Chapter 1: The Knaves Visit the Spudfields

When the four weary travelers came within sight of an old and dilapidated roadhouse, it was cause for considerable excitement. They had been too long on the muddy and unmaintained road east, too many nights without a roof o'er their heads, too uncertain of what laid before them, and what came behind.

The Bellowing Bear, the worn and once colorful sign read, and not one of those companions hesitated before going inside for a hot meal and the promise of the first restful sleep in more than a fortnight. After they greeted the owner and the few locals present who were talking quietly and drinking in that dim, smoky room full of benches and rough-hewn tables, the quartet got down to the business of eating a hot potato stew, one flavored with onions and a bit of chicken. It was delicious, and brought to them by the cook, a hunched man with a squint, a scarred bald head and an unwillingness or inability to speak.

"And where are you all goin'," the spindly proprietor Ogden asks, while at the same time hefting earthenware pitchers of both ale and what was surely a terrible wine. "An' more importantly, what're ye drinkin'?"

Filling Watters' cup with a dark red fluid made by a local farmer who'd found a patch of wild grapes and dabbled in wine-making, Ogden then measures two pours of the frothy, pale beer he brews himself, grinning crookedly at Clomm as he finishes. "Free?" he says with a snort. "Nothing's free, mate. You've some coppers in them pants you took off someone, I trust. Someone bigger n'you, looks. You're the wily one o' this crew, I'd wager. I've my eye on you."

Suddenly, it's apparent that Ogden has, in fact, one good eye -- the other, slightly milky, points off to the side.

Before the fourth traveler can voice his preference for a beverage, another voice joins the conversation, a mustachioed man with a high forehead, dark, slicked-back hair and quite a pointed nose. In the man's hand a pair of bone dice click softly, and he admonishes the owner of the Bellowing Bear. "Ogden, are you trying to drive off the first travelers we've seen since the last moon? You wouldn't last a day in a village where another innkeeper knew how to treat his patrons."

"Well then I'll count myself lucky the Bear here is the only game in town, then," the proprietor says, looking at Endrei, waiting for the big man to speak up or simply gesture.

"Well speaking of games," the man with the oily hair and the thin mustache says as he gets to his feet, "do any of you gentlemen -- or the lady -- throw dice? Care for a friendly wager?"

"Dice?" the greasy stranger said as he reached the table. "Well that would be something, wagering a pair of dice in a game of dice!"

When no one laughed at his humor, the man pulled up a chair and placed his six-sided, ivory-colored gaming pieces on the worn tabletop. "Hungry lot," he commented as at least two of the travelers seemed to be focused on putting away as much stew as they could. Four shining copper coins appeared near the edge of the table, seemingly just with a pass of the man's hand.

"I've a coin for each of you," he went on, clearly ignoring Audree. "All you need do is roll higher than me, it's yours."

Ogden was back behind the bar, close to the open door which led to the kitchen, which looked better lit than the low-ceilinged common room. The hearth took up one whole corner of the place, and looked to have an oven that opened to the kitchen on the other side of the wall. "Don't you be robbing them that needs to pay of all their worldly goods, Theo. That's a copper for a place on the floor tonight by the fire, your four, and two a day for your meals while you're here."

"I'm offering some of them means to pay, I think," Theo said with a smile.

Several others in the Bellowing Bear looked over now, interested to see what might unfold. There was an old man in the corner who had previously looked asleep, a man and a woman enjoying a bowl of stew as they chances looks towards the group, and an overweight, middle-aged man with lank grey hair and an unruly beard. He lacked a mustache and as a result his upper lip looked tall and constantly disapproving; on his head he wore a broad-rimmed hat, and seemed to look on with a skeptical eye.

"All right, good!" the lank-haired man says to Audree and Elius. Nodding at both of them, he places a pair of bone-colored dice on the wooden surface in front of him. "Just put your wagers on the table, minimum one copper, natch, then roll the pair of dice three times! I will do the same, and whoever has the highest total wins!"

The man's smile remains as he nudges the dice toward the travelers. "Go on. I'll help you keep count if need be."

"Alright, alright," Theo says, scooping up the dice in his broad and surprisingly agile hands. "I wager a copper for each of you, for that coin and those dice. Soa nineteen, and an eighteen. Great rolls! I'll be hard pressed to beat those, but let's just see..."

Shaking his hand, the man proceeds to roll, gather and reroll the dice until he's thrown the pair three times...

Theo's dice come up seven... then four... and then five. Totaling sixteen, he's lost!

The man grimaces and makes a guttural sound in his chest as Odgen, back behind the bar, laughs. "I know that look, Theonin! Lost your knack today?"

Picking up his dice and frowning at them as he tucks them away, the man, surely enough, slides a coin to both Watters and Wax.

"Sixteen. Your table. Again?" the man asks, raising an eyebrow. "Surely it's only fair to give me a chance to earn back my copper..."

---

Outside the roadhouse, on the muddy trail that leads to the three farms occupying the north fields, a young woman in a long, homespun skirt hurries into the little village of Snodswick. Endrei and Clomm and the others hadn't even noticed the name of the humble community as they'd walked into town from the west, not seeing the sign for the overgrown grasses that had covered it.

Elius narrows his eyes as Audree asks Theo about local rumors. The man did something with the dice before he rolled... did he switch them for a second pair?

That thought, and Audree's offer, are both left dangling as the door to the inn bursts open and a brown-haired, teenaged farmgirl scrambles into the room, out of breath.

"Reeve Morbin! You... you must come quickly! There's a -- a creature! In our cellar! Mum saw it! Eyes in the gloom!"

