The Measure of Madness
26st of Rova 4707 A.R. (Absalom Reckoning)
Caught between the jaws of a trap your mind whirls. Spells might serve and blades might serve, but words you had learned might serve most of all: "We have been sent by the Talons to investigate your death."
"Lost, lost, dishonored!" the specter wails. "They mustn't know, they mustn't know! They
know!"
"You are lost but not forgotten, dead but not dishonored!" you whisper with insistence equal to a shout, hoping that short simple words will cut through the fugue of his death. "Was it the devils? Was it your kin?"
"They'll know, they'll know, always whispering, always plotting!"
"Then name then and let them be damned!" The words come out as a hiss, more vehement than you had intended.
"Uncle Mennen! I don't wanna go, I don't wanna go!" A whirl of wispy tendrils forms and the words scratch at the edges of your mind, trying to splatter thoughts like a stone tossed into a quicksilver lake.
"You don't have to go anywhere, just step back a few steps. Come on, we can talk inside."
A grave is like a hearth for a specter, right? You desperately search for any scrap of lore about laying the dead to rest and wish that Mina were here for this.
By chance or skill or the favor of whatever power looks out for grave robbers
from grave robbers stealing that proves to be the right of it. Mouths close and not open and some semblance of clarity seems to return to the colder pits upon the chill shade that might be called its eyes. It draw back slowly into the tomb. "The birds are destroyed by jealousy, but the owl doesn't care," he whispers in parting.
Akorian Bluff (DC 30): 1d20+14 = 33 (Success)
"Huh," Cob puts his knife away. "Spook talk good!"
"I concur, that was an uncommonly skillful way of dealing with the spirit," Sirim silently adds.
"Particularly as he now considers you a noble of sorts. That was an old Chelixian saying that relates to the ability of the aristocracy to know and make common cause with its own while the rabble squabbled among themselves."
Sirim Knowledge (History): 1d20+10 = 21 (Success)
"He can think I'm a shade-damned pale belly as long as he leaves us alone," you sigh in relief as Cob starts to leverage the slab open. Yet as you step into the chill of the tomb proper it occurs to you that if you can get the spirit talking then you can keep the scroll that otherwise might have gone to making the bones talk.
Thus you pull out the
other scroll, the list. "Why were you trading russet mold, Ergriso Vaylen?"
"For the war, the devils are coming, the devils are coming, they are many and the sons of liberty are few! We needed a weapon!"
That throws you for a moment. From what the orc brothers had said the operation at the mines was illicit trade concerned with making money, sure as if they had been digging gems out of the ground, but the more you think of it... Why would Ergriso share his higher ideals with hirelings, especially as those ideals drove him to dangerous extremes?
Since this is not a spell and he is present here in full you break with the script. "You planned to use the mold on the enemies, a poison?"
"No, not poison, never poisoned again, never controlled, never compelled, a mutagen, an army that would know no rival!"
Moldfolk that retained their minds then, and their skills. For a moment you look around the tomb, wondering what more you can ask. Ergriso's bones are white upon the slab, one assumes alchemically treated as well, and in their grip is a slim steel bound book marred with acid burns and minor slag spots as well as a small wooded chest bound with a silver lock. Presumably they had buried this with him in the hope that they would help keep his shade down, and when that had failed they had sealed the door.
"But then your uncle Mennen discovered what you were planning and he killed you?"
"No, no didn't want to!" the dead man's voice lowers, as though echoing from some distant pit. "Didn't have a choice, shame, shame. Poison, always poison! Just like her. Mother? Mother where are you? The devils poisoned me too, just like you!"
"I suspect he was encouraged to take his own life, least it bring shame onto the family. Though his fractured mind now shies away from the knowledge, substituting other events such as the death of his mother, which might actually have been the doing of Chelish agents." Sirm notes clinically.
"Still, it strains credulity that an operation to bring something as dangerous as russet mold all the way from near the Chelish border to Augustana could have been accomplished by one rogue alchemist."
Sirim Intelligence (DC 15/20): 1d20 +4 = 20 (Full Success)
"Who gave your heart to the pyre that they might spare their own?" You ask, slipping into the expressions of the People without meaning to.
It does not seem to matter, if anything the names almost come up too fast affix in mind: "Uncle, cousin Lynea, Captain Georg Smaltrim of the Andoran Navy, Sir Leonas Reefclaw."
You are about to step out of the tomb when Cob shuffles a little, closer to the bones and the book.
"No!" you call out sharply, knowing there is no way Ergrso will allow you do disturb his bones and take his things unless... If you could convince him you are interested in continuing his studies and fighting the Chelixians, only about half lie in any case. You might just be able to clear this place out.
What do you do?
[] Just leave, keeping the scroll is prize enough
[] Try to claim the grave goods
-[] Claim that you will continue Ergriso's experiments and fight the Chelixians wherever you find them (Bluff DC ???)
-[] You've learned all you need to, disperse the ghost and claim its treasures
[] Write in
OOC: Well that worked... somehow. Not the outcome I was expecting. 
