"We are under attack!" cried Gavil to warn the party members who were not at the gates. He then downed his potion of vanish and hid at the corner of the gatehouse.
Paullus, who was just north of the gateway headed to the area and prepared to his bow.
Out of the squat gatehouse a humanoid with red tattoos on his face, red eyes and jagged filed teeth, ran south to attack Ursina. A man with a red cape on moved out to attack Paullus with his rapier.
Gavril dropped the raging humanoid with a critical hit and Ursina tried Death Knell to steal his life. The tattooed man resisted Ursina's attempt. The other kept firing bolts at Armania while Paullus and the caped man traded blows.
Ciprian identified the red eyes humanoids as Kuru, savage natives of the Shackles, dreadfully transformed by their loathsome “goddess,” the Blood Queen. They had cleave, blood courage and could rage. He started a Bardic performance against them. Ursina, wobbling on her feet, dropped to the ground at the start of her next turn. Erevel kept up her attacks against the assassin. Paullus and Gavril were busy with the other two enemy. After being damaged again the red caped figure moved back and downed a potion. The Kuru cleaved Paullus and Gavril. Armania kept moving the flaming sphere around and casting magic missiles.
Ciprian headed straight toward Ursina and applied healing magic to both stop the bleeding and recover her to consciousness. Ursina, enraged at being felled attacked from her knees and with Erevel's continued help the assassin died.
With help of the flaming sphere, Gavril and Paullus finished off the last two enemies. Ursina was busy healing herself while Ciprian and Armania started looking for magic. Gavril moved slightly into the guardhouse, which had some quivers of bolts next to the doors, along with another set of double doors at the back.
Ursina identified the wands as cure moderate wounds and invisibility. The wand was put to good use immediately on the party. Meanwhile Gavril and Erevel were examining the door, no traps were seen and it was not locked. Hearing no commotion from the far side Gavril cracked open the door. Inside he could make out a gravel path leading away from the gatehouse, splitting to go toward several buildings. There was a hedge surrounding a well. The grass grew tall and yellowed with weeds sprouting all around. Seeing no enemies approaching, Gavril pushed the doors open.
The grounds of Iris Hill appeared eerily shrouded in a thin mist that lingered over the grass despite the driving rain. All the buildings appeared dark and quiet, and the odor of heather and ivy seems mixed with some sweetly sour, unwholesome essence.
Evidence of neglect lay strewn across this once magnificent garden. The grass grew tall and yellowed, and weeds choked flowerbeds along the sides of the estate’s buildings, leaving only a smattering of color from the few flowers that survive. A few overgrown bushes once trimmed to look like humanoids stood in a rough circle around a brick well in the center of the estate. A gravel path led from the gatehouse and circled the well before branching off to each of the estate’s buildings. The ground floors of the various buildings that make up Iris Hill are built with solid stone blocks, and thick vines of ivy cover the walls with a verdant blanket. Sturdy timber-frame construction makes up the second floors of the buildings, jutting slightly from the thick walls below. The manor, with two large chimneys and circular dormer windows, is clearly the tallest building among the others on the estate.
One building to the south was only one story tall, the other outbuildings were 2 stories, given approximately ten foot ceilings. Crows stood sentry on the building’s eaves, periodically called out their dreadful squawks and eyeing the party.
The party headed to the southwest toward the manor house, attempting to skirt the short building while not approaching the surrounding hedge. As Gavril neared the small building he saw some movement in the hedge surrounding the well. As the party edged cautiously forward a lumbering topiary in roughly
The party quickly found that attacks other than slashing were not effective, luckily Erevel's greatsword did significant damage. Gavril was attacking with Red Destiny, which was less effective. Ciprian quickly put away his mace and started to use a sword, while Paullus used his sword. The topiary slam attacks were damaging but it appeared they were losing life force quickly. One topiary was down and another stepped back into the hedge and disappeared.
Ursina opened the door to the short building finding a wooden bathtub and a cold fireplace inside. A small shelf holds bars of soap, towels, brushes and pieces of pumice stone. On the floor were buckets of rocks. Paullus entered just to get out of the rain. The other topiary fell and Erevel looked back at the well to see if there were holes in the bushes or any other movement. She did not see anything new but to the northeast she saw a topiary munching away on a grove of bushes.
