Arbrant: male human rogue/sorcerer (Chris)
Ceinwynn: female human cleric of Fiset (Lynn)
Dormandian: male dwarf cleric of Sverrir (Mike)
Ivar: male dwarf fighter (Jesse)
Marc: male human fighter/sorcerer/topaz dragon disciple (Erik)
Nestaron: male elf sorcerer (Corey)
Stavis: male human ranger/barbarian (deceased) (Jesse)

2 Feb 516
The campaign opens in Falcon's Hollow, a muddy, chilly lumber town at the eastern edge of Gervais, wedged between the Ulfsberg Mountains and the sea, in a region known as the Dunstraths.  The town is in the grip of a plague known as the blackscour taint, and no cure is on the horizon.

Something small and fiery streaks through the town's center.  It's an ash rat, setting fires to haystacks and woodpiles, spitting flame on a woman, and making a beeline for a rickety old firetrap of a tavern.  Four strangers, would-be adventurers, step forward.  Dormandian the cleric stumbles out of the tavern, rushing toward the rat and brandishing his morningstar.  Arbrant the rogue moves into close range, and reveals a loaded hand crossbow.  His attack misses.  Stavis, a ranger from the steppes, charges and swings his greatsword.  The rat's smoky hide conceals his form, and the ranger fails to connect.  He succeeds with his next attempt, though, and slays the creature.  Meanwhile, Ceinwynn, another cleric, tends to the burns of the injured woman.

The assembled townsfolk applaud the strangers' bravery, and a half-elf approaches, introducing himself as Sheriff Baleson.  He thanks the strangers, and suggests that Laurel, the town herbalist, could really use hands like theirs.  He directs them to a shop called Roots and Remedies, where a long line of coughing blackscour victims (and hypochondriacs) waits for her assistance.

Laurel barely looks up from her work when the strangers ask how they can be of assistance.  She explains that the blackscour taint is caused by a fungus that has infected the town's well.  The townsfolk have stopped drinking from it, of course, but there are dozens already infected, and many more in whom the disease may still be incubating.  Her grandmother, also an herbalist, has a recipe for a cure, but there are three ingredients Laurel does not have: elderwood moss, rat's tail, and seven ironbloom mushrooms.  The moss grows on the oldest tree in the forest; the mushrooms are likely to be found in an abandoned dwarven monastery nearby; and the rat's tail is a pickled root, possibly found in the cabin of the old witch Ulla-Maj.  She does not know where any of these places are herself, but recommends that the strangers ask Miles Rhoddam, a veteran woodsman.  He can be found in the Lumber Consortium Camp to the northeast.

The PCs follow the road out of town, and reach the camp at dusk.  The loggers have no interest in would-be heroes, and are abusive and rude when asked for directions to Rhoddam.  Just as Dormandian is about to resort to violence, a wiry man intervenes.  He is Thurston Creed, the "gavel" of the Lumber Consortium, and evidently more polite and reasonable than his colleagues.  He directs the party to Rhoddam's quarters at the camp.

Rhoddam explains that his nephew is among those suffering from blackscour, and he is eager to help.  He draws the party a map depicting the vale and nearby mountains, and notes the location of the forest's eldest tree, the dwarven monastery, and Ulla-Maj's hut.  He also arranges lodging for the party in the camp's barn.

3 Feb 516
The party heads out the next morning.  Ceinwynn plots a course that will lead them near a lake, and they will use that to guide them as they head north towards the elder tree.

En route, the party discovers a strange glowing mold growing on the underside of a large boulder.  Ceinwynn carefully scrapes some away, and Arbrant keeps it to use as a light source.

Around midday the party reaches the lake shore, and they spot a large-eared fox, snared in a trap.  Scanning the horizon for the trapper, most of the party (except Stavis) spot a hobgoblin perched in a nearby tree.  Dormandian tries to hail him, but the only reply is an arrow that strikes the flat-footed Stavis.  A pair of large, oily-feathered birds (razorcrows), apparently the hobgoblin's pets, join in the attack, swooping in and slashing Ceinwynn with their claws.

Arbrant hits the hobgoblin with a crossbow bolt, and then tries to hide in the underbrush.  The hobgoblin spots him, though, and delivers a critical hit.  Arbrant is disabled, and dives for cover.  Meanwhile, Ceinwynn and Stavis dispatch the razorcrows without much ado.  The ranger trades his greatsword for his bow, and with a pinpoint shot, drops the hobgoblin.  The party loots his corpse.

Ceinwynn wrests the fox from the jaws of the trap.  Using her Heal skill, she determines that the poor creature has little chance of survival.  She uses a cure minor wounds to restore some of its strength, and then sends it on its way.

As night approaches, the party discovers a huge clearing, and in it, a massive tree.  Ceinwynn approaches carefully, to see if she can locate the elderwood moss.  As she gets closer, though, she and the party are once again surprised, this time by a wingless dragon known as a tatzlwyrm.  The creature charges and drops Ceinwynn before the latter can even act.  Arbrant and Stavis move in to melee the creature, while Dormandian steps up and delivers a cure light wounds, bringing Ceinwynn back to consciousness.

Arbrant and Stavis now flank the dragon, and the rogue delivers a sneak attack.  Ceinwynn tries to cast defensively and fails.  Stavis is bitten for heavy damage, but eludes the creature's grasp thanks to his Improved Grapple feat.  Dormandian and Stavis finally bring down the creature with their melee attacks.

Ceinwynn gathers the elderwood moss from the trunk of the tree, and Stavis climbs to search for the tatzlwyrm's nest.  He finds several human bodies hanging there, in various states of decay, but with most of their equipment intact.  The party gathers the valuables, and decides to make camp for the night.

While Dormandian keeps watch over the others, a giant mosquito silently attaches itself to the sleeping Ceinwynn.  The dwarf is alerted by her struggle, and tries to pull the creature off, but fails.  Ceinwynn screams to wake the others, and then succeeds in removing it, but not before suffering six points of Constitution damage.  The mosquito tries to escape, but Stavis kills it.  The rest of the evening passes without incident.

4 Feb 516
The party arrives at another clearing.  There's a dilapidated cabin in the center, surrounded by a dozen or so wooden or straw effigies.  Stavis searches for signs of life outside the cabin, and finds none.  The party enters cautiously.

Inside, they find dozens of jars of herbs, roots, powders, and sundry other alchemical items.  There's also what appears to be corpse wrapped in linens, but on closer inspection, it turns out to be simply another effigy.  Finally, by the fireplace, there is a large cauldron engraved with unsettling images.

Taking care not to disturb anything, Arbrant, assisted by Ceinwynn and Stavis, locates a jar of rat's tail.  When Arbrant picks it up, the cauldron springs to life!

XP awarded: 350 each.

4 Feb 516, continued
Stavis dodges the cauldron's bite.  He strikes back with his greatsword, but the cauldron's hardness absorbs most of the blow.  The rest of the party joins the battle.  The cauldron gets hold of Arbrant, and then swallows him whole!  The rogue is knocked out instantly.  Eventually, though, Stavis and Dormandian shatter the animated object.  The PCs take the rat's tail and a few other minor valuables, and press on.

They reach the monastery after dark, and elect to camp for the night, not far away.

5 Feb 516
Shortly before dawn, Ceinwynn hears something approaching in the nearby woods.  It's a pair of prowling wolves, who rush towards the sleeping party to attack.  Ceinwynn wakes Stavis, and the ranger kills a wolf with a critical hit.  Ceinwynn drives the other off before Dormandian and Arbrant even awaken.

The party returns to the monastery.  Entering a large courtyard, they spot a stable and an abandoned well.  The stable has nothing of interest, but at the well they find a chewed corpse and a backpack with a few useful items, including a flask with an unknown substance.  They choose to investigate a watchtower to the southeast.

When Stavis forces the door to the watchtower, he is surprised and bitten by a monstrous spider.  The spider's poison saps his strength.  Still, he is able to drive the spider back to its webs in the ceiling, and then shoots it down with a well-placed arrow.  Arbrant successfully navigates a rickety stair to the top of the tower, but there is nothing there of interest.  The party moves on.

Heading to the northeast, they discover a statue near a completely ruined chamber.  As they probe the ruins, they are attacked by a pair of oversized, leathery bats (night hunters), whose strange screams would rattle lesser adventurers.  Dormandian's aura of courage, though, keeps them steadfast.  They dispatch the night hunters with little ado.

Following a corridor to the west, they find an abandoned armory.  After some digging around, Arbrant discovers several crossbow bolts, which later turn out to be magical.  He also finds a secret door in the northeast corner.  The secret chamber beyond contains cells with rusted doors, and beyond them, three dwarven skeletons which leap to the attack!  Ceinwynn turns all of them, and the party slowly hacks them apart.  Searching the cells more closely after the battle, Arbrant finds a pair of ironbloom mushrooms and a magic ring.

Still further to the west, the party finds a large stone desk, and behind it, another pair of wolves.  As they battle the wolves, they hear a fearsome growling from the west; Dormandian's aura of courage again helps them to stand their ground against an intimidating foe.   A massive wild-eyed wolf appears, and it speaks, demanding to know who has invaded its lair.  The PCs answer, and explain their quest for the ironbloom mushrooms, six of which are visible in the adjacent chamber.

