Hastily Scrawled 3rd page in the Journal of Lucian.

ASIDE: What follows is the in-character journal entry of my character as he tries to survive the Death House and enter Ravenloft. Please go here to read the prior entries. These entries do not cover whole gaming sessions, but merely cover parts of the narrative where I’ve had a chance to jot in my journal.

Durst Hours? Better to call it a House of Death.

We’ve found the path to the basement in this twisted house, but I’m getting ahead of myself.

Wearing a dead man’s armor and shoes I felt better about ascending the stairs to the third level. While the house has been incredibly creepy, we have met only mystery and a half-starved dog. Oh, the house was just toying with us.

I was the last of the seven of us to touch foot to stair on the way to the third floor of the house. As soon as my heel left the floor of the second level, the lights began to fade. Cobwebs and cracks appeared along the walls and everything fell rapidly to decay. I covered two more steps before I had to come to halt against Tate’s back, and in those two steps all of the candles and lamps snuffed. The halflings cried out in the total darkness that enveloped us.

Fighting in the Dark

I heard a shout from the front of the line. Jherek and Naamah had taken the landing. Blessed with keen vision the dark holds no mysteries for me. I could just make out Naamah at the top of the stairs, his back to the empty shaft that the stairs spiraled around.

The halflings pressed against the wall of the stairs, and the rest of us rushed up. A suit of armor was trying to hurl Naamah down the twenty-foot shaft to the first floor. But between Jherek and Sorrow, the hollow suit was battered and thrown down itself.

Pooling our meager resources, we soon had a lamp and single candle lit. The third level of the house was decayed and cold. And it was here that we started to understand what was truly happening in the house. Earlier in the night we had put forth a theory that different stories were playing out. Recordings of dead people locked in their final moments.

That theory was proven more accurate than we thought.

Ghosts of the House

In the master bedroom we found a door to a nursery. Within the nursery we found an empty crib. And when some of our number went in the nursery, the ghost of a maid appeared in the room and asked us not to wake the baby.

The ghost of the maid was pleasant, though she was locked in the belief that the baby was alive within the crib. But under our questioning she began to crack and understand that she was dead. It was revealed that she was the mother of the baby, after an affair with the master of the house. And that she looked after the other children when the Lord and Lady were in the basement playing with their monster.

She revealed a hidden door behind a mirror in the bedroom and led us up into the attic where we encountered the final horror, before we discovered the door to the basement.

The Children’s Room

The children, those same children that begged us to enter the house and save their baby brother and find their parents, had a room in the basement. A room with a great padlock over the knob. Naamah wanted into the room, still on a mission to save the children. While Tate took to opening the lock, I mentioned to my companion the truth we should all expect.

The house was full of ghosts reliving their last moments. The children that asked us into the house were most likely ghosts. But Naamah held out the stuffed doll. Ghosts didn’t carry real toys.

Tate opened the room and as expected we found the bodies of two small children. Within seconds their ghosts appeared and what followed was an interesting conversation.

Speaking to the Dead

The maid had given us the past, a view of the history that led to the fateful night. The jealous lady of the house had taken a moment to stab the maid and hide her body in chest. Then the Lord and Lady had gone into the basement, after locking the kids in their room, with their cultist friends. Only their pet monster had murdered them.

The child ghosts were different than the maid. While she was locked in her past, repeating events and sharing information up to her moment of death. Both of the children were aware that they were ghosts.

They apologized for the versions of themselves that lured us in. They claimed it was the house itself trying to lure people in and feed the beasts in the basement. Intriguingly, there were two versions of the “Charlie” doll. The ragged version held in the hands of the corpse child, and the version in Naamah’s robe.

With the door unlocked, Rose offered to show us the secret passage to the basement. But within their bedroom we found a model of the house and discovered the passage on our own.

Ready for the Lower Dark

We all gathered in the final room of the attic and uncovered the door to the basement. Yes, you read that correctly. Within the attic was a door to a staircase that descended directly to the basement.

A final search of the room uncovered the maid’s body stuffed into a chest. We took a moment to gather our thoughts and steel our resolve. Jherek and a handful of others took a moment to return to the first floor where Jherek harvested the fallen suit of armor.

In the basement some monster awaited us. And it was better to armored than not.

I hope that I survive the basement and find a way out of this hellish house. I have a feeling that this land is going to be worse. If you find my body and this journal… hidden in a pocket inside my pen box you’ll find the deed to this house, a windmill, and the Last Will of Lord Durst. They should probably all be burned as I believe that all of his holdings are equally cursed.

The others are ready now, they’re descending the stairs into the basement, and once again I’m the last man through the door.