The peasants accommodated us as best they could for the night. It wasn’t a great night’s rest, but it was certainly better than the last couple of nights. The next morning, we felt some security in adventuring during the day and decided to head toward the bathhouses to check it out. THE BATHHOUSES The bathhouses sat in a clearing between the canals and the woods. Lichalia and Theedi kept insisting that they saw something shimmering above the bathhouses, but the rest of us were convinced that it was just the sun reflecting off of the steam. Once we were closer to the buildings, Theedi focused on trying to figure out what was happening in the skies above and was able to actually see a tower floating above the bathhouses! There was a dais in the middle of the courtyard, with a large stone in the middle. While the rest of us were exploring the first building, we encountered a servant that was mopping the floors. We tried to convince him to come with us so he could escape from the vampires, but he seemed to have little interest in doing so. When Theedi returned and started asking questions about the tower and the stone, the man said that he had no idea about any tower and that they were forbidden to touch the stone. We dragged him to the stone and forced him to touch it and he vanished! THE TOWER Assuming this to be the way in to the tower above, we all quickly followed suite and touched the stone. We were instantly teleported to a large circular room. With no other way to go, we headed down the hallway. As I approached the first door, it suddenly opened its eyes and large mouth and began WALKING toward us!!! The group dispatched the door with little incident and found a few mysterious potions and some barrels of ale inside the storeroom. We left the janitor in this room to drink his fears away. Continuing on, we eventually met a strange and mysterious man that identified himself as Arpodian the Watcher. Apparently he has been watching us from his tower and was expecting us. After many questions and few answers, Arpodian offered to give us something that would help defeat the vampires, but only if we were able to retrieve an artifact that was stolen from him by a woman named Niarus the Turgid. He also agreed to allow the servant from below to live up here and work for him instead of the vampires. He identified the vials that we had found in his storeroom. A couple healing potions, some that would be useful to throw at our enemies, and a few that would apparently make us smell like we have been dead for some time. This last one would help to “hide” us from other undead, but if we are killed while under its affects, we would likely be turned in an undead forever! Using his viewing device, he showed Theedi where he believed the artifact to be hidden. He said that there was a hidden door that only opened when the dead looked up at the sky. Afterwards, he attuned his teleportation device to the location of this hidden door and we stepped on to the platform. THE DOOR The group found themselves at exactly the same location the Theedi saw in the scrying device. There was a group of dead hunters and a dead bear lying on the ground. All seemed great until the group began calling out my name, as if I wasn’t even there. I answered, but they just kept calling my name and looking around. Looking at myself, I appeared to be some sort of shimmering apparition. I tried pushing Little Maggie, but it had no effect other than giving her a chill. I attempted to pick up one of the broken weapons from the corpses, but my hand just passed right through it. After several minutes, we all saw my body appear. It stood there seemingly lifeless. It is one thing to view yourself in a mirror, but seeing myself stand there looking dead was extremely disturbing. Hoping for the best, I moved my ethereal form through the physical body and thankfully they combined and I felt myself again. What a dreadful experience! We discussed using the rot potions to maybe trigger the hidden door to open. Before we could do that, Theedi decided to check the corpses. As she turned the first one over, she recoiled in pain and her hand began to rot! Fortunately, Margrave was able to heal it before it spread. We carefully worked together using our weapons to turn over all of the corpses and as we finally got the bear turned over, we heard the stone door behind us slide open…. Being attacked by a door and having my soul separated from my physical body, certainly made for a stressful morning, but I am willing to bet that whatever is beyond this door will be even more frightening. ~Bheldor