The worg, Graypelt, seems willing to allow the PCs to take the mushrooms, provided that they assist him in ridding the monastery of some troublesome inhabitants, namely the spider, the night hunters, and a pair of darkmantles in a nearby shrine.  The party has of course already dispatched the first two, and readily agrees to fight the darkmantles.

Graypelt directs them to the south, where they find a shrine with a large stone altar.  Looking up (per Graypelt's instructions), Stavis spots the two creatures.  He fires an arrow at one, to no avail.  The monsters then cast darkness, filling the room with shadows, and descend to attack.  One of them grabs Stavis and constricts, dropping the ranger.  No sooner does Ceinwynn stabilize him than the other darkmantle grabs and constricts Dormandian, dropping him as well.  Ceinwynn and Arbrant fight on.  Ceinwynn tends to Stavis's wounds, while the rogue stabs at the darkmantle strangling Dormandian.  It's a sneak attack, and it kills the creature.  With Stavis now back on his feet, the remaining darkmantle flees to the courtyard, where it avoids missiles from Stavis and Arbrant before flying off for good.

Stavis and Ceinwynn return to Graypelt to report their success, while Arbrant stays with the stable but unconscious Dormandian in the shrine.  The rogue pours the unidentified potion from the backpack down Dormandian's throat.  It's a potion of cure light wounds!  Dormandian is on his feet, but staggered and weak.   Back in the worg's lair, Stavis and Ceinwynn realize too late that Graypelt has no intention of honoring his bargain...

XP awarded: 900 each.

5 Feb 516, continued
Graypelt's wolves gain the initiative, and lunge at Stavis and Ceinwynn.  Stavis is bitten, but avoids the wolf's trip attack.  He flies into a barbarian rage, and follows up with an attack of his own that kills his adversary, previously wounded.  Ceinwynn hops onto the stone desk in the center of the room.

Meanwhile, Dormandian gathers himself, and is able to press on.  He and Arbrant rush to the wolves' den.  Graypelt, sneering and growling, tries to latch onto Stavis but fails.  Stavis hacks at the worg for heavy damage.  Indeed, the wound seems more grievous than it ought to be.  Stavis surmises that his foe might actually be an unseelie fey creature, with particular sensitivity to the touch of iron.

Arbrant fires a bolt at Graypelt, missing, while Ceinwynn is bitten and tripped by a wolf, and falls off the desk.  Dormandian steps up to melee, and he is also bloodied.  Eventually, though, he and Ceinwynn kill the wolf, while Stavis brings down Graypelt with another mighty blow from his greatsword.  As he lays dying, the worg smiles, and whispers a threat: "Lusala will defeat you all."

Arbrant searches the desk, and finds a hidden cache with some coins, a Dwarven-language book dedicated to Laduguer, the evil duergar god of toil, and what is later determined to be a +1 morningstar.  The room beyond, Graypelt's lair, has the ironbloom mushrooms the party was searching for, as well as more treasure.

The PCs decide to clear out the rest of the monastery, to avoid any nasty surprises later.  They make their way back to the shrine chamber, where they encountered the darkmantles.  Examining the anvil-altar more carefully, they note that it has five small depressions in it, as if something were meant to be placed there.

Heading further south, Arbrant unlocks a door to a small chamber.  The party enters carefully, and beyond another door, they surprise a sleeping kobold.  Arbrant tries to sneak attack the unprepared creature, but misses.  Stavis then grabs the kobold and grapples him.  The kobold manages to wriggle out of Stavis's grasp, but Dormandian slays him shortly thereafter.

The PCs loot the kobold's corpse, and find a ruby that Arbrant guesses will fit in the anvil-altar.  But while exiting the room, Dormandian stumbles into a tripwire which the entire party had miraculously and inadvertently avoided on the way in.  The kobold's trap is sprung: rocks, debris, and even a small anvil rain down on Dormandian's head, immediately knocking him unconscious.  Ceinwynn stabilizes the dwarf, but she has no healing magic left.

Stavis and Arbrant explore the monastery's library next.  When Arbrant jostles some mold-covered books, a cloud of spores envelops them, and they both suffer Constitution damage.  However, they also discover a well-preserved and potentially valuable dwarven hymnal.

Returning to the shrine, Arbrant and Stavis place the ruby in one of the depressions.  A wave of white light strikes them, an angelic dwarven chorus rises and fades, and the two PCs are healed of some of their wounds.  Dormandian, however, is outside the room, and gets no benefit.  The party decides at last that it is time to return to Falcon's Hollow.

They head south-southeast, straight towards the river in the center of the vale, dragging the dwarf behind them on a makeshift stretcher.  En route, Dormandian regains consciousness.  By nightfall, the party arrives at the river, and Ceinwynn and Stavis use their Survival skill to fashion a crude raft.  Rafting across the river will save them a day's travel, at least.

6 Feb 516
The next morning, Ceinwynn is able to heal Dormandian enough to travel under his own power.  The party presses on.

A few hours into their journey, Ceinwynn feels something try to bite her!  She whirls around to face her assailant (the attack missed), but there is nothing there.  Guessing that something invisible is stalking them, Arbrant fires a crossbow bolt in the presumed direction of the attacker, but misses.  Stavis and Dormandian join in as well, but the invisible creature keeps shifting positions to avoid their blows.  It bites Ceinwynn and Stavis, and avoids Stavis's grapple attempt, but it is eventually brought down.  Moments later, it becomes visible.  It appears to be a four-legged mass of vegetation with a vicious maw; a phantom fungus, according to Stavis.

The party reaches Falcon's Hollow late that night.  There's a light still on at Roots and Remedies.  Laurel is overjoyed to see that the party has brought back the reagents for the cure.  Ceinwynn offers to assist her, and gets to work with a mortar and pestle.  The rest of the party settles in at The Firefoot, the local inn.

7 Feb 516
Laurel distributes the cure to the afflicted residents of Falcon's Hollow, including the nephew of Miles Rhoddam.  The disease claimed the lives of twenty-five townsfolk, but dozens more were saved.

Seeking more information about "Lusala," the party visits the local temple of Robitaille, a bunker-like structure at the southern edge of town.  The warrior-priestess there, Cecile Worthy, welcomes the party as champions, but she has never heard of Lusala.  After a brief and slightly testy conversation with her, Ceinwynn decides that Worthy, like many Robitaillans, is overly eager to smite evildoers but not concerned enough with helping others.

8 Feb 516
The party is met at The Firefoot by James, a nervous young man, who is there to escort them to the Lumber Consortium headquarters.  They are ushered into Boss Payden Teedum's richly-appointed office on the second floor, where they also meet the halfling Victor Hague, the town's magistrate, who is clearly in a subordinate position.

Teedum heartily congratulates them on their recent success, and then gets down to business.  He tells the PCs that a Consortium camp to the northeast has been suffering from frequent raids by gnolls, and he'd like them to put a stop to it.  He offers them each 800 gp, payable when the job is completed.  Arbrant seems to want to bargain with Teedum, but Ceinwynn accepts the offer on behalf of the party.  Teedum directs them to a place called Fort Chance, about four days away, where they are to meet with a certain Cam Donelly for additional information.  James the errand-boy can serve as their guide.

As they leave Teedum's office, Victor Hague stops Arbrant and remarks on his signet ring.  Hague feels like he's seen it before, and asks Arbrant where he got it.  The rogue tells him that he simply found it.

9 Feb 516
The party heads northeast towards Fort Chance.

11 Feb 516
On the second day of their journey, the PCs (and James) come across a devastated farming village.  Some of the buildings are burned, others have collapsed, and there are corpses everywhere.  A figure approaches them from a distance.  It gurgles something, and then drops to the ground.

Stavis rushes forward, sword in hand, suspecting a trap.  He soon realizes that it is not a trap, and that the figure -- a half-orc in leather armor -- is dying.  Ceinwynn uses cure light wounds to revive him.  Conscious once more, the half-orc introduces himself as Kemen, a druid in the commune of Fairweather.  The commune was sacked yesterday by a large group of black- and red-clad human raiders, who were reportedly searching for a huge topaz, the size of a man's fist.  The commune, led by someone named Thistle, resisted, and most were slaughtered.

The party chooses to investigate, starting with a nearby barn surrounded by corpses of farmers and raiders.  Kemen heads off to look for more survivors, and James stays with him, not wanting to explore a dangerous building.

Inside the barn, the party finds yet more corpses, all of which appear to have small cuts and scratches.  Stavis goes to explore a gaping hole in the southwest corner of the barn, down which he hears the chattering of rats and sees the glint of metal.  As he peers down, the floorboards beneath him give way, but he quickly jumps back to safety...

XP awarded: 1200 each for Arbrant, Dormandian, and Stavis; 1300 for Ceinwynn.

11 Feb 516, continued
Stavis, wanting to investigate the metallic glint, but not wanting to deal with a potential swarm of rats below, devises a plan for dispersing them.  He finds a wheelbarrow among the ruined farmhouses, fills it with straw, pours oil on it, lights it, and sends it crashing down the pit.  He can hear the sounds of panicked and screaming rats, and then the chattering subsides.  After the smoke clears, he drops a rope down the pit, and climbs down.

At the bottom of the pit is a large chamber with passages heading south and east.  As Stavis pokes around some charred rat corpses, more rats arrive and attack.  He dispenses with them easily, and calls up to the rest of the party to join him.

