Ashenhave's Nested Ghost Hunt

The Nested Ghost Hunt turns Ashenhave’s seasonal ghost activity into a dangerous search for its source: an abandoned well and a ghost nesting inside a composite animal corpse. Theo, Wicker, and Cargo must contain the creature while trying to release the other spirits drawn into its haunting.

Causes and Discovery

At dusk, the party reached Ashenhave and found temporary fencing around the town’s main section. The farms they had passed were dark, their windows giving the impression of dead eyes. Wicker sensed ghosts nearby, while Veiv observed that the season brought them out; Malthios, sharing Theo’s body, also felt strange presences. The barriers suggested that the villagers were already responding to a threat, but the party continued to investigate its source.

Cargo warned the others as they approached a small glen. There they found a moss-covered stone well, its wooden winch and cover rotted away. Theo thought he could hear distant screams coming from it. Before the group could investigate, a large, lumbering shadow emerged into the faint moonlight: a decaying deer corpse joined to the rotting hind legs of a bear, with exposed bones and blood-matted remnants of fur. The creature’s grotesque appearance made clear that the haunting had taken physical form, but Wicker’s explanation revealed the danger behind it. A ghost that haunts a place long enough can nest in available corpses; this one was stirring up the other ghosts, and removing it could release them. The monster also guarded the well, making the apparent source of the haunting difficult to reach.

The Plan and the First Assault

Wicker identified fire as the way to destroy the nested corpse, while Cargo offered to help by eating ghosts—a reassurance that did little to comfort Theo. Before the group could settle on a plan, the wind shifted. The creature turned its empty, maggot-filled sockets toward them, shrieked, and charged. Wicker and Cargo drew it away as Theo ran for the well, though the beast proved fast despite its rotting body and seemed to single him out. Theo wondered whether it sensed Malthios within him or was drawn by the strong scent of healer’s magic.

Theo hurled holy water at the creature. The liquid struck flesh and bone, which steamed and bubbled, but the attack did not stop its advance. Cargo bit into one hind leg and dragged the monster away, buying Theo time to reach the well. Its stones were rimmed with cobwebs, and the air around them was bitterly cold. When Theo put his palm against the stone, pain drove him to his knees: an icy sensation through his forehead accompanied by emotions and memories that were not his. He experienced a sunny day in the woods followed by fear, darkness, cries for help, hunger, thirst, and the despair of realizing no one was coming. As those memories overwhelmed him, he ignited his magic.

Burning the Nest and Releasing the Dead

On their next return to the glen, the nested corpse was already pacing near the well. Wicker threw a lantern at its feet, splashing it with oil, then spoke a rune that kindled their torch. Theo and Cargo drew the creature’s attention while Wicker moved in to attack. As Theo entered the glen, a child’s voice begged to go home; his green healing magic brightened, and the beast recoiled long enough for Wicker to sweep the torch across its oiled side. The marked torch’s flames caught quickly, and Wicker struck twice more as the corpse shrieked, its flesh and fur burning until blackened bones cracked beneath the fire.

When the creature collapsed and the flames began to die, a silvery glow appeared beside the orange fire and Theo’s green magic. The ghost of a boy emerged above the remains, clearer than before, tears visible on his cheeks. He pleaded to be taken home and reminded Theo of a promise. Theo crouched with his arms outstretched and offered to help. The boy ran into them; Theo’s magic passed over him, the pain faded, and the ghost disappeared. Malthios responded bitterly to the cruelty the child had suffered. Theo shared the anger, though he recognized that other innocents might suffer in the future.

The encounter did not end with the boy’s release. Wicker still sensed ghosts nearby and suspected they were the nested spirit’s victims, so they prepared to settle them as well. Wicker scattered salt counterclockwise around the well, placed five sticks of incense between its stones, and used their spoon and magic to trace runes in the air. After instructing Theo to throw the torch into the well, Wicker declared the work done and planned to ask Veiv to destroy it the next day. Theo instead drew on Malthios’s mana: the stones cracked inward, and he brought down the surrounding earth until the well was buried beneath a mound. He wished he knew the boy’s name so he could mark the place, then prayed to Arriss for the child’s peace. On the walk back, Theo admitted he never wanted to see a nested ghost again; Wicker answered that they had made a good team.

The Hunt in Retrospect

The ghost hunt later returned as part of the community’s shared account of the quest. At the tavern gathering after the party came home, Wicker recounted their adventures, including the bandit ambush, the dire-wolf fight, their encounter with ghosts, and their final battle with the demons; the others added details as the story went around the room. The hunt thus became more than a private ordeal at the well: it was remembered among the dangers the party had faced together.

That retelling also preserves the hunt’s double character. The party had confronted a physical monster, but the violence at its center belonged to the dead child whose memories Theo felt at the well and whose pain eased when Theo’s magic reached him. Destroying the nested corpse and burying the well ended the immediate threat; the later telling carried the encounter back into the life of the community as a shared memory of danger, cooperation, and release.