The man seated alone, the one with the broad-rimmed hat and the cruel lip, looks up at the girl, drinks deeply from his cup, then wipes his mouth with his sleeve. His eyes, hard and dark, fix the girl in place. There's a history between them, it's not difficult to see, and he smiles slightly before finally speaking.

"What now? Conrad and Eliza Spudfield want my help, want the help of the King's Reeve -- having not paid their levy? Did your father put you up to this, girl? Was he not man enough to come and look me in the eye to ask for my help?"

The girl -- more a young woman, really -- gulps air to calm her breathing. She wrings her hands as she responds. "I... he... it was mum what asked me to come fetch you. She was hoping--"

"Fetch me?!" the man blurted, interrupting the desperate teen. "Girl, I represent the King's authority here. I won't be fetched by the likes of you, not when your family can't even pay their taxes. Go back home, child. Go tell your father he needs to come see me himself if he expects my help, and he better have silver with him. Silver, not copper!"

As everyone watches the heated exchange, Theo quietly pockets the coin that Audree refused.

Elius stares at Theo and pick his coins. There is something fishy with this man, but one copper probably isn't worth the drama. There seems to be enough in the town.
He grabs his pack and follows Audree, mumbling "For lack of silver, I hope they'll have at least some copper"

The farmgirl flinches a little as the town's Reeve berates her in front of everyone, but Audree's quick and reassuring words brighten the teen's face. "You will?!" she says hopefully, and then when the other three gather round -- one of them towering over everyone else as he finishes chewing -- she grasps Watters's hands.

"There are four of you! We will be so grateful! My parents will reward you for this, I am sure!"

Turning, the slim brunette makes for the door, intending to lead the way back to the Spudfield farmstead.

"I will collect payment for your lodging and food tonight," Odgen calls out as the troupe exits his humble establishment, and Reeve Morbin narrows his dark and judging eyes as he too raises his voice.

"Tell your father I will visit the farm tonight to collect what's owed, after you've dealt with this terrible monster in your cellar, girl. Tell him!"

---

Outside the Bellowing Bear, a light drizzle is falling as the Spudfield girl pulls up the hood of her cloak and leads the quartet off to the north, away from the half-dozen old buildings and road that comprise the heart of Snodswick.

"Thank you again, all of you," she says again as she makes her way through the tall grass of an increasingly wet field. The lands surrounding the village on both sides of the road are largely old fields marked by low and partially robbed stone walls that look like they were built centuries before. "It's not far, not even half a league pa says, just past the old burying grounds."

"There seems to be a lot of tension and animosity in this last outpost of civilization before the wilderness. We'd better be careful" thinks Elius, paying conscious attention to his surroundings while eagerly waiting for the answer to Audree's question

The young Spudfield sets a good pace through the northern fields that border the village, leading her rather unusual companions to an overgrown path that takes them past the broken and rotten-looking remains of a collapsed building and a pile of lichen-covered fieldstones. They navigate a boggy patch of ground that results in a few wet boots, and finally cross a sparse line of stunted, wind-bent trees once used as a property line.

"That was Morbin, the King's taxman and Reeve," the girl says to the brightly dressed woman. "He has the run of Snodswick, dad says, and abuses his authority. My father doesn't like him, and didn't want to ask for his help."

As Clomm trudges, and as Elius Wax keeps an ever-wary eye out, the diminutive brunette in the homespun dress looks over her shoulder at Endrei when the big man rumbles out his own question.

"Of that I have no doubt, Mister... oh. My! I haven't even asked your names, nor told you mine." Turning so that she is walking backwards as she talks, it is plain to see that this girl is sure-footed and knows the terrain. Behind her, the shape of a farmhouse is emerging from the light mist, and some distance closer the ground is hummocked and unevenly mounded in places, looking quite unlike the rest of the potato fields surrounding the Spudfield farm.

"Call me Daece," the teen says, turning round again after names are exchanged. "And I am sure my parents will feed and house you if you can root the fiend my mother saw out of the cellar!"

"Hmm. Can you tell us a bit more about this creature? Did it suddenly appear from nowhere a few days ago?"
Then, pointing his bony hand toward the uneven ground, Elius adds in a rasp "Also, what kind of stuff do you grow in those fields?"

"Just last night," the girl answers, "mum went into the root cellar to fetch vegetables for our dinner. It's dark down there, so she brought a candle to light the lamp -- and she saw this figure, this hunched, shadowy thing. She can describe it better than I can, but it sounds frightful, like a thing crawled from a grave. She ran and slammed the cellar door behind her, and when she and dad heard growling from down there, they bolted it. My pa wanted to check on it this morning, to get some food for breakfast, but she wouldn't let him. They argued about what to do about it until she finally told me to get the Reeve... and here we are."

When the man asks about the fields, she shrugs. "Mostly root vegetables. Turnips, onions, carrots, beets -- and lots of potatoes."

"I've no idea," Daece says when Audree asks about how such a creature might have found its way into the root cellar. "It's not like there's another way into the cellar. And dad barred the trap door pretty much right away... I don't know if the wicked thing has tried to get out or not, but if it has my parents talk about it. Maybe to keep from scaring us?"

As the group walks on, the muddy path beneath their feet smooths out some as they pass a series of earthen hummocks and strange mounds on their right, some distance off the trail. There are what look like tumbledown stones of some sort scattered here and there, and at least two patches of earth that look like they were freshly dug or disturbed.

"There's my father and brother," the girl says as they come within a hundred paces of her farmhouse, gesturing at a man and a boy working in an animal pen, tending to a pig. The man sees that he has visitors, and puts his son on his shoulders as he makes to leave the pen and greet this daughter and four strangers as they approach his house.

