When we left off last session, the Party had rescued the farmer couple from the ghoul scarecrows. However, Ymir had been infected with Ghoul Fever. For those who don’t know, this means she has to make a Fortitude save every 24 hours. If she fails, she would take 1d3 Dexterity damage and 1d3 Constitution damage. If she died from Ghoul Fever, she would rise as a ghoul or a ghast the following midnight, retaining none of her previous abilities and acting as any undead fiend with a hunger for flesh would act. Thankfully, two consecutive saves would be enough to cure her naturally.

On top of that, Jyn’s Tengu Wings weren’t going away, which left him very concerned. As Chaka’s player put it, “Jyn! You’re only supposed to drink ONE Red Bull!”

The Party reached town by sunset and informed the Sherriff what had happened. The Sherriff said that a cleric could be brought in to cure Ymir and the farmers, but it would take three days for them to get there. Anais offered to fetch the cleric, since he had no issue getting past ghouls in the dead of night.

After a brief discussion, the Party decided, while waiting for Anais to return with the cleric, to head for where they thought the source of ghouls was located: the Nobleman’s manor. As they made their way there, Ymir had to make her first Fortitude save against her Ghoul Fever.

She failed, taking 2 points of Constitution and Dexterity damage each. Those two points were enough to bring her AC down by 2 her health down by 5.

They arrived at the manor in the early afternoon. The manor itself was decrepit and barely holding itself up.

Me: “How do you wish to proceed?”

Jyn’s player: “Left foot, right foot…”

You laugh now, buddy, but just you wait….

Some sickly crows perched themselves on the burned remains of an out outbuilding, but they flew away as soon as Jyn approached them. Chaka used his usual Detect Magic, but sensed nothing from the burnt remains.

With nothing else to see, the Party entered the manor, opting for the side entrance instead of the front door. Chaka was ready to bust down the door when Jyn stopped him.

“Why loud?” he asked, holding up his lock picks.

Ciara, in turn, tapped Jyn on the shoulder. “Why bother?” she asked, holding up the key she got from the ghast in the previous session.

The first room they entered was a parlor with a rotting piano and a dance floor. A woman could be heard sobbing from somewhere upstairs.

Before anyone could say anything, Jyn walked to the piano, opened the lid, and stabbed the inside.

Once his sword touched the inner strings, the piano erupted with catchy but discordant music. Jyn was swept up into a dance, pirouetting around the room. No one else could see whom he danced with, but Jyn could. A Beautiful Woman with silky black hair and a radiant smile spun with him around the room. Jyn failed a Will save and kept on dancing. As they continued, the woman’s beauty began to fade. An angry bruise darkened around her neck and her face contorted with pain. Once Jyn succeeded in his Will save the next try, the woman crumbled away. However, Jyn was left Fatigued.

Ymir: “You just HAD to stab the piano…”

Jyn: “Was fun…Should try it…Took…breath away…”

Ciara opened the next door, which led to a washroom with an aging tub. A diseased rat scurried inside the tub, unable to get out. Chaka tried to heal it out of sympathy, but the cure minor wounds spell only made it feistier. Curious, he used his trusty Detect Magic. He sensed a supernatural malice oozing from the manor’s walls, but he couldn’t tell what school of magic was in play. Jyn finally used a bamboo dart to one-shot the diseased rat. “Was a mercy killing. For us. That was an insult to life.”

The next room they entered was a lounge, where the dust moved as if someone was pacing back and forth. Chaka stepped through the pacing specter’s path and was immediately struck with a memory, a woman’s memory, where she wondered what her husband was doing in the basement and how she needed to escape with her child. He developed a sudden urge to grab Ciara, whom he was convinced was his daughter, and escape the house. However, he rolled a high enough Will save to fight it before he grabbed a very confused Ciara.

By this point, the Party knew something was wrong with this house and wished phones were invented so they could call Ghost Busters. However, a quick inspection of some very unique stained glass windows in the dining room confirmed that necromancy was somehow in play. Further up in the entrance hall, they spotted a stuffed manticore. Jyn smelled burning hair for a brief moment (more on that later). A spiral stain of black, blue, and green mold lay on the floor between the dining room and entrance hall.