After they climb down, still more enraged rats appear.  Dormandian and Stavis are bitten, but their wounds are trivial, and the rats are defeated.  They find a masterwork cold iron greatsword (which Stavis immediately begins using), as well as a vial of silversheen.

Heading south, the PCs discover a storeroom which reeks of death.  Several corpses are stacked here, near sacks of feed corn and barrels of rotted foodstuffs.  The party hears a strange clicking sound coming from behind the barrels.  When they investigate, a large monstrous centipedes emerges from hiding to attack.  Arbrant reacts quickly, scoring a critical hit and a sneak attack with his crossbow before the centipede can act.  Dormandian finishes off the creature with the next blow.  The PCs gather up some mundane gear (weapons, tools, etc.) and head onward to the northwest.

The next chamber is very slick and muddy; Stavis informs the party that the footing here is treacherous, and therefore they must move slowly.  There are walls of mud throughout the room, forming a maze of sorts, but the walls have small holes and gaps in them.  The PCs follow the maze to the south, where they come across a sinister-looking dire rat.  As they move to engage it, another dire rat appears at the party's rear.  It delivers a vicious bite on Dormandian, and smites good for good measure; the dire rats are fiendish, it seems.

Stavis enters a rage, and begins hacking away at the rats, who now number four, and who are passing through holes in the mud walls with impunity.  Arbrant, Stavis and Dormandian melee the enemy, while Ceinwynn provides healing magic.  Everyone receives at least one filthy bite, and Arbrant is seriously hurt, but the party eventually slaughters the rats.

Pressing further south, the party finds a chamber with a large open pit, partially filled with murky water.  To continue in that direction, they will have to negotiate a narrow ledge around either side of the pit.  Arbrant tosses a small stone into the water, and notices a bit of strange movement; there's something lurking down there.  The party decides to explore the muddy maze a bit more before proceeding.

The maze exits to the north.  Around a bend in the passage, the party can hear some labored breathing.  Stavis believes it to be mammalian, but not humanoid in nature.  When they round the bend, they see a pile of dead dire rats, and among them, a seriously wounded badger.  The badger growls and hisses at the party, but Stavis uses his wild empathy ability to calm the creature.  After Ceinwynn applies a cure light wounds, it seems healthy enough, but seems to want to wait in the tunnel.  The party follows the tunnel a few hundred feet to the west, where it emerges in the hollow of a tree at the edge of the village.

Back in the room with the pit and pool, Arbrant, with his excellent sense of balance, easily edges along the eastern ledge (the narrower, slicker one, it turns out) and reaches the other side.  Dormandian and Ceinwynn decide that they have no chance of success unless they remove their armor.  They do so.  Dormandian carefully makes his way across the western ledge, but Ceinwynn slips!  She is about to tumble into the pit when at the last moment she catches hold of the ledge and pulls herself up.  An ooze creature in the pool reaches up to grab her.  Arbrant fires a bolt at the ooze, and appears to damage it, albeit slightly.  Stavis takes the western ledge and joins the party on the other side of the pool.

Now heading west, the party hears the chattering of dozens of rats (if not more) ahead.  They also hear footsteps seemingly belonging to a humanoid.

The chamber before them has a makeshift bed, a number of barrels in the northeast corner, and most disturbingly, a patch of ground in the northwest that is positively boiling over with rats who scurry into nearby tunnels.  A staff and other items poke out of this strange rathole.

Arbrant spots a figure hiding behind the bed -- it's a bipedal, humanoid rat.  He fires a bolt at it, hitting the creature, but the ratman simply laughs.  He pulls the bolt out, and the wound closes instantly.  The PCs guess that they are fighting a wererat, and will need silver weapons to defeat it.  Fortunately, Stavis has that vial of silversheen.  Unfortunately, the wererat has five fiendish dire rat allies.

The wererat seems to be commanding the dire rats to move into position behind the PCs, but they're mostly unsuccessful in doing so.  Every time one gets close, a PC cuts it down.  In the meantime, Ceinwynn has cast bless on the party, and Stavis has applied the silversheen to his greatsword.  Stavis is skewered on the lycanthrope's rapier, bitten, and smited (the wererat is also fiendish), but he withstands the attack and damages his opponent, who, it turns out, is also a favored enemy.

The party finishes off the dire rats, and moves to deal more decisively with the wererat.  Dormandian and Ceinwynn use the aid another action to grant Stavis attack bonuses, which he uses to grievously wound the enemy.  The wererat retreats towards the rat swarm, and drinks a potion of cure light wounds.  Enraged at the thought of losing valuable loot in this manner, Stavis hacks again and again at the wererat until it is dead...

XP awarded: 2050 each.

11 Feb 516, continued
Having defeated Blood Whisker and his fiendish dire rats allies, the party rummages through his lair, finding some valuable equipment and treasure in a pair of locked chests.  Ceinwynn detects a magical aura on the staff and other items poking out of the bubbling rat hole, so the party decides to investigate further.

Stavis notices a rope dangling from the pit, and pulls on it.  Something very heavy is attached to it.  Bracing himself, he tugs on it again, and pulls up a creature!  It is a kind of plant-man, with recognizably humanoid features, but with roots and leaves for skin and bones.

After recovering from the trauma of having been submerged in the rat pit, the figure introduces himself as Thistle, the leader of Fairweather, and a druid.  He is obviously extremely grateful to have been rescued, and explains how Blood Whisker took advantage of the chaos caused by the raiders' attack to strike at both the villains and villagers alike.  He offers the party one of his magical items as a reward.  They politely decline (with Arbrant being outvoted).

There are still two matters that greatly concern Thistle, though: first, the rat pit, which is created by a magical item (the bag of endless rats, naturally enough); and second, the whereabouts of his badger animal companion.  The party is happy to report that Snarl the badger is alive and well, at least when they last saw him, and they will bring Thistle to him shortly.

As for the bag of endless rats, Stavis decides the simplest plan will to be plunge into the pit and close the bag as quickly as possible.  Remarkably, he finds the bag on the first attempt, and suffers only minimal damage in the process.  Thistle asks if he can take custody of the bag, as it is very dangerous, but Arbrant successfully bluffs him into believing that the party already has a contact with experience in destroying such objects, and that he will handle it.  Knowing nothing of the bag himself, Thistle agrees to let the party keep it (although Stavis refuses to hand it over to Arbrant).

The party and Thistle wend their way back around the pit with the gray ooze -- Ceinwynn makes her way along the edge with no drama this time -- and they head back to the tunnel where they had left Snarl.  The badger is still there, faithfully awaiting his master's return.  Thistle is overjoyed to be reunited with his friend.  Deciding that the party really is trustworthy, he reaches into his chest, and produces a topaz the size of a man's fist -- the rumors were true!

Thistle explains that it is too dangerous for him to keep the gem -- the Eye of the Night -- and he offers it to the PCs for safekeeping.  He declines to explain to them the gem's purpose or the danger it poses, but does tell them that it can provide light in darkness.  Arbrant eagerly takes custody of the item.

The group exits the tunnel to the west, and they emerge once again in Fairweather.  The PCs decide that it's probably best to explore the remainder of the caverns below, to make sure there are no surprises waiting for the village.  They descend the pit in the barn once again, and this time make their way to some cramped tunnels leading to what can only be described as a breeding pit for rats.  The party goes on the attack, and slays all the rats (including a pair of dire rats) in short order.  They clear out a similar adjacent chamber immediately thereafter.

The party decides to spend the remainder of the day in what's left of Fairweather.

12 Feb 516
The next morning, Arbrant is running a very high fever, and a wound he received from the dire rats seems badly infected.  He's lost several points of Dexterity and Constitution.  Thistle again offers the party one of his items: a jar of Keoghtom's ointment, which can remove disease, among other uses.  The party accepts it gratefully.  Arbrant is cured, and Ceinwynn's lesser restoration spells recover most of his lost ability points.  The group, reunited with James, their guide, heads out on the road to Fort Chance, and their original mission.

13 Feb 516
Dormandian falls ill with filth fever, just like Arbrant had.  Another dose of the ointment is used, along with more lesser restoration spells.

14 Feb 516
Now it is Stavis's turn to take ill.  Dormandian supplies the restorative magic.

Towards the middle of the day, the party arrives at Fort Chance, a tiny, and seemingly very flammable little outpost on the east bank of the Godsmaw River just as it exits the Ulfsberg foothills.  On the opposite bank of the turbulent river, the party can see a veritable army of gnolls camped.  The situation is evidently not as Boss Teedum described it.

Guards wave the party in to meet Cam Donelly, the fort's captain.  After some brief questioning (and some attempted bargaining by Arbrant over the party's reward), Donelly explains the situation to them.  A large gnoll army has materialized very quickly -- Teedum was probably not aware of it, either -- and threatens to sweep down and devastate this part of the Dunstraths just as soon as the Godsmaw subsides enough to let them.  The fort has one chance: someone needs to interrupt the gnolls' supply chain -- a herd of bison -- and keep the gnolls occupied long enough for a mercenary dwarven army to arrive.

Donelly unfolds a map, and shows the party the location of Blood Hawk Trail, a path that leads up into the hills behind the gnolls' position.  From there, they should be able to reach the bison with minimal resistance.  Crossing the Godsmaw will be a problem, as the bridge is out, but Donelly believes that a small team like the party should successfully get across.  He also provides them with climber's kits to assist in scaling the hills of the Blood Hawk Trail.

