Raenerys looks out the window and sees a bunch of people running down the street towards where the scream was coming from. She tells Miryks to drop her tinkering and come along, as they both run down to the tavern and into the streets, joining up with Gaia and Quill who also took off running towards the noise. Quill, seeing an opportunity to do good, gives the party a pep-talk on the way there, hoping to bolster their resolve.
After a couple of blocks they come to the scene of the crime, with a bunch of people huddled around something in a nearby garden, with a woman sitting on the pavement, hyperventilating and clearly in shock from what she has witnessed. The party makes their way through the crowd, finding a body lying on the ground. It’s Bill, the courier. His chest has been opened, with his intestines spilling out. Quill has to look away, as it is just too gruesome for her. She instead turns towards the woman, sitting down next to her.
Quill asks her what she saw, and through crying and hyperventilating, the woman describes a man with a disfigured face reaching into Bill’s chest, pulling something out of it, and then taking off running. She points to a nearby alleyway, which prompts Raenerys to start following the trail of blood leading there. Gaia questions the guard, but he arrived with the rest of the crowd and doesn’t know what to do.
Miryks looks around, spotting a few birds in the area, so she reaches out to them, hoping to find some clues as to what happened or who did it. Unfortunately, the birds don't know a lot, but they describe the perpetrator as a tall, redheaded man. She suddenly hears Raenerys call out for her, and when she looks around, Quill and Gaia have taken to the skies to look for any lead. She runs to the alleyway where she heard Raenerys’ voice.
Raenerys, who has been following the trail, loses it when it reaches the street where people are walking around. As Miryks catches up to her, she asks if she can use her druidic senses to catch the trail. Miryks beastforms into a wolf, and immediately catches a whiff of blood and something else. It smells foul, like ammonia, so she decides to follow it, with Raenerys in tow. Gaia and Quill follow from above.
𐡸
The trail runs cold near a group of buildings near the edge of town, with several establishments in view, a butchers shop, a doctors office, a brewery and an undertaker, to name a few. Quill and Gaia land next to the others as they sense the trail running cold. Quill asks a nearby woman who walks by for help, with Miryks telling the woman that they’re looking for a tall redheaded man. The woman exclaims “oh, that must be doctor Fritz, he lives right there,” pointing to the doctor’s office. When asked about his background, the doctor arrived in town a few years ago, has a strange accent, and has been good to the community, helping people mend their injuries and heal their sicknesses. She can’t imagine him having done something wrong.
They let the woman go, and walk over to the doctor's office, knocking on the door. There is no answer, and the lights are off, so Raenerys tries to open the door, but it is locked. When she looks at her hand, she sees blood, coming from the doorknob. She looks over at Gaia, who kicks open the door using her magic, causing the glass to shatter, and papers being blown around the room. A few guards spot the disturbance, asking them what they’re doing, having not heard about the commotion on the other side of town. The guards reluctantly keep people away, allowing the party to investigate, telling them the doctor’s actual name, Krantz.
Looking around, they find a bedroom, bathroom, kitchen and surgery room, with the entrance working like a reception. Everything looks immaculate and clean, with no sign of the good doctor. Raenerys walks behind the counter near the entrance, spotting a well hidden trapdoor with remnants of blood on it. She opens it, revealing a staircase leading down into a basement, with a light coming from below. She gestures for the others to follow as she descends into the light.
Reaching the basement, they’re faced with a simple room with a bunch of bookshelves containing various medical and historical books around a table with a lit lantern on it, nothing that sticks out to them. There are a bunch of barrels near the staircase which have been in use recently, and by the smell of it they seem to contain some sort of formaldehyde-like substance. Raenerys points out that it’s commonly used in necromancy. Gaia takes a look around the bookshelves, finding one with a slight blood smear on it, and the markings on the floor indicate that it can be opened. She starts pushing and pulling on books, and one of them unlocks the hidden door, leading to a corridor behind it.
They quietly make their way down the corridor, and come to a door around a bend. It doesn’t appear to be locked, so they open it carefully, being met with a pungent smell of rot and decay. The room is dominated by four tables, each carrying corpses of various states of decay. Miryks immediately senses the presence of magical beings, and when Raenerys studies the corpses from a distance, she notices the slightest movement from them. Zombies. She tells the others, and they decide to be very careful walking through the room, as they see a door on the other side leading onwards.
The party manages to avoid rousing the zombies, making it safely through to the other side. They come across another hallway, this one leading to two doors. They see another bloodsmear on the one to the right, so they decide to check out the other door first, in case there is anything that can catch them by surprise from behind. Inside they find a makeshift prison of sorts, with five individual cells lining the opposite wall. Between the cells and the door is a table with two chairs on opposite sides. And in one of the cells is a single undead being.
