now that would have been the smart thing for us to do does that spell travel with us or is it a one room deal?
Ivar doesn’t detect any traps[sup]*[/sup]. He does, however, detect a seven-foot snake that clanks and appears to be made of metal, and the reason he detects it is that it tries to bite him. Fortunately, it misses him. It looks up for another go, though.
- It’s like a radar scan that travels with the caster, while it lasts - anything in his line of vision will show up if it’s trapped.
Jorund is very glad that he has his hammers in hand as he tries to smash “Evil snaky thing”
There is a short burst of activity… three of you are able to get at it, including Ivar who is obviously the nearest. It strikes at him again as he brings his spear round - they miss each other, Jorund crouches and whacks at it with both hammers to no effect, but Ulf snatches out his one-handed battleaxe and strikes just behind the critter’s head, severing it cleanly. It does indeed seem to be made of iron, although perhaps the past tense would be more appropriate now.
Well Ulf makes sure the snake is dead (and is delighted nobody got hurt).
However he is a bit worried that the snake was ‘defending the house’. Are we Vikings being honourable?
“We find wizard who make bearowlies and stop from make more . . . how not honorable? . . . Any see where snaky thing some from maybe we go there?”
Did Jorund have time to tell if the fireplace was recently lit?
It’s hard to be sure about the fireplace - it’s quite cold, but the ashes could be recent or weeks old. The iron snake emerged from among the general clutter strewn about the place. If someone had shut a wild cat in here for a while the creature might have made a similar mess trying to get out - although a frightened cat would have made a smellier mess while it was at it.
There is an odd smell coming from somewhere, it seems to be strongest near the stairs - sort of burnt and acrid.
Ulf is satisfied with Jorund’s argument. 
Making a colony of Owlbears, which attack* hamlets is not right.
He suggests they continue exploring and (weapons ready) pokes around the stairs.
*Ulf thinks to himself “Of course if we were at war, we’d be doing the raiding!”
“Ivar… is this door trapped? If not, perhaps we should make a choice then. Upstairs, or behind this door? I’d prefer to wholly check the bottom of the house before going upwards, but we don’t want to be caught off guard…”
Is Osvald able to recognize what the Snake thing is? IE: is it a created magical creature? Or was it an actual monster/living thing that is normally 7 feet long?
Osvald goes to the Snake-like creature and examines it for details- such as blood, organs, etc. Anything unusual such as acidic blood, or foul odors, etc?
“How did this fellow work? Hmmm… I’ve not seen snakes this large before.”
“Wait it did sound like it was made of metal! How can this be?” Osvald definitely checks it out.
The snake appears to be a made thing, not a living creature. The fangs look sharp and the head makes a slight sloshing sound when shaken. Meanwhile the Find Traps spell is reporting the stairs clear.
Upstairs you find a single large room well lit by the South-facing dormer window. There is a rough cot in one corner, a large work-table with some odds and ends on it, a very strong acrid smell and a strange burn mark on the table surrounded by shards of glass. There is a book on the table, somewhat charred. A bin in the corner is more or less overflowing with rubbish of one sort or another.
Are we in the attic bedroom, i.e. does this fit in with what we saw from outside? In particular, could there be any room above us?
Ulf asks Ivar to check for traps, then cautiously rummages in the rubbish bin and searches the table and cot.
He asks Osvald to carefully look at the room (and especially the book) and to think what the Wizard could have been doing.
Ulf wonders if the metal snake could have used poison, just like a real one. :eek:
Perhaps someone would buy it from us!
Did he use the cold iron blade on his Battle Axe? Is that for magical creatures?
Once we’ve done all we can in this room, Ulf suggest we follow Ivar’s trap detection downstairs and go through the interior door…
Apparently this thing took damage from “normal” weapons. Cold iron works on some creatures that otherwise need magic to hit them, just as silver does (different metals for different creatures): indeed, a few rare creatures even take extra damage from iron. (It’s a different and harder forging process than for steel.) But it also works just fine on things that are bothered by steel weapons.
It looks like you are in the attic, from the shape of the raftered ceiling.
No traps. The bin contains quite a selection of odds and ends, including feathers, claws and beaks, also teeth that look mighty familiar to Ulf - at least twelve, in good condition. Also bones of many shapes and sizes.
The book is in poor condition but some pages still seem to be readable. However, it’s written in that uncouth curly-lettered alphabet they use over here, instead of nice sensible runes (not that Ulf is literate in either, but he has at least seen runes often enough to know what they look like). Ivar could probably puzzle out more of it than most, and of course Comprehend Languages would work just fine assuming it’s not magic.
If there are bear teeth / claws, can I make a necklace? 
Or at least, can I carry the stuff around until we get into town?
You can certainly take some teeth away. It will take time to craft a necklace, especially if you want to give it some care and attention.
Oh yes.
This is now Ulf’s main preoccupation (outside of combat of course). Whenever there is spare time, he will be working on his ‘totem’.
(He’ll buy suitable materials whenever possible, and take advice on how to make it sturdy.)
“Why burn smell? Did wizard go boom? Maybe we keep looking but down”
Jorund pokes around but seems to want to keep searching.
Osvald will look around the room and try to see if he can puzzle out just what was going on here from a Wizarding standpoint.
To help, he casts Detect Magic in here this upstairs room (or if it follows me, even better, I’d like to check the whole house with it)
Well this is excellent, because we have both Detect Magic and Find Traps running.
So Ulf guards both casters carefully as they check out the top floor (may as well look for (magically-hidden?) hidden doors / compartments), then go downstairs and open the interior door.
Detect Magic does follow you.
Wizard may or may not have gone boom but it looks from the state of the worktable as though a flask of something may well have done so. However, unless he was disintegrated it doesn’t look like there was anyone getting blown up by it.
The interior door downstairs leads on to a rather untidy kitchen - no magic or traps there, or anything of especial interest except some stored food, some of it mouldy but most of it edible. The back door there is bolted from the inside. There is a rope, coiled up, on a hook on the kitchen wall, and one end of it is tied to a grapnel.