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[DragonRage]

"I will accompany you, Lyra.  Should there be danger, I am unlikely to be damaged," Alexandria strides after Lyra with confidence, "It is unwise to go alone in such circumstances."

[StormLord]

Fred shrugged and Liliya's question.
"Don't really know how stable the house is yet, seemed safer than trying to weather a tornado in a wooden box."

Lyra unlatches the door easily enough, though it takes Alexandria's help and a great deal of creaking from the door itself to offload the pile of dust blown against the cellar opening.  Lyra and Alexandria step out to see the sun poking up from the horizon in the distance, casting a dull blue-grey light over the house.  The ground is powdered in rich red dust, piles of it built up to about a yard up the side of the house and no sign of hail or dampness from the rain.  A few hundred yards in the distance at the end of the driveway and just before it connects to the main road Lyra and Alexandria catch a glimpse of an unidentifiable man in a black coat.  He snaps a large book closed in front of him and turns away to face the road, disappearing just as he steps onto it.

[Chevaleresse]

"Well, if the weather's gone now, we might as well look at the house. Maybe this will all turn out to be simpler than it looks?" Martyr didn't sound particularly confident in that suggestion. She looked around for the right way up and into the house - unless the cellar was only accessible from outdoors, of course. "No use standing around until we get black lung from all this dust or something."

[GodofGamingRWBY]

Osada

"Hard to say, truly, though it did seem to pipe down rather quickly" Osada commented, nodding at Lyra and Alexandria as the two went back outside, "Regardless what're your thoughts on the place Velma? Ordinarily, the dust would say that this place hasn't been touched in a while, but someone had to have lit these candles, unless one of you came down here earlier to light 'em."

[Strider03]

"Just not that anxious to stand around in a basement for hours." Liliya muttered in response to the perfectly logical justification for why they were in fact in a basement.

Before exiting, Liliya would circle along the walls, tapping them with one of her knives, double checking that the walls were solid, without hollow spaces behind. If nothing happened, she'd try to follow the other girl up into the house.

[StormLord]

Shaggy twitches sharply and bats off a spiderweb before heading towards the exit at Arturia's comment.
"Like anywhere is better than this creepy basement man."
"We've combed the house pretty well, but you're welcome to look.  We were going to check out town once the storm passed and...I think there's enough room for everyone in the van."

"The power went out a couple hours ago so we've been keeping up with them.  I don't think anyone has but us has been down here for a long time, but the house is a different story.  It looks like someone came by before us and cleaned the place up, you'll see."

Liliya's hopes for secret passages or hidden chambers are dashed when all walls of the cellar are as firm as they appear.

There is nothing of interest left in The Cellar.


Arturia and the others that follow find the house small and mostly empty.  There is a single Great Room combining the living and dining rooms with a partial kitchen on one end.  Down a short hallway leads to two bedrooms and a tiny bathroom.  One of the bedrooms has been converted into an Office.

Great Room:  The front door leads here.  A couple windows let in the earliest glow of morning light and passed around candles make up the rest.  A sofa faces an empty table against the wall with a dust ring.  An old wooden dining set sits near the middle of the room.  The kitchen has an ancient fridge and a woodfire stove, a few dishes with desiccated food sit undone in the sink.

[Chevaleresse]

"Weird." Those dishes had clearly been there for a long time; the thought of what her mother would do if she'd let them languish at home like that made her cringe. "Did whoever lived here just up and leave? Though, I guess that makes sense, if it was your uncle dying or something. . ." Arturia shrugged, meandering toward the Office, to check it over for any documents of interest.

[AzyWng]

Lyra looked to Alexandria. "You saw that too, right?" Returning to enter the house, the contractor said, "I saw someone for a moment when I went outside - they were wearing a black coat and had a book. They disappeared before I could get a good look at them..."

[StormLord]

The Office:  a smallish room with two desks in an "L" shape at one corner.  Pens, pencils, and a slew of papers cover one of the desks while the other has recently been cleared off completely.  There are a pair of filing cabinets containing largely disinteresting papers, mostly old tax paperwork, farm equipment purchases and sales, etc. all sorted by date in hand marked dividers.  Curiously Arturia finds a number of dates marked on the dividers that no longer have any paperwork in them.

Buried under the pile of papers on the writing desk Arturia also finds a single marked envelope open and emptied(the matching letter nowhere to be found).  The sender address is listed as a P.O. box and initialed "F C S".

[Chevaleresse]

Arturia, after assessing the room's contents, let out a small "hrmm" before gathering up the empty envelope and dividers. She took note of the cleared desk before heading out to talk with the rest of the gang over her armful of mysteriously absent paperwork. "Did you guys notice this? There's a bunch of stuff missing here."

[Unlurking Sentinel]

"Private Investigator" did seem like a reasonable enough occupation to possibly make dangerous enemies, assuming the game was good. 'Formerly wealthy' seemed likely to execute something this elaborate. Even still, the likely threat of Trespassers (which Cicivexa just assumed were implied by this being the Portal to Evil's destination) could not be ignored, even if the party seemed keen to keep quiet on the truth of the matter.