Lagging behind, long-limbed Endrei makes his way into the unruly green field southeast of the farmhouse. The flat, rectangular stone he examines is worn and weathered, but it looks cut, like it was once worked by a stonemason. It has a front and a back, and traces of something interesting on its pitted and white lichen-covered face. The big man sees concentric rings and unknown glyphs running in tightening circular patterns towards the center. Nearby, two spots of disturbed earth in the side of a hillock are evident. Both look like they might be graves to Endrei, though small ones.

When Watters leads the crew towards Mr. Spudfield, the man puts his son on the ground and shoos him back towards the house. He's a wiry soul with a sharp chin and full head of brown hair, young-looking for someone who has a teenaged daughter. Like Daece, he's dressed in humble but sturdy homespun clothes; his hands are dirty and calloused.

"You know, Audree," the man says with a nod, "yes, we might at that. Has my daughter fetched you here to help, then?"

"I have!" Daece announces. "You've met Audree, and this is Clomm, and Elius! Back there -- see the big one? That's Endrei. Four hardy adventuring types, father, surely enough to forcibly remove the thing in the cellar."

Spudfield takes them all in, and shrugs. "I'm Conrad, and thank you for coming to our aid. We can't afford to pay you much for this service, I'm afraid, but we'll do what we can. You'll always have a place to rest your head when traveling through Snodswick, and I can put in a good word for you at Fourtower Bridge."

---

The Farmhouse:

"Only my wife saw the thing," Conrad says, "though we all heard the growling. Come inside, she'll tell you about it. I'm hoping whatever it was is long gone... somehow."

When the giant approaches and grimaces in what looks like considerable pain, the farmer does his best to not wince in return. "Hello, sir," he says simply, but his face falls a little when he's asked about the burials.

"Up there? That's an old burying ground. Goes way back, well beyond the founding of Snodswick and the surrounding farms. It's used as a cemetery for animals now, mostly beloved pets and such. One of the graves you would have just seen was for dear Doris, our dog." The man's chin trembles slightly. "We miss her terribly, I must say."

From the door to the house, the man's son, who sneakily hasn't gone inside and who in fact as been watching and listening, calls out. "She's not dead, dad!" the boy manages, but quick as that Daece is shooing her younger brother inside.

"Sorry," Conrad says, wiping a tear. "She meant a lot to us, and the kids... well, I'm happy to say there hasn't been a lot of death in their lives. They're still coming to grips with it."

Turning, he means to lead the way inside. "Come. I'll show you the cellar."

Clomm's wondering goes unanswered as Conrad brings them all into his house.

It is a stoutly made building -- a two-story, timber-framed, wattle and daub structure with a steeply pitched roof. The second floor has a jettied overhang, and an addition has been added to the ground floor at some point; it is through this utilitarian front room that the group enter, behind the family patriarch. They walk past a workbench and some washing basins, past some tools and garments that are in need of mending -- and past a trap door in the floor that is secured with a makeshift lock, into the kitchen, which smells of bread and roasting potatoes.

Eliza Spudfield, a friendly-looking brunette in her thirties with a babe in one hand and a wooden spoon in the other, smiles as her son steals a piece of sweetbread from an earthenware platter on a nearby table. "Conrad, Daece, who's this then? You've brought -- oh! There are a lot of you! And you're -- there... there are a lot of you!"

"I found them at the Bellowing Bear!" Daece declares. "The Reeve wouldn't help, just like dad said he wouldn't, but these four travelers -- once hearing about the terrible beast in our cellar -- said they'd have a look, they'd take care of it!"

Eliza looks impressed -- with the height of the one, the hair and wary expression of the pock-marked fellow, the flamboyant clothes of the woman, and the elegant and unusual manner of the bald man. They were a sight... but they were willing to help. Handing her snoozing babe to her husband, smacking the table with her spoon to prevent her greedy-fingered son making off with another sweet, the woman wiped her hands on her apron and came to greet the foursome properly.

"I am Eliza, and I thank you for agreeing to help us. I'm sure Conrad has told you we have no silver to offer, and little copper besides -- at least until we can sell part of our harvest... which is in the root cellar we don't dare go into!"

Daece relays that the four travelers have expressed interest in room and board, and her mother readily agrees to that. "The least we can do," she says as she leads them back towards the trap door in the front room. "Now I didn't get a good look at the thing I saw down in the cellar last night, but it was evil, I'll tell you. It's eyes! It's teeth! It had a kind of... hunger that I could feel. Scared me out of my wits, I ran like I'd seen Death itself! We slammed shut the door and bolted it, and that's when we heard the thing growling -- and what an awful sound!"

"No, only this way, in and out," Eliza says, gesturing at the trap door. "Perhaps the thing dug its way in, or -- yes. It's possible that it slipped in when we weren't watching. The door is left unbarred normally. It's only held fast now by the haft of an old shovel that my husband used to secure it. You see?"

Elius Wax did -- paying careful attention to the room, he'd already noted that the fastening looked hastily made, and none too secure, really.

To him and Clomm, the woman says, "The cellar's loaded with the harvest! Potatoes, turnips, greens -- bushels and barrels and sacks worth." Swatting at the man with the mohawk, she adds, "There will be no fire, no smoke! This is our house, man! That's our livelihood down there!"

Then, when Endrei says his piece, the woman turns sheepish. "I didn't -- I didn't get a good look at it. It was in the corner, in the shadows -- scared the death out of me with its eyes! Kind of -- they reflected the light from my lamp in this awful way. It was like a man, but not. Upright, yes, and there was a smell, there was this... cold." The woman shivers. "It wasn't like anything I've laid eyes on before."

Conrad comes into the front room supporting his cooing youngest with one arm. "In the shed," he says to Daece, and like that the girl darts outside. When she returns with a pair of torches, they are added to what Eliza has gathered as well.

