Battered but unbroken, our heroes made their way through the dungeon back to the torture chamber at the terminus of the Reaper's Hold. Forewarned of the haunt's nefarious presence, they filed cautiously into the room.
There was the briefest swirling of necrotic energy and a slight rattling from the iron maiden standing in the center of the chamber. Easy to miss, the party was expecting the telltale signs of a haunt and stood fast as it made itself manifest.
With a bang like a crack of thunder and the shrieking screech of rusty hinges wrenched wide the iron maiden flew open. Inside, chained piteously, her wan form bleeding from dozens of deep punctures...was Kendra Lorrimor.
"H-help meeee...." She moaned, swooning against her bonds.
Not only the sight of their erstwhile charge galvanized our heroes to action, but under the current of fear and adrenaline a deep and insidious compulsion drove them forward, towards the great spiked casket. How could this be? How could Kendra come to this dark and cursed place? Three titanic wills struggled with that dissonance. For a heartbeat the overwhelming urge to rush in to the iron maiden, to go to Kendra's aid was overpowering. But the moment passed, and with it the image of Kendra herself. She seemed to shimmer, there in the iron maiden, and then dissipated into a ghostly mist just as the other haunts had.
As the illusion faded the iron maiden snapped shut with a booming, hollow crash.
In the echoing silence that followed the group was free to move about the grotesque chamber and investigate. The torture implements were grizzly reminders of the barbaric fates that the prisoners faced in Ustalav's most notorious prison. The iron maiden was inert, even when pried open by hand, but had the black stains of ancient blood on its cruel spikes. The braziers and strapped chairs stood in grim testament.
On the far wall Darcon lifted a curtain of hooks to reveal a loose stone doorway. It swung open to reveal a hidden passage that led off in the darkness, directly towards the Nevermore.
The most interesting find was the rack in the center of the chamber. A body lay there, an ancient skeleton tied to the table. Garland cast his expert eye over the corpse and even considering its age he could read the horrifying damage done to it.
It was clad in a tattered guard's uniform. The bones of its hands, elbows, and knees had been shattered with heavy blows. A rusty assortment of loose keys, a matched set to those that our heroes had found in the Oubliette, had been pushed into its body cavity. Its jaw had been shattered and the instrument that had inflicted the damage was still lodged between the skull's teeth: A heavy silver badge, finely worked and tarnished with age.
The haunt manifests but luckily all three of you save and nobody gets trapped.
I've taken that MW longsword and that +1 mace off of the group loot sheet, be sure you add them to your character sheets.
You find a secret door in one wall that looks like it leads into the next cell block.
You also find a significant looking ancient silver badge...
3 - The Nevermore - unexplored
4 - Secret Passage
B1 - Hell's Basement
B2 - Central Chamber
B3 - Guard Post
B4 - Guard Office
B5 - Reaper's Hold
B6 - Torture Chamber
B7 - The Oubliette
This message was last edited by the GM at 18:36, Mon 16 Sept 2019.