The group settled down to talk with the group of orcs they had come across, some more happily than others as Falcon was ill inclined towards friendliness towards his favoured foes, and together they mapped out the manse from the map Siax had previously drawn, adding in more detail. The orcs however could tell them little about what had been happening in terms of guard shifts, as they said quite a lot of groups had been leaving, or just not turning back up again after they were outspoken over Grannoc's aims. Any cold weather gear the group had hoped to find at the manse was likely not there, they were told, as all extraneous belongings were sent on to a main storage area, but they didn't know where that was.
Deciding more information would be useful, Idris sent his familiar, Effie, to scout the place, and in about an hour she returned. The place was empty, as far as she could tell, with no patrols or any orcs she had noticed. She did find a strange hat on a corpse, which she took and brought back, one that turned out to actually be an oragami magic map that showed a different location, and a note from the owner.
“Names Big Al, owner and operator of Butterskull ranch. We were hit by orcs led by some off folks that were hidden as boars. I’ve picked up a word or two or orcish and I heard them talking about a base, round thunder or something like that. I sketched up this map in case I don’t make it. Maybe it helps whoever you are find these darn oddballs and take them down. Well good luck stranger and heck, if you’re reading this tell Petunia I love her.”
Effie also told the group that she had seen what appeared to be a portal in one of the rooms on the south side, which might be used to bring in reinforcements, or to bring in Grannoc if he was not there already.
The group decided to go and view the manse themselves before making any firm plans, such as whether to burn the manse down entirely without stepping inside, or whether another plan might be better. They came from the south, the side where the portal had been seen through one of the windows. There were no twigblights in evidence, but there was a huge patch of pumpkins surrounding the house and thorny looking vines covering the walls. There were also two large skeletal looking trees at the front entrance with corpses hanging from them.
Deciding that the first thing to do would be to kill the portal before anything else, Pine moved into position to see it through the window from the tree line, and dispelled the portal. Immediately as the vines that had made up the circle around it fell, so the group were immediately attacked by twigblights that had been hidden amongst the pumpkin vines. They proved little challenge for the group, and soon the area was silent once more.
Edging their way through the trees, they decided to enter the north entrance to the manse, through what had once been a kitchen as Effie had already been in there without issue. Sticking to the path, nothing attacked them, and there were able to enter the dilapidated kitchen untroubled. Other than finding the place in a very decrepit state, and avoiding rotted planking in the doorway, nothing of note happened, until they stepped into the next room. There they found that the dining room walls were covered in crude drawings of boars chasing humans drawn in blood, and a blood trail leading across the room seemingly ending at a painting, and atop the fireplace Idris spotted four little figurines that seemed to be designed to look like Idris, Pine, Zenari, and Siax. Upon trying to pick them up, all four of them suddenly came alive and attacked Idris.
Initially Idris attempted to talk to the small figure that looked like himself, but it stabbed him in the hand, the small sword going through the metal as if it was indeed his own sword. Casting a spell to comprehend languages, he got no more information from the sounds the little twig figures made, but he did hear another in the voice that had, up until then, sounded like the wind. It is like different parts of the house is communicating with each other.
"Leave!"
"He's coming."
"Intruders!"
"Where?"
Zenari tries to grab the tiny effigy of herself, but it slips out of her grip and perches upon Idris's head. Siax, seeing it standing out, shoots it, doing so much damage to the tiny thing that it disintegrates. To his horror, Zenari instantly falls down, unconscious, on the precipice of death. Pine, upon seeing this happen, attempts to bring her back with his healing magic, but to his disconcertion, something appears to be stopping the healing from happening. Only when she seemed to fight against whatever it was that was happening to her, did things become better. Siax, desperate to make up for his error, forced a potion of healing into her mouth, and she thankfully was able to regain consciousness and helped back up, Siax giving a litany of apologies.
"The trap is sprung. He knew, he knew. They take."
Pine, seeing this, and judging that it was the strength of their constitution that was the crux of the matter, as well as understanding that wasting spells would likely not aid their cause when they were likely to face down a man who had so easily outmatched them before, plucked the tiny effigy of himself from Idris, and ripped it in two. He too took some damage from the process, but other than feeling a slight sense of indefinable loss, he remained steady on his feet.
"He is coming."
Falcon, who was being constantly attacked by the Siax effigy, asked Siax what he wanted him to do with it. Although Siax was at first scared and hesitant after seeing what happened to Zenari, Falcon challenged his nerve and training, and in the end he told Falcon to kill the thing. He does, and much like Zenari, Siax falls down, having some sort of seizure, dying. Thankfully, he regained his consciousness quickly when both Pine and Idris heal him, nothing keeping the healing from working.
Meanwhile, Idris, his divine senses found that there was a huge gathering of necromantic energy in the next room in the centre of the house and beneath, started to try to kick in the door, before Zenari helped him tie up the twig effigy he was holding, so that he could use his sword instead. The blade cut down, and the door opened, revealing a courtyard with a tree in the middle coming out of a well surrounded by blood, and Grannoc, slowly clapping in sarcastic applause.
"That was quite a performance. But this won't do. You are not allowed in this place."
Although Idris attempts to get him to grovel with a command, the half-orc had no difficulty shrugging it off.
