The Case of the Missing Musician

Wren, Erin, and Tomas were relishing some (almost) alone time. The others had gone off on some hare-brained pursuit of the Queen’s Physicians. Wren and Tomas didn’t see what that could possibly accomplish – the Physicians were just trying to help people after all – so they’d returned to Zellara’s. They hadn’t realized how cramped this place was with six people living in it (seven since the arrival of Girrigz), and now they were enjoying being able stretch out and take a little mid-day nap.

That was interrupted by a knock on the door. They rubbed the sleep from their eyes and exchanged looks, then Tomas moved to one side and made sure his bow was at the ready. Wren cautiously opened the door. A woman with dark hair stood on the other side, a worried expression on her broad face. “I’m terribly sorry to bother you, but I don’t know where else to turn. One of the Guards at the Citadel suggested you might be able to help me, so …”

Wren looked up and down the street; seeing no threats, she let the woman in. “What is it you need?” she asked.

“My name is Deyanira Mirukova, and my brother Ruan has gone missing.”

Tomas perked up. “Ruan Mirukova, the musician?” Deyanira nodded, and Tomas looked at Wren excitedly. “Haven’t you heard of him?” Wren shook her head. “He’s a regular musical prodigy – he’s been playing with the Korvosan Symphony since he was what, 12 years old?”

“Eleven,” Deyanira corrected. “Although he hasn’t been playing much lately. First with the riots, then the plague – it’s been weeks since he had a paying job. But a little less than a week ago, he came home so excited. He’d been invited to perform at a private ball at Carowyn Manor. Ausio and Olauren Carowyn are well-known patrons of the arts, and this would be a wonderful opportunity for Ruan to build a relationship with them.” Tomas nodded – his family knew the Carowyns well.

“Ruan practiced a new arrangement all day, and I cleaned his performance costume. He set off for the ball in the late afternoon, and told me he might not be home until late. But he didn’t return at all that night, or the entire next day. I went to Carowyn Manor, but it seemed to be abandoned – the doors were locked and the windows were boarded up. But there was a horrible smell coming from inside.

“I went straight to the Korvosan Guard, and reported what had happened. I begged them to go to Carowyn Manor to look for my brother, but with all that’s going on, they said they just didn’t have the manpower to handle a missing persons case. I’ve been back to Citadel Volshyenek every day since, but have gotten the same response. Today, one of the Guards took pity on me, and suggested I try you.

“Please – will you help me find my brother? Even if … if … it’s only his body you find. You’ll recognize him – he’s Varisian, with dark curly hair like mine, but his is dyed blonde at the tips.”

As Nat, Shadow, Jax, and Girrigz turned the corner, they saw a young woman leaving their house. Shadow whistled, but she just picked up her pace. “Who was just here?” Jax asked when they’d come inside. Wren and Tomas looked at each other. “I think we just agreed to take on a new case,” Erin said.

They filled the new arrivals in on Deyanira’s story. It was just past noon, and the casters had barely used any spells today, so they decided to investigate Carowyn Manor right away. They made their way to South Shore. They had no trouble finding the elegant mansion. Carowyn Manor faced Shorline Way, with a breathtaking view of the sea beyond. The home’s limestone façade was festoond with cinderberry garlands and bright red drapery, obviously decorated for some affair. A thick hedge surrounded the property; hidden in the hedge was a tall, spiked iron fence, but Tomas managed to part the branches enough to peer through. The grounds inside were well manicured, with a small pond and gazebo. Another building, likely servants’ quarters, sat at one corner of the property. Everything was quiet and empty.

While Tomas looked at the grounds, the others were looking at the front of the house. The front door was a massive mahogany affair. There were windows along the front, ground floor and upper, but the shutters were all closed. On the ground floor, they could see the points of nails protruding through the shutters – they had apparently been nailed shut from the inside. A balcony ran the length of the house above them, with more shuttered windows and a pair of French doors, but they couldn’t tell from this distance if they were also nailed shut.

Nat tried the front door, but it was securely locked. Griz elbowed him aside, and pressed his nose to the place where the two doors met. He inhaled deeply, then stepped back, a smile on his face. “Ahhh! There’s something nice and dead inside!” Erin cast Detect Evil, then frowned, and nodded silently to the others – dead and evil.

