Picking up where we left off, the party entered the spooky death tunnel in hopes of finding Raoul. Elvira had 1 HP, and everyone else was running on close to empty as the party advanced through the tunnel. Eventually, they came across a fork in the road, and Laura was able to track where Raoul had been taken.
Continuing down that tunnel, the group narrowly avoided a pit trap before entering a somehow familiar room with a pedestal at the center and four gargoyle heads on the wall. That's right, it was the water puzzle again. After more time spent out of game discussing the puzzle's illustrious history than it took to actually remember the solution, the party bypassed this stupid joke and continued to track Raoul.
The party came across a closed set of doors, listening through the door to hear two raspy voices discussing having seen Raoul dragged through this area about an hour prior. Lucifer was also able to smell through the door the same perfume that the Ghoul she fought in the Ossuary on the road had been wearing. The ghouls heard the party discussing what to do, and combat ensued. Inej burst open the door to discover the two weird guys she spoke to at the masquerade ball.
The party fought desperately, but Laura was paralyzed for the entire battle, and Elvira ended up fully dying. It nearly took Laura so long to recover from her paralysis that she ran out of time to cast revivify, but in the nick of time she broke free and saved Elvira from death. As the party was trying to recover, a random weak Ghoul showed up and was slaughtered. The party started getting ready to leave the catacombs, and heard a long, pained scream from Raoul emanating from down another tunnel
At this point, the party retreated from the strange catacombs, reaching their rooms and going to sleep. Unfortunately, Ghoul Rot was setting in on Laura and Inej. They both woke up feeling incredibly sick, with reduced constitution and dexterity. Laura stumbled to Silas's room, freaking him out and causing him to rush away looking for a spell scroll that he could use to heal Laura's disease.
Meanwhile, Elvira and Lucifer visited the Royal Ossuary to investigate. There, they met Lucie Gavreau, who told them about Cilorian funerary rights, and gave them a tour of the catacombs. While there, Lucifer used detect thoughts to pry into what Lucie was thinking as she talked about the legend of the Black Reaper. Several big revelations occurred, for one Lucie knows that the Black Reaper is real, but doesn't believe in the peasant stories about the being. Secondly, the Black Reaper took the souls of the four kings who were murdered in the Year of Five Kings. Also, Lucifer and Elvira watched the process of a body being prepared for burial, which is probably very graphic and disgusting, but they were interested in it.
Inej met up with the Baron Raymond for their "date". During the date, which was at a café, Raymond was a self-absorbed asshole. He told the story of how he got his most beloved cape: Six years ago (94 AC), he had a rival named John, a fellow Baron whose estate was very close to Raymond's. Every season, Raymond and John would rush to their tailor and lavish him with money in order to outdo each other. Raymond always won these competitions, but in 94 AC, he was shocked to discover that John had bought out the tailor, and made him agree not to serve Raymond.
Raymond fumed and stewed in his rage. Eventually, overcome by anger, he ran to John's estate and challenged his fellow baron to a duel (after breaking the hip of John's elderly "shit-tier" butler). The next morning at dawn, the two met and dueled, a duel which Baron Raymond claims he won. Inej was able to tell that something was amiss in this story, and that it felt like Raymond was making things up. In an effort to continue getting closer to the Baron, Inej asked if they might go somewhere more private. Raymond invited her back to his chambers so he could show Inej his "prize cape".
Elvira used Marrow to detect that Raymond was some kind of undead, that he was Lawful Evil, and that his emotional state while he took Inej back to his room was both cocky and malicious. Lucifer and Elvira rushed to extract Inej, using the excuse that they needed Inej to help them with Laura taking a bath. The group took Inej to meet Silas, who was confused to have yet another incredibly sick party member, and rushed off to find another scroll. In her delirium, Inej mentioned a name from her past, just in time for Silas to show back up and successfully heal her.
After that, the party explained what was going on to Silas, then rushed off to investigate Raoul's room again. They found Raoul's room completely repaired, and after Blorbing the bookcase (again), they saw that the tunnel behind it had disappeared. Despite this mysterious happening, Laura simply used shape stone to reveal that the tunnel was still there. Now, we leave off more or less exactly where we did last time. The party stands outside the spooky tunnel, but this time at full power, not at the end of an intense day of combat and adventure.
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