LOST TRAILS: THE HARROWDALE HORROR: PART 3

[ewancummins]

After quickly escorting the three ‘civilians’ to Willun’s boat, at the pier, the party moves toward the Civic Hall…

AT THE HALL

Cloaks cling sopping wet to the adventurers’ backs (Kat found a curtain in the food shop that serves as a makeshift cloak) by the time the party reaches the Civic Hall, at the top of a low hill off the roadway.

It's far less grand than the gothic edifice in Selgaunt, but still handsome: a one-and-a-half story structure, solidly built out of cream-colored stone and dark varnished wood. Timber pillars line the wide wooden portico.
A tangled, black cloth curtain flaps in the wind, hanging out a large broken window in the front of the building. There's no other obvious damage.

Kat checks the perimeter. She finds no trace of her previous visit—the heavy rainfall has turned the black soil of the uprooted garden into mud and slicked all the grass down flat.
The back double door remains as she left it, which was as she found it, slightly ajar.

Creeping inside, she enters the shadowy back storage room.

The box she moved to access the trap door has been shoved all the way against the near wall. Did she leave it like that?
No…
The trap door remains shut.

The door into the next room stands about six inches open.
It's darker beyond the doorway.


https://imgur.com/gallery/lJ4WQiX


Looking about the room, Katrin spots something she missed the first time through: a rectangular panel in the ceiling near the outer wall, in arm's reach if she stands on a box. The panel has been painted the same dark hue as the rest of the wooden ceiling, and looks like a fine piece of joinery. Easy to miss.
A gap just big enough for someone to slip his fingers into shows along one edge of the rectangle.

[Adam]

Bennedict sweeps the room with his crossbow, before eventually lowering it as no threat presents itself. "Which way?" he asks.

[Lord Skybolt]

Alain on entering scans the room ready to draw his pistol if stealth is not required . Alain used a good amount of spellpower killing the thing at the church, so is rationing his spell use . Thinking to himself he really really needs to make an item to replicate speedy search spell he uses a lot lately .

[alhoon]

Raen follows behind the two men, also scanning the room for anything of interest, not just hostiles.

[ewancummins]

Searching the main floor

VIEW CONTENT:

(There is also the wooden portico, and a cellar which Kat found, and possibly an attic accessible through that ceiling hatch in the back room...)

, the party finds supplies, an abandoned office, lobby, audience chamber or courtroom, records room, and a bailiff's station.
In the bailiff's station, they discover the two cells Katrin had described.
They don't see the strange woman.

Checking the door of the cell where Katrin saw the madwoman, they find that it's not locked.
The woman is not here, but a half-full chamber-pot, some bread crumbs, and rumpled blanket all suggest recent occupation.

The other cell door is locked, but that cell looks a bit dusty and the blanket in the bed/bench lies nearly folded.



Tap.


Tap...tap...tattaatap...


The small noises seem to come from the ceiling.
Whatever it is, the party might have missed it in the pattering of the rain, if not for everyone being on alert.

More tapping rises from under the floor.

Tap...taaapppattapp...

[Lord Skybolt]

Alain moves away from where he thinks what ever may come up through the floor . He will ready himself to use attack spells* if it attacks the party .





*Looking at second lvl spell list mainly

[ewancummins]

Alain moves away from where he thinks what ever may come up through the floor . He will ready himself to use attack spells* if it attacks the party .





*Looking at second lvl spell list mainly

Alain hears something creaking. Floor boards? Door hinges?

A couple of the others seem to hear it too, as they turn toward the sound.

Whatever it is, it sounds as if it is coming from the back of the building, the way the party had entered.

The tapping sounds have stopped, quite abruptly.

Katrin, looking down for a moment in the yellow light cast by Alain's magic, spots some muddy splotches on the floor of the bailiff's office. The spacing and general outline suggests footprints. Short stride, small feet...



Pitter-patter

That wasn't the rain, which continues drumming on the roof and falling a little through the partly opened window.


One of the group stifles a sneeze.

The tendril-draped humanoids burst through the window and the doorway at the same instant, rushing in with knife-spears and spades!

[ewancummins]

Katrin stabs one coming through the window, dropping it limp on the desktop.

Klokulf barks a word of power, unleashing a thunderclap in the hallway that halts the rush of child-sized green humanoids through the door.
Alain hurls a blue knife at the stunned monsters. The blade whistles between two of them and smashes into a third exploding in a white and blue puff of ice crystals. That one drops, frosted and slashed.

Raen blasts the threshold with conjured lighting. But the powerful energy only sets Saint Elmo's fire glowing on the motionless figures there.
No obvious damage...

One creature leaps through the window--and into Sir Clive's sword-swing. Its severed head rolls to rest against the wooden divider that marks off the cell area from the bailiff's office section of this large room.

Benn shoots a foe standing in the doorway, but the bolt passes through its tendril-draped abdomen without any obvious effect. The being does not cry out in pain.

VIEW CONTENT:

so far, none of them have screamed or spoken aloud or even groaned

TAP TAP TAPPPAAPPA

Pitter patter




Thud
Thud Thud

More coming!

The one Katrin stabbed suddenly springs up from the desk and leaps at her face!