Jax stepped up, pulling out his lockpicks and flipping them in the air with a flourish. “I’ll have us inside in two shakes!” Ten shakes later, he was still cursing over the lock. “Don’t know why rich people need to have such fancy locks,” he muttered, as he tried another pick. “I mean, that’s hardly fair, is it?” At last the lock gave a click. “There!” he said proudly. “What’d I tell you?” Nat and Shadow quickly cast Mage Armor on themselves, and Jax pushed the doors open.

It was the scene of a massacre. On the marble floor and heaped in the corners lay more than a dozen corpses, each clad in garish outfits of sequined velvet, revealing silk, and colorful feathers. Masks of all shapes and sizes — each competing with the last in terms of elaborateness — adorned the dead. In several cases, though, these fanciful adornments had fallen away, revealing withered flesh covered in the telltale blisters of Blood Veil. Most horrifyingly, upon a blood-slick space cleared at the room’s center swayed three couples, jerking like hellish dancers, their features hidden by masks. They danced in silence, with no music save the shuffling of their feet on the blood-stained floor.

Most of the group stared in utter horror at the grotesque tableau, but Tomas swung into action. With the twang of his bowstring, a pair of arrows sank into the nearest male dancer, and it crumpled soundlessly to the floor. His partner continued her dance steps for a few more seconds, then stopped and turned her masked face towards the door.

“Um, excuse me? We’re looking for Ruan?” Erin was nothing if not hopeful. Her query got no answer, but the other dancers stopped their halting steps, and began advancing towards the front door. Girrigz stepped inside, and took a deep sniff – nothing but the scent of death. Jax took up a position beside him, and together they barred the door. The dancers crowded in on them; two clutched at them with withered hands, but missed, and the others pressed against them.

Wren cast Bless from the back of the party and Shadow turned Invisible; he didn’t know what they were up against, and decided it was better to remain unseen for the moment. Nat would have liked to settle matters with a Fireball, but didn’t dare with his friends so intermingled with the enemy; instead, he popped one with a Force Missile. Tomas fired another arrow, but it whizzed through the crowd of dancers without striking anyone. Griz slashed his rapier through the throat of the dancer attacking him and its head fell backwards, barely still attached to the body. From somewhere inside the house, they heard a woman’s sing-song voice: “Nyah nyah nyah na na, You can’t catch me!” followed by a string of insane-sounding giggles.

Wren wasn’t sure whether the things they were fighting were alive or dead – their masks hid their features – but she decided to take a chance. She Channeled the power of Pharasma, and all but one of the dancers collapsed like puppets with their strings cut. Nat fired off another Force Missile at the lone survivor, and it, too, fell.

There were closed doors on either side of the entryway, and a pair of open doorways farther in on the left-hand wall. Hoping to catch whoever was taunting them, Tomas ran to the first open doorway, Erin close on his heels. It looked like it had been the manor’s den. Two nobles wearing matching lion and lioness masks sat before an empty fireplace, with a third person dressed as a peacock and holding a silver serving tray attended them. Tomas didn’t wait for introductions, and his arrows took down the servant. Erin rushed in and took out the lioness, while the lion clawed at her ineffectually. Tomas darted to the other open doorway, which also led into the den but offered a better angle for his shot, and the lion zombie went down.

For the moment, there was no one attacking them. The great hall was open to the second floor and a stairway led upstairs. There were a pair of closed double doors to the south of the great hall, and another open doorway to the east. Shadow and Griz opened the two doors on either side of the front door; both rooms held more dead bodies, but no threats.

Nat caught a glimpse of movement through the balustrade surrounding the opening to the second floor. “Upstairs!” he hissed. Girrigz headed up the stairs, stopping near the top and peering cautiously into the second floor. He was looking into a gallery, its walls covered with works of art. Great windows would have provided magnificent views to the east, west, and south, but all were tightly shuttered. An alcove to the west was set with chairs, possibly for musicians. Half a dozen more masked figures moved clumsily around the room, pausing before each painting and stroking their chins as if in admiration of the art – but they periodically stumbled over the dozen corpses littering the gallery floor.

