Chapter 5: To the Cellar

June 1

The group follows the revenant downstairs and then to the cellar. In the cellar, there is a kitchen, and when Jaysek makes too much noise, he awakens the kitchen’s foot long rats. One pack attacks Jaysek, and another pack attacks Neeia. Neeia moves to the other side of the room, but the rats notice and follow. Jaysek and Neeia receive quite a lot of injuries from the rats. Ra sees that the rats should not be a problem and continues on his way. Kieron notices the situation from upstairs and comes down to help Jaysek, who has created fire in at his own feet trying to scare the rats away. The rats are not afraid of fire, and Neeia, in turn, is afraid of rats, so she calls for help. Neeia kills half of her pack before Ra comes to help and kills the rest of the pack. Jaysek’s pack remains in place, is continuously injured by the fire, and Kieron arrives to kill more so that so many rats from that pack are also killed that they too leave.

After the battle, Ra continues following the enemy, and Jaysek and Neeia heal themselves and then follow after Kieron and Ra. The revenant spends some time opening a door, so the others catch up to her, and the group forms their normal order again, with Kieron at the back outside the light, Ra in front, and then Neeia and Jaysek. The revenant enters a room, and Ra follows, but notices that he has weapons with him, so he stops to think about what to do. Neeia gets tired of waiting and passes Ra, who is thinking in the doorway. Neeia passes what looks like a laboratory or workroom.

Jaysek notices that the lab is broken, and the books on the bookshelf are in poor condition. There are two windows to the outside from the room, even though they are underground; in the stained glass is the same man who upstairs turned moldy and attacked. In one, he is doing something in the lab, and in the other, he is drinking his magic potion. Many books deal with necromancy. Apparently, this is the lab where the man tried to transform himself into a lich, but since he was in that painting upstairs, he clearly failed at it.

The others go down, and Kieron sneaks quickly behind. When she comes to the laboratory, she feels an irresistible urge to go read those books but manages with full force to resist it. However, she sees a vision of how that transformation into a lich happened, i.e., how Vorel acquires magical supplies, reads books on how others have succeeded, etc. After that, she sees in the vision how Vorel prepares his potion, drinks it, and how his body then began to mold. In addition, she feels a sense of shame that her beloved would do something like this, and he must be stopped before the ritual is completed.

Neeia, who is walking first, sees a vision of Aldern, completely sweaty, hacking at something with a pickaxe and managing to get somewhere from which a large number of ghouls then come out. Aldern opens a route for Neeia. The group goes down spiral stairs and reaches some kind of cave made in limestone. The walls of the cave exude moisture. Black and blue mold grows on the walls, floor, and ceiling in a spiral pattern.