The being looks at Gaia who opened the door, and when the party walks inside the room, it follows them with its eyes. They try to speak to it, but it does not respond. Quill says the name of the doctor, Krantz, prompting the creature, which Raenerys identifies as a wight, to growl. They spot a shiny dagger in the cage of the wight, but they don’t want to deal with this right now, so they leave him for later.
The next door leads to a circular chamber, dominated by a large statue of what appears to be a god of some sort. In the middle of the room there is a single lantern, dimly lit, with another door leading onwards. Raenerys, who opened the door, sees the face of the statue, recognizing it as Thanakar, the god of undeath and necromancy, and relays this to the others.
As soon as she takes a step inside, the lantern glows, spreading out red and green flames throughout the chamber, which strikes Raenerys. She’s gripped with a terror that is indescribable, but she manages to overcome it, letting her enter without problems. Quill and Miryks both are faced with the same trial, and also manage to stem the fear after a little help from Gaia. They try to extinguish the light within the lantern, but it won’t go out. Gaia takes a step forward, but unfortunately for her, the terror is too much, so her heart is filled with dread. Without warning, she takes off running.
Gaia stumbles through the hallway and towards the room with the four zombies. Quill runs after her, but stops when she realizes that the zombies are stirring to life. Gaia continues to run, and as soon as she reaches the basement and exits up the stairs, the feeling disappears. She turns around, hearing the zombies coming after her, so she runs back down to face them before they spill into the streets.
The rest of the party has followed Gaia and Quill, and sees the four zombies slumbering towards the exit. One of them turns around when they notice Quill, stumbling towards her. Gaia has returned to the basement, and is faced with a single zombie that has reached her, who shambles its way to her. She strikes it down, tossing it across the room, then runs to join the others, who have already dealt with the rest of the undead. Gaia looks at the others, embarrassed, but okay. They walk back to the chamber, and this time Gaia manages to overcome the fear from the lantern, letting her pass in peace. They open the other door to continue their search for the killer.
𐡸
Down another hallway they come to a seating chamber with a couch, a couple of chairs and a table with a book on it. Walking over to the book, it seems to be a guide for the humanoid body, how to identify and remove specific body parts. Really grim stuff. Miryks’ sense for magical beings goes off again, prompting Quill to do a reveal spell. The two chairs suddenly light up, indicating that they are something else in disguise. Mimics. The party sees a door leading further into the basement, but Raenerys spots a secret door in the wall, so they decide to open that instead, sneaking past the mimics instead of going through the regular door.
On the other side they find a meeting room with a large table and some chairs. There is another door leading west, and on the opposite side of where they come in they see a large bookcase. Miryks senses are still tingling, indicating that there are magical beings nearby, but they see nothing obvious. They decide to not touch the chair and tables, just in case. Quill goes over to the bookshelf to examine the titles, finding one that looks quite interesting considering their encounters, called “Out of One, Many”. She decides to grab the book, which disturbs the bookshelf, which animates, and attacks Quill and Raenerys who are standing closest.
The bookshelf hits hard, but Quill makes another runic circle, forcing the bookshelf to break free of its bounds, moving towards the party in attack. They hit it hard, but it hits back even harder, causing Miryks to be flung backwards. Gaia jumps onto the table with her falchion at the ready, swiping at it. The bookshelf suddenly starts to vibrate, and then suddenly bursts with a massive explosion, throwing the whole room into disarray. Around them are scattered pages of the books that were contained in it, all of them blank.
Behind the bookshelf there is another room hidden, containing three chests. Quill does another reveal, and it’s clear the center chest is another mimic. Realizing that Dr. Krantz must have heard the explosion, they decide to not waste time with the chests at the moment, hoping to find him before he finds them. They exit the meeting chamber through the door, which has now been blown open.
They come to yet another narrow hallway, which splits up and leads to two separate doors. Miryks beastforms into a wolf in order to get a better sense of which door they should try. The one closest to them has a very strong smell of formaldehyde and blood, so they figure they should check out the other door first, just in case. There, they see several bloody remnants leading up to the door. They brace themselves, then open the door. Inside is a bathroom, with a bathtub filled with red water, bloody clothes scattered all around, and a couple of toilets, which has some oozes at the bottom for waste disposal. Realizing that their killer must be behind the other door, they go there instead.
