Whoo, that session was a wild ride! I kept being surprised by how things went.

You discuss your plans, thinking that you still need to hunt down Artukan, presumably up on the first floor. And then two wolves stride confidently through the open front doors, followed by a chill wind. Their muzzles are thick with blood and their eyes are black pools of doom. One is huge, with silvery fur along his back; you recognise him as Silverspine. And as the other, more man-sized one rises up gracefully on two legs and then quickly transforms into the body of a tattooed man, you know him as Black Eyes.

He gives a rasp growl in Darktongue that you have stirred up trouble here and there will be more to come. He says that the gate guard is taken care of, as the blood on the two animal-people’s faces bears witness. But the city guard is coming. You feel the time pressure rise, to either act or flee. The Telmori shaman doesn’t say it, but he must be impressed by your success so far. He notes, somewhat too casually, that his spirits dispensed with some enemy spirits – Krarshtides, he says, asking if you are familiar… Fraud shrinks away. Black Eyes looks at the dilapidated Bog, commenting on his poor state. You exchange some words and, with some hesitation, Black Eyes says that if Bog wishes to fight on, he has a spirit that can help him. Bog accepts, and Black Eyes rubs a Beast rune tattoo on his left arm. A spectral wolverine (none of you know this beast, but it’s like a big otter or weasel) slinks out and then slinks quickly to Bog, slipping into him. And Bog is fuelled by a new feral energy of a ferocious beast.

Black Eyes says he and Silverspine will sniff around this ground floor for anything else while you head up to try and find Artukan. So you do.

You split up at the top of the staircase, where bodies from that large battle lie growing cold. Boamund and Bog head to their left and find an empty guardroom/barracks, and Shrett and Fraud turn right and find the same, then open another door beyond that, on a corner of the mansion, and behold a surprise.

The room is freshly decorated with vivid murals of what Shrett, in shock, recognises as Blue Corpse flowers in withered, mist-shrouded fields haunted by walking corpses – wait this is Giraine! And this conclusion immediately is reinforced. There is a giant mechanical cobra rising from its coils and looming in front of Shrett. Behind it is a foreign woman (visibly not Safelstran) in nice clothes and various tattoos such as Communication/Trade runes. She is smiling. Behind her is a giant corpse-flower, but unlike the others it has giant fanged, slavering jaws and thorny tendrils, and roots that enable it to slowly drag its pot around the room.

She says with an unfamiliar accent, “Ahh, yes, I thought it was you. The heroes of Giraine; I’ve heard so much about you. So, what will it be, will we talk or must there be violence? Shrett makes it clear he’s opting for violence, and the room bursts into action. The woman tries throwing some powerful sorceries Shrett’s way but at first he’s unharmed. However, he is blocking the doorway and blocked from progressing by the huge mecha-serpent; and the Blue Corpse Flower can reach him with its long tentacles. Through luck and determination, he survives the initial confrontation and manages to slip underneath the snake, clearing room for Fraud to come further in, having already forced Shrett closer to the snake with a firm shield-push. Meanwhile Boamund and Bog take quite a while coming with aid.

Shrett and Fraud engage in a desperate fight with the clockwork cobra and flower, while the sorceress keeps throwing very powerful spells very quickly. Bog flies into the room just above Fraud. The snake whips at Shrett and Fraud at once with its long tail but they avoid harm. Shrett loses his shield to an entangling plant-tendril. Shrett closes with the woman but then the flower grabs him with a tendril and drags him close to it, and begins biting at him. He soon is bleeding profusely from a leg wound. He survives a bite from the serpent’s fast-acting venom, as does Fraud.

Then things look bad when Bog is overcome with a sorcerous charm from the sorcerer (now presumably a Brown Vadeli; she does have the right skin colour) and, following her verbal and mental commands, unleashes his mustelid fury on Fraud. But Fraud disarms him, so he flies down onto Fraud’s back and keeps trying to bite through Fraud’s iron helmet, worrying at him for quite a while as the battle proceeds. Fraud too is disarmed, so he draws his Menekeyil blade. Boamund finally comes into the room (and has sprouted two more Crolar-scorpion arms), and the snake’s head gets smashed in with some final blows. The woman, having had limited success casting (very MP-expensive) sorceries your way, suddenly vanishes in a puff of foul brown vapour, leaving Shrett choking and staggering. It’s now just you and the plant (and Bog’s chewing on Fraud). Soon you hack the undead vegetable’s stalk apart and it falls down, wilting under the flames of Boamund’s sword, which seems to work very well against it.