"Two torches, this oil lamp, and these three candlesticks," the ruddy-faced woman says after lighting one of the candles at her stove, so that it can be used to light the other implements. "Be careful with the lamp, please. Tis an antique, belonged to my gran." It's a nice piece -- brass with a glass cylinder that broadcasts light effectively.

"There's a ladder, yes," Eliza answers, then her husband chimes in regarding the size of the basement.

"It's the full size of the building," the man says -- and then he and his wife are exclaiming and darting backwards as Watters unbolts and open the trap door. It creaks as it opens, and lands heavily as it settles on the floor. Cold air wafts out of the blackness, but no monster bursts out, no dark tentacles wrap around Audree's ankles to pull her in...

All is quiet below.

Leading down into the seemingly drafty cellar is a rough-hewn ladder, likely one made by the Spudfields themselves. The angle is such that Audree cannot safely descend it facing forwards, so she has to turn around and climb down the usual way, which means her back is vulnerable as she sinks, rung by rung, into the dark. Carrying a torch slows her down as well, but her initial sweep with her firebrand dispels the shadows quick enough, showing the woman that the space beneath her and the immediate surrounding area at least, seem devoid of monsters, if not jars and sacks and boxes and barrels and such.

As her feet touch the damp, packed earthen floor a chill moves through the woman, making her shiver. There's a smell as well, one reminiscent of rot and decay, but it's faint, not strong. Above, the ladder creaks and moans as Endrei begins descending...

The ladder cracks and groans and shifts -- Watters is sure it's going to splinter and shatter under her big companion's mass... but it doesn't. It holds, and soon enough the man joins the torch-wielding woman and pulls out his two-handed weapon as goosebumps and hairs rise on his forearms.

Watters and Endrei inch forward a bit, moving to give the others room as they descend, pushing the dancing shadows back with the woman's torchlight. By the time both Wax and Clomm have joined them, coming carefully down the ladder, there's enough light to illuminate the whole of the cellar. It is as the Spudfields described -- full of root vegetables and grains in bushels and barrels, preserves in jars and bottles, spare stores of various kinds in old crates and worn wooden boxes.

A few things take their attention as they quietly explore. The first is a jagged hole in the far masonry wall, damage or a collapse of some kind. It's a narrow opening, wider at the bottom than the top, and the cold draft coming from it is unmistakable. A quick look shows that beyond the opening lies a tunnel of some sort. Next is a piece of thick leather laying on the ground in the middle of the basement -- what looks like a strap, or perhaps a collar. Near the hole are a few scraps of cloth on the ground, and something that looks dark and sticky on the packed earth floor.

All five Spudfields crowd around the open trap door and peer down at the adventurers. Eliza is about to ask 'what do you see?' when Audree calls up to them.

"A hole in the wall?!" Conrad says, gently rocking his infant. "That's new!"

"We have barn cats," Daece adds, before he younger brother chimes in as well.

"And a dog! A big one! Doris is her name!"

"Son," Conrad says in an admonishing tone, "we've told you. Doris is gone. We buried her weeks ago, lad."

"Beyond that," Eliza calls down to Watters, "just chickens and goats and our sow and other farm animals. Why do you ask?"

"She did," Conrad says with a frown, peering down at the faces looking up at him from the torchlit gloom. Disappearing from sight, the man's footfalls can be heard overhead as he walks to a different part of the house.

Cold air continues to waft from the hole in the drystone cellar wall, and those not actively engaged in conversing with the Spudfields swear something can be heard on that chill zephyr -- a groan, a muttering, a hissed whisper.

The patriarch reappears at the edge of the opening in the ceiling. "I'm not sure how, but her collar is gone from where we'd hung it in the kitchen!"

The man's children exchange glances as Endrei eyes the piece of leather on the ground more carefully, and does believe it looks like it could be a dog's collar -- complete with a metal buckle and a few holes punched along part of its length. It's large. If it once fit a dog, the creature would weigh a dozen stone or more.

"I ain't seen her since before," the boy says, responding to Endrei. "Before Pa buried her. But I heared her! I'd know Doris's bark and growl anywhere, and I heared her down there, where you are, last night and before that too!"

Taking her excitable boy and moving him back behind her skirts, Eliza has heard enough from her son. "Look, I don't know what you're getting at down there, but I can tell you it was no dog I saw last night, dead or alive down there!"

Wax nears the dark passage as his companions quiet down, and as he feels the chill from the dark on his exposed skin he listens carefully. It's hard for him -- as it would be for anyone -- to describe what he hears. The deafening silence of being deep underground, punctuated from time to time with a soft, barely audible scraping sound, or more rarely, a thud, like a clod of earth falling. There is something more, though. A noise in the background, almost an absence of sound, like an ever-present wind that the ear has learned to not hear.

Then, from time to time, Wax hears it. A whisper? It's beyond faint and impossible to decipher, but it does sound like someone speaking, ever so softly.

After the careful listening of Elius Wax, the silent contemplation of Endrei, and the arcane whispers of Clomm, Watters can hold her zeal no longer. She ducks through the hole in the wall, entering the tunnel beyond, and her torch lights the way as her fellows come behind her.

The earthen tunnel looks hastily dug, and the floor, walls, and ceiling are soft. The damp and mottled dirt surrounding them smells strongly; each step squishes a few inches into the ground. Audree cannot stand upright but does not need to crawl... Endrei has considerably worse a time, having to stoop significantly to make progress. It is not easy for the big man to see, as Watter's form and garb block the light she's holding in front of her, and that from behind him seems to do little more than cast shadows.