Shortly before the party heads out on the mission, more visitors arrive at Fort Chance.  They bear a white banner signaling their peaceful intentions.  As they approach, it is evident why: they are hobgoblins, representatives of Anavatan, the great goblinoid horde that has conquered the steppes of Gervais over the last few years.

The leader of the group, Coskun, addresses Donelly, and explains his visit.  The hobgoblins were returning from Dunhaven, and hoping to use Teverwood Pass to cross the Ulfsbergs back to the steppes, when they heard a rumor that the area was soon to be overrun by gnolls.  They decided to investigate for themselves.

As this parley goes on, Stavis notices that one of the visitors wears the orange-and-black mantle of the Tiger clan of the steppes, his own people.  Sure enough, the visitor notices Stavis in return, and throws back her hood.  It is Ellie, a human, and Stavis' old sweetheart.  She dismounts from her horse, and rushes to embrace him.  She asks what he is doing here, and when he replies, calling her Ellie, she stops him, saying that she goes by the name Elif now.

Although clearly glad to see Stavis, Elif seems disgusted with his current life and his companions.  She accuses him of betraying his traditions to live with soft city-dwellers, and urges him to rejoin his people.  Stavis, in turn, accuses her of being little more than a servant of the monsters that conquered her people and land, but Elif is adamant that she is here of her own free will, and that the goblinoids are preferable to rule by the Empire Nordique.

Donelly grudgingly offers Coskun and his party hospitality, but warns them that he cannot guarantee their safety in the event of a gnoll attack.  The hobgoblins (and Elif) decline, and leave the fort to head back the long way around the Ulfsbergs to the southwest.  Before going, Coskun expresses the hope -- perhaps not sincere -- that the dwarves arrive in time to save the Fort.  Elif gives Stavis a look as if to say, We shall meet again soon.

Political and personal intrigues behind them, the party sets out on their mission.  As soon as the fort is comfortably behind them, they are set upon by a gnoll raiding party!  Three gnolls rush towards the PCs, while a fourth lingers in the concealment of the Teverwood to fire an arrow at them and drink a potion.

The party squares off in melee with the gnolls, except Arbrant, who fires his hand crossbow as a sniper from a safe distance.  After dispatching a gnoll, Stavis pivots on the battlefield to take on the leader, who has rushed forward to join his colleagues.  Unfortunately, this seems to be exactly what the gnoll leader wanted.  Wielding a pair of shortswords, he attacks Stavis with great strength and precision, dealing almost fatal damage.  It seems the leader is a ranger, and knows where to strike humans at their most vulnerable points.

Ceinwynn quickly heals Stavis, while Dormandian melees his opponent.  Reinvigorated somewhat, Stavis enters a rage, and strikes back at the enemy ranger, doing significant damage.  Two of the ordinary gnolls are now dead thanks to Dormandian and Arbrant, but the leader unleashes yet another devastating full attack on Stavis.  Ceinwynn again comes to the rescue, but her magic is now in short supply.  Stavis then delivers a huge critical hit on the ranger, killing him.  The PCs dispatch the last gnoll, and then pause to gather themselves and their enemies' loot...

XP awarded: 875 each.

14 Feb 516, continued
The party presses onward towards Hope's Crossing.  They enter the Teverwood, a dark and foreboding place, with twisted trees and no signs of animal life.  Coming to a small clearing, they find a grisly sight: a gnoll, crucified on a large tree.  The PCs approach carefully.  Stavis finds no tracks; in fact, he finds the opposite: evidence that the ground has been swept clean.  Arbrant's search of the body reveals nothing.  The party moves on.

A short while later, they come across a much larger clearing, with an even more disturbing sight: six gnolls, eviscerated and hanging by their own entrails.  Out of the corner of his eye, Arbrant spots a pair of beady eyes at the far edge of the clearing.  He subtly signals Stavis, who inches up, thinking perhaps that the party has found an ally in their fight against the gnolls.  Instead, the creature, a small sentient plant known as a twig blight, attacks, along with seven more of his fellows hiding at the edges of the clearing.

Arbrant launches a crossbow bolt at the nearest one.  It is right on target, but does no damage to the creature.  A pair of twig blights flank Stavis and claw at him, delivering a mild poison.  The others rush the party, while Dormandian casts an aid spell.  The PCs find themselves quickly surrounded, but the twig blights are no match for them.  With little ado, the PCs cut them to pieces.

Arbrant and Stavis then go to examine the dead gnolls more closely.  When Arbrant touches one, its stomach explodes in a cloud of yellow spores.  Arbrant manages to avoid the cloud, but Stavis is affected, losing a point of Constitution.  Arbrant and Stavis then stand back, and trigger the remaining stomach-traps at a distance.  The gnoll corpses all have a little treasure on them, including one with a triple-flail symbol.  Neither Dormandian nor Ceinwynn recognizes the symbol.

The party reaches the edge of the Teverwood and sees the Godsmaw River a few hundred feet away.  They approach the raging river cautiously, trying to formulate a plan for crossing it, when they spot a band of gnolls on the opposite bank hiding behind some boulders.  The party ducks behind cover of their own, and the two sides trade arrows for several rounds while Ceinwynn uses her scroll of spiritual weapon.  After two of the gnolls are slain (and Arbrant is staggered), one gnoll heads southwest, presumably to get reinforcements.  Arbrant and Stavis cut him down before he gets very far.  The final gnoll flees in the same direction, but Stavis hits him squarely between the eyes and drops him.

Ceinwynn realizes that her Travel domain granted power will help immensely with crossing the river.  She holds her breath, and uses freedom of movement to get across with no difficulty.  She brings a long rope with her, and ties it securely to the other side.  Arbrant, showing off, simply walks the tightrope across the river.  Dormandian doffs his armor, curses under his breath, and enters the water, advancing slowly, hand-over-hand.  Stavis unties his end, and manages to wade across while holding the rope tightly.  The PCs hide the gnoll bodies.

They head northeast along the trail for about a mile when they spy what looks like another gnoll outpost.  Arbrant sneaks in for a closer look, and realizes that the post has been abandoned, and there are signs here of a struggle.  Most of the area is covered in thick gray webs.  Searching the area, Arbrant finds a large boulder with its top seemingly shorn off, and a broken ladder nearby.  Atop the boulder, he can see tiny hand- and footholds leading up the cliff face for about 100 feet.  This must be Blood Hawk Trail, at last.

Stavis removes his chain shirt, and uses his climber's kit.  With some effort, he is able to climb the cliff face to a small landing.  He drops a rope below him, and the others have an easier time making it up the cliff.

Atop the landing, they see a rough, possibly natural set of stairs winding around the side of the hill.  Stavis spots a large gnoll poking his head around a corner at the top of the stairs.  There's something odd about him, but Stavis cannot quite place it.  Ceinwynn hears a strange skittering coming from that direction as well.

Stavis climbs the stairs to investigate, but when he gets there, he is overrun by a swarm of spiders.  He lashes out at them futilely, and is poisoned as well.  Ceinwynn lights a torch to beat them back, but as she does, the gnoll appears behind the party, having climbed down the cliff wall.  It's not a gnoll at all, but a strange spider creature -- an ettercap -- wearing gnoll skins.  The ettercap bites Dormandian, poisoning him.

Stavis heads down the stairs, and the swarm follows him.  The party decides to focus their efforts on the ettercap, and they quickly flank him.  The ettercap tries to bull rush Dormandian off the cliffside, but Arbrant sneak attacks it before it can do so, and kills the creature.  Meanwhile, the swarm has been biting and poisoning various party members, and the PCs lack effective means of dealing with it.  After much effort, Dormandian, Ceinwynn and Stavis attack it with lit torches, and succeed in destroying it.  Dormandian uses his Luck domain granted power to fight off the secondary effects of the ettercap poison...

XP awarded: 1175 each.

15 Feb 516
The party, having spent the night in the ettercap's cave, heads out once again on the Blood Hawk Trail.  They wind around the top of the hill, and from there, pass along a very narrow footpath right along the cliff face.  Suddenly, the party hears loud screeches coming from overhead: a group of blood hawks has spotted them, and is swooping in to attack.

The PCs -- except for Arbrant -- find it hard to defend themselves and maintain their footing on the narrow path.  Stavis kills a blood hawk, but when attacking another, slips and falls.  Luckily, he does not fall off the edge of the cliff, and rights himself soon after.  Dormandian, though, is not so fortunate.  He slips, uses his Luck domain granted power to try to regain his balance, fails that as well, and tumbles down the cliff, breaking his fall on a landing forty feet down.

He is badly hurt, as are the rest of the PCs, as the wounds caused by the blood hawks bleed uncontrollably.  Ceinwynn hastily dispenses healing magic to all the party members she can reach.  Eventually, the PCs are victorious, and Stavis lowers a rope for Dormandian to rejoin the group.

The party ascends another ladder built into the rock, and comes upon a strange, beehive-shaped structure overlooking the cliff.  Below them, the party can see the herd of bison grazing on a grassy plateau, and further down, the gnoll army massing on the banks of the river.

Stavis decides to investigate the beehive structure.  It has spikes along one side that allow him to climb to the top.  Halfway up, one of the spikes shoots out at him, like a spear!  His trap sense kicks in, and he just barely dodges out of the way.