Nonetheless it was a brutal battle. Shrett is terribly weakened from blood loss and a nasty leg wound, and Fraud is not feeling great. At least Bog’s domination ends and he returns to his bestial nature. You take a quick look around the room—there’s a bed filthy with, err, nightsoil. Beside it there is a little table where the skeleton of a baby lies, its bones picked clean and a toothpick made from bone lying beside it. As the rest of you head through another door, Boamund’s eyes halt on a book on a desk. It is made from pale human skin and bears angry grey eyes, and a scraggly grey beard tucked inside the pages as if used as bookmark. Its mouth is sewn shut. Disgusted by the shocking sight of what surely is a book from Giraine’s Psychetheca Everlasting library, Boamund first sets it alight with his flaming sword but then, dissatisfied that this will take too long, casts his fire-wall spell and chars the book, with the face contorting in anguish as it is turned to ash.

You enter the next room, which is a library full of well-kept stacks of scrolls, tablets, books and more; and tables and desks. Boamund comes in last and feels something unnerving here—there is a presence watching, but you do not see that mechamagical eye from earlier. It’s something else. You don’t linger. You cross the room to the next door.

This room seems to be a Malkioni ritual chamber. There is a great Law rune on one wall and a finely crafted protective circle set into the floor. On another wall there is a large wooden cabinet. You keep moving, opening a door to one side of the room, which leads to a long, wide hallway. You all file in and come to a chamber with two fortified iron doors and one regular wooden one in a corner. It is a luxuriously decorated chamber with frescoes of craftsmen at work and at trade (especially stone and metal workers; Artukan’s guild); quite innocent and pleasant; and some fancy furniture. Fraud opens the wooden door and there is a woman in servant’s clothes cowering in there, which is a small (but, for this era, rather fancy) privy chamber. He leaves her be, taking the pleading look in her eyes to potentially be genuine.

You try the iron door on the right side of the chamber. It is locked. Shrett pulls out his tools and does a speedy job of picking the lock. You take a deep breath, brace yourselves for action, and open the door…

The room is the most luxurious one yet, with a 4-poster bed, incense burners, decorative furniture and artworks; a tall mirror; and pleasant frescoes of ships around Lake Felster and the Jrimb River. There is a plump man in fine robes across the room who fits the description of Artukan Goldminder, although his flesh ripples like jelly and he has a twisted tentacle erupted from his forehead. He also is hard to see, as if you’re not sure if he’s nearby or far off. He holds an iron staff and apparently stands next to an attractive middle-aged woman in expensive bedtime attire. She is unarmed and looks afraid. Next to them there is a statue of grey stone that is fashioned like a dark troll, and wears some clothing that adds to the realism. And the mechamagical eye-guardian soon reveals itself from hiding in a corner near the door.

Artukan shouts in fury, “How dare you? In my house? You will regret it, for so cometh Urcheth!” Things do not start well for you. Shrett is hit by a wicked magic that withers his right arm to a wizened twig of gnarled flesh and bone. It’s horrific, but it doesn’t kill him. He withdraws from the doorway. The others rush in, soon confronting the statue and the eye. The eye keeps trying to cast spells at you, failing to turn you into drooling idiots with Tap INT (same with Artukan later), and it withstands many blows from you as the battle proceeds. Fraud is smashing at the statue, which rends Bog’s leg with its jaws, leaving him bleeding, and later he is grabbed by those jaws. Boamund is soon there aiding in the fight. Shrett hangs back, out of view, casting a spell, and soon there is swirling darkness near Artukan, who has backed off to the far wall with his female companion.

But you’ve pushed the battle forward. Bog deals the final, colossal blow to the Uz-Jolanti’s head, decimating it, so it releases him from its jaws as it crumbles into ruin. The eye, too, is dispatched. Boamund and Fraud confront where they think Artukan is. He defends himself with his head-tentacle and tries some spells. Fraud is merciless and hacks the head cleanly off the woman. She is very dead, and Artukan sees this with horror and rage. He hurls one of his vile Wither spells at Fraud and now Fraud falls to the floor, his leg turned into useless jerky. Bog closes in, too. You rain some blows on Artukan but it’s unclear what happens to him. And now Shrett’s shade appears, almost grabs Artukan (who falls down to save himself), and then it does engulf him in its freezing shadows. There are tense moments when it is unclear what is going on; you keep attacking where Artukan might be and maybe something is changing.

Then the outcome becomes clear. The shade drops the frozen corpse of Artukan before Shrett—his body is intact, just a bit frosty on the exterior, except for his left arm which has been frozen as if it were ice. You smash it to bits and it’s clear he is very dead. You make sure of this by severing his head. And the battle is won!

Shrett heals the bleeding Bog and you do some other caretaking of party members while Boamund explores the room, sharing some of what he sees with Fraud. There are a lot of valuables but nothing easily taken or obviously precious and portable. You rush for a far door; again iron; and, having found keys on Artukan, unlock it. The room beyond is unlit and plain-walled. There are eight life-sized fine statues, made of same grey stone, all dressed in real clothing and some with real items like copper kafl pipe, golden harp, or broadsword. You judge it likely that the Uz Jolanti had been standing in here. Seeing nothing further, you go back through Artukan’s bedroom to a corner iron door that you’d bypassed before (from the lavish lounge with a side-privy). The keys work again.

