After our heroes failed to stop the revivification of the clockwork king, they had no reason to stay in the town of perfection. Luke Adams, the newly minted warlock, was saved from death, but remains unresponsive; his soul fuel for the Clockwork King’s fell ritual. With both of their parents dead, and their older brother in a coma, the remaining Adams siblings, Dallas and Darla, along with their estate are placed into the care of the Druids of the Neverwinter Orchards nearby. The guards of perfection, and a group of volunteers form a militia to drive the goblins out of the mountains to the north.
Our party rested and their job done, we leave perfection; heading east, back to the White Plateau headquarters in Lakeshire. But there’s more than a week of travel between us and our home, And after our fight in the belly of the hells, are we ready for what lies between.
Shortly after leaving Perfection, we encounter Cole, a traveling wizard asking for directions to the nearest town. We direct him to Perfection less than a day away. As thanks, Cole tells us about an abandoned tower. He tells us it is a good place to rest for the night, and to add a little more mystery Cole mentions that when he stayed there last night, a muffled voice could be heard, emanating from the crumbling stone walls. Cole tells us the tower can be found a short ways off the main road, there’s a patch of red grass, and we can follow that to the tower.
Thoroughly intrigued, and exhausted from a day of travel, when our carriage comes across a patch of red grass leading into the forest, we decide to investigate. Following the red grass into the wood, true to Cole’s word, we find the tower. Feeling cautious after hearing about this tower’s whispering walls, Euphamia decides to take a look around. Inspecting the outside of the tower, she finds no signs of traps, ambushes, or whispering stones. What she does find is engravings, in 8 stones along the ground, equally spaced around the circumference of the tower, in the shape of a bell. Strange, but not dangerous, we set up camp inside the tower. It was not long though until we heard the whispering stone.
Distant and quiet, but undeniable, humming of a familiar tune could be heard in our camp. We began searching the tower to find the source. We found nothing on the ground floor, nor on the remaining half of the second. We did find another engraving of a bell on the back side of the staircase, but it was not the source of the humming; which we found was seemingly coming from under the floor. After this ground breaking discovery Kellon began excavating. Finding the loosest floor board he could and pulling it, and its neighbors free. Once the opening was large enough we leapt through to the chamber below. Inside was there was a stairway back to the upper floors, but the top was sealed off with stone. We also found the source of the humming: a rocky talkie, a magic artifact that allows communication over long distances, along with something altogether more ominous. A skeleton, that must have stood taller than 2 men when it was alive, but with bones too slender to be those of a giant; and clutched in its bony fingers was a silver handbell. On the wall beside the skeleton is a hastily scrawled message in a script none of us could read.
Lindon, being the first to identify the rocky talkie, calls out to the person humming on the other end. After a short pause punctuated by the sound of hurried scrounging, Lindon is greeted my Amanda Teagan: An anthropologist working on their doctorate at a university to the north west. Her colleague lost this rocky talkie while investigating these ruins, although they didn’t uncover the basement. Amanda asked us to return the rocky talkie to her, but her university is too far out of the way to hand deliver, so we agree to mail it to her when we get back to Lakeshire. That is about the time that Eerie rings the large silver handbell.
Several things happen all at once as the large silver handbell is rung. First, eight stones that were flush with the ground – presumably the stones engraved with bells – disappear into ashy clouds which fall to the ground. Second, though we didn’t notice right away, the stone wall blocking the stairs shares a similar fate to the stones around the base of the tower, freeing us from the basement. And finally, the reason we didn’t notice the stone on the stairs, a deep, thick, gurgling crept into the chamber through missing stones from outside. Through those missing stones we saw 4 large legs guarding the entrance to the tower, dripping what could only be assumed to be a tremendous amount of blood.
We inched our way up out of the basement. Peeking around to the entrance we saw two forms. Each standing as tall as two men stacked, but far to slender to be giants. Each instead looking as though someone took a human and stretched them out until they were far to tall to be healthy. Yet, despite their unnatural forms, their effortless grace and fair features endowed them with a sense of strange beauty. Though a grotesque one to be sure, covered in blood as each one was. Intimidating as they seemed to be they were simply standing at the entrance to the tower, ominously.
Kellon nocked an arrow, ready for a fight before calling out. The fight that ensued was far to graphic to do justice now in text, but thankfully we were able to dispatch these ensanguinated guardians. We found that they were less than corporeal, dissolving into puddles of blood upon defeat.
Where they were spawned outside we found that the red grass around them was exsanguinated, no longer dyed red like the rest of the ground surrounding the tower. We also learned – thanks to some stranger habits of Eerie – that the red grass contained slight healing properties. The grass itself had no inclination as to why that might be.
Muting the bell, we returned to the tower to sleep. Night watches were more nerve wracking than usual that night. Thankfully the rest of our trip to Lakeshire were far less eventful.