Nerd Dice: Part II: Spooky Halloween Special

It is the morning after defeating One-Eye the orc and returning the mystical dragon bone dice to Sleek Calhoun. Garg comes into the tavern with his wolf after happily spending the night cuddled up to a tree. Roid Rage and Galatea meet him, but there is no sign of the funny little gnome Niddock Houk Linnpert Farkaddo Slumputtle. After a hasty breakfast they begin to ask after Ned, and soon find out that he had bought a donkey early that morning and left quietly before the others woke up.

According to the man who sold him a donkey, Ned hadn't paid for his ride. After some debate the others forked over some gold to prevent violence from the very large and insistent donkey seller. However, they aren't pleased with the gnome at this point and are determined to follow him and demand repayment for the donkey.

They easily find some donkey tracks on a road southward that is a well-known path to Hill's Edge. They follow the road for a good while until they can see storm clouds gathering up ahead. At first they are little concerned until they notice that the storm appears to be a fairly serious one; flashes of lightning are visible and dim rumbles of thunder give warning. It doesn't look like a storm that should be weathered without shelter, so they are relieved when Galatea points out a house about a half a mile up the road.

As they reach the building they find it is quite dilapidated, but it doesn't seem completely abandoned. They knock on the door, but no one answers, so they walk in just as the storm front approaches. The house appears to be two storeys and fairly spacious. The first room they find doesn't show any real signs of habitation. They search the room and only find an old gouged table with some worthless dusty crockery and a chest of drawers that is falling apart. Inside the remains of the drawers they find a vial with a thick purple liquid in it that Galatea detects as magic.

In the next room they see a table and a chair in front of a large fireplace, and on the table a leather-bound tome. On closer inspection, the book is written in some kind of infernal language with depictions of diabolic torture and human sacrifice. Unnerved, Galatea closes the book and notices the leather is made of human skin, after which she refuses to touch the book.

Also in the room they find a large chest. Roid is curious, checks the chest and finds it isn't locked, but isn't sure if it is trapped. Garg throws a chair at the chest but misses it and simply breaks the chair. Annoyed, Roid just opens it and inside finds a mummified skull. Being a big fan of skulls, the barbarian strings the skull around his neck with some rope. Galatea looks at the skull and warns Roid that it's probably not particularly healthy to wear that thing. Roid reluctantly throws the skull outside and it cracks apart and breaks into pieces.

Nothing else in that room, they move on to the next. Roid opens the door and finds the floor in the next room covered in bugs which begin to bite him. Repelled, he jumps back and slams the door. They return to the room with the fireplace and start a fire with the broken chair, then Roid lights a torch and Galatea lights her lantern. It's now quite dark and the storm is raging outside, and the house doesn't seem to be occupied at all.

They continue searching the bottom floor and come into a kitchen with huge cleavers and meathooks on the walls. Blood stains are on the floor and benches along the wall, and in the hearth among the ashes are fragments of bone. It has more the appearance of a slaughterhouse than a kitchen. They search the room and find a loose floorboard, and beneath it find some gold and silver jewelry, which they pocket.

Next to the kitchen is another dusty empty room behind a locked door which they break down. There is a cupboard but nothing else, and when Garg opens the unlocked cupboard doors, a bloated corpse falls out of it and rolls onto him. The corpse is covered in hungry grubs but Garg brushes them off his arm quickly and scrambles away from the cadaver, which appears to be about 3 weeks old.

Garg and Roid want to dispose of the corpse, but Galatea doesn't have the stomach for it and wanders upstairs. She can hear them using the meathooks to drag the body into the room full of bugs, and the insects immediately begin to devour the body. Galatea sees three doorways upstairs and heads for the one in front of the stairs as Garg and Roid finish up their grisly work and come upstairs as well.

