back to The River of Death, or to the Index

about 18 Ardan

Our Heroes had arrived in the small village of Millhaven, in Silvanus. The village was gripped by fear -- for several weeks, terrible murders had occurred at night -- probably the work of a renegade ghast. Our Heroes asked Kel some questions about the village.

Millhaven is on the banks of the Necros River; Zandu is on the other side. The terrain is low hills with abundant forests, and fields of provender plants. The mill does double duty as a provender-grinding machine and a lumber-cutting machine. There are (were?) also some miners living in the town, working at a mostly played-out mine of some sort nearby. Looking down on the town from a nearby hill is the manor house, a very elaborate mansion in the highest Zandiran taste; it was the home of the Yildoray family until they died out some years ago. There are old tombs and crypts scattered through Silvanus, but Millhaven's residents cremate their dead. Only the Yildoray family kept a crypt within their mansion. A Cymrillian alchemist and his wife rented the manor house last year, but disappeared three months ago; their names were Tarkin and Selva. The manor house is considered to be haunted (before the Cymrillians moved in, certainly). There is a caretaker and his family living on the grounds of the manor house:  Old Tep.

Aldak and Hasama (the Bane dancer) decided to try and track the ghast; Puliko, Keja and Vidan went up to the mansion -- perhaps the ghast arrived through the crypt there, and perhaps it was using the manor house as its base. Tep, along with his wife and simple-minded son, maintained gardens within the low walls surrounding the manor house. He had nothing to say about the ghast -- and in fact claimed to not even know of the trouble in the village. Likewise, he didn't know what happened to the Cymrillian alchemist, but did have a pretty pessimistic view of what happened if you ventured into the house. Nonetheless, the three adventurers decided to enter and look for the crypt.

The house was clean inside, and fully furnished. Everything was of the highest Zandiran style (as far as the not-very-fashionable adventurers could tell); clearly magic was producing some effects, such as subdued lighting, eyes-in-portraits following the Heroes, hot bath water, etc. There were all sorts of things that the usual run of tomb-robbing adventurers would consider treasure -- books, ancient swords and daggers, alchemical preparations, etc. Old Tep's warnings about what happened if the house was disturbed kept Our Heroes safe (if somewhat spooked) for a while. Keja contacted some spirits to "gain wisdom" about what was going on in the manor, and got a general sense that upstairs was the way to go. Eventually, a pretty minor transgression -- pulling a book off of a bookshelf -- caused a rapidly-escalating, painful and mind-bending series of attacks. Our Heroes couldn't tell how much of the terror was illusory or not, but after only a few minutes they came tumbling out the front door, and scuttled out beyond the garden wall. Some of the damage caused was real enough, and needed healing.

The consensus:

• If the ghast came though the crypt, but left and hadn't come back:  no reason to ever re-enter the house.

• If the ghast never came through the crypt, and never entered it:  no reason to ever re-enter the house.

• If the ghast was hiding in the house, but was powerful enough to ignore the house's magic:  no reason to confront the ghast in the house.

• If the ghast was hiding in the house, and was controlling or creating the terror attacks:  then the ghast is too powerful for Our Heroes, at least when within the house.

The chastened trio trudged down the hill, back to the village, late in the afternoon ...

onward to Millhaven - Lotte's Demise