"Listen, Fred, it may be in your best interests for you and your friends to avoid further involvement. Our party has reason to believe that an exceedingly dangerous threat is at hand, something in all likelihood beyond your preferable understanding, besides it being a matter of life and death. And assuming that whoever summoned you here did so out of vengeance..."

Cicivexa chose to leave that last sentence hang for a moment. After receiving Fred's response, Cicivexa left the cellar (outside of the investigators' view), activated the Kanohi Akaku, the Mask of Vision, and swept the house for details beyond mortal vision. In the event that a stat check is demanded, Cicivexa relies on his 17 Intelligence.

Spoiler: The Mask of Vision (click to show/hide)

Kanohi Akaku, the mask of vision.

This silvery, metal, circular mask has a series of telescopic lenses on its right side, and a stern continence.  When worn, the mask color-coordinates with the wearer’s outfit.  Wearing the mask grants telescopic, microscopic vision that can peer through solid objects.

Lets you see through anything less dense than solid lead, though you can still tell whether you’re looking through something.  Has a telescopic zoom lens.  Activate the mask as a free action to ignore dodge and miss chances/effects for 1 round.  3 round cooldown.  Incompatible with other masks.

Doom additionally told Cicivexa's prior party that the telescopic lens lets him see from "kilometers away" (a measurement Cicivexa is unfamiliar with), and that it "grants the ability to perceive all forms of light" (a scientific concept Cicivexa is also mostly unfamiliar with, though he has some reference points to compare). Word of GM states that the latter claim was false. Additionally, it did *not* let him see through Doom's armor, which is presumably one of many magic-based special cases.

[StormLord]

Daphne waves at Cicivexa's comment dismissively.
"I'm sure we'll be just fine, we aren't easily scared off."
"Despite the impression Shaggy and Scoob might give.  Anyway, I'm sure together we'll get to the bottom of this even faster than either of us could alone."
The pair head back up and towards the house, giving Cicivexa free reign to stare blankly at the outside wall.  Even with his augmented vision and relative lack of distractions there was still a ton of ground for Cicivexa to cover.  He sees the layout of the house and Arturia searching through the office, he notices unmistakable dust rings on several surfaces including the table in front of the couch and the second desk in the office. 
The bedroom doesn't have much to speak of, a single large bed and pair of nightstands, some luggage stowed to the side.  The closet has clothes lining up with an old farmer and the shelf to one side is missing about half the books from it.
The kitchen is mostly canned food and normal cookware.  There fridge is an unspeakable disaster area.  More luggage and a small futon can be found in the corner of the great room.

Velma, Shaggy, and Scooby are waiting in the great room when Arturia comes back from searching.  Velma takes a look at the paperwork and shakes her head.
"I saw the missing files earlier, but I must have missed that envelope.  I'm afraid I don't recognize the sender though.   "F. C. S." Probably initials, but I wonder who's?"
Shaggy walks over a flops down on the couch with Scooby.
"It's pretty clear they cleaned this place out before we got here.  They didn't even leave the TV man."
Fred and Daphne walk in just as there is an audible growl from Shaggy's stomach and a second one from Scooby's.
"If the power isn't going to come back on we should head to town and get something to eat soon."
"For once your stomach isn't off Shag.  When the others are done searching we can go into town for some breakfast and to ask around for more clues.  The Mystery Machine should be able to fit everyone."

Enough clues have been gathered to move on.  Tell Fred when you're ready to go or keep searching the house for more.

[Unlurking Sentinel]

Cicivexa had entered the house to investigate much closer (the half-empty bookshelf was on his mind) when he heard the young investigators discuss their findings, and he felt the need to chip in. "Clearly, whoever emptied this house wasn't concerned with tidying up for its new owner, given the state of the kitchen..." Cicivexa quickly turned to the most experienced-seeming member of the party, Alexandria, and hopefully out of earshot of the young investigators, whispered "Have you learned what a 'teevee' is?"

[DragonRage]

"I did see a sign of life at least," Alexandria shares with the group, "When Lyra and I first stepped outside, a man in black clothes was standing by the road.  He walked towards it, and then vanished.  Self-diagnostics have turned up no signs of problems on my end, so...  I don't want to jump to conclusions and assume enemy action, but it was rather strange.  Possibly an optical illusion of some sort.

"A 'TV' or 'television' is a screen onto which moving images and soundtracks recorded elsewhere are displayed.  In technologically advanced societies, they are often used for public broadcasts of news or entertainment.  In more magical societies like yours, Cicivexa, playhouses and newspapers would serve a similar function."

[Unlurking Sentinel]

Cicivexa didn't entirely understand Alexandria's explanation (an electronic newspaper with sound and images that move?); he tried to brush off the matter for the moment (surely a man in black vanishing would be considered suspicious by even the most-simpleminded of every possible world, so he left discussion to the others) and he returned to what he entered the house to do: to further inspect not just what was there, but what wasn't.

He examined the size (and potentially the shape, if they aren't simply ring-like) of the dust rings, before then entering the bedroom and inspecting the spines of what books remained, as well as the locations of any books that were missing (hoping that there was an organization to them that could lead to inferences with later information).