Aric climbs on Brother Bother’s shoulders to better spy out the land and sees that there are farm buildings to the Northwest, so the group take this route. Presently they see a dilapidated barn and farmhouse and approach as silently as they can. Brother Bother can hear a faint raspy breathing from inside the farmhouse so Aric skirts the outside, peering through gaps in the shutters into the darkness with his elvish vision. He sees at least two creatures standing still in the main room.
Quietly approaching the main entrance, Garalath throws open the door and steps back. He is assailed by a foul stench of decay but is able to hold his stomach down, which is just as well as several ghouls rush forward. One holds back inside but three attack the barbarian, wounding him with teeth and claws.
As the ghouls carry forward their attack and move out of the farmhouse Brother Bother becomes a blur of fists and feet as he destroys one in a flurry of blows, but then Garalath takes a nasty gash from a ghoulish claw and becomes paralysed. Aric rushes in and kills another ghoul in two blows but then he and Bother begin to feel weakened and nauseated by the stench coming from one of the things in particular. Bother thinks this may be a stronger ghoul known as a ghast.
Bother is wounded slightly but Aric is getting torn up by the attacks. The ghoul facing him has an expression of sick glee and begins rasping “I will eat your flesh!” He proceeds to do just this as he takes a bite out of Aric, who only resists paralysis due to his elvish blood.
Luckily Garalath’s paralysis now wears off and he rejoins the fight, beheading the ghast with a powerful strike. Bother kills the last ghoul and the exhausted heroes drag the undead corpses into the farmhouse. The ghast’s corpse has a leather thong around its neck bearing an iron key with the symbol of a curious flower surrounded by thorns, but there is no other treasure on the things.
This room of the farmhouse is a mess of broken furniture and blood splashes, as if a family were massacred here by undead monsters. Through the door is the kitchen, where a mutilated body lies on the table decaying and swarming with flies. On its chest is carved a sihedron rune, but pinned to its tunic is a folded note – addressed once more to Gol’den Chile.
Searching upstairs reveals a stout wooden coffer under a loose floorboard. Garalath can hear coins inside when he shakes it but there is no means of opening the lock for now so the party moves to search the barn. This is partly built around a 12-foot high stone head, now weathered and moss-covered but probably once part of a Thassilonian statue of a stern warrior. Inside it is a charnel house, strewn with bones and the partially-eaten corpses of animals and humans. Aric makes himself sick searching through this but finds nothing. The stout-stomached Bother conducts a last search of the mutilated body in the farmhouse kitchen and finds a small key which unlocks the coffer; inside are 34 pouches of 100sp each.
Deciding that the madman at the sanatorium needs their attention before he too becomes a ghoul, the group head back to town by way of Erin Habe’s establishment. Habe appears when the bell is rung but if anything he seems even more nervous than last time. Bother is convinced he is hiding something and a firm line is taken; Habe resists granting another audience with Grayst Sevilla but after some persuasion from Aric he and his two tiefling orderlies fetch the madman downstairs again. Just like last time the sick man makes no sense, muttering about teeth and razors but once again Gol’den Chile’s name can be made out amongst his mutterings. With a promise to come back in the morning with the Sandpoint guards, the party bids Habe goodnight. Satisfied that there is no overly-suspicious activity that they can see from outside, they head back to the sheriff.
The heroes tell Hemlock everything that has happened, leaving out only the discovery of the coffer full of silver. He is alarmed but satisfied that the ghoul threat at the Hambley farm seems to have been reduced if not eliminated. He can offer no enlightenment or explanation for anything they have seen but he does recognise the emblem on the iron key as being the Foxglove family crest – Aldern Foxglove being the noble who the heroes rescued when the goblins attacked Sandpoint, and who took them hunting boar in the Tickwood in gratitude.
Exhausted, sicked and wounded, it is time to retire to the Rusty Dragon for some of Ameiko’s hearty food …
Experience: 600 each (15,523 total, 6th level).