Anyone looking carefully at the walls of the tunnel can determine easily enough that it looks like it was dug by hand, at least in part. The passageway narrows slightly as they walk, and after fifty feet or so Audree calls a halt. There are tracks before her, muddled and difficult to distinguish, and a few scraps of fabric, similar to those seen back in the cellar.

Moving past the disturbed earth, stepping over the scraps of dark cloth, Audree Watters leads the foursome forward, towards the unknown. The smell of being below ground is powerful here, earthy and organic, but each step they take increases the whiff of something bitter, of some smell that seems intermingled with a long-forgotten rot. The cold intensifies as well, until they can each see their breath and a single shiver seems to pass among them.

The quarters are close -- very close. Endrei is right -- the passage is tight and would be a disastrous place to fight. The tunnel is freshly hewn; whatever made it did so in recent days or weeks. The various light sources crackle and snap, lighting the black passage with a flickering orange glow, and finally, after what seems a long time, the delvers come to the end of it.

Two hundred paces down the tunnel, stones litter the floor -- large ones, ones that look like they perhaps came from a wall. And sure enough, just as the Spudfield's cellar wall had been breached, ahead lies another underground structure, one that has been similarly broken into. Or... perhaps broken out of. The hole in this wall is larger, and Audree and Endrei can both see through to the chamber beyond when they reach the threshold.

The stone room is roughly square, perhaps five or six long strides on a side, and passages lead off both on the left and the right. The air is still and dry, the silence oppressive. Any sound made by the adventurers seems strangely muffled, like all the earth above is pressing down, smothering them. The bitter smell is strong here, some kind of herb perhaps, and other than rubble strewn on the floor, only two things catch the eye in this chamber.

Two large candelabras stand against the far wall, silver and holding unlit candles that look to be purple in color, or perhaps dark blue. Behind them, a large oil painting adorns the wall.

For a closer look, the party knows they will have to enter the room.

The ever wary Elius Wax is trying to listen carefully as Audree makes her declaration and marches into the room. There might have been a whisper, the faint pull of breath through teeth -- but all sounds not coming from the party cease the second Watters steps through the threshold. Her torch lights the room, and as quick as that the painting on the far wall is much easier to see. Nothing erupts from the darkness to eat the woman, so that's a plus at least for those not keen to rifle her skirtpockets when she's dead, but none of them can evade the fact that it seems like there is a... presence in these old stone halls.

The standing candelabras are ornate and look both old and valuable, Audree sees -- they are covered in cobwebs, some of which reach to the rich oil painting that dominates the wall. It is a depiction of two pale, grim-looking men with a family resemblance and dramatic widows' peaks. Both look to be in their fifties, wear red and black robes, and are standing before what appears to be a burning village.

Endrei comes into the room next, and glad news -- nothing attempts to eat him either. Rubble is strewn about the floor, making for unsure footing, but the passages leading off to the east and west look clear.

Soon enough all four companions make their way into the stone chamber, and the scent in the air becomes harder to place when Watters uses her torch to light the two candelabras. While the candles themselves are purple in color, she now sees, the flames that start small and quickly grow to three inches in height burn a rather strange green. The odur they give off is greasy and unpleasant, but the coiling smoke shows Elius Wax that there is in fact no breeze or movement of air here. Now that they are all present, the place seems very still indeed.

Endrei whispers his questions as Clomm taps around a bit with his long adventuring pole; those examining the oil painting can't tell much more about it despite the now better light. It looks old -- the paint is cracked and the canvas slightly buckled in places, but it's difficult to tell whether the scene is of some specific place, or more representational. The details -- of the thatches rooves, the stone walls, the animal pens, the style of the hearths and their chimneys -- are plentiful, but could easily come from the mind of the artist as well as any real scene they might have been painting from. The two men themselves bear no resemblance to the Spudfields, with their angular, hawkish faces, dark eyes, and elaborate mustachios.

In the rubble on the floor, near the hole in the wall, Clomm prods a pile of what look like black, rotten cloth -- perhaps the same type of cloth the group saw in both the Spudfield's basement, and also here and there in the tunnel.

Lifting up a bit of the cloth on the end of his pole, Clomm could see -- and smell -- that the fabric was old, and rotten. It seemed damp, and like it would stain anything it came into contact with. It was in strips, long and narrow, reminiscent of a wrap or bandage.

Leaving the candles burning with their strange green light, the group briefly investigates the two passages. To the east, right, a wide passage appears to end after twenty feet or so, perhaps continuing on to the left. To the west, where Endrei gestures with his hammer, the passage is narrower -- only five feet across. After only five or six paces, it appears to connect with another chamber, a square, stone-lined room about the same size as the space housing the candelabras and the painting. It does not take Audree long with her torch to light up that room after carefully treading down the connecting passage.

What she -- and anyone else accompanying her -- sees, is startling and unsettling.

A statue stands against the far wall, in an alcove. It has been carved from smooth, green-black stone, and is a blasphemous representation of a naked, horned man. He has three eyes and two mouths, and seems to hold a metal staff or rod of some kind in his open, upturned hands. Muscular, over seven feet tall and simply evil-looking, the thing is disturbing. Is it breathing? No. Surely not -- the thing is just cold stone, given slight movement by the flicking flame.

On the floor in front of it lies a withered, red and black carpet with an intricate, curving, scrolling pattern woven through it. In the north, a wooden door reinforced with iron stands closed.

What will our brave Knaves do?

No one can place the pattern in the rug, and indeed it's so old and moldering and stained that one may no longer exist in it. Audree gets closest to the thing, and sees what she thought was a dark stain... move. Puzzled by what she's seeing, she's still trying to understand it when Endrei gently thumps his hammer on the fabric -- and suddenly that half of the rug is alive with a movement that shimmers in the torch light, with tiny insects swarming and crawling out of the matted nap.