The top of the structure is a moveable cap made of plant fibers.  When Stavis pulls it, an attached bell underneath it rings.  Ceinwynn recalls from her study of ancient religion that the shamans who built these structures used to ring the bell four times before entering, three times by knocking, and then sliding the cap out of the way.  Stavis knocks three times, and then removes the cap.

The interior is cramped and dark, with petroglyphs carved along the walls, and a hole in the center of the floor, with a rope dangling down.  Suddenly, from out of the darkness, the PCs hear a piercing shriek.  It is a vargouille, a bizarre winged head of a creature.  The shriek paralyzes Arbrant with fear.  Ceinwynn grabs the rogue and drags him out of the way.  The creature tries to bite Stavis, and fails.  Stavis, in turn, cuts it in half with a single blow.

Arbrant, now recovered, can hear some faint breathing coming from the hole below.  Ceinwynn drops down a pebble with a light spell on it.  There is a chamber fifty feet below, with a finished floor, and an unholy font in the shape of a triple-headed flail.  Stavis quickly climbs down the rope to investigate.

When he gets there, he spots a gnoll-like creature guarded by a pair of hyenas.  He charges, and cuts the creature (a flind) with his greatsword.  The flind strikes back with his flindbar, doing heavy damage to Stavis.  To make matters worse, the hyenas flank Stavis, and trip him.

Ceinwynn climbs down the rope to try to assist.  While she is still dangling there, Arbrant slides down, stops short just before crashing into her, and tumbles into position to attack.  Stavis stands up, taking attacks of opportunity.  He is looking very weak.  The flind steps up and delivers a killing blow to the party's strongest warrior.

Arbrant and Ceinwynn flank one of the hyenas, and Arbrant kills it quickly with a sneak attack.  Dormandian, who has slid down the rope as well, moves into melee.  The flind -- a cleric, as it turns out -- targets Ceinwynn with a cause fear spell, but she shakes it off easily.

The three remaining PCs kill the other hyena.  The flind cleric then invokes a spiritual weapon to attack Arbrant, who has moved behind him and has been sneak attacking him.  Dormandian casts aid on the rogue, keeping him alive.  Ceinwynn adds a bless spell.

With both sides looking weak, Dormandian grabs the flind and successfully grapples him.  Arbrant gets in a final sneak attack, which knocks the flind unconscious.  The rogue, in no mood to play nice, runs the helpless cleric through with his rapier.

Searching the room, the party finds dozens of sealed stone doors around the chamber, with epitaphs carved upon them.  This is a mausoleum.  Two of the seals appear to have been cracked.  Examining the one to the northeast, the PCs find the flind cleric's laboratory, where he has been brewing poisons.  Behind the other seal is a cramped tunnel leading out and down towards the bison.  The PCs clear out the laboratory and place the body of their fallen comrade in the crypt...

XP awarded: 1150 each for Ceinwynn and Dormandian; 1250 for Arbrant.

16 Feb 516
Having spent the night resting and healing in the flind's laboratory, the party proceeds through the tunnel out onto a small plateau.  There they see the ruins of an ancient village, and a narrow path leading onto a dry, grassy plain where the herd of bison is grazing.  Beyond the bison, they can see a large contingent of gnolls and hyenas, and beyond that, the cliff facing the river.  There is also a somewhat treacherous slope heading east down to the riverbanks, but away from the main force of gnolls.

The party now formulates a plan to get the bison to stampede.  The PCs gather up the gnolls' battered equipment, and Arbrant uses his disguise kit to make them look more gnoll-like (at least from a comfortable distance).  They proceed cautiously down the quarter-mile trail to the bison plateau, and then Ceinwynn sets a carefully placed fire using her Survival skill.  The fire sweeps across the dry grass quickly, and the bison begin to panic.  They start to overrun their gnoll handlers and stampede right off the cliff face.

The party quickly heads back up the trail.  The gnolls spot them, and dispatch hyenas to chase them down, but the party has too large a head start.  They climb back up the rope in the prayer chamber, and then cut the rope.  For good measure, they also cut the rope suspending the prayer bell and climb out back onto the Blood Hawk Trail.  The gnolls cannot pursue, and have bigger problems to attend to.

On their way back down the trail, the PCs hear the clip-clop of hooves, and spy a dwarf and mule coming around a bend.  They hail him.  He is Ivar Samuelsson, an attaché with the dwarven consulate in Dunhaven.  He was climbing these mountains for sport when he suddenly found himself behind a gnoll army, and with little way to escape.  The party invites him to accompany them.  The group spends another day and a half making their way down the mountain, and eventually finds a spot where the Godsmaw has calmed sufficiently to allow the PCs and mule to ford.

17 Feb 516
The party returns to Fort Chance triumphantly.  Although the waters of the Godsmaw have started to subside, the gnolls are utterly unable to press the attack, given the destruction of their herd (and the trampling of a fair number of their soldiers as well).   Captain Donelly gratefully gives the promised reward to the PCs, including a share for the family of Stavis.  He also mentions that Mr. Creed of the Consortium stopped by before the party arrived and asked about them, but then left.  He does not know what it was about.

18 Feb 516
The next day, the party decides to head towards the town of Dunhaven, in order to dispose of their accumulated treasure and visit the Cathedral of Fiset.  En route, they spot a figure in the distance.  He waves at them to come over.  It's Thurston Creed.

Creed offers them a hearty congratulations on the success of their mission.  Then his tone grows dark: "It's a shame it won't matter.  We're going to crush you under our heels and take this land for ourselves!"  With that, he appears to try to concentrate on something, but with seemingly no effect.  At the same time, Arbrant and Dormandian spy a couple of grayish figures crouched in the underbrush nearby.  It's an ambush!

Arbrant gains the initiative, and sneak attacks Creed, dealing substantial damage.  Creed then suddenly undergoes a transformation.  His features become bestial, and his clothing and possessions drop off his frame.  He has become a hyena, with slavering fangs.  The two gray figures in the brush are ghouls, and they step forward to attack Dormandian.  One of them claws him, but he shakes off the dreaded ghoul paralysis.  Ceinwynn destroys them with positive energy, while the rest of the party squares off with Creed.  The two sides strike at each other mostly ineffectually for several rounds, with Creed's damage reduction absorbing most of the blows.  Eventually, a buffed Ivar is able to deal the killing blow to the lycanthrope.

Rifling through Creed's possessions, the party discovers some unusual items.  First there is a pair of gold coins with strange insignia.  They depict a creature with the head and body of a lion, a goat's head springing from its back, and a dragon's head where the tail should be.  There is also a note, written in a language completely unfamiliar to anyone in the party, including Ivar, who is a pretty skilled linguist.  Ceinwynn uses comprehend languages to translate.  It reads: "Preparations for kadtanach hastening. Make sure any threats are eliminated beforehand. -- Lusala."  Ivar notes that two of those words are from the Gnoll language: Lusala means "whip," and "kadtanach" means "too big to be seen all at once."  A quick check of Creed's (now-human) body reveals a tattoo reading "H.M.S. Fontenot."  Pondering these clues, the party continues on to Dunhaven.

19 Feb 516
The PCs arrive in town.  Their first stop is at the Shipwright's Guild, where they meet Gorka, the half-orc guildmaster.  He tells the group that he has heard of the H.M.S. Fontenot, and that it was in port here some months ago, having returned on a long voyage from the newly-discovered continent of Nyambe-tanda.  He's not certain of the whereabouts of the ship at present, but agrees to inform the party if he can track down information about the ship's owner, captain, or crew.

The PCs next pay a visit to the grand but somewhat weathered Cathedral of Fiset.  Ceinwynn introduces herself to Leira Ivie, the head priestess here.  Ceinwynn tells her to expect a message from Gorka.

On Leira's recommendation the party takes rooms at the Lizard's Boat, with the exception of Ivar, who stays at the Dwarven Consulate.  They then split up: Arbrant haggles with merchants around town to unload the party's unwanted treasure, Ceinwynn spends time at the Cathedral, and Ivar heads to the Grand Library of Dunhaven to learn more about the "kadtanach" and the mysterious note.

Ivar's research turns up nothing on the kadtanach, but while at the library, he encounters the wizard Michael Orville, the local guildmaster.  Orville takes one look at the note, and recognizes the language as Kordo, the common tongue of Nyambe-tanda.  He doesn't speak or read Kordo himself, but he does note that there is a Nyamban right here in Dunhaven: her name is Jinca, and she is staying at the Lizard Embassy, where the lizardfolk of the nearby swamps maintain a presence in Dunhaven.

As night falls on the town, the party repairs to the Lizard's Boat to rest.  Arbrant stays in the tavern downstairs for a bit, socializing with the locals and other travelers.  When he's had his fill and heads upstairs to his room, he finds it occupied: a pair of halflings are hiding in the darkness, weapons drawn...

XP awarded: 1225 each for Arbrant, Ceinwynn and Dormandian; 1425 for Ivar.

19 Feb 516, continued
Arbrant tries to shut the door, but one of the halflings is too quick, and blocks the entryway.  He aims for Arbrant's femoral artery, but stumbles at the last second, missing.  Arbrant calls out for help.  He and his assailants trade attacks for several rounds before Ceinwynn arrives on the scene.  Her hold person spell is ineffective, but her spiritual weapon kills one of the halflings.  Arbrant wounds the other, and he surrenders.