Gavril took advantage of the break to move toward the manor house, seeing small windows shaped like arrow slits that he could peek through. Erevel moved toward the main doors of the manor house and saw a covered lean to on the bathhouse with chopped wood piled underneath, she decided to use this area to get out of the rain also. Ciprian entered the bathhouse and found that three bars of soap on the shelf were magical. He stuffed them into his pouch.
The last topiary appeared in the hedge close to Gavril and attacked once more. Everyone converged on the creature, with Ursina brandishing her lit torch. With flanking Gavril hit with critical efficiency, while Ursina lit the creature afire and it took even more damage. Quickly the enemy was dispatched.
In the meantime Erevel climbed set of stairs on the southwest of the bathhouse and found the one hoel privy. Gavril move to the nearest window and peered into the dark interior.
"Ursina, come look in here if you can," he implored.
Ursina move over looking in at an angle and saw a room with walls lined with ceiling-high bookshelves laden with bound tomes, parchment scrolls, a table an chairs. Stairs in the western corner of the room led up to the second floor. Moving to the next window she saw the same along with a with a door to the west. Worse she saw a disembodied female torso flapping through the air on bat-like wings.
"Let's just go over to the doors and enter, we probably will not find anything by continuing looking in," Gavril suggested moving toward the doors. "Just duck below the windows so that Undead thing doesn't notice us."
At the doors Gavril heard no noise or commotion inside, nor any traps. The doors were locked though.
"Ciprian, do you have that key we found on the assassin?" he asked.
"Sure, here it is," responded Ciprian tossing the key toward Gavril.
It fell on the ground just past Erevel. Ursina moved over to retrieve it and deliver it to Gavril.
After unlocking the door Gavril edged it open revealing a rectangular space, walls covered with fine wood paneling. It reminded him of an oversized curio cabinet, with hundreds of items and art objects on display on small tables, in vitrines, and on benches. Dozens of paintings and tapestries of various sizes hang from the walls of the marble-floored chamber.
Checking for traps just inside the door Gavril then moved into the chamber noting that the wall coverings apparently muffled the sound of footsteps. Some of the hall’s paintings must have been removed as evidenced by the faded walls and hooks left with nothing hung on them. The collection
of curios and artwork at Iris Hill remained impressive. More than quality, however, the Lowls family seemed to have favored originality and oddity in their choices.
Among many other things, the collection included the following.
frame on a small tea table with a single chair featured a child posed near a kitten at the
foot of a luminous window, seemingly terrified.
• Marble busts of scholars from the Sincomakti School of Sciences, including three effigies of academically renowned ancestors of Lowls sit on small plinths. The sculptures with the Lowls
name on their bases have been smashed against the floor and damaged.
• Small-town perspectives of Thrushmoor and a half-dozen large paintings of the surrounding
landscape hang here. The large pictures include a historic piece, in which the first settlers of Thrushmoor are shown living in two clusters of huts on low hills, hard at work to reclaim the surrounding land from the swamps. The Star Stelae have been depicted almost as an afterthought.
• Statuettes of dragons, giants, and strange beasts litter the shelves. Among these is a poorly executed, 1-foot-tall, clay figurine of an elephant-legged, multi-mawed, tentacled aberration.
• Set on an ebony pedestal is a human skull that has been marked with elaborate carvings of geometric shapes and lines. Small, worked garnets are set in the teeth, and a thin line of silver rings the eye sockets.
• Porcelain and ceramic dishes, jugs, teapots, and vases, some of which are of excellent quality, are kept in a glass showcase. A small ceramic vial shown magic to Ciprian view.
• A battered shield hangs on a wall, bearing a device. According to a plaque fixed under it, the shield belonged to Fassimar Lowls, a cadet who died just beyond the northern border of Ustalav during the Second Mendevian Crusade.
• A man dressed in a fine noble’s outfit appeared frozen in a shimmering field of amber.
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