Wax is trying to use his senses to understand more about this ancient place they have found, but it's to no avail. The pungent smell of death drifts faintly in the air, mostly covered by the now slightly stronger smell of herbs, and no sound or source of heat or cold reaches him.

Left alone, the swarming bugs appear to settle. But Endrei, closest to them, sees a number of the pale-bodied little things -- about the size of a pepper seed -- suddenly vanish into thin air. Wait, no -- not vanish, but leap, so fast the eye can't follow them in this light. They are fleas or some other hopping vermin and a handful of the things land on the big man's boots and lower trouser legs as he presses against the southern wall.

Endrei moves past the infested rug along the southern wall, swatting and brushing at the tiny creatures that are now slipping into the folds of his clothing, beginning to bite his legs even as Elius wax goes the other way -- and successfully slips past the moldering floor covering, finding himself at the door in the northern wall. Made of gray-brown wood and furnished with wrought iron, it stands shut, concealing whatever lies beyond it.

Clomm follows behind Endrei along the south side of the musty, dank room, slipping quickly past the infested rug and stepping over it to pass the big man and get close to the tall, terrible statue that stands with its back against the western wall. With Endrei still swatting at the biting insects that are swarming around his legs and Wax positioned at the door, Audree stoops and uses her torch to try and set fire to the floor covering.

The fabric flares and catches quickly, and the woman sees with perhaps some satisfaction that dozens, maybe hundreds of the little vermin are crisped and killed almost instantly. Others are scrambling, leaping in all directions, but the heat from Watters's torch is definitely a ward against them.

Standing before the statue as dark, reeking and oily smoke starts filling the air and stinging his eyes, Clomm, candle in hand, feels transfixed by the three eyes set into that green-black, horned head, and the two mouths seem to sneer and mock him. The staff, though, that the statue almost seems to be daring him to take, is beautifully if disturbingly crafted. The metal shaft is pitch black in color, and topped by... by what looks like an ugly, crying infant's misshapen head. It's made of that same strange, dark metal, and the eye sockets are conspicuously vacant, hollows inside the thing's small skull.

As flames flicker and the rug smolders, Endrei exits the room down the eastern passage and finds himself back in the chamber the group first entered. The air is clearer here and the room is lit by strange, green-burning candles that cast an eerie light, but the tall man can still smell the stench coming off the burning fabric. If it burns for long, the air here will be poisoned too. The brothers in the painting glower at him and it's hard to not wonder if it is in fact the burning village that smells so awful...

Standing before the looming statue, curiosity itching his fingertips, Clomm does not believe that any mechanism lurks near the staff, waiting to snip off a finger or inject a dark poison...

Stamping, Watters attempts to put out the fire she started.

Much is happening beneath the ground at the Spudfield farm.

Endrei utters his excuses and explanations towards the grim painting in the room where his and his fellows entered. Elius Wax carefully examines the door in the chamber with the smoldering rug and the unnerving statue, listening, looking for signs of passage or traps. Audree is comically stamping and swatting at the rug, and for her troubles she extinguishes the flames that she herself had lit. Smoke still wisps from the now ruined mat, but not so much as to do more than sting eyes and lungs a bit.

It is Clomm, though, who is rewarded for his bravery. The black metal staff is cold in his hands, and heavy as he tries to pull it free. The unmistakable sound of iron on stone resounds -- even Endrei hears it -- but the whole length of the thing comes free from the statue's grasp rather easily, like it was meant to be removed.

His tongue still out, the man's eyes flick to the trio of the same that adorn the terrible statue's face, but they do not blink, they do not look back at him. The figure does not stride forward to reclaim the weapon, or plunge a hand into Clomm's chest to squeeze the life from his rapidly beating heart. He simply... has it: a rod with a chilling effigy of a crying infant's head atop it, crafted from the same dark metal as the rest of the thing. It is solid and weighty and should be unwieldy, but something about the staff feels right in Clomm's sweaty hands...

When nerves are steeled and quiet nods are given, Elius Wax tries the ancient-looking door... and finding it closed tightly, yanks with some fervor to try and open it. It does not budge, but when aid is offered from one of his fellows, the portal becomes unstuck, pulling slowly into the room with the statue. Old hinges whisper faint shrieks, high-pitched and barely audible, but then Audree is there, lighting the way forward.

The well-constructed passage strikes off straight north for fifty feet or more, but small, open rooms are plainly visible on the right and left. A low, intricately carved stone altar occupies what barely passes for a room on the right hand side; seven of the strange purple candles now burning green in the entry room are present on it. To the left, the chamber is deeper and contains a stout-looking chest of black, lacquered wood. An iron clasp holds it shut, but no lock is evident. Northward, at the end of the passage, it looks likely that the tunnel turns to the right and continues. At that far end of the hallway, what look like three burial alcoves are visible in the walls, up off the ground. It is impossible to tell from a distance whether the alcoves contain remains.

As the quartet ponders their next move, Watter's torch -- their sole source of light, flickers and wavers. Endrei's legs and feet itch. Wax twitches his nose towards the burial chambers. Clomm notes that the iron staff in his hands almost seems pulled by some unknown force from time to time. When he sets it butt-first on the ground, the thing rotates slowly so that the head of the staff -- the eyeless, wailing child, gazes down at the end of the hall, towards the alcoves.

As Watters ponders lighting another series of candles, Endrei makes his way to the ominous-looking trunk resting against the wall. The man doesn't have his own light source, and his body throws massive, long shadows in front of him as he approaches the chest and its iron clasp. Shifting his stance allows more of Audree's light to fall on the clasp, and a flick of the giant's fingers opens it with a brief clatter. When nothing beyond that sound happens, the man kneels and places his hands on the edges of the lid. It complains as it opens, creaking loudly until Endrei rests the lid against the wall.

