Haunted by Dwarfs

“Haunted by Dwarfs”
Rise of the Runelords episode
Episode no.	Episode 97
Date	2010
Game Master	Abbe
Characters	Honeypot Nathaniel Nell Velicia
Episode chronology ← Previous Next → "The Storm" "Diamonds"
Rise of the Runelords chapter list

In this chapter investigating the building the heroes encounter ghosts of dwarfs.

Haunted by Dwarfs

I started looking around the house and found it to be in a mess. There were furniture and old clothes strewn about. I looked into a short corridor while the others went into another room. There were coats for rain and cold weather hanging there, but in dwarf size. To me that means just a little short but much to wide. Then the others said strange things using the telepathy. They all suddenly got very hungry. I was very strange. Apart from me only Velicia ever talked like that about being hungry. I was looking through the next room that was some kind of room between the house and outside, when Nathaniel said he got attacked by a hungry dwarf spirit trying to eat him. It turned into several and the whole house started shaking. Then I too started to feel hungrier. It was probably all that talk of hunger. I heard that Honeypot had taken out her horn of cornucopia and was trying to feed the hungry spirits, but I tried to find out if there was anything that could be the cause these haunts. Back in Foxglove manor it had been my grandfather who had tried to become a lich that had caused the death of many from my family and all those things had made it haunted, but after Aldern died, his wife disappeared and after we had exorcised Vorel all hauntings had stopped.

I sneaked outside through the coatroom. The blizzard still raged further out, but Honeypot's ritual had calmed it around th house. I took a good look under house. There were some old sleds but nothing that I thought could be the cause of the hauntings. I had thought there would be old bones or something. Through the telepathy I heard that Nathaniel suddenly attacked Honeypot and then when she ran away, Velicia. I sneaked back in making sure to avoid being seen. I didn't want to fight Nathaniel. Instead I hid in the room with coats and boots and listened to what happened and tried to figure out what to do. I heard Kaven coming up the stairs. I knew he too had been possessed by the insane dwarven spirits. That's when Velicia said that she had picked up the dwarven bones they had found in an inner room I never looked into. She was on her way out when Nathnaiel caught up with her following Honeypot, near the door but his insane, wild swings missed and she could continue out. I ran out too following her out into the heavy snowfall. I was very happy

The ghost of Silas Vekker.

Then Velicia ran out into the snow with the bones and I followed through the other door. No one else followed us out and soon I could hardly see the house through the snow. Honeypot told us that the hauntings had stopped and Nathaniel was back to normal when I noted something through the heavy snow. It came at us out of the storm, towards the house. It was a dwarven head that came floating in mid air. It talked to us.
"So, you survived? Well we didn't. Greed and hunger got us."
Then it warned us not to go to Xin-Shalast. It told us we would end up like he had, cold and dead. But if it couldn't dissuade us, it could help us to find our way if we helped it. The brother of the haunting ghost had died at the last mine they had and if we united the dead brothers, the ghost would reward us by giving us instructions on how to find Xin-Shalast.

We returned into the house and though the storm still raged further out, the house was still and we could finally get a little rest. I quickly regained the warmth in my body and went to look around. I found a secret room that looked like it had been not only where they hid the gold they found but also maps and books. There were five sacks of gold sand that I guessed was worth about a thousand gold pieces each and another two sacks containing gold nuggets worth probably half again each. Velica was more interested in the papers. She said that she had found out where their last mine was. She also told us that the whole mining operation never was any profitable.

The ghost of Karivek Vekker.

Leaving Kaven, we set out into the heavy snow fall that turned into a blizzard as we left the area Honepot's ritual had changed the winds in. The mountain rose to our left but to the right the snow covered ground ended in a sharp edge. We couldn't see the bottom below in the blizzard that engulfed us. Nathaniel suggested that we tied a rope between us. As we started tying the rope, Velicia said she wasn't sure it was such a good idea, but she agreed anyway. We continued and the plateau was slowly becoming a ledge as it narrowed as went on. Nathaniel was first, followed by Honeypot and Velicia. I went last and thanks to the others having made their way through the snow it was a little easier for me. Suddenly Velicia stepped through the snow and fell. The snow had hung over the edge and she had strayed to far right and stepped into thin air. The rope around my waist drew tight and pulled me forward to the edge where Velicia had fallen, but I found strong footing and held her weight. It was lucky as Honeypot had been surprised and stumbled backwards, but as the pull on the rope let off as I held Velicia's weight, she found her footing and stayed on the edge. Velicia was quite tall, the tallest female eldarin I've ever seen, and she wasn't skinny either. My muscles were shaking as I slowly started pulling her up. Nathaniel helped and soon we were all back safely on the ledge. Cautiously we continued on and came to what looked like a graveyard covered in snow. It turned out that it was stones looking like gravestones, but without any carvings. They could still have been put there as gravestones. Just beyond there was an opening into the mountain, a cave. As we approached we untied the rope holing us together. We noticed that there was a body of a dwarf. It was broken as if it had fallen and broken bones. The legs looked like they were frozen to bits. Then a floating spirit of the dwarf appeared and attacked us. It thundered and somehow dragged us closer to it. There was a big fight where we all attacked it but I finally ended it by running up to the wall of the cave and up it, flipping over and landing on the other side of it. My dazzling acrobatics distracted it so I could slice the spirit to pieces with my dagger disbanding it. After a short rest Velicia gathered the remains and brought them as we set out on our way back to the house.