As she opens the door, she hears a faint crying and smells an odd metallic smell. The others join her and they walk into what is obviously a bedroom. There is a bed on the right across from the window, and an inert humanoid figure under the sheets. The fireplace emits smoke from the fire downstairs, and in the corner between the bed and the fireplace a young woman crouches, sobbing. They speak to her but she doesn't immedately reply, cowering as if she is utterly terrified. Finally she stands up and screams warnings, telling the travellers to get out before he kills them. They can see bloody wounds on her neck and then she is suffused by a strange glow and disappears. Checking the form on the bed, they find another corpse of a young woman who vaguely seems to resemble the revenant they just witnessed. They find nothing else in the room and recover the body with the sheets, going back into the hallway.

They must break into the next room, the door seems stuck with damp and age. Inside they find a pentagram inscribed on the floor with blood, which resembles some of the diagrams they found in the book downstairs. As they look around, they hear the noise of someone clearing his throat behind them. An old man stands in the doorway, tall with a long white beard. He is obviously aged but doesn't look infirm. Garg's wolf eyes the old man warily as the other three speak with him. He claims to have stumbled upon the house, coming in from the storm outside as well. None of the group trust him, something seems funny about his story, and he doesn't appear as if he's been out in a storm.

Roid begins to rub out the marks on the floor as best he can, and Galatea and Garg announce that they are going to search the rest of the house for food or something else useful. The old man seems displeased about the destruction of the pentagram, and stays in the room with Roid. The bard and the halfling enter the third doorway from the hall and find a room in disarray, full of destroyed books with pages ripped out, and finding another doorway with junk piled in front of it. After searching the room carefully they also find a secret panel near the other doorway. They clear away the junk from the door.

Meanwhile, Roid carefully avoids allowing the old man to get behind him as he finishes destroying the pentagram on the floor. The stranger seems to get bored and goes back down the stairs, and Roid joins the other two just as they finish clearing away the last doorway in the house. They open the door to find a small dank room full of animal pelts and stink and flies. Just then, before they can enter this new room, the door behind them shatters in and they turn to see a hugs slavering wererat snarling at them.

Galatea and Roid hit the creature, but find their attacks do no damage, even with direct hits. The wererat simply heals up its wounds bloodlessly. Though they have no silver to kill it, Garg casts a spell on his club and manages to beat the wererat to death. As it dies, it begins to transform back into the figure of the old man.

The enter the room with the pelts and search it carefully. They find an apparently empty sack, but when Galatea reaches into it, her hand finds metal coins. She pulls her hand out of the sack and Garg snatches the sack away. Galatea keeps her copper coins, but Garg gets the rest, a wealth of money and a few grisly items-- a necklace of human teeth and some fingerbones.

In the secret room, they discover a large amount of skeletons, mostly adult humans, but also some smaller ones that could have been children, dwarves or halflings. Garg's sharp eyes find a valuable gold ring, but other than a few pieces of copper, there is nothing else but the skeletons.

They clean up the house, burning the woman's body, the wererat, and the other corpse in the room with the biting bugs (effectively destroying the bugs as well). Roid also throws the evil book with the human leather into the fireplace, and it screams as it burns. Garg goes out into the rain with his wolf and spends the night under some low trees, perfectly content to be out in the wild weather. Galatea and Roid stay in the least bloodstained of the rooms. In the morning the storm is long gone and the three of them burn down the evil house, until all that remains are its foundation stones.

They travel the rest of the way to Hill's Edge without incident, and are happy to leave the gruesome house behind and get on with finding the sneaky little gnome. It doesn't take much asking around before they find him, listening to a gathering of Bards singing in a competition. Roid, Galatea and Garg confront Ned, but he claims that he only wanted to see the concert, he paid for the donkey, and he told the folks at Oxbend where he was going!

Galatea joins in the competition and wins prize money for her singing. Garg joins in the competition, and wins death threats if he should ever try to sing again. The group spend a while longer in Hill's Edge, and are all offered jobs by the Zhentarim. They all accept, except for Garg, who wants to be his own boss.