.**

##### 1-11 - Storeroom

* This room contains food goods, a lot of which has gone off though others are non-perishables.

#### Basement Floor

##### B4 - Ritual Room

* This room was used in the mansion owner's rituals and experimentations with the orichalcum orb. Here is where the ritual was performed that awoke the monster.

##### B5 - Store Room

* This room contains scraps of orichalcum, Kusan scrolls, and shelves containing a Rope of Grabbing, an Immovable Rod, and a Sash of Minor Conjuration (can summon 1 small item to your hand once per day).
* It once contained the music box.

##### B6 - Crypts

* This room is where the Lords and servants of the house had been cremated and buried in a tomb dedicated to each Lord.
* This is the room where the monster slumbered, and woke up after the repair of the orb.
* Patches of the room are difficult terrain, with sticky residue of the monster (treat as Web).
* The insane ghost of the mansion's owner is here, and tries to warn the players.