When investigating the library, an ornate scarf came to life with a shriek and attacked Ciara because she got too close to where it lay. Ciara rolled a high enough Will save to avoid getting strangled, but, for a brief moment, she saw a ghostly image of the Nobleman. Chaka speculated that the Nobleman was attacking them with some sort of magic.

In the next room, Chaka joked around about “letting some light in.” Draco, taking him seriously, drew the curtains and leapt back. He had seen a woman’s face in the window. Based on how he described her, it was the same Beautiful Woman Jyn danced with.

Upon returning to the entrance hall, Jyn noticed that the stuffed manticore was smoldering. As he tried to warn everyone, the manticore burst into flames. Its face turned into that of a human woman, and it attacked him with its stinger. He dodged and fired a bamboo dart in retaliation, but it dissipated, leaving the dart in the opposite wall. Everyone else saw nothing, save for Jyn jumping around like a mad bird.

With the bottom floor cleared, the Party cautiously proceeded upstairs. Ymir opened the door to a child’s bedroom that seemed relatively unsuspicious. However, Ciara heard a child whimpering somewhere inside.

Ciara: “…NOPE.”

Well, that’s 800 XP they’re not getting…

Draco opened the door to another bedroom. This one was caked in the mold from downstairs. Suddenly, a little girl’s voice spoke to him. “What’s that on your face, mommy?” He was then overcome with a sensation that something was growing on his face and he needed to get it off immediately. Failing his Will save, he clawed at his face until Ciara pulled him away from the room. The experience dealt him 2 points of damage to his HP, but also 6 points of Charisma damage. This dropped his Charisma from 20 to 14, which is REALLY bad for a Charisma-based healer.

“Chaka? Remember that speech you made the other day about being brave? I kind of want to shove it down your throat right now…”

As you can see, the Party’s more uncouth parts have been rubbing off on him.

Next, Ymir tried entering the second floor washroom, only to dive back out before the rotting floor collapsed under her weight.

The next bedroom they came across, a ruined master bedroom, contained a single, undamaged painting. Draco took it and recognized the woman in the portrait as the same one he saw in the window. Upon seeing it, Ciara was hit with a brief yet intense wave of sadness. Since nothing else seemed wrong with it, Draco kept the painting with him.

However, that was not the true haunting that room contained. Shortly after leaving the room, Ymir was struck with a dizzy spell. Once it receded, she was filled with an overwhelming hatred of woman and, thanks to a failed Will save, was compelled to attack the nearest female to her: Ciara.

Ciara dodged her first swing and backhanded her, hoping to knock some sense into her. Instead, Ymir took 3 points of nonlethal damage, failed another Will save, and punched Ciara for 5 damage. Draco tried to grapple her, but failed by a single point difference. Finally, Ymir broke out of the possession. Despite the tense moment, the Party understood she was not in her right mind and were quick to forgive her, although Ciara had a hand on her pistol just in case. Ymir then hugged everyone as an apology.

After that, they found a gallery with five portraits covered in cobwebs. Jyn suggested they wipe them off. Doing so revealed the faces of the Nobleman (his younger self) and his past relatives.

However, as the last portrait was cleaned, the room turned bone cold. The portraits morphed from living people to depictions of how they passed away. The one of the younger version of the Nobleman turned into a bald, ghoulish figure. The portrait of the head of the household, the Nobleman’s ancestor, erupted in a flood of fungus and tumors that swept through the entire room.

As quickly as it spread, everything in the room returned to normal. Despite the terrifying sight, everyone seemed to be fine…except for Draco, the only one who failed his Fortitude save. He could see red bumps rising on his arm, but no one else could see it. He had been infected with a supernatural Phage.  

The last room on the second floor they explored was another bedroom. It seemed relatively okay, save for some of the mold growing on a desk. Everyone rolled a Perception check. They saw a silver-handled dagger on the desk which hadn’t been there a second ago.

Chaka was suddenly gripped with the confliction that he had killed the person he loved the most. He was compelled to take the dagger and end himself, but he was able to pass his Will save. The dagger turned into its true form, a sharp sliver of wood.

With the sobbing coming from the third floor and the basement stairs left unchecked, the Party was unsure of where to go next. Based on Chaka’s suggestion, they decided to leave the upstairs crying for later and opted to go downstairs instead.

As they descended the steps, they could hear the stairs creak behind them a moment later, like an invisible specter walked behind them. They turned around to discover…

…that I ended the session there and told them to stay tuned for the next game.