"No, I don't think I will. Listen, I admire your persistence, but I was obviously ready for your arrival. If you step in this room, it is the last room you step in. This is a professional courtesy. Just leave this place. I'm sure we will meet some time in the future. I'm busy right now, and you have just made me slightly busier. Especially some of you messing with a portal. Why are you even here? What are you seeking here? Are you just troublemakers going from place to place, disturbing what you don't understand? It seems to me that way."
It seemed as though Grannoc had created a new one in the space behind him before they had entered.
"What is your purpose?" Idris asked, "Why are you doing what you are doing?" The lightning in the paladin's eyes became stronger.
"Ah, you've paid my dear friend [Muesco] a visit. I do hope she is dead. I can assure you my dealings with the cult of Talos are at an end. I gave them the old gem and they are doing their own thing. I'm quite happy here. You are basically on my property."
"You didn't answer my question. What is your purpose? What's this tree doing here? And what is its purpose?"
"Perhaps I should tell you. What the heck? I have discovered power. Power that was ungoverned. I've learned how to cultivate it. Shape it, more than a powerful acolyte. Quite a lot more. What I am planning is to stay here and grow this power as my own, and then use that power to take anything I wish for myself. You've proven yourselves to be quite powerful. Perhaps you could work for me. After all, I have snagged a little bit of your soul as you saw from the dolls outside."
Idris looking at the tree. "Is that the source of your power?"
"None of your business."
From there the talking descended into fighting, with Pine attempting to close the second portal but failing, Idris blessing the party, while Siax shot an arrow directly at Grannoc.
Grannoc sighs, "So be it. Let's do this. I recognised from the moment I saw you that you'd be trouble. I like to study trouble. I like to know how they operate. I've picked up a couple of tricks from looking at how you work." His eyes started glowing green, and he does gestures like the ones Pine does to summon his spirit guardians. "I can do everything you can do, but better." Twigs and bits of leaves and plants start flying around him, and the group takes a not inconsiderable amount of damage, and Zenari falls unconscious again from the damage.
Siax, his vision slightly obscured by the tumult of leaves and branches in the air, nocks a phase arrow and shoots, hitting Grannoc to great effect, however his bow's tendrils, which had been growing longer ever since coming to the house, stabbed him in the thigh. He took no damage, however, instead regaining health from the damage that had been inflicted.
"Trap after trap," Grannoc said to him, "and you fall into it."
A second phase arrow derailed his concentration, and all the whirling wind and bits of plants that were circling in the air fell silent and still. In retaliation for this inconvenience, Grannoc called forth needleblights, far more dangerous than their twigblight counterparts, who lined up on the balcony above and started attacking while Grannoc stepped through vines like they were a portal, and emerged on the other side of the room away from the inconvenience of Siax's arrows.
From then on the battle raged, and despite being outnumbered by the group, Grannoc is able to call forth both spells and allies that have the party in a precarious state. Then Siax throws a flask of oil onto the large tree in the courtyard, and the tables start to turn. Idris, with a flaming smite sets the tree alight, and Pine casts blight upon it.
"What do you think you are doing?! You will kill us all!"
"They come. They burn. They must die."
In what could only be an action borne of panic, Grannoc casts a huge ice spell over the room, putting out the fire, but also damaging indiscriminately. All of his needleblights die in the cascade of cold, although Siax also falls. Grannoc then starts chanting in druidic to the tree, attempting to redirect its ire only towards the group.
Zenari moves and using the staff she had taken from the cultist of Talos, blasts a lightning bolt through the tree at Grannoc, disrupting him and setting the tree once more on fire. The wild magic surged and hundreds of cabbages started sprouting all around her, on the walls, and even on the tree itself. The tree was not impressed. With a great shriek of pain and horror, it started to tear itself out of the well, while its two younger kin outside started to bash their way into the house in order to come to its aid. The well splits apart and the gigantic mass of black roots makes its way out, striking out at Zenari and starts to drag her towards a huge black maw that had opened up in the bark.
"What is this?!" Idris cried out.
"I tamed it, and you've let it loose! It's going to destroy us all, and then spread uncontrollably. Maybe if it eats your corpses it will calm down."
dris attempted to talk to the main tree, but it didn't believe his words of positivity since he had attacked it and set it on fire.
Grannoc, seeing the tree he had spent so long cultivating, flail around in a berserk manner, while listening as the two outside bash their way into the house, seems to decide that now was the time to make himself scarce, made a dash for the portal that Pine had been unable to close. On his way past, the flailing of the tree caught him, the hit propelling him through the portal to land on the other side, Zenari seeing him there, unmoving on the ground, although whether he was alive or dead was unknown. She could make out a hill, and on that hill there are masses of upright stone slabs in a circle, and figures looking down upon the portal and the figure laying in front of it.
The group, battered and barely clinging to life themselves, turned their attention back to the immediate threat of the trees. After reviving Idris from a nasty hit, Falcon and Pine rush to engage the two smaller ones, whose bashing through walls was making the house unstable. Pine summons his spirit guardians, and when he does so the cowled figure appears to him on the stairs nearby, watching.
"Perhaps this is the time to explain everything to you," it said into Pine's mind with a barely perceptible smile showing on its lips, "Or perhaps I'll wait to see if there's a need."
Pine gets a glancing blow as one of the small trees plucks a corpse from its branches and throws it at him, one that turned out to be a ghoul. But before it could attack him properly, the power of the spirit guardians tore it apart. Still, the situation was a precarious one for them all, and life was not at all guaranteed.