This chamber has plain pale blue walls like the sky dome; its top is black like the night sky, complete with stars, and detailed in its design. There is an odd guilded cylinder on a bronze stand facing one shuttered window. Shelves are stuffed with books, artifacts and devices; nothing of obvious great interest, but valuable / collectable. Clearly Artukan has an appreciation for fine things. There is a squat chest, and a desk with some papers atop it and a drawer. Keys unlock the chest and drawers, Boamund finds. The documents (all in Safelstran) atop the table are of trivial interest, Fraud says, but inside the drawers are plenty more documents. What look like letters and other papers, and then a formal gilded “scroll tube” sealed at one end with wax bearing Artukan Goldminder’s symbol. And a worn old bronze plaque, which Fraud reads as: “You are in a room with 7 colleagues. A mask is to be placed on each of your heads. There are 7 possible masks that you know of. Any number of them may have been used. You can see everyone else's mask, but not your own. At the exact same time, you will guess which mask you wear. If any of you get it right, you all win. If you all get it wrong, you all lose. You have time to come up with a strategy before the masks are placed. How do you ensure that you win?” He identifies this as a mystical Riddle; not a simple puzzle; but leaves it at that for now.

The chest holds a wealth of golden sun Wheel coins, and then a few smallish items: (Shrett uses Detect Sorcery on these as per below) 1. An ornate, many-coloured ceramic bottle (Shrett sees the seal on the bottle as sorcerous) 2. A little ebony box; you soon open it and see a fine ring with a red crystal set in it. Later, Boamund puts it on and sense he is connected to a presence, and when he tries communicating to it, it whispers to him in a totally unfamiliar tongue. (the ring; really the gem; is sorcerous) 3. A lovely sheep’s wool hide wrapped into a bundle; later you find that it is wrapped around a hand-sized piece of amber, which bears a carving of a bare-chested man with Air/Storm and Mastery runes on his chest, and holding aloft some sort of staff ending in a ram’s head. (Shrett sees no sorcery here) 4. An old green bottle with inscription in Seshnelan: “All-antidote”. (Shrett sees no sorcery here)

You make haste out of the building, having had enough and with three out of four of you badly injured/cripped/possessed. Fraud hobbles along using Artukan’s iron staff as a crutch. Bog, at least, can fly.

You meet Black Eyes back on the ground floor. He has sniffed around and found the stench of Chaos, emitting from a hidden spot in a corner room; near where the krarshtkids attacked you. He says that he smells the foulness of Krarsht there. Fraud is all the more committed to getting out of this place, and none of you quite feel up to Black Eyes’s offer of continuing the fight down into the basement of the mansion. Maybe whatever is down there is not so urgent for you to deal with; Artukan’s household has been obliterated (although it seems that the Brown Vadeli escaped!). Black Eyes praises your victory, saying you are truly allies of his. He urges you to hide now, because the guard is nearby (you can hear them, probably now within the mansion grounds), but that your two comrades with un-healable injuries need to find healers, so do that in the morning, but expect that someone will still be hunting you. Danger is far from over in Estali. Artukan’s allies will know more now about what has happened, and if they didn’t know already, they’ll be more likely to find out that you are culprits.

Black Eyes then steps backwards out of the foyer into the dark night and fades away with Silverspine, but with a parting comment, of “Sorry for what happened at the House of Secrets.” And those of you still aware enough to process it recognise he is admitting to having some complicity in the attack of those animal spirits on Madam Magthyra’s business, which led to a lot of difficulty in her basement. Boamund, sardonically, states that he isn’t surprised; Black Eyes has been in on some plot since the beginning.

You hurry back to the rooftop and Bog flies over, gets the rope, and you escape into the night. You avoid going to anywhere you’d easily be spotted. Instead, you use Shrett’s still-active Stalking sorcery to help you sneak into the Streets of the Sinister and find a secluded blind alley to hide out in for the night. Bog, Shrett and Fraud are too weary to do more but rest now. Bog has had a little struggle of wills with the wolverine spirit, hoping to be able to make it out of town to his Zorak Zoran shrine, and it leaves him in a huff, back to the spirit plane, so he returns to an exhausted state. Boamund sifts through the documents and such. It will take Fraud some hours, once he is better off, to read through them. But there is the formal “scroll tube” which Boamund opens and hands the excellent papyrus sheet to Fraud. It is from Artukan to “My Lord”, written in very formal but vague, lengthy, dissembling prose. There is just one bit that catches Fraud’s eye and that is a phrase where it says, “Our New Queen [in capital letters as such] is ready.” This unsettles you. Now the question is, what do you do with what you know, and how?