𐡸
They decide to listen by the door to see if they can hear anything. Some footsteps and a soft mumbling can be heard, before whoever is within shouts for the party to enter. Since the jig is up, the party opens the door, being hit with a wall of foul smells from a massive decaying corpse on the table. Next to the table stands a tall, redheaded, balding man. He smiles through his thick beard, speaking in a foreign dialect. He wants to know how the party found him, and seems annoyed at his misfortune since this is the first time someone has seen him in his work. They asks why he killed poor Bill, with Dr. Krantz replying that his heart was strong, and just what he needed to finish his work, looking at the corpse on the table. The party says that they’re here to stop him, so he simply replies that he looks forward to using their body parts for other creations, before taking out a scalpel.
The large body on the table animates at the doctor’s words, rising up. The terrifying beast causes the party to falter, but they resist running away. Dr. Krantz casts a spell to protect the zombie, which flings its arms around itself, striking the party hard, filling the party’s heart with dread. They realize that the only way to take down the zombie would be to take out Dr. Krantz first, they decide to focus on him. He tries to drain the various members of the party of their life-force, but eventually they manage to knock him to the ground. Not wanting to be taken alive, Dr. Krantz looks at his creation and rejoices in his fate.
"He is there… waiting. Thanakar welcomes me into the endless stillness."
He takes his scalpel to his throat, slicing it. As blood pours out of his open wound, he falls over, with a smile on his face, eyes fixed on his lumbering, perfected zombie, before the light leaves his pupils.
The zombie sees its master fall, and screams at them, in a deep, guttural voice.
“DIIIIEEEE!”
It flings its arms around again, flinging people around. Gaia and Miryks both hit the floor, unconscious. In a desperate attempt to save their friends, Quill moves over to them after making another runic circle, hoping to heal them. Raenerys, who has been standing clear of the zombie’s reach, uses her patron’s powers to force it to run away from her. Right into the runic circle that Quill placed before. Half the zombie’s torso is melted away as it runs through it, as it slumps over, next to its creator. Krantz’s killing days have come to their end, with his creations gone with him.
Quill heals both Miryks and Gaia, who gets up, heavily wounded still, but alive. They search Krantz’s pockets, taking his scalpel, and some keys that should help them clean up the lair. They then step through the door which leads to his chambers. A modest, cozy little room with bed, bookshelf, a table and chair, and a footlocker. They search it, finding a large amount of gold, a bunch of healing potions, a cloak of elvenkind, a ring of protection, as well as his journal, detailing his victims, who mostly consisted of travelers visiting Kestrel’s Roots alone, and therefore wouldn’t be immediately missed.
The total number of victims seems to total around fifteen to twenty, judging by his writings, far below the number of people who have disappeared recently. They finally decide to take a look in his footlocker, which is trapped, but Miryks makes quick work of it, breaking through the lock with little issue. Within, they find a single item; a mask made of humanoid skin in patches, explaining the woman’s description of the killer. They take it, as well as the journal with them, as they decide to look through the rest of the basement one last time, in case they missed anything.
The three chests are dealt with, by not touching the mimic, slaying the ooze which was hidden in one of the others, and unlocking the last with the keys from Dr. Krantz, revealing a plethora of potions for the taking. They then move back to the makeshift prison, and the wight, hoping to get the dagger by killing it. They open the cage, but instead of attacking, the wight calmly walks over to the table, sitting down on the chair, waiting. Gaia sits down across from it, and it begins to mimic her movements, while Quill grabs the dagger, a finely made one which will definitely come in handy.
As Gaia gets up from the table, the wight walks back to its cell. It’s clear the doctor wanted to train it to follow commands, so they wonder how they should deal with it, deciding to tell Elara about it so that she can come and take it or end it if she finds no use for it. They then exit the basement, and emerge into the cold night.
𐡸
Outside, two guards have been waiting for them, and when they spot the party emerging from the office, they fetch their spears and run over to them, asking how it went, looking at the badly wounded Gaia and Miryks. The party holds up the mask and gives them the journal, while drawing them a sketch of the basement so that they can secure it. They warn the guards not to touch the wight in the cells, as they will send the archmage to deal with it. The guards thanks them for their help, saying that Mayor Tellpenny would most likely reward them for their deeds, before departing with the journal and map. The party keeps the mask, just in case.
Safely back in the tavern again, Quill steps back on the stage, still bloody and bruised, telling the gathered crowd about their escapades of the evening, angling it as a true horror story. The rest of the party goes straight to their room to rest, collapsing onto their beds. Quill finishes her story by holding up the gruesome mask, which causes some people in the crowd, while others decide to run to the doctors office to see if she’s telling the truth. Quill then walks up the stairs to join her companions in getting a good night’s rest at last.