The Ghost of Lena Mueller

Session Summary: 04/02/2023

Ahhhh, the truth begins to EMERGE! Returning to the catacombs with wounds mended and resolve renewed, the heroes opened the door to the main chamber and were immediately accosted by an undead hand, still wearing a wedding ring inscribed with words of eternal devotion. How TOUCHING. How perfectly, miserably touching. They destroyed the crawling thing and pressed through the door it had been guarding.

What they found stopped them cold. A white stone archway filled most of the far wall, its surface carved with inscriptions in the elven tongue. But more disturbing than the archway itself was what had been done to it: the passage had been bricked shut, and entombed within those very bricks was the corpse of Lena Mueller, her handless arm reaching out from the masonry as though still searching for the husband who never came. Black sand ran through the mortar like dark veins pulsing with wrongness, and the mystical energy that Geist confirmed was leaking from whatever lay beyond the archway carried the fingerprints of conjuration, enchantment, necromancy, and transmutation magic woven together in ways that defied easy understanding.

Lena's spirit rose from the archway with a SHRIEK that rattled teeth and shook dust from the ceiling. Fury and grief and four years of unanswered outrage poured from her in waves of supernatural force! But Charles, ever the shepherd of troubled souls, spoke to her through the chaos. He made her promises: her murderer would be found, her story would be told, justice would come. He took her locket from around her neck, inscribed with the words Mine even in Death, and vowed that it would not be kept by him when the time came for her to rest properly.

Her spirit quieted. Not peacefully, not with acceptance, but with the grim patience of one who has decided to wait for vengeance rather than wail endlessly for it.

In the crypt beyond, they found Geist der Feen, a fey spirit of considerable personality and considerable IRRITABILITY, trapped within a human skull. Kiren claimed him immediately, recognizing value when she saw it. They buried Lena's remains beside the cremated ashes of Hans Bauer, a small mercy in an otherwise merciless situation. The Owl Gate had a name: Andon Olui Ho. The gate had been corrupted. And somewhere in the city of Lepidstadt, a young man named Gregor Pendergrast had signed the inn's guest book on the very night of Lena's disappearance!