The Skinsaw Murders

Sasha fiddles with the door. It turns out the door is not locked, but rather swollen shut from the moisture which has damaged the doorframe. She gives it a good hard shove and it pops open. Before she enters, Li Kao puts and hand on her shoulder and stops her. He mutters an incantation and raises a protective ward over Sasha. “This will give you some protection in case there’s anything, uh, odd in the next room.” Sasha nods thanks and turns to go. Li Kao stops her again. “Oh, it will only last about 30 seconds or so. So best get moving.”
The sound of the house straining and creaking gives the long, high ceilinged room beyond an additional sense of age and decay. The place smells damp, the unpleasant tinge of mould lacing the air as surely as it stains the wooden floor, walls, and furniture in pallid patches. A curving flight of stairs to the south leads to the upper floor, while a pair of large stone fireplaces brood to the north and south. Heavy dark blue curtains hang over the windows, and the frames over the two doors are carved with dancing gargoyles and skeletons. Trophies hang on the wall to the north-east: A boar, a bear, a firepelt cougar, and a stag, their glassy eyes staring from fur crusted with mould and cobwebs, yet they pale in comparison to the monster on display in the centre of the room. Here crouches a twelve-foot long creature with the body of a lion, a scorpion’s tail fitted with dozens of razor barbs, huge bat-like wings and a deformed humanoid face. The stuffed beast’s poorly maintained fur has fallen away in places, allowing the sawdust filling it to sift out into tiny mounds on the platform below.

Sasha moves into the entrance hall first, with the others following behind.

“Wait!” Xer raises her hand and everyone freezes in anticipation. “Did anyone else just hear that?”

“Yeah,” Yola says from across the room. “It sounded like sobbing.”

Xer nods. “Right. It was coming from upstairs, but now its gone.”

The rest of the party looks around uneasily, having heard nothing but the creaking of the house and the faint roar of the sea far below.

Yola CLICK HERE

The group fans out through the hall, and gazes down the western hall. The light is dim but it appears to lead to what might be a dining room at the back of the manor. Doors are placed in both the north and south walls of the hall, and a rather gruesome antique – what appears to be a mummified monkey head – hangs on the northern wall here. A bellpull extends from the monkey’s gaping mouth. A ratty throw rug partially obscures a foul stain of dark coloured mould on the floor.