The captured halfling does not stand up to interrogation for very long.  He reveals that he and his colleague were hired by Victor Hague (the magistrate from Falcon's Hollow!) to take Arbrant's ring, and deliver it to someone named Burgoyle at a nearby castle.  Arbrant then abruptly kills the halfling, much to Ceinwynn's shock and consternation.  Kaija Ruokanen, the innkeeper, runs upstairs to discover the source of the strange noises she had been hearing, and expresses deep regret and embarrassment that thieves had broken into Arbrant's room.  She offers him another room, free of charge.

20 Feb 516
In the morning, the team reassembles, and Arbrant and Ceinwynn bring Ivar up to speed on the night's events.  Dormandian elects to remain behind at the Lizard's Boat for now.  The remaining PCs decide to investigate their various outstanding mysteries: Lusala, kadtanach, the H.M.S Fontenot, Victor Hague and what he wants with Arbrant's ring.

Their first stop is the Cathedral of Fiset, where they are expecting Leira Ivie to relay them any information that Gorka the shipwright guildmaster might have provided regarding the Fontenot.  Gorka's information is scant for the moment.  Creed was the first mate aboard the Fontenot.  The ship returned to Teravide loaded with exotic trade goods, as well as a few native Nyambans.  One of those Nyambans is still here in town: Jinca, the same individual mentioned by Michael Orville.  The group heads to the Lizard Embassy to meet with her.

After an uncomfortable encounter with a lizardfolk guard, the party is allowed to meet Jinca.  She too appears reptilian, but not very similar to the lizardfolk.  She has no tail, for one thing, and no crest on her head.  She appears somewhat more mammalian in general than her hosts.

The PCs introduce themselves.  She explains to them that she is an unthlatu, a draconic race from Nyambe.  She is a traveler and thrillseeker by nature, and leapt at the opportunity to visit Teravide when the Fontenot arrived at the Nyamban city of Arabo.  She now serves as a sort of unofficial ambassador for her "lizard" clan of the Great Mangrove Marsh, and shares space with the lizardfolk of Dunhaven, with whom she perhaps shares an ancestral bond.

The party shows her the note they found on Creed.  She instantly recognizes the script as Kordo, but has no additional information to provide about Lusala or the kadtanach.  She does explain that the gnolls -- called the MbUi in her land -- are a fairly powerful force, with a large portion of the tUbI Grasslands to call their own.  They are, however, a disorganized and fractious lot.

Based on the party's description, she can identify Creed as a werehyena, something all too common in Nyambe-tanda.  She remembers him from her time aboard the Fontenot as a creepy, shifty-eyed presence, who spent an inordinate amount of time below decks, and especially in the ship's cargo hold.  She interacted with him as little as possible.  The party thanks her for her time.

Intrigued by Jinca's description of Creed's behavior, they visit once again with Gorka, who is able to dig out a copy of the ship's cargo manifest.  There doesn't appear to be anything of interest on it.  Ceinwynn speculates that perhaps Creed was meeting with a stowaway in the cargo hold.

Running out of leads, the party decides to find out more about Victor Hague, the halfling thieves, and Arbrant's ring.  They start by asking around town about Burgoyle.  Ceinwynn tracks down a halfling shopkeeper named John Farleigh, who has heard of this Burgoyle.  He is said to live in the haunted Castle Mistamere to the north.  The party decides to head there the next morning, using the directions provided by Farleigh.

21 Feb 516
Two days later, the PCs arrive at the castle, which is mostly in ruins.  The outer wall of the structure is crumbling, and has completely given way near the southwest corner.  The outer gates lie on the ground nearby.

After some argument, with Arbrant declining to scout ahead alone, the PCs decide to try to enter via the hole in the wall to the west.  As they approach, Arbrant spots something underneath the fallen outer gates.  It's a large, tentacled monstrosity-- a grick -- and it moves out from its hiding spot toward the party.  Arbrant shoots it with a crossbow bolt, but it does no damage.  The creature wades right into the party and gets in a devastating full attack against Ivar, nearly killing him outright.  Ceinwynn heals the fighter, who strikes at the creature repeatedly with his spiked chain.  Ceinwynn casts a bull's strength on Ivar, who is then able to finish off the grick.

The party gathers some treasure from the grick's hiding spot, including a small key, and then heads through the rubble in the castle courtyard.  No sooner do they get there than they spy some guards: a group of four, fiery dwarf-like creatures (azers).  The azers throw spears at the PCs, but do not connect.  Arbrant uses his amber amulet of vermin to summon a giant praying mantis, who immediately grabs an azer and kills him.  Another azer deals a heavy critical hit to the mantis, but then it and Ivar make quick work of the rest...

XP awarded: 1292 each for Arbrant and Ceinwynn; 1067 for Ivar.

21 Feb 516, continued
The PCs loot the azers and proceed to the entrance of the castle proper.  The door is rotting but still clearly in use.  Arbrant detects nothing untoward with the door itself and hears nothing beyond it, so the party enters.

Inside is a dark dusty hallway, filled with debris.  After a quick search, the PCs head west through an open doorway.  The next chamber has little of interest but a fireplace in the north wall and a hole in the ceiling, leading to the ruined upper floors above.  When Arbrant pokes at the fireplace, a ferocious yeth hound descends from the hole, and lets loose a baleful howl.  The party stands fast against the fear effect and counterattacks.  Ceinwynn strikes the creature solidly with her mace, but seems to do no damage at all.  Only Ivar (under the effect of bull's strength) and Arbrant (using his newfound arcane talents to lob acid splashes) can hurt the unearthly hound.  The creature's bites deal heavy damage, but the party slowly wears him down, and he flees back through the ragged hole in the ceiling.  Undaunted, Ivar climbs up through the hole himself, and finds a cramped chamber where the yeth hound has gone to lick its wounds.  After a short melee (and nearly being bull rushed back down through the hole), Ivar finishes the creature off.  The PCs find a few silver spoons and a bag of dried peas for their trouble.

Moving onwards, the party finds a storage area, filled with boxes and crates.  As they search, they hear a voice coming from a chest: "Who's there?"  A moment later, it asks, "Is Burgoyle with you?"  The PCs answer in the negative, and the voice replies "Oh, well then, never mind."  They open the chest, but it is empty.  They are puzzled, but move on.

An adjacent closet is empty but for a hatbox sitting in the middle of the floor, tied with a string.  Arbrant unties it, but finds a strange powdery residue coating his fingertips.  He is poisoned, and suffers hit point damage.  Ceinwynn attempts to draw the poison out with a Heal check, but a minute later, Arbrant suffers heavy Constitution damage as well.  A lesser restoration recovers most of it.

Next door is a bedroom.  There appears to be little of interest here, but when Ceinwynn searches the bed, she feels a strange compulsion that she is able to shake off.  The party decides to leave well enough alone.

However, their efforts have attracted the attention of three azer guards, lurking near a stairwell.  Ivar is able to slay a pair of them with little ado, and the third quickly surrenders.  He explains that he and his group are mercenaries in the service of Burgoyle, a wizard, whose quarters are two levels down.  He knows nothing of Arbrant's ring.  After being given a stern warning from Ceinwynn, he is released.

Pressing on, the party encounters a strange sight: a heavy log, suspended by rope directly above a chest.  This is clearly a trap of some kind, but the PCs cannot figure out how it would work.  They simply move the chest out of the way, and find a modest treasure within.

A chamber to the east has a statue of a kobold holding a crude stone sword.  Understandably wary, the PCs decide to have Arbrant investigate more closely.  After a few moments of searching, he determines that the statue is indeed a trap that would be triggered by touch.  The party ignores the statue and exits to the east.

They find an ornate but ruined dining room, with a long table, golden plates, crystal goblets, and a dozen chairs, four of which of are occupied by human skeletons.  As they move in to investigate, two enemies appear: a small, eyeless orb-like creature with an unearthly glow (a death weaver), and a lifeless armored figure identified by Arbrant as a dread guard.  The death weaver hums and pulses eerily; Arbrant and Ivar are transfixed and paralyzed.  The weaver moves in and begins to devour the dwarf fighter before Ceinwynn can drag him away to safety.  Meanwhile, the dread guard moves into melee, brandishing its longsword.

Ceinwynn grievously wounds the death weaver, and it retreats to the far corner of the dining room.  Arbrant and Ivar are no longer in its range, and are no longer paralyzed.  Ivar attacks the dread guard with his spiked chain, and Arbrant tumbles behind the construct, flanking him.  The rogue casts golem strike as a swift action and sneak attacks the dread guard.  Although the construct Power Attacks Ivar for heavy damage, he and Arbrant are able to bring it down, while Ceinwynn finishes off the death weaver...

XP awarded: 1187 each for Arbrant and Ceinwynn; 1400 for Ivar.

21 Feb 516, continued
Arbrant examines the golden plates on the dining table.  When he picks one up, it kicks up a cloud of yellow spores that leave him coughing, but he manages to shake off their effect.  He notices with disgust that the golden sheen on the plates is due wholly to the yellow mold.  The other PCs search the skeletons seated at the table, but find nothing of interest and move on.

In an adjacent closet, Ivar notices a few scattered coins mixed in with some refuse.  He reaches down to collect them, but two of the coins begin moving, and rush to bite him!  They are hoard scarabs.  He dodges them, but finds that they are very difficult to hit.  One of them succeeds in biting him, and tries to burrow into his flesh, but he brushes it away quickly.  He then crushes them, and collects the coins after all.

