Cain and Constantine maneuvered into favorable positions and, working together, struck true against the sprite.

"Uwaaaah! You're no f-f-fun! It's not f-fair! Not fair!" The little monstrosity blubbered, wringing ghastly little hands into the red pinpricks that served as eyes in its shadowy, flaming form. It fled, darting through the wall behind Constantine in an effort to escape.

The two remaining spirits cackled at their companion's distress.

"Coward! Faker! Baby!" They chanted sing-song, reaching deep into their attacker's flesh.

---

Upper Floor

---

Cellar

---

Cain hits for 8, 4vs ethereal.

Constantine hits for 10, 5vs ethereal.

Shade misses BC2, the only target she hasn't used her healing hex on yet.

BC1 flees, full withdrawing through Constantine's square which provokes an AoO from Constantine and Shade. Sorry Cain, he only left one of your threatened squares.

The broken children attack Cain and Constantine, they hit both, but Cain passes his save. Constantine does not. Cain, you're staggered next round and you take 2 negative energy damage. Constantine, you take 1 damage and 1 CON drain.

Adrin, because you were skipped you get an additional standard action next turn. Constantine and Shade, you each get an AoO on BC1.

---

BC1 - Broken Child, AC 15, Touch 15, Fort +4, Ref +2, Will +4, incorporeal, cover, 33 damage
BC2 - Broken Child, AC 15, Touch 15, Fort +4, Ref +2, Will +4, incorporeal, 15 damage
BC3 - Broken Child, AC 15, Touch 15, Fort +4, Ref +2, Will +4, incorporeal, 14 damage

CAI - Cain, mage armor, shield, 3 damage
CON - Constantine, mage armor, 4 damage, 3 CON drain
ADR - Adrin, mage armor, shield 1 damage, 1 CON drain
SHA - Shade, mage armor, 4 damage, 1 CON drain

TRP - This narrow trap door and staircase leads to the root cellar.
w - Boarded up windows. Boards can be broken with a DC13 strength check or by attacking them, they have AC5, 5 hardness, and 10 hp.
l - A beam of light shining into the house from outside.

Adrin growled, which was an unusual sound for him to issue in the time that the others had known him.

He chanted out a series of words in rapid succession after his bullet failed to penetrate the wood on the house, and one, then two barrages of translucent card-shaped magical darts lanced out and struck the ghostly child that threatened Shade. Each dart slammed into it with no mercy.

The sling bullets continued to hover around the harrower seemingly forgotten for the time being.

OOC:
MM for last round - BC2 - 7 pts of force damage
MM this round - BC2 - 12 pts of force damage

12:12, Today: Adrin Prescu rolled 7 using 3d4+3.  Magic missile.
12:13, Today: Adrin Prescu rolled 12 using 3d4+3.  mm round 2.

Cain nearly falls over trying to get out of the way of the reaching wraith. The moment he regains balance he strikes back with his sword.

Staggered. Attacking BC2 if it's still standing, or BC3 if it's not.
16:53, Today: Cain rolled 24,14 using 1d20+8,1d8+7.  Attack, damage.

Seeing a sudden opening SCG lashes out taking an attack of opportunity

14:43, Today: Sir Constantine Godalming rolled 10 using 1d8+2.  Damage AoO. 14:42, Today: Sir Constantine Godalming rolled 15 using 1d20+9.  +1 longsword AoO

He swiftly turns back on the other opponent..
Which he hits nothing but mist
oday: Sir Constantine Godalming rolled 11 using 1d20+9.  +1 longsword attack flanking


“How is everyone holding up?”
This message was last edited by the player at 18:46, Sat 16 May 2020.

Shade flails at the child ghost with the bottle of holy water, nearly hitting herself in the face with it rather than hitting the ghost, and shudders at its passing. Whirling, she's able to touch the ghost she missed the first time, infusing it with positive energy even as it tries to resist her touch!

OOC: 11:34, Today: Shade of Lonwood rolled 4 using 1d20+3.  AoO with holy water.
11:35, Today: Shade of Lonwood rolled 16 using 1d20+3.  Attack with healing hex.
11:35, Today: Shade of Lonwood rolled 17 using 1d20+4.  Broken Child Will Save.
11:36, Today: Shade of Lonwood rolled 12 using 2d8+5.  Healing Hex. (BC 2 takes 6 damage, due to saving for half)

Our heroes rallied, lashing out in unison with a vicious wave of magic and steel. Constantine cut down the fleeing little wraith before it could disappear through the wall to safety, and Adrin struck as one with Cain against its compatriot. Both wraiths burst in a cloud of shadowy energy, a plaintive sigh the only sound to mark their passing.

Though there seemed no love lost between the malevolent little monsters the final ghost stamped its tiny foot and moved towards constantine.

"No fun no fun no fun no fun!" It shrieked, its words becoming an almost incomprehensible litany of fury.

---

Upper Floor

---

Cellar

---

Adrin MM's twice for 19 damage.

Cain hits BC2 for 14 damage (7 vs ethereal), which brings it down.