Before Griz could alert the others, an object came rolling out of a partially open door on the north wall of the gallery. It was small and round, and sparks fizzled from a short fuse. It rolled across the floor, through the balustrade, and dropped to the floor below, where it exploded with a soft thwump. A thick cloud of choking smoke filled the entire great hall; the stairway was also filled with smoke, but it didn’t extend into the second floor. Those downstairs suddenly found that they could barely see five feet in any direction.

The mad voice echoed through the house again:

I love Rolth

Rolth loves me

We will kill your family

With a stab slash snicker-snack, Cut their little throats

… I don’t know what rhymes with ‘throats’

More crazed giggling followed. It sounded to Griz like it was coming from the room the smoke bomb had come from, but he had his hands full at the moment: the zombies upstairs had been roused from their mindless pattern by the bomb’s explosion, and they were now converging on the stairs – and him. “Upstairs!” he shouted, readying himself.

The people downstairs could barely see their hands in front of their face, but they stumbled towards the stairway. Wren pushed her way past the people lined up on the stairs, and breathed a sigh of relief as she emerged from the fog and could finally see again. Then she saw the crowd of zombies coming at her from every direction and wished she was back downstairs. Undead hands clutched at her from all sides, and she felt her skin tearing.

Downstairs, Tomas felt helpless. He was on the far side of the great hall, and could hear Wren’s screams from above, but could see nothing through the fog. Hoping to find a back stairway, he fumbled his way into the den until he found a way out of the fog. There was another door there, and he opened it, but found the manor’s library, and more dead bodies, but no stairs.

Girrigz pushed through the zombie mob and dropped one of the creatures, giving Jax room to move up and engage as well. Shadow, still invisible, slid up the stairway and past the undead attackers; he was keeping his eyes open for the woman who was taunting them. Across the gallery, he saw a black-hooded figure slip out of the partially opened door and vault over the balustrade, disappearing into the fog below. “She’s jumped downstairs!” he shouted.

Erin heard his warning; she was at the back of the crowd trying to fight their way up the stairs, so she reversed direction and headed back for the entryway, hoping to block the stranger’s escape. She could see little in the dense fog of smoke, but she waved her sword and arm as wide as she could, hoping that no one could get past without her noticing.

Wren took advantage of Jax’s movement to step back from the horde of zombies into a slightly less dangerous position. She slammed her mace into a masked woman standing by the balustrade, but her weapon did less damage than she would have liked. Nat managed to climb far enough up the stairway that he could see into the second floor. Seeing the crowd pursuing Wren, he thrust his hands through the balustrade and a wave of flames from his Burning Hands engulfed them; all four zombies fell in a smoldering heap.

Girrigz finished off the last remaining zombie with a backhanded swipe of his rapier, then raced back down the stairs. He was sniffing furiously, trying to catch the scent of the person Shadow had seen leap down. He smelled humans, but it turned out to just be Erin and Tomas, who had come back into the great hall at Shadow’s warning. Wren also descended, and joined Erin at the front door; here they were out of the fog, and sure to block the way of anyone trying to get out.

Shadow moved quietly across the upstairs gallery and pushed open the partially opened door. Inside was an opulent bedroom. In the center of this room stood a woman dressed as a Galtan queen, her sprawling pearl-studded gown flowing around her and her elaborate, powdered wig nearly brushing the ceiling. A second woman,dressed as a Qadiran princess, attended her. Shadow was still invisible, and neither woman seemed to notice the opening door. Jax, however, did see the door open and rushed to prevent anyone from escaping. He collided heavily with the invisible Shadow; the sound of the collision (and the resulting cursing) drew the attention of the zombies inside.

Downstairs, Tomas was still trying to figure out where the mysterious stranger might be. He remembered a pair of double doors to the south of the great hall, and made his way there through the fog, alert for any sound or movement, then pulled open the doors.

Eight corpses sat at a finely set dinner table, looking at one another blankly. They were mechanically going through the motions of eating the rotten food on the table before them, spooning it back into their mouths after it dribbled out onto the table from their slack jaws. “More dead in here!” he called as the zombies struggled to extricate themselves from their tightly pushed-in chairs. Griz rushed to his side, impaling the first zombie to reach the door on the blade of his rapier.

Upstairs in the bedroom, Jax wasn’t worried  - he’d seen how easily these undead fell. “I’ve got this,” he called confidently, and true to his word, sent the princess zombie to her final reward. But then a sickly green ray of magic flashed from somewhere to his left, surrounding him with its glow. He felt the strength drain from his body, and the Ray of Enfeeblement left him barely able to lift his sword. He turned and saw a woman grinning at him. She was an elf, her blonde hair woven into long braid. She was dressed in maroon and gold motley, like some sort of circus performer. “Oooo! Did that tickle?” she giggled madly, then bounced a few times on the bed before hopping into the far corner of the room.

Nat heard Jax yelp, and rushed to the door. Seeing the mad elf, he cast Scorching Ray. Shadow joined him, and hit her with a volley of Magic Missiles, becoming visible in the process. “Oh yes!” she cried, seemingly in ecstasy. “Do that again!” Jax obliged with a Force Missile, but then she quaffed a potion and vanished.

Downstairs in the dining room, the zombies were crowding the door. Two of them clawed Girrigz, giving him second thoughts about why he was helping these freaking humans in the first place. Tomas took a step back, hoping to use his deadly bow, but he was back in the fog and unable to see a target. So he abandoned that idea, drew his spear from his back, and waded back into the fray. Unfortunately, the zombies needed to be hacked to pieces, not poked and prodded, and his spear did little damage.

Just as they thought things couldn’t get any worse, they did. Griz, Jax, and Shadow all felt horrible pain as hideous tumors broke out on their faces, and the skin all over their bodies began to break down. They hadn’t seen anyone do anything to them (and they were in different parts of the building). Could this be the result of exposure to something in that smoke?

When the elf vanished, Nat knew just what to do. Pulling back out of sight around the doorway, he cast See Invisibility, then stepped back and looked into the room. Sure enough, he spotted the elf standing along the back wall, grinning from ear to ear as she watched Jax and Shadow’s features become disfigured. Knowing where she was, and knowing that she didn’t know that he knew, gave Nat a distinct advantage. He just wasn’t sure what to do with it. Not wanting her to know that he knew that she didn’t know, he kept silent and pondered his next move. He cast Fox’s Cunning on himself, hoping it would give him the flash of insight he needed.

Erin could hear the fighting in the dining room, as well as upstairs, and chaffed at being out of the action. “Hold the door!” she commanded Wren, then rushed to help Griz and Tomas. Wren had been looking at some of the bodies of the zombies they’d killed in the entryway in their first foray. Beneath their masks, they bore the unmistakable signs of Blood Veil. But something didn’t seem right. From what she knew of Blood Veil, it took about seven days for a victim to succumb to the disease, and the Carowyn's ball had been less than seven days ago. And Blood Veil victims didn’t come back as undead – at least not so far. Kneeling, she examined the bodies more closely. With a start, she realized that the appearance of the bodies had been magically altered – they really had no symptoms of blood veil at all. What they did have were stab or puncture wounds, some as from a dagger and others from an arrow or crossbow bolt. And the wounds were all in the back.

Erin reached the dining room just as Griz killed another zombie and bulled his way into the room. She slashed her sword at the one in front of Tomas, and it too went down. That gave Tomas an opening, and he ran into the room, leaping up on the dining room table. One of the zombies raked him with its claws as he ran past, but he ignored the wound. Now he was out of that damned fog and had room to fight. He dropped his spear, drew his bow, and sent one of the zombies straight to Hell, just as Griz dropped yet another.

Upstairs, Shadow was now visible and standing right next to an agitated zombie. So far, it was attacking Jax (with success) but he saw no reason to count on that continuing. The elf had disappeared, and he had no idea where she might be (thanks to Nat’s cunning silence), so he decided what was good for the elf was good for the half-elf, and cast Vanish on himself. Jax was still battling the zombie dressed as a queen, but in his weakened state, even when he hit it did very little damage.

Nat was standing just outside the door, trying to come up with the perfect strategy to take advantage of his ability to see the invisible elf, when she suddenly came tumbling between Jax’s legs, did a somersault and sidestep past him, then vaulted over the railing and disappeared into the first floor fog.

I’ll award XP at the end of the encounter, but you’ll all be at 6^th level once this is over. Roger will be on-call again next week, but hopefully will still be able to join.