Moving into the eastern section of the castle, the PCs find another kobold statue.  As they move to examine it, they hear footsteps and clinking from an adjacent room.  It's a pair of stout azers.  Arbrant launches a crossbow bolt at one of them, hoping for a sneak attack, but it bounces harmlessly off his shield.  Ivar hits one for solid damage, while Ceinwynn steps up to provide healing support.

The azers counterattack, and they are quite strong, it seems.  Each azer issues a fighting challenge, one to Ivar, one to Ceinwynn, staking their personal honor on defeating the PCs.  Their warhammers deal very heavy damage.  Ceinwynn responds by casting command on the one Ivar is fighting, forcing him to drop prone.  The PCs have great difficulty connecting with the heavily-armored outsiders, but they eventually bring them both down.

To the south, the party finds a locked room, and within, a human prisoner bound to a chair.  They ungag him.  He explains that he is Marc Sanseau, a farmer taken in as a slave and/or apprentice by Burgoyle.  His cooking displeased his master, so the latter had his azer bodyguards imprison him.  Burgoyle also performed some arcane ritual on him that left him dazed and woozy.  He now seeks revenge against the wizard.  Ceinwynn unties him, and the PCs invite him to join their party.  He gathers his gear from a nearby chest, and the group proceeds down a stairwell near the azer sergeants.

They find a chamber with a dirty but well-preserved tapestry, depicting Castle Mistamere before it was a ruin.  Ivar rolls it up and Marc agrees to carry it for future sale.  In the next chamber, containing a ruined statue of a wizard-like figure, the party encounters a pair of hungry oil beetles.  Arbrant sneak attacks one for heavy damage.  It replies with a jet of caustic fluid from a strange nozzle on its back, but the rogue shakes off its effects.  Marc and Ivar crush the beetles before any more damage is done.

The group finds another squashed beetle near a door in an adjoining chamber.  Heading through the opposite door to the east, they find the oil beetles' nest, with four of the creatures resident.  Arbrant sneak attacks one, while Ivar and Marc wade into melee.  A beetle sprays Arbrant with its caustic fluid, inflicting painful blisters on the rogue, and the others deliver painful bites to Ivar.  The group brings down the remaining vermin.  The PCs destroy a clutch of beetle eggs, find a chest containing some treasure and a strange stone orb, and then bed down for the night.

22 Feb 516
The next morning, Arbrant's blisters seem to have healed, and they head back in the direction of the squashed beetle.  When Ivar opens the door, a giant stone piston drops from the ceiling, dealing heavy damage.  This is obviously what had killed the beetle.  Beyond, they find a set of stairs heading down.  They elect to explore the rest of the level before descending further, and return to the area where they arrived.

When they head north through a widening in the corridor, Ivar triggers yet another trap: a pit filled with spikes.  Marc jumps out of the way just in time, but Ivar falls in and is spiked.  The others lower him a rope, and they proceed onward, finding another set of stairs around a bend.  Above the stairs is a warning to use the other set, per Burgoyle's orders.  Naturally, the party ignores the instruction and heads down.

On the third level of the dungeon, they find a room with a large stone altar, on which are a number of bizarre offerings to Burgoyle (whose portrait hangs above): some scattered coins, a dead rat, some halfling fingers, and a potion.  They pocket the coins and potion and head south through a door that Arbrant unlocks.

The corridor leads after a turn into a large chamber, and there to greet the party is an enormous filthy two-headed creature: an ettin.  Marc rushes in to attack while the ettin is flat-footed, but misses with his flail.  Ceinwynn casts a prayer spell, and Arbrant fires a crossbow bolt, hitting the creature for modest damage.  Ivar gets within range with his spiked chain, and hits the giant more substantially.

The ettin strikes back at Marc, but misses badly, and the party continues its offensive.  The ettin comes within a hair's-breadth of bludgeoning Marc with his morningstar, missing only because of the prayer spell.  Marc follows up with a devastating critical hit, felling the ettin, who lands with a mighty thud...

XP awarded: 2642 each for Arbrant and Ceinwynn; 3017 for Ivar; 1625 for Marc.

22 Feb 516, continued
A dim light comes from an open passage to the north.  It starts to grow brighter, and the party chooses to hide from whatever threat is approaching.  A cloaked figure enters the room, carrying a torch.  He throws back his hood, revealing elven features.  Ivar recognizes him as Nestaron, an old ally with ties to the dwarven consulate back in Dunhaven.  Nestaron explains that the consulate is requesting Ivar's presence as soon as is practicable.  In the meantime, Ivar invites Nestaron to join them in their hunt for Burgoyle.  He agrees readily.

The PCs head south into a chamber with a cold fireplace and flickering torch.  Arbrant notices that one of the shadows in the room is moving unnaturally; it's an undead creature.  He launches a crossbow bolt at it, but is simply passes right through.  The shadow and another undead -- an allip, as later determined by Ceinwynn -- move to attack the other surprised party members.  The shadow misses Marc with its incorporeal touch, but the allip begins babbling in hypnotic fashion, transfixing all of the PCs save Nestaron.  However, the allip's touch attack against Arbrant fails, and also breaks the fascination effect.

Nestaron, a sorcerer, launches magic missiles at the shadow, severely wounding it, and Arbrant succeeds in hitting the allip with a magical flaming bolt (discovered way back in the abandoned dwarven monastery, and unidentified until now).  Ceinwynn, roused from her hypnosis by an attack, tries to turn the undead, and succeeds, sending both of them fleeing upstairs.  Ivar and Marc shake off the hypnosis.

The PCs expect the undead to return as soon as the turning wears off, and sure enough, they do.  Nestaron enlarges Ivar, while Ceinwynn finishes off the shadow using cure light wounds, but not before it touches Marc and weakens him.  The allip also touches Marc and drains his Wisdom, and then the party finally destroys it.  They find an arcane volume in the chamber and little else.

They head north to a large chamber with a stained rug at its center.  It seems an obvious trap.  Arbrant and Ivar carefully unfasten the rug from the floor (it was nailed down), and find a trap door underneath.  Arbrant deliberately triggers it, revealing a sixty-foot pit.  They leave, and the trap door snaps shut.

To the west is a gallery filled with statues of a goateed figure, identified by Marc as Burgoyle.  The party senses another trap.  Ivar steps forward carefully.  When he gets to the middle set of statues, four of them come to life.  Arbrant notices the ambush a split-second before it happens, and tries to use golem strike to sneak attack the living statues.  He misses.  The statues are very tough, and deal punishing blows with their fists.  Arbrant retreats and summons a giant praying mantis using his amulet, while Marc and Ivar melee the statues, Nestaron launches magic missiles, and Ceinwynn uses a spiritual weapon.  Though they suffer heavy damage, they destroy the statues.

There is a chamber ahead to the southwest with four doors, not counting the one through which the party entered.  A disembodied voice, presumably Burgoyle's, tells them to choose wisely.  After a brief unproductive search of the room, Ivar opens the west door, which reveals what appears to be a plain five-foot closet.  He has the party close the door behind him, and suddenly a secret door appears and opens.  He proceeds into a chamber with a dais, atop which is a figure which appears to be Burgoyle!  The figure tries to lay a hex on Ivar, but the dwarf shakes it off.  Ivar replies with attacks from his spiked chain.  When the figure tries to cast darkness, Ivar drops him.

Now bleeding to death, the figure no longer looks like Burgoyle, but is some sort of horned humanoid (a tiefling, the party later surmises).  Ivar drags the tiefling back towards the four-doored room, but finds that the door was one-way; he cannot open it from this side.  Worse, it is also now locked, and the party cannot open it from their side, either.  He closes the secret door behind him, and the door becomes openable.

Arbrant binds the tiefling, and Ceinwynn awakens him with a couple of cure light wounds.  Questioned by Arbrant, the tiefling claims to be Burgoyle, but has no reaction to seeing Arbrant's ring.  Ivar asks him the name of the halfling sent to kill Arbrant, and he replies that he in fact sent two of them.  Ivar is convinced that he is an impostor.

Ivar and Marc try the east door next.  As before, when the door is closed, a secret door opens ahead of them.  Another pair of "Burgoyles" heads their way.  They're dispatched quickly, with Marc dealing a devastating critical hit.  Once dead, they change forms to pale humanoids with yellow, slitted eyes.  Marc identifies them as doppelgangers.

Ivar and Marc follow the passage back to the doppelgangers' lair, which has some mundane books and items, along with a modest treasure.  They also find a passage to the room with the rug and trap door through a one-way door.  They head back and reunite with the party.  Marc and Arbrant now agree that the prisoner is most certainly not Burgoyle, and Arbrant simply runs him through...

XP awarded: 900 each for Arbrant, Ceinwynn and Nestaron; 1275 for Marc; 1775 for Ivar.

22 Feb 516, continued
Two more doors remain to explore.  Ivar and Ceinwynn open the southwest door, cram into the small closet beyond, and close the door behind them.

A secret door does not open in front of them.  Rather, an ochre jelly drops from the ceiling.  It slams Ceinwynn, but her freedom of movement ability keeps her from getting grappled.  She screams, and the other PCs open the door once again.

