The door to the study on the top floor opened by itself. Gulnyr and Ash investigated the room. They found a loose brick in the wall, behind where the painting of the bullfight had been hanging. Behind the brick was a small alcove containing some coins, two vials of liquid, and a copper key. While in this room, Ash thought that she caught a glimpse of a blue butterfly flying from the birdcage towards the alcove.

Next, the two of them returned to the first floor, and met back up with Devin, who explained what had happened to him. In the room with the manticore, there was a door which led to a stairway leading down. Devin had seen Iesha pass through that door before he was stopped by the manticore. The three of us proceeded down these stairs.

The first room we came to in the basement had a large wooden table, and shelves along the walls. The shelves were in disarray, as though they had been ransacked, and rat droppings were visible on the tabletop. There was also a stove with a chimney, and inside the chimney Devin spotted an urn, though he was hesitant to disturb it. Gulnyr grabbed the urn, and three violet garnets fell out of it. At this point, a large swarm of rats came bursting from the walls and attacked us. During the fight, Gulnyr chopped off the legs of the table so that some of the rats became trapped under it.

After killing the rats, we continued exploring the basement level. The next few rooms we found were:

• A relatively clean room, which we determined to be the servants’ quarters.
• A wine cellar. The floor was covered with broken bottles. In the back wall, Ash found a secret compartment containing eight bottles of wine from the Vigardeis Vinyard in Cheliax. We took these.
• A pantry, which had become a rat’s nest.

We came to a locked door at the end of a corridor, and unlocked it using the copper key from the study. Behind this door was a workshop. There was a workbench, with some soggy books on it. There were also three birdcages, with dead rats in them. The room had two stained glass windows, which looked out over the water from the cliffside. The images in the windows depicted an old man undergoing some kind of transformation. Ash investigated the wet books, and as she touched them, she experienced visions which gave her the knowledge that Vorel had tried to become a lich, but failed because he was interrupted during the process.

Another door led from this room to more stairs leading down, which brought us to a room filled with stone, dirt, and broken pickaxes. In the floor of this room was an ancient spiral staircase of stone, leading much farther down. Suddenly, Gulnyr experinced being attacked by a horde of ghouls, and claw and bite marks appeared on his flesh. He saw through Aldern’s eyes as Aldern dug out this room, found the spiral staircase, and was ambushed by ghouls from below. Gulnyr also came to the realization that Aldern was the one who had written the notes that were signed “Your Lordship”.

We proceeded down the spiral stairs, and came to a cavern with mold-covered walls. Several passages led out of it, and one looked more recently dug than the others. We opted to explore one of the older passages first, in which Gulnyr kicked up a cloud of yellow spores, and we fought three ghouls.

From there, we came to a large, round cavern with a cathedral-style ceiling. The center of this room contained a huge pool of water, and the floor consisted of a large spiral-shaped ramp leading from the edge of the room down to the pool. There were four goblin ghouls in this room, and four others attacked from a side cavern near the entrance to this room. The floor of the side cavern was covered with piles of bodies and entrails, and we saw a skull with a stony protrusion. We recognized it as a fragment of the stone angel bookend from the library.

A door led from the large round cavern to an alcove. This room contained a painting, a chair, a table covered with garbage, and a broken puzzle box. One wall of the room was covered with black fungus. Aldern was here, in the form of a ghast, fighting the ghost of Iesha. Meanwhile, Phillipe was sitting on the floor, eating the black fungus from the wall. Suddenly, Aldern put on a mask that resembled Gulnyr, and attacked us. After we fought him for a while, he dropped to his knees, and wept. He begged us to save him by destroying his body. He mentioned a cult called the “Brotherhood of the Seven”, and said that they were currently occupying an apartment that he had in Magnimar. He also told us to destroy the fungus on the wall.

Gulnyr delivered the killing blow to Aldern, and Devin channeled energy twice to beat back the fungus. He knew that he would have to come back the next day with a Consecrate spell prepared to destroy it completely. Examining the room more closely, we discovered that many of the items on the table had been taken from Gulnyr. We also found a letter addressed to Aldern. It read:

Aldern,

You have served us quite well. The delivery you harvested from the caverns far exceeds what I had hoped for. You may consider your debt to the Brothers paid in full. Yet I still have need of you, and when you awaken from your death, you should find your mind clear and be able to understand this task more than in the state you lie in as I write this.

You shall remember the workings of the Sihedron ritual, I trust. You seemed quite lucid at the time, but if you find after your rebirth that you have forgotten, return to your townhouse in Magnimar. My agents shall contact you there soon — no need for you to bother the Brothers further. I will provide the list of proper victims for the Sihedron ritual in two days’ time. Commit that list to memory and then destroy it before you begin your work. The ones I have selected must be marked before they die; otherwise they do my master no good and the greed in their souls will go to waste.

If others get in your way, though, you may do with them as you please. Eat them, savage them, or turn them into pawns — it matters not to me.

– Xanesha, Mistress of the Seven

On Aldern’s body, we found a suit of armor, a razor sword, two rings, and the mask. Other than the armor, all of these items were magical. The painting in the room was a portrait of Iesha, which had been crudely drawn over with a picture of Gulnyr. We also found a keyring with two keys, one of iron, and one of bronze with a lion motif. We found a magical chime in the mold.

We returned to the first cavern at the bottom of the spiral stairs, and although we were injured, we wanted to find out what was in the passage that we had not yet explored, the one that appeared newer than the others, before returning up. Ash scouted down the passage while the rest of us waited behind.

This passage led to another cavern with entrails and carcasses covering the floor. Also in this cave was a monstrous undead bat, which detected Ash’s approach, and stunned us with a loud screech. Phillipe charged at the bat, but the bat knocked him unconscious. It then picked up Ash, and tried to fly away with her through an opening in the ceiling, but Gulnyr caught up and killed it before it got away. We found some treasure among the carcasses.

We then returned up the way we had come, and continued exploring the upstairs of the manor. We found a loft, and an observatory. The observatory had more stained glass windows, one depicting a woman, and the other showing a man, each with a bladed weapon. At this point, we rested for the night.

The next morning, we went back down into the cave where we had fought Aldern, and Devin destroyed the fungus using a Consecrate spell as planned. We then left the house. On the way back to town, we were attacked by a swarm of undead crows.

When we got to Sandpoint, we visited Father Zantus to get Ash checked for disease. He diagnosed her as having Vorel’s Phage, but Devin was able to cure her. We then reported to Mayor Deverin, and gave her a full report about what happened to us and what we had learned.

The next day, Ash was sick again, as was Devin, and Devin cured them both. The day after that, he had to cure Phillipe and Gulnyr. On this day, we booked passage by ship to Magnimar, to investigate Aldern’s apartment.