Inside, the plundering knave finds several items of interest. On top, two moldering but surprisingly intact hooded robes are folded. The garments share the color and intricate patterns of the flea-ridden rug that Watters had set fire to in the other room, and beneath them lie ten of the same purple candles that have now been seen in multiple locations. On a silver tray with gold inlays -- clearly valuable -- rest three other items: a small cloth bag with loose items inside that rattle slightly, a large and weathered-looking leather-bound book, and two unmarked green glass vials holding a water-like fluid.

The book opens with some complaint, its spine stiff and its pages dry and brittle. Clomm recognizes right away it appears to be some sort of religious text, full of troubling symbology, cramped writing, and filled with highly detailed, painstakingly crafted illustrations. The pages are difficult to look away from, drawing the reader in, filling his eyes and mind with dark and mystical knowledge.

Close by, still hovering over the trunk as Watters holds her torch aloft for them all to see, Endrei jostles the cloth bag and examines its contents, which proves to be -- bones. Finger and toe bones... human, if the man had to guess. Cleaned of any soft tissue remains, they clattered lightly when rattled together.

Back in the main area of the room, several candles sputter and flicker with green flames that eventually settle -- Audree's handiwork.

Page after page, Clomm turns, his fingers trembling as he seeks that which he knows must be present in this book... a powerful sorcery, a magical spell that he can command. When he finds it at last, his mind is befuddled slightly -- he cannot tell what the intent of the enchantment is. He can read the words, he can make the gestures, but the former cook has no idea what energies will be loosed.

As Watters picks up the green vials, she can see that they are indeed sealed with glass stoppers and a long-ago applied drizzle of wax. She holds one of them delicately, leaving the second on the tray, and a twist of her fingers breaks the seal and allows her to remove the stopper.

"Wait!" Elius hisses -- but it is too late. The instant that the liquid inside is exposed to the air, that same instant when Audree is lifting the vial to her nose to sniff at it, the stuff begins vaporizing, turning almost instantly to a gas that rushes from the bottle violently!

The fumes are awful, like nothing any of the adventures have ever experienced, and as eyes begin stinging and watering, as lungs burn and skin blisters, each of them fight to not be overcome by the gas...

Clomm chokes and sputters as he gets a good, strong whiff of the poisonous gas, feeling his throat constrict as Watters extends her arm and waves the bottled of rapidly evaporating fluid around in the air. Across the room, Elius Wax is coughing and wheezing as well...

Endrei's curiosity turns to dismay as he watches strange gas tumble from the vial that Audree has opened. The smell hits his nose, and his face contorts. The giant lurches to his feet, then shuffles away from the alcove, trying to get clear of whatever this vapor might be.

Unfortunately, it's crowded now in the alcove, Endrei is not a small man, and his eyes are swimming from the gas. Unable to pick his way through the others, he staggers into the nearby wall with his shoulder.

As Endrei, Clomm and Elius all begin choking and gasping desperately, it suddenly dawns on Audree that she's avoiding the ill effects by holding her breath... and that the liquid in the unstoppered bottle is still vaporizing, and is beginning to fill more and more of the underground passage!

Gasping and wheezing, Elius Wax retreats out of the room, only stopping when his eyes and lungs no longer burn from the noxious fumes...

Once Watters has the stopper back in the bottle, the noxious fumes dissipate rapidly. The stuff is dangerous in an enclosed space, and eyes are still watering as the four explorers recover.

Elius is breathing hard, and there are flecks of blood on his lips as he gestures northward, to the alcoves and the shadows beyond. "Should we continue?" he croaks, grabbing one of the green-burning candelabras off the nearby table.

The dungeon -- for what else could it be called at this stage? -- again has that deafening silence, that eerie stillness as the foursome moves up the hallway to the north, carefully. The lights, carried now by Watters and Wax, drive back the shadows, sending them scuttling to the corners of the place.

At the end of the hall, as the passage turns to the right, they see that the three dark but open alcoves are burials -- interments in the wall. Each holds what looks like the shrouded and perhaps mummified remains of a human-sized figure. Down the eastern passage, torch and candlelight reveals a set of steps leading down into darkness on the right, the passage turning to the south after fifty feet or so, and most arresting of all, a huge stone head set into the north wall in a large alcove. It is flanked on either side by the now familiar candelabras, has been carved from some strange, pale yellow stone shot through with veins of green. It's two fist-sized eyes appear to be made of smoky glass... glass perhaps containing some swirling liquid or gas?

Watters' footfalls are soft as she approaches the massive head that's set into the north wall, and additional light brightens the room when she lights the eerie green-burning candles to the left and the right of the strange and impassive stone face. The material is unknown to the woman, pale yellow and smooth, but it is heavily veined with a network of green material that might be jade or tourmaline. Set into the thing's eye sockets are fist-sized spheres that appear to be made of glass; within those eyes, there is a murk that seems to shift and swirl of its own accord. Now that she is closer, the woman can also see that the lower part of the face might be hinged. Is the mouth meant to open?

Some distance from Audree, Clomm inspects the rest of the room more carefully now that the lighting is brighter. At his side, Wax holds his torch aloft as well, fully revealing steps that traverse down into the dark, and that end in a landing just at the edge of the adventurer's illumination.

Audree keeps her touch light as her fingers move across the face of cold stone, and she finds that she cannot open the mouth despite there being a seam and evidence of some kind of jaw-hinge. The glass eyes she can touch directly, and believes might pry loose with a little persuasion.

Clomm assumes the position, pointing his iron staff towards the face, eyeless infant's head-first. And then -- and then he does feel a tremor of power, of energy... in the room, in the staff, in him!