Marc immediately bashes the ooze with his flail, inflicting heavy damage; he wishes he had Power Attacked it.  Nestaron hits it with a few magic missiles, which seem to affect the creature normally.  Arbrant then hits it with a crossbow bolt, which not only fails to damage the creature, but splits it in two.  Ivar draws a mace, and along with Marc and Nestaron, succeeds in smashing the ochre jellies into a lifeless paste.

Now only the southeast door remains.  Marc and Ivar squeeze in, close the door, and find themselves teleported directly above the trap door in the room with the rug.  The trap door opens underneath their weight, and they fall sixty feet down, suffering very heavy damage.   Ivar removes his armor, gets out his climber's kit, and carefully scales the wall of the pit.  The trap door at the top is shut tightly.  Clinging precariously to the wall with one hand, he bashes the trap door with his mace in the other.  Eventually, he is able to splinter the wooden door and clamber up.  He lowers a rope to Marc, and the two of them make their back past the living statue gallery to the chamber of doors once again.

All four doors seem to have been a bust.  Clearly, the PCs must have missed something.  They go west to the room where they encountered the tiefling.  Beyond it, they find a room filled with fabulous treasures which, when examined closely by Arbrant, turn out to be worthless.  However, the rogue discovers a secret door to the south.

Beyond is a sumptuous chamber with a deep, clear pool of water.  Waiting for the PCs is Burgoyle (the real one, they can only hope).  He has prepared for their arrival, and has a number of mirror images shifting about him, but he loses the initiative.  Arbrant tries to sneak attack with his crossbow, but misses.  Ivar double-moves into melee position.  Burgoyle tries to create a wall of fire, to separate Arbrant and Ivar from the others, but his concentration wavers and the spell is lost.

Nestaron begins casting sleep, and Marc moves up to melee the wizard, destroying one of the figments.  Burgoyle then launches a devastating fireball that targets four of the PCs, and nearly kills Nestaron outright.  Burgoyle sneers and taunts the party.  Ceinwynn heals the sorcerer, while the PCs continue to whittle away the images.

Burgoyle casts hold person on Ivar, freezing him in place.  Nestaron counters with Tasha's hideous laughter, but Burgoyle simply shakes it off.  The wizard then levitates up toward the ceiling, and begins reading from a scroll.  Ceinwynn casts fly on Marc, who grapples Burgoyle and deals some nonlethal damage.  Arbrant takes advantage of Burgoyle's condition and sneak attacks him, knocking him unconscious.

After they strip him of his gear (especially his spell component pouch) and tie him up, the PCs interrogate him.  Arbrant's attempt at intimidation is met with scorn, but Nestaron successfully rattles him, and he becomes very talkative.  Asked about Arbrant's signet ring, he looks incredulous.  Arbrant is a member of House Reynard of Majeau, is he not?  Doesn't he know what the ring can do?  Arbrant replies that he knows nothing of either.  Burgoyle explains that the ring allegedly provides a means of opening a secret vault in the Reynard family crypt at Majeau.  His associate, Victor Hague (the magistrate at Falcon's Hollow) noticed the ring on Arbrant's finger, and the two of them hatched a plan to get it from Arbrant.  The halflings that ambushed Arbrant at the Lizard's Boat were thieves, not assassins.

Marc asks Burgoyle what sort of ritual the latter performed on him, when he was Burgoyle's prisoner.  The wizard replies that it was a spell designed to reduce him to his base animal nature.

Burgoyle promises to never molest the party again if freed.  They briefly toy with the idea of delivering him to justice at Dunhaven, but decide that they have no evidence to present at a trial, nor interest in particpating in one.  Ivar kills him.

In a nearby bedroom, the party finds a trove of magical treasures and a book about House Reynard and Majeau which repeats the rumor that Burgoyle had told them.  In the course of prying gemstones off Burgoyle's throne, they discover a button which reveals a secret door.  They decide to rest for the night before proceeding.

23 Feb 516
The passage beyond the secret door is rough-hewn.  It leads for a half-mile up and into the mountainside.  As it climbs, the passage grows colder and colder, until the party begins shivering (and several PCs take some nonlethal damage).

Eventually, the passage widens.  Nestaron sends his rat familiar to scout ahead.  The rat carefully peers around a corner, and spies a large chamber, covered in frost, with an ice bridge joining two halves of a cavern.  At the opposite end of the cavern is a white dragon, who does not appear to notice the rat.

Arbrant wants no part of this dragon, but Ivar convinces him that the loot will be worth it.  Furthermore, as Ceinwynn notes, white dragons are the weakest of their kind.  Eventually, a consensus is reached, and the PCs agree to attack.  In the interim, however, they can hear the beating of wings.  It seems the dragon may have noticed the rat after all.  It has flown to the near side of the ice bridge, and is preparing to attack.  Luckily, however, the PCs gain the initiative.

Arbrant misses with a crossbow bolt (a potential sneak attack), Nestaron begins an enlarge person spell for Ivar, Ceinwynn casts prayer, and Marc casts expeditious retreat and advances to melee.  The dragon flies back onto the ice bridge (drawing two attacks of opportunity, both missing), and then uses its breath weapon on Arbrant, Ivar and Marc.  Arbrant simply evades the cone of frost, while Ivar and Marc take a small amount of damage.

Marc then steps onto the slippery ice bridge to melee the creature.  He proceeds carefully, and is able to strike her with his flail.  A now-enlarged Ivar then steps onto the bridge, but it can't support his weight.  He dives back onto the stone ledge in time, and the dragon simply hovers in place, but Marc tumbles into the thirty-foot chasm below.  The dragon then flies down and bites Marc.  He's prone, and alone with the dragon.

Arbrant quickly summons a giant praying mantis to assist Marc.  It flails ineffectually at the dragon.  Nestaron hits the dragon with a few magic missiles, which are not ineffectual.  Ceinwynn follows with a spiritual weapon and delivers a critical hit.

The dragon takes a full attack.  Its bite and claws drop Marc -- but fail to kill him outright, thanks to the prayer spell -- so it shifts its focus to the mantis, and dispatches it.  Ceinwynn then casts fly on Ivar, who moves in to attack the dragon with his now-oversized spiked chain.  He inflicts heavy damage.  The dragon, badly injured, begins to cast fog cloud to escape, but Ivar kills her on the resulting attack of opportunity.  He brings an unconscious Marc back to Ceinwynn, who quickly stabilizes him.

The party gathers the dragon's hoard (perhaps not quite as impressive as they had hoped) and then explores a passage to the south.  It leads out onto an ice shelf, high on the mountainside.  The climb down from here will be treacherous, if not impossible.  The party elects to head back through the dungeons of Castle Mistamere, and on to Dunhaven.

XP awarded: 1500 each for Arbrant and Ceinwynn; 1700 for Nestaron; 2200 each for Ivar and Marc.

25 Feb 516
The party returns to Dunhaven loaded down with loot from Castle Mistamere.  After settling in, Ivar and Nestaron lead them to the dwarven consulate, where they meet with Ansgar Ballo, the consul.  He explains to Ivar that they have intercepted a note in an unfamiliar language, and need him to translate.  It's in Undercommon, and Ivar shares the contents with the group:

Chundag:

I awaken once again at the Argrim sanctuary.  I must still gather strength before I can depart, but I will join you soon.  I have learned of the failure to recover the Eye of the Night.  We must redouble our efforts to forge new components for the Oculum.  In the meantime, there are efforts underway to obtain the Eye.  All must be ready for Skullshank's return.

It's signed only with a bloody fingerprint.

The party recognizes the reference to the Eye of the Night; indeed, it's in their possession, given to them by Thistle, the thornblood druid of Fairweather.  Ballo suggests that the "Argrim sanctuary" likely refers to the shrine of Gendwar Argrim, a minor dwarven deity of fatalism and obsession, located at the tiny outpost of Budhir, about 60 miles from Dunhaven.  The shrine is also a tomb for the great dwarven paladin Geilir Hjorrbjartur, who six centuries ago slew an evil priest known as the Dread Watcher.  Supposedly, Dread Watcher is pinned to the wall of the shrine with Geilir's famed weapon, the Sword of Conviction.  The note suggests that this may no longer be the case, however.  The party agrees that they must check out the situation immediately.

Ceinwynn asks where the note was found, and Ballo explains that it was on the body of an old dwarf soldier.  She was found in a nearby valley, apparently slain by gnolls.  The consulate arranged to have her buried in Dunhaven.  Ceinwynn expresses an interest in attempting a speak with dead spell, and Ballo agrees to provide an official diplomatic request to the cemetery groundskeeper so that the party might be allowed to disinter her body.

Ceinwynn and Ivar then head to the library while the others sell loot and purchase new equipment.  After many hours spent poring over old tomes, they discover a reference to an "Oculum Infernae," a complex arcane device with some application to stargazing, but with a sinister purpose.  It is mentioned in conjunction with the name Skullshank in a history covering the same era in which Geilir Hjorrbjartur slew the Dread Watcher.

Before retiring, the party visits Leira Ivie at the Cathedral of Fiset, hoping to get her assistance in restoring the Wisdom points that the allip drained from Marc back at Castle Mistamere.  She agrees to prepare the spell after a suitable donation, but is clearly angling for a conversion.

26 Feb 516
Ivie restores Marc, despite the latter's obvious lack of enthusiasm for the Merciful One.  Ceinwynn also persuades Ivie to vault the Eye of the Night for them.  The party doesