Play Report 33 — Workshop

thank you to Kai, player of Almuund, for this beautiful work of art

Hant and Almuund attempt to reassure the family upstairs that they are not monsters that need to be shot at. Hant falls back on the assumed identity of “Jonas” and claims that the group is just a group of well meaning people trying to make the town safer. The woman upstairs with the gun, who identifies herself as Clover, is very reasonably skeptical. It is only after multiple reassurances that the party is not climbing the staircase, will try to repair the door, and will notify her when the monsters are cleared away so that she can move back in. She shares a little information: the house next to her is also haunted by creatures, she thinks, but so is the whole wilderness and nobody makes her pay rent here. She says to find her by asking around the marketplace once the party is done, and clears her family out.

The party then ventures back into the nightmare, hunting for a path further in, and descend a spiral staircase into what appears to be an artists workshop. There are multiple desks, all covered in ruined tools, chips of wood and stone, and dried paint. They notice several statues: a woman, hands behind her back and eyes on the ceiling, stands in front of what seems to be a natural cave entrance on the other side of the room, while two statues of frightened children are off to the side against a wall.

Hant decides to examine the statue of the woman. She has ornate braids, a lot of jewelry, a formal looking dress, and a knife with which she stabs him unexpectedly when he leans in. When she does so, she whispers “I never really loved you,” while he can feel his vitality being sapped: damage from the knife is dealt directly to the health stat. A messy fight follows: Hant shoots her but only gets a glancing shot, Almuund misses with an arrow, she stabs Hant again. Hant casts web and sets it alight, but she is immune to fire. Almuund douses her in holy water which does cause her clear pain, and the party backs out of the room. As soon as they leave the workshop, she becomes still and silent, resuming her pose where she hides the knife.

Hant has been harmed such by the statue’s knife (which damages the health stat directly) that he contracts a nightmare curse: They Find You Sleeping.

As the party tries to decide what to do about her, another sound comes from the dark. Fearing the return of the corpse eaters, Almuund banishes spiritual enemies and is rewarded by the shriek of another one of the the undead beings crumpling tot he floor, dead. The sound does, however, attract the attention of the Basilisk Man again, re-formed by the nightmare. A lantern looms from the dark and a voice asks, “who is there? Are you lost?”

Hant kills the basilisk man with one well placed bullet.