7 Arodus
Breachill
6:00am

We rose to a spectacular sunrise. Or at least it seemed so; I’ve never owned a castle before so I imagine every day will be a little brighter than before.  Er, castle, citadel, whatever.  That big stone house at the end of the road.  Hey Grandpa, my new address is:

Tarsius Falco
Only Castle Nearby
Breachill

Well, 1/7th of a castle but still.  Several of the others in the group are still going on about the stained legacy of the Hellknights and want to completely rename it.  I don’t care much I guess, but renaming a castle seems like a big deal.  I imagine we’ll take some time to discuss some names. Almost like naming a baby!  It’ll probably take weeks to hammer out a proper name.

7 Arodus
Breachill
6:40am

Maybe not weeks.  I guess it was important to them.  We are called the Seven Card Consortium and for now we own the Seven Card Consortium Citadel.   Sounds so, I don’t know, so corporate.  Since Gath will be doing arrows and myself magical armor, maybe call it the Gathtar Citadel, home of Gathtar Enterprises and a wholly owned property of the Seven Card Consortium?  I don’t know, I guess I’m not that invested in names.  I’m lucky to have memorized six new ones in less than a month 

7 Arodus
Breachill
5:00pm

Being the co-owner of a castle is expensive!  I had no idea.  How much upkeep can something made out of stone need?  Stone lasts for hundreds if not thousands of years just fine, with nary more than an occasional dusting and cobwebbing, right?  Sigh.

We’re apparently talking dozens of gold pieces to hire skilled and unskilled people to clean things up and completely replace or refurbish other things.  And that’s even with we ourselves doing a lot of the unskilled cleaning.  Aemi’s taking on the role of project manager and although she complains bitterly that she’s out of her element, she also wouldn’t let even Warbal take over.

I will say, those Bumblebrashers did jump right in and help out.  And Warbal agreed to be the equivalent of our seneschal for 2.5gp/day, but that is gold pieces. To her credit, that’s about half the going rate, but we’re also paying for most of the labor and all the materials for the renovation.

I wonder if the town will try to tax us?

17 Arodus
Breachill

Well, we are ready to welcome the cleaning and repair crews in force, which means we need to deal with the wandering undead.  Can’t have them killing, possessing, or even scaring the help, you know.  I did read up on undead as part of my studies, but if the last two months have taught me anything, it’s that there’s a big difference between reading about something, and actually doing it.

I even went and had a conversation with Voz, which I at least could say was more unpleasant for her than for me.  I just kept asking innocent bright eyed questions (“Since you disturbed the undead, do you know how to make them go away?  Any help will probably count in your favor at the trial.”)  I got the impression she probably did know what to do but she wasn’t doing nothing out of the goodness (?) of her heart.

She never discovered, I think, that we were part of the crew that inventoried her shop.  We found some interesting accounting entries which suggest we have more digging to do regarding who was backing her.  Because it does appear this all was not just idle curiosity and research on her part.

My review of the topic suggested there probably was an object or a sigil somewhere that was still active.  And sure enough, after affixing my hall pass to my armor, I was able to find a glowing sigil on the wall.  But I couldn’t figure out how to deactivate it.  Gath had the idea of treating it like a trap (which, really, it was) and he and Liberté were able to deactivate it.  The skeletons and most thankfully the wights fell to the ground. We’ll respectfully rebury them somewhere else outside the basement.  Problem solved.

Well, sort of.  We still had flying Hellknight helms in the ossuary.  We thought we might just catch them in bags and take them away.  Hah.  First one we tried that on dodged and then all of them were hostile.  They were surprisingly difficult to put down, but eventually we did.

9 Rova
Breachill
6:00am

The days are again brighter and sunnier.  Consortium Castle is cleaned up and repaired. All of the entrances now have non-lethal wards to alert us of visitors from the outside … or the inside.  I won’t go into details since it seems to me like that sort of information should not be written down anywhere.

I think we can call this home now.  We’ve decided to create an eighth share of whatever loot we collect which will go to citadel upkeep (or expansion, in the long run.)  Owning a castle isn’t for the faint of heart.

But it is also time to bring the council in on more of what we have discovered so far.  Several people, most vehemently Qantrip, did not trust giving the whole council the full story.  There was a lively discussion before deciding to bring just the councillor Greta Gardania up to date.

It was well we did. Voz, before being transferred out of town, had sown some seeds of distrust by “revealing” some half truths to Greta. Our coming forward to reveal that information instead of being confronted with it helped put Greta at ease.

The castle repaired, our party fully healed, and the council now informed, we were all set to try to use the gate in our basement.  After a good night’s sleep.

10 Rova
Breachill
9:00am

Ok, that certainly could have gone better.

We were able to activate the Huntersgate gate, but upon passing through, we were confronted with a dark, uncomfortably warm tube of rock.  Renali had time to confirm that this was not here last time when a dragon appeared at the far end of the tube and unleashed a blast of fire upon us.  Most of us took some fire damage, and unfortunately the charau-ka with us died from it.

The rest of us retreated back to our citadel to heal and ponder, heal and ponder.

Upon reflection, Gath believed this might have been another magical trap like the sigil was in the tombs.  With sufficient time, he might be able to disarm it.  I can obtain some resist fire spells tomorrow to extend their time under fire (heh) if needed.

11 Rova
Breachill
9:00am

I cast resist fire on Aemi, Qantrip, and Gath, and they gated into the tube again.  A minute later, they poked their slightly smoking heads out to announce it was successful.  We’re all going to the other side now.