Constantine hits BC1 on his AoO and does 10 damage (5 vs ethereal), which is enough to bring it down. He misses his regular attack.

Shade, because BC2 went down before your turn you are 'refunded' your action. Also, because Constantine's AoO was enough to take down the ghost you can skip that AoO as well, so that holy water isn't expended.

BC3 takes a step and attacks Constantine for a hit. Constantine passes his save and takes 1 negative energy damage.

Shade, because your attack was interrupted you get an additional standard action next round.

---

BC3 - Broken Child, AC 15, Touch 15, Fort +4, Ref +2, Will +4, incorporeal, 14 damage

CAI - Cain, mage armor, shield, 3 damage
CON - Constantine, mage armor, 5 damage, 3 CON drain
ADR - Adrin, mage armor, shield 1 damage, 1 CON drain
SHA - Shade, mage armor, 4 damage, 1 CON drain

TRP - This narrow trap door and staircase leads to the root cellar.
w - Boarded up windows. Boards can be broken with a DC13 strength check or by attacking them, they have AC5, 5 hardness, and 10 hp.
l - A beam of light shining into the house from outside.

Cain clicks the heels of his boots again before moving behind the last wraith standing. "One left!"

Move to n10 with Acrobatics.
22:10, Today: Cain rolled 32 using 1d20+16.  Acrobatics.

Flanking BC3 with Constantine.
22:10, Today: Cain rolled 28,9 using 1d20+11,1d8+7.  Flanking (Attack, damage).
This message was last edited by the player at 20:15, Tue 26 May 2020.

Adrin, from his comfortable spot in the light of day, loosed another volley of magic missiles at the child's wraith that was left to fight them.

These missiles slammed home as effectively as had any of his other volleys, which was why the remaining three annointed sling bullets floated in the air next to him still as he released the reliable impact of the missiles of force.

Action: Magic Missile - 13 force damage on BC3
00:49, Today: Adrin Prescu rolled 13 using 3d4+3.  MM BC3.

With the last child ghost left already affected by her magic, Shade took the vial of holy water and poured it on the undead, disrupting it a little more.  As it moved to attack Constantine, Shade knew she had little other ways to help, and tried to distract the little horror to give him an opening, but her efforts were weakened by the chill touch that still threaded through her veins.

OOC: 07:02, Today: Shade of Lonwood rolled 22 using 1d20+3.  Touch attack.
07:03, Today: Shade of Lonwood rolled 2 using 2d4.  Holy Water damage.
Move to 9m
07:06, Today: Shade of Lonwood rolled 6 using 1d20+3.  Aid another.

Cain and Adrin punched holes in the whispy form of the wraith with their attacks, an arc of magical steel and drills of pure arcane force. It wavered, held together only by malevolent will.

It was Shade that skipped forward, flinging out her flask of holy water like an aspergillum. The attack seemed almost minuscule, but the flung droplets of blessed water punctured the fluctuating form of the wraith as surely as Cain's blade or Adrin's magic.

The little beast shrieked, lunged for her, and dissipated like a bad dream in the pale light of morning.

Silence fell over the abandoned house after the fracas, and in the calm our heroes once again could feel the unmistakable prickling of hidden eyes watching.

---

---

You take down the last spirit, congratulations!

With the feeling of eyes on him and the dissipation of the last of the three spirits, Adrin made his way out into the blessed light of day as his body shivered from the lingering effects of the undead's touch.

He waited for the others to come out before he spoke his mind with a grim face.

"I don't know yet if we have released the spirit of Ellsa or not. We destroyed one child wraith in the church in our first visit here. And now we have destroyed three more, in the former home of Ellsa, so... there is a chance one was in fact her. But... there were 5 children taken by the wraith with eyes and the other children before the town fled."

He started to count on his fingers as he continued. "Think of the story the sisters told. First was Sarah Corrow. Then in quick succession Tomas and Holger Ramonanov. Three in just 2 days. Then Vania the boy was found in his bed killed without a mark. Finally, Ellsa was lured to the hilltop and slain by the other children before...Solomon brought her body back."

The harrower held up his left hand, showing the number five. "So we seem to be missing a child's spirit, don't we? Perhaps Ellsa is still in the house and didn't want to show herself? I felt eyes on me as we finished off the last child. But the menace of it was such that it could have been the wraith with eyes..."

OOC: if I missed a Broken Child wraith somewhere please just IC correct me! :)

"I think naught Elsa would not have been one of these, that complained we did not dig their corpses up.  Since we did dig her up, it seems unlikely.  I still hope that we may speak to her and no matter the dark abyss of unlife she is in now, she will tell us something helpful."

SCG lets the sun wash over him, but he is also careful to be the last one out of the house....

"Is anyone injured badly, we may want to go more places before the spells expire,"

Cain thinks back. "There are six dead children, we destroyed four wraiths, so two remain I believe. And there is that... thing we encountered in the church, if that is not a wraith of one of the dead children."