Wax, Watters, and Endrei all watch in surprise as the mouth on the huge and impassive stone face opens with the sound of stone on stone, yawning before the raised staff that the knave wields. In the thing's open lower jaw, a pair of small, purple gemstones twinkle, shining in the torchlight...

Endrei and Elius crowd in a little closer, trying to get a look at the pair of gems themselves...

Watters's hand might tremble when she reaches into that great maw, in the torchlit gloom... but nothing happens. The mouth does not slam shut, severing or trapping her arm, and no poison darts or blasts of flame result. Instead, she holds the two beautiful gemstones in her palm. They are perhaps amethyst? Beautifully faceted, nearly glowing in the torchlight.

The purple gemstone seats perfectly with a satisfying schuck, and Clomm immediately feels the staff tremor in his hand. Light flickers in that precious stone, illuminating the massive face on the wall as the entire underground structure seems to draw and hold a breath. Dust falls from the ceiling and faint sounds are heard in the distance as mortar crumbles and falls from the walls and ceilings in other rooms.

From down the steps, in the darkness, a rancid wind blows briefly, flicking the torches and candles before it ceases abruptly.

The repugnant air wafting from the lower room down the stairs where Audree and Endrei are now stopped suddenly ceases, trickling to nothing... like an old man wheezing his last. The silence becomes thick as the big, hammer-wielding adventurer decides to let his female companion go first -- or doesn't. Either way, the air begins to chill and within a span of seconds breath is visible.

Creeping down the stairs, Audree watches as the shadows shrink and evaporate in the face of her flicking torch. The stone steps only descend one flight before they land in a small stone chamber, perhaps twenty feet on a side. But it's what the chamber holds that grabs the woman's attention -- and indeed, the attention of the three men crowded behind her on the stairs.

A large stone sarcophagus lies in the center of the room, its lid shattered and lying in pieces. Towards the back of the room, another passage leads out, to the east -- and it's there, in that archway, that they all see it.

The figure stands perhaps six and a half feet tall, and is dressed in what looks like ornate ceremonial armor. He is clearly long dead, skeletal beneath the moldering leather and rusting metal, and clearly not -- for terrible green lights burn in his skull's eye sockets, and he hisses through his bare and broken teeth in a way that makes the skin crawl. The remains of his long, dark hair are lank and ropey, and it is immediately clear that he is the source of cold in the room, as well as the hideous smell.

As eye contact is made, the undead warrior takes a step, and then another, coming forward, opening his jaws to loose a low growl that seems to shake the whole chamber!

The moment that Clomm inserts the second stone, the iron staff reverberates again, thrumming with power in his hands. Both gems blaze and light up brightly, casting eerie, dancing shadows throughout the chamber in front of them... and lighting up the ancient, rotting and terrifying creature advancing towards them. There's the ring of steel as it draws its weapon, a sword that is pitted and rusting, but looks sound enough to strike with...

Initiative

"Gods, what is this abomination!?" Wax cries from the rear, where he pulls his bow off his back and nocks and arrow!

The smell of the thing as Audree gets closer, axe in one hand and torch in the other... the presence of the thing! The adventurer tries her best, but the chill and her nerves mean that the woman's axe-blow is nowhere near her fiendish target.

Endrei joins Watters in facing off against the looming horror, but where her axe blows do not connect, his swinging hammer comes down of the fiend's gleaming white skull with bone-shattering force.

Or... with what should be bone-shattering force. For when the face of the two-handed weapon -- swung with all of the tall man's considerable might -- makes contact with the crypt-dweller's head, it turns in the warrior's stinging hands and vibrates hard. It feels like striking granite, like striking something that does not and cannot break. The force of the impact does at least drive the skull towards the ground, but when it looks up again, its souless, glowing eyes burn for Endrei. It hisses in its raspy, lipless voice and comes for him, one skeletal hand extended!

Behind the pair, Elius draws an arrow while Clomm steadies the staff and the magical energies he knows course within it. It might not allow him to control the thing, he quickly realizes, but he can see the death magic animating the monster. See it, and possibly unravel it!

Endrei moves back when the thing lurches towards him, hissing cold breath, eyes blazing and long, bony fingers clicking...

As Endrei and Audree face off against the graveborn monster, Clomm unlocks the power of the staff! The eyes blaze and the head of the child wails, a keening sound that bothers the wight more than anyone. Bothers it so much, in fact, that pieces of the thing seem to come off, floating in the air like ash from a dying fire. It is disintegrating! Clomm can feel the dread magic animating the thing, and the staff's connection to it.

He can dispel it, he's sure!

And it's during this surge of confidence that Elius Wax exclaims and quails from the top of the stairs, behind the other three. A glance back reveals that a second undead warrior has risen and joined the fray... surely the brother of the first that they still face. It's two men from the horrible painting, everyone suddenly realizes, based on their armor, their rotting garb, their height and the lank, brittle hair still partly attached to their skulls. The second brother, though, is better armed, wielding a dark, wavy-bladed two-handed sword...

The brother at the top of the stairs moves swiftly, closing in on the surprised Wax with his ancient sword, but the swipe cuts only the air, neglecting to take off the adventurer's head. It is a disappointment for the walking corpse, whose brother staggers forwards as well, reaching for Watters as it advances, eyeing Clomm and the staff that caused it such suffering...

"The staffff..." the monster in the lower level, near Watters and Endrei, hisses through broken brown and yellow teeth as it swipes awkwardly at the woman. "Give it to meee!"

The creature in the lower chamber, near the sarcophagus, turns and follows Clomm with his glazing green eyes as the man moves. "The stafff!" he garbles out out his lipless mouth.