Questing with Amelia and Kiara

The first thing I notice is that there are trees around us. I look behind and the forest quickly gives away to farmlands. So, a mansion retreat for a noble who wants to enjoy the simple life, but at the same time doesn’t want to attract too much attention. That’s at least what it feels like to me.

I look back to the mansion and I see a small wall with behind it, a large house. From a distance, I’d say it is about the same size as Mr. Enzo’s mansion, back in Merton. The difference here is that in front of the wall is a moat and behind the mansion seems to be a hill. Surrounded by trees on one side and a hill on the other side, with also a wall and moat. It seems the person who build this wanted to enjoy their privacy.

Amelia and I walk across the bridge over the moat and reach the gate. It is closed, but Amelia pulls out a key. The quest giver had passed the key on to Amelia’s guild and they passed it on to her. Once the gate is open, Kiara lets the horses and carriage inside. Inside the walls, we come to notice that this mansion is not exactly in the best shape. Grasses have mostly overgrown a tiled path. Ivy has grown up the walls of the mansion and have in some cases hidden the windows behind its leaves. Then there are some windows that have been broken and there is even some old or broken furniture gathered in a pile close to the front door. This mansion has definitely seen better days.

After Amelia closes the gate behind us, Kiara and I release the horses from the carriage. This way they can graze while we do our investigation.

“Amelia. Can you tell us something about this place?” Kiara asks.

“Well, my guild said this mansion is owned by a nobleman who lives in the east of the kingdom.” Amelia explains. “It was originally owned by his grandmother and she used it as a summer home. But when she became too old to travel, she ignored it and it became abandoned. Her grandson has not felt the need to travel here for a long time, so he left it as it is. But about a month ago he received a position at the queen’s court. So, he came her with the intention to reclaim his property.”

“That explains the pile of old furniture.” Kiara replies. “The servants must have been preparing them to be transported out.”

“Yes.” Amelia answers. “The noble is currently staying in the castle’s guestrooms, so the servants were here, doing all the cleaning. Shortly after they started, they started getting sick nearly every day.”

“What kind of sickness are we talking about?” I ask.

“Pretty much everything.” Amelia says. “Nausea, headaches, fever, coughing, throwing up, bloody tears, whatever you can name.”

Kiara grabs her chin and ponders over the information Amelia just gave her. “Interesting. If it was one thing that kept repeating, the cause might be something as simple as a gas leak. Like sulfur for example. But since we are dealing with multiple different diseases, it would either have to be multiple different issues working together, or something much more complicated.”

“You mean like a curse?” I ask.

“Could be, but I’ve never heard of such a complicated curse.” Kiara says. “I propose we investigate with caution. If we are not careful, we might end up getting sick ourselves.”

We follow Kiara’s advice and start our investigation. First, we study the pile of old furniture. In the years that the mansion was abandoned, perhaps a mold started growing on the wood. If so, the spores could have affected the servants. There was one cabinet which had some mold, but Amelia quicky identified it as harmless to humans. So, it’s not that.

Next, we enter the mansion. The first room we enter is the foyer. I quickly notice the wide staircase in the middle and moving up to the next floor. As I look up, I also notice this room is two stories high. The place feels incredibly spartan with all the furniture and carpets removed. There are discolorations on the walls where paintings and furniture clearly used to be but have since been removed. This is probably the first room the servants started cleaning, I can tell by the lack of dust.

There is however still a large framed painting on the right side of the wall. It is too large to fit through the door, hence why they must have left it. It is a very old painting, made obvious by the result time has had on it. Many of the colors have faded, but it is still possible to see the image of a young woman on it.

I guess that is a portrait of the grandmother of the quest giver Amelia was talking about, made back when she was younger. It looks like many years ago, this grandmother used to be a cute innocent girl. I am sure she must have had a lot of suitors.

Our group heads into the left wing and we walk through a similarly spartan hall. There is practically no dust in here either, save for maybe the dust that fell after the servants left because of the repeated illnesses. We check the first room we come across. One that is right next to the foyer. My eyes light up as soon as I see what’s inside. Rows and rows of books. The library? This quickly? There are even still a table and chairs, as well as a thick layer of dust everywhere. Clearly the servants didn’t feel like cleaning out this room.

“Only one of us should enter.” Kiara says. “In case the disease is in the dust.”

“Well, it can’t be Darx. Not when it comes to a room full of books.” Amelia replies. “He’ll be in there all day reading every single one of them.”

“Meliaaa,” I try my best to fake a nagging complaint. “Don’t embarrass me in front of my girlfrieeend.”

Both girls smirk, followed by Kiara telling me I can go in.

“But if you stay in too long, I will use my [Shadow Manipulation] to punish you.”

Knowing Kiara, I am aware she’s joking. But at the same time, she’d also do it.

I head in and wherever I walk, I am making footprints in the dust. Damn, it feels like nobody has been in here for 100 years. I look around to try and find anything suspicious, but can’t find anything. As I walk past the bookshelves, I notice the titles on the sides. The virgin heroine, Stranded, A naïve princess, Whore of the dragon. I don’t recognize any of them.

Suddenly I feel a sharp sting in my butt. I yell in pain and turn back to see Kiara and Amelia snickering in the doorframe, with a long shadowy rope coming from Kiara’s hand.

“Stop getting distracted and continue searching!” Kiara yells at me.

Right. So, if I let myself get distracted by the books, my butt gets whipped. All in all, it was a good way for Kiara to incentivize me to focus on the job as I didn’t get distracted again. I can always come back to this room after we finish.

After failing to find anything, I return to the girls and we move on to the second door in this hall. This one leads to what I assume to be the living room. It is hard to tell with all the furniture missing. But there is an open fire which is a dead giveaway that at least in the evenings, and certainly in winter, people would spend most of their time here. With this room having already been cleaned from all the dust, all three of us can search this place. But in the end, we find nothing again. What we do notice is this room having a second door, on the opposite side of where we came in.

We head through that door and enter another hall, parallel to the first. It has been similarly cleaned like the previous one. But when I look through the windows and stare into the backyard, I see a large flower garden. I am sure that in the past, it must’ve been very well kept. But today, the plants have grown out of control. It’s a shame, really. I wouldn’t have minded having a picknick with Kiara and Amelia while surrounded by flowers.

We head towards our right, back towards the foyer. We take the first door on our right and indeed return there. So now we know 2 doors in the foyer lead to the library and living room and back. But there is a third door to the left wing. I open it to see what’s inside. And it is just a large closet for people to store their vests. It is empty though. The servants must have taken theirs when they left. It was at least a small and easy room to check out.

“Alright, that was the left wing.” Kiara says. “What should we check now? The right wing or the next floor?”

“I vote for checking the right wing.” Amelia says, “Let’s do this methodically.”

“I prefer checking out the next floor.” Kiara counters. “People often tend to have their bedrooms there. Private places where they tend to feel safe enough to leave private belongings. We might find something interesting there.”

What Kiara says might be true, but we have no reason to assume the bedrooms really are up there. They could easily be in the right wing instead.