"I am at a loss as to where we could find them though. I assumed we would find Ellsa in her home, but if she was not one of those we destroyed, I don't know where else to look. We could give the basement one more try, maybe her wraith will show up now? Something is certainly still there."

They attack isolated targets, right? Maybe we could bait them with Cain again.

Shade was still shaking slightly at the battle with the child ghosts, but the importance of finding out what was behind this tragedy was more important that her fear.  That thought was a little startling to her, but the surprise at her change of heart was becoming less and less as time went on. Perhaps some day it would even feel natural.

"It still feels menacing in here. Perhaps the other ghosts are more timid than the others and wouldn't come out of the basement? As for the one that tried to suck the life out of me in the church, that one deserves a lot more sunlight," she says.

"If we're going back in that house, let's remove the boards from the windows from the outside before we go back in, but we're racing the clock right now..." Adrin said.

"And thanks for remembering the other kid. Sorry I forgot him."

It was more the task of a builder than an investigator, but at Adrin's suggestion our heroes made short work of the planks boarded over the windows. The sullen eyed brothers seemed loth to do more than the digging that they were contracted for, but at a stern look from Shade they doffed their caps and lent a hand.

In the broad light of day, with sunshine streaming in through the now open windows, the house lost much of the foreboding menace that had infused it when they first entered.

The upper floors were well explored and mostly bare, so it was into the root cellar that the investigators directed their attentions. The brothers steadfastly refused to step foot inside.

It was a small, earthen walled chamber accessed by a sturdy wooden staircase almost steep enough to be considered a ladder and blocked from the kitchen above by a trap door that had been hidden under a rug. The walls were lined with simple pine shelves held together with wooden pegs rather than proper nails. They were bare, the family haven taken whatever they could pack before journeying away to live with their relatives.

It seemed bereft of clues.

Just as the party was ready to give up on their search Shade spotted a small scrap of parchment carefully folded and tucked into the chink between a shelf and its support at knee height. Our heroes carried it up into the light and unfolded it.

It was a fragment of a page torn from a book, although nobody had the linguistic skill to determine much more about it than that. On the corner that was visible it was clear that someone had scribbled a childish drawing over the page. It was difficult to tell what it was based on the small bit remaining, but the drawing and page had been folded and stashed, not discarded.

Adrin sighed when they found nothing but a scrap of paper.

He pulled a scroll from his pack and read it quickly and then motioned to be handed the paper they'd found in the basement.

"I should be able to decipher it now." he said.

OOC: use scroll of comprehend languages, 10 minute duration (CL1)

How much day light is left?

"This is a clue but I have no notion of it's import,  shall we continue to search for more."

Adrin's scroll offered some clues about the nature of the small paper scrap, although what he discovered wasn't wholly illuminating.

The language was in common, and beneath the colored chalk of the drawing fragment the words seemed to be organized into rhyming couplets. Only a few sentences could be seen, but Adrin determined that they were some sort of poem.

He passed the scrap over to Shade for an appraisal with her extensive knowledge of local peoples, customs, and languages. After some careful consideration she determined that the page had been torn a book of Varisian children's poems and fairytails.

Cain is a bit disappointed with this discovery. "Can't really see how this drawing and a poem are connected with anything. It could be just something a child has done and hidden it then."

Unless someone has a different idea, he proposes that they try the church again. "Maybe that wraith will back there? I could casts some spells of protection and try to lure it there by entering alone."

Could work. And if not, it will only cost us a couple of minutes. Alternatively, we could start systematically checking each remaining house. Or head for the hill. What's the party opinion?
This message was last edited by the player at 10:28, Wed 03 June 2020.

When Shade revealed that the scrap was just a children's story, Adrin sighed, though he kept ahold of it since you never knew why Fate put something in your path.

"Sure, chapel again sounds fine," Adrin said though the conviction of his voice was less than that of the words themselves.

OOC how much light/day is left?

Our heroes doubled back to the chapel to perform another sweep of the first location where they had encountered the spirits. The entered cautiously, with Cain in the lead, weapons readied and spells prepared to lash out at anything that might accost them.

The building was still empty and, as when they had left it, blessedly free of spirits. None of the furniture or the wrappings had been disturbed in the intervening time, and there was no sign of any interlopers.

It looked as if the spirits had not returned to that once hallowed ground.

---

Sorry, I had missed your previous question. It's a little after three in the afternoon now, what with travel time and digging time. You have about five hours of daylight left.
This message was last edited by the GM at 20:30, Wed 03 June 2020.

"Building by building or head for the hill?" Adrin asked. "I could do an augury, but those are very specific to me, not good for general guidance."

Cain looks around before voicing his opinion. "Buildings first, I think. We know wraiths can hide in them. There might be something on the hill as well for them to hide in, but if not we would have to wait for the sun to set to find anything there."

"Either way, I think we should send our help away before we start the search, have them far away from here before night falls. No need to risk them as well."

I do think we need to continue the search, at least until we killed all the wraith children. The big guy we can leave, but our spell will fail if the child is still a wraith.

“Agreed there are more souls to free from the fetid chains of undeath.”