Part II:Entering Harrowstone Prison

As the strange events continued around Ravengro, the population grow more and more frightened and concerned. A meeting was set up in the Town Hall to discuss the problems and what could be done about them.

The Town Hall was packed. Almost all of the townsfolk were there. Councilman Hearthmount quitened the crowd, and then began to speak. Suddenly, several of the torches adorning the walls roared into life, sending sparks of fire across the hall. The building was on fire!

The assembled crowd panicked. Everyone tried to leave the hall as the flames spread. Skalif, our witch, tried frantically to control them, getting them to move in an orderly fashion, and exit the building quicker. The rest of starting battling the fires. The halfling cleric, Ferdibrand, brought his Create Water spell to great use.

There was suddenly a shattering of glass as the two windows at the back of the hall exploded inward, and through them floated two flaming skulls, which began to attack the terrified councilmen on the stage. Fortunately our two paladins, Ichabod and Ellavorn, were ready. Ichabod leapt up onto the stage and took out out one them with his greatsword, while Ellavorn raised her firearm and blasted the other to pieces. (Ellavorn later told me that the weapon was called a pistol, and was made in the magic-dead city of Alkenstar, way to the south).

Once the townsfolk had all left the building and the fires were put out, the councilmen approached us and begged us for help. Everything seemed to be connected to the old prison up on the hill, so it was time for us to visit Harrowstone and find out what was going on.

Harrowstone Prison was a grand building on top of a nearby hill. The fire that ravaged it 75 years ago had takens its toll on the structure, though, casuing the eastern side to collapse. A sinkhole had formed and filled with dark, murky water, which flowed into the eastern half of the building.

Scouting round the outskirts of the building, Skalif noticed that the building's foundations were completely inscribed with strange, magical runes, which, he said, were used for capture and imprisonment.

Carefully we stepped inside. The horrors of the catastrophic events that happened there had manifested as haunting visions. We glimpsed ghostly prisoners who were ablaze and screaming. A large furnace, used to burn prisoners alive, belched into life, spewing flames at everyone. And in the infirmary, a skeletal ghostly apparition arose, which hurled old scalpels and other sharp objects at us.

Why was the haunted prison affecting the nearby townsfolk? We were about to find out...

Part I: Ravengro.

I travelled to Ravengro to attend the funeral of Professor Lorrimor. When I arrived, I met Kendra, the professor's daughter, and several others whom the professor had encountered in his life. Among them was a gruff dwarf priest name Bazak, a paladin named Ichabod, and a monk named Crimbledon.

We started the funeral procession through the Restlands cemetary, but soon encountered trouble. A local gang of thugs, lead by a man named Gibs, stopped us, and tried to stop us burying the professor in the graveyard, claiming that he was a necromancer. A scuffle broke out, and several of the thugs were injured, which caused the others to flee. Once the incident was over, the funeral continued uninterrupted.

We returned to the Lorrimor home with Kendra for the reading of the will. It was an odd will. The professor had left most things to his daughter, but had left myself and the other adventurers a chest with several books in it. The will also stipulated that we were not to leave Ravengro for a month, so we could help Kendra sort out her father's affairs.

Looking through the books, we discovered the professor's personal journal. Inside, he had circled several passages. They spoke of a plot by a group called the Whispering Way and their interest in something up at Harrowstone Prison.

A piece of history for you - Ravengro was famous throughout Ustalav for Harrowstone Prison, a place where notorious criminals throughout the country were brought for execution. However, 75 years ago, there was a riot, and the prison was destroyed by fire, killing the prisoners, 23 guards, Warden Hawkin, and his wife.

While Kendra went about her business, my new found friends and I decided to do some research on the Whispering Way and Harrowstone Prison. The locals were suspicious of us, but reluctantly let us use their libraries.

We discovered that the Whispering Way are a cult of necromancers whose main goals seem to be finding ways to become liches, and to release someone called the Whispering Tyrant. We also found out that on the night Harrowstone Prison burnt down, among the prisoners were five notorious and very dangerous criminals - Father Charlatan (a con man who pretended to be a priest), The Lopper (a killer who beheaded his victims), The Mosswater Marauder (a dwarf who smahed in the skulls of his victims), The Piper of Illmarsh (a man who poisoned his victims, then let his pet stirges drain them of blood), and The Splatter Man (a killer with an unnatural obsession with his victims' names).

We were also told in the journal that there was a secret stash of items that may be useful to us, hidden in a false crypt in The Restlands. We tried to ask the local temple of Pharasma for help, but they refused. So, under the cover of darkness, we decided to sneak in to the crypt and find the items ourselves. When we arrived there were two pirests outside. Our paladin, however, kept them distracted by debating with them about religion, while the rest of us broke in to the crypt. Inside, we encountered a pair of giant centipedes. Horrible creatures. But they were easily dispatched. And inside the sarcophagus we found a collection of items that would become useful in the future.

As we explored Ravengro, we noticed some very strange goings-on. Children were singing a skipping song that mentioned the five prisoners. A pack of cards burst into flames during a card game (almost setting the dwarf's beard alight!). A gravestone appeared with Crimbledon's name on it. And then, one night, we discovered a series of letters, painted in blood, by a memorial to the guards who lost their lives in the Prison fire. We discovered that the thug from the graveyard, Gibs, was writing the letters. But when we approached him, he had no knowledge of what he was doing. The frightening thing was that he was acting exactly like The Splatter Man - spelling out the names of his victims before killing them.

What was happening in Ravengro? What had The Whispering Way set in motion? What was happening in Harrowstone prison? The professor knew. That's why he gathered us all together. It was now up to us to find out, and to put a stop to it.

Prequel

My name is Acacia Misko. I have been asked to tell you of a series of events that happened a few years ago in the country of Ustalav. A series of events that came to be known as The Carrion Crown.

First, though, a little bit about myself. My father was an elf who was a travelling merchant. My mother was a human farm worker on a farm just outside the town of Tamrivena in western Ustalav. They met, fell in love, married, and had me. My father then went away to deliver goods to the neighbouring country of Belkzen, and he never came back. Reports say his wagon was attacked by orcs, but his body was never found.

My mother worked long hours on the farm, so I was usually on my own for most of the day. I would wander the nearby forests and mountains, learning about the ways of the wild. It was only natural, then, that when I came of age, I decided to become a ranger. I would help the local townsfolk whenever they needed to venture into the wilderness, to gather food, find lost sheep, and so on.

It was on one of my forays into the nearby forest that my destiny was to be revealed.

I could hear up ahead some wolves barking and snarling. I then heard a man's voice cry out for help. Dashing through the trees, I came across a middle-aged man on the floor, surrounded by three wolves. His leggings had been torn where one of the wolves had bitten him, and I could see blood. I ran in, making a loud noise and waving my axe above my head. Two of the wolves fled from my intrusion, but a third turned toward me and leapt. Instinctively I lashed out with my axe, and metal met bone. With a yelp, the wolf crashed to the ground, my axe buried in its neck.

The man thanked me profusely, and as I bandaged his leg, he told me that his name was Professor Petros Lorrimor. I helped him up, and I helped him walk back to town. I got him a room at the inn and left him there for the night. In the morning I returned to see how he was. He thanked me once again and said he would never forget my bravery. And that was it. He said goodbye, left town, and I never thought about the incident again.

A year later, I received a letter from Kendra Lorrimor, the professor's daughter. It was to tell me that the professor had been killed in an accident, and, to my surprise, I had been mentioned in the will. The old man had remembered me after all. I was asked to attend his funeral and the reading of his will in the town of Ravengro.

And so it began. I had started along the path of the Carrion Crown.