Cookies! Cookies are turning into quite the commodity in the campaign. Markus was actually relatively well-behaved this session…at least he didn’t pull the party into yet another side quest related to his libido. The Windler House was explored a bit more and a new ally finally showed up. Ansel showed up. He’s another resident of Ragged Hollow and was on Halloo with the others. He wasn’t able to return with the others because his wizard mentor wanted a little more time to teach Ansel another spell.
Yes, we have a new player joining us in this session. Pete is playing Ansel, a wizard. On his way back to Ragged Hollow, he heard a good bit about Markus and his, um, exploits. Getting to Ragged Hollow, it was quickly apparent that something was terribly wrong and Ansel was quickly directed to catch up with Dieter, Liesl, and Marlena as they were looking into what was going on. Since one of Ansel’s talents was an extra spell and he was joining mid-campaign, having Ansel delayed in returning from Halloo kind of worked. Plus, it got him up to speed on that ne’er-do-well Markus!
Everyone was in attendance. There will, obviously, be spoilers for Nightmare Over Ragged Hollow from The Merry Mushmen along with our mangling of this very fine adventure. My GM comments, as always, are in italics.
88th of Summer
- After Ansel catches up with the party in the Windler House, explorations continue.
- A large bedroom is found beyond the door where the party had heard children laughing (at the end of the prior session). There is a large four-poster bed with a series of levers on the wall next to it. Four piles of rags, clothes, and such are in each corner. Rustic portraits of playing children hang on the walls.
- Stifled laughing comes from the piles. Dieter offers a cookie, placing it next to one of the piles. Once the pile is out of the light, the party can hear a cookie being eaten. Cookies are shared and eventually, everyone except Liesl and Marlena leave the room with the lights.
- Four ghostly figures of children emerge, glowing enough that they can be spotted in the dark. They keep asking for more and more cookies, indicating that they are so hungry. Getting a better looked, the ghosts look like somewhat misshapen children. Their mouths, in particular, are not right…going from ear to ear and filled with shark like teeth.
- When asked, the children say that they are not allowed on the bed. The “Master” forbids it.
- As the cookies are depleted, the “children” start to appear and sound more predatory. The door to the bedroom cannot be opened and the rest of the party outside cannot hear anything, such as banging on the door, from within the bedroom.
- Before the children become too aggressive, a deep voice booms out. It demands to know who has left crumbs in the bedroom. Broomy and Liesl quickly clean up the crumbs.
- Meanwhile, in the workshop outside the bedroom, old man Windler shows up, stretching out of the walls again. The trio in the room are able to stay out of his reach. (Hmmm…is he limited to reaching out from the walls? Why not just come out and attack? If not that, why not reach up from the floor or down from the ceiling? Hmm…).
- Once the crumbs were cleaned up, things returned to normal with Windler and the ghost children disappearing. The group goes back in the bedroom and searches more.
- The levers on the wall control various inclinations of sections of the bed, a magic fingers mode (gotta give the players what they want), and gauzy curtains to surround the bed.
- Three of the piles have something of interest stashed in them. These include two pouches, one blue and one green, with 29 gold and a ring in each respectively along with a silver mouse trap in another pile. The last pile had nothing of interest.
- Ansel looks more closely at the ring. It is bold with faint spider web etchings along the outer edges. He puts it on and can hear soft, comforting music. (Consider it a welcome to the game item for Pete.)
- Four ghostly figures of children emerge, glowing enough that they can be spotted in the dark. They keep asking for more and more cookies, indicating that they are so hungry. Getting a better looked, the ghosts look like somewhat misshapen children. Their mouths, in particular, are not right…going from ear to ear and filled with shark like teeth.
- The group then elects to examine the bathroom a little more thoroughly. The showers in the room are still running and the humid room is filled with steam.
- After Markus enters, Dieter shuts the door on him. Old Man Windler shows up again. Markus evades him. When the door won’t open, he attempts to break it open.
- Outside, when Dieter realizes that the door won’t open, he attempts to break it open.
- There was a critical failure on the checks to break upon the door. As Markus slams into the door, he also bashed into Dieter, sending both crashing through the door of the child’s bedroom across the way. Both doors are now ruined.
- Fortunately for the party, the toys within the bedroom did not come to “life” this time. Still, Markus grabbed the same figure that he had interacted with on a prior visit to make sure it couldn’t blow its horn. He is currently holding it tightly in one hand.
- With no apparent or immediate dangers, Liesl is able to gather up all of the snakes, venomous bog vipers, that are trapped in the tub and they are released outside the house.
- Ansel finds a silver hairbrush in the tub after the snakes are cleared out.
- There was a critical failure on the checks to break upon the door. As Markus slams into the door, he also bashed into Dieter, sending both crashing through the door of the child’s bedroom across the way. Both doors are now ruined.
- They then look through the children’s bedroom again. The clock from the alcove is taken. Additionally, one of the mattresses is taken and the group heads back downstairs.
- Heading to the dining room with the mirrors and aggressive chandelier, Dieter, Markus, and Marlena use the mattress as cover, crawling their way to a door in the room. Shards from the chandelier strike the mattress but not the trio.
- Opening the door, they spot a LOT of crisscrossing wires all over the room. Near the opposite wall, directly across from the door, a full-looking red pouch hangs from one of the wires.
And that is where we ended the session.
The party now resembles a traditional party with a fighter, priest, thief, wizard, and that extra character…a ranger in our case. Pete rolled a 17 for Intelligence so it was obviously fated that he’d slip right into that wizard slot in the party.
Hmm…anything else…oh yeah. It has now gotten to the point that I’m face-palming myself in advance of using normal language to describe something completely innocuous in anticipation of the players twisting it into something dirty and adult-related. My players are so predictable!