Sir Clive rips the frenzied attacker off the burglar-woman and hurls it on the desktop with one hand.
Before the little savage gets to its feet, the knight claps both hands about Mercy's hilt and brings the huge sword down in a chopping blow that sends his sword tip crashing through the windows above and behind the desk, cuts the monster's top-knotted head clean off, and almost flips the desk over.
A drawer drops out of the desk-frame and spills papers and ink across the knight's armored feet.

Sir Clive's violent two-handed upswing bisects the next one through the window gap, destroys what remains of the shutters and glass, and cracks the window-frame.


The creatures in the doorway shake off their stupor and advance, prodding with spears and swinging spades like axes.

Alain rips his pistol from his belt and thrusts it into the face of the nearest enemy. BOOM!
The monster staggers backward with green goop flowing from a burst eye, then falls down motionless.
Blue smoke drifts from the gun.

As Klokulf swings his iron mace at a spade-wielding green-man, Raen dashes away from the fight, ducking behind the wooden rail that divides the office end of the room from the jail end.

[ewancummins]

the fight in the bailiff's office, continued



The green dwarfish things fall back from the counter-assault,then rally and rush in, stabbing and hacking.
Alain's gun barks and a foe's head caves in.
Klokulf and Katrin fight side by side, mace and dagger against spear and spade.

Sir Clive slays another monster as it leaps from the cracked window frame with its mouth open in a soundless scream.

As quickly as it began, the fight ends--at least for now.

Acrid blue gun-smoke drifts toward the interior doorway, blown by a wet breeze through the broken window.
The dead bodies of the plant-animal 'men' stink like manure and rotting compost.

Raen emerges from one of the cells with a blanket, hurries across the chamber, and seizes an oil lamp from the far wall.

The mage douses the blanket in fuel as his comrades look out for the approach of more enemies.



All clear at the window. Just the rain falling on the muddy, stripped gardens and the grassy lawns.

All clear at the doorway into the lobby, too.


Then Katrin hears a hollow thump. It sounded as if it came from the back of the town hall, maybe the storeroom with the double doors through which the party had entered the building.

[kintire]

Katrin looks humiliated.

"I... I'm sorry. My scouting missed some pretty critical details."

She looks down at the corpses and around at the room

"How did that thing get up after I stabbed it? Will the rest stay down?"

[ewancummins]

KAT

Katrin looks humiliated.

"I... I'm sorry. My scouting missed some pretty critical details."

She looks down at the corpses and around at the room

"How did that thing get up after I stabbed it? Will the rest stay down?"

Looking at the headless (thanks to Sir Clive) remains of the one she had stabbed, Katrin sees only a little ichor leaking from a pinprick puncture hole in the torso, noticeably narrower than her rapier blade.
If she had to guess...

VIEW CONTENT:

The alien body structure of these plant-animals probably accounts for the ineffectiveness of stabbing them; their internal organs may be very different than human parts.
The puncture wound made by her sword seems to have partly self-sealed.

Chopping, bashing and blasting obviously work just fine, though, as evidenced by the carnage--if that's the right word for things that are not exactly made of proper flesh and blood.

Looking at what's left of the muddy smaller footprints on the floor, she can see they appear quite fresh, quite possibly made after her initial scouting. She certainly did not see them before, and she did look down when she was in here alone.

Katrin notices one of the creatures twitching on the floor. A quick check reveals it isn't dead, but battered and stunned.
The others show no sign of life at all.

Then she hears the thumping noise from the back of the building.

[Adam]

Bennedict turns towards the thumping, the glowing spear hovering over his shoulder as he goes to investigate the thumping sounds.

[ewancummins]

Bennedict turns towards the thumping, the glowing spear hovering over his shoulder as he goes to investigate the thumping sounds.

INVESTIGATING THE NOISE:
Takes BENN into the storeroom at the back of the town hall, where he immediately notices a wooden stair detached from the walls, running up through a gap in the ceiling, into a shadowy upper space. This wooden stairway was nowhere to be seen when the group came through the first time, not long ago.

A closer look shows these heretofore hidden steps were built into the reverse side of that ceiling panel Kat noticed earlier. The movable panel pulls down and forward on a hinged slide mechanism of some sort, making a narrow, steep stairway that goes up into the garret when the panel is fully extended and lowered to the floorboards.

The double doors to the outside stand open, swaying a little in the rainy wind.

THUMP
BAH-BUMP
The sound seems to be coming from under the floor. The trapdoor in the floor, which Kat’s report noted opened into a shallow cellar, rattles with each thump.

Listening closely, Benn detects a choking rasp accompanying the bumping noises.

[kintire]

Katrin looks dubiously at the trapdoor, then eyes the ceiling void cautiously as well.

"What ever is down there can't get through a simple wood trapdoor, but it might have other abilities if let out. Should we check the loft?"

She peers up to assess how much light is up there

[ewancummins]

Katrin looks dubiously at the trapdoor, then eyes the ceiling void cautiously as well.

"What ever is down there can't get through a simple wood trapdoor, but it might have other abilities if let out. Should we check the loft?"

She peers up to assess how much light is up there

The attic is dim, but some light is coming in, maybe through a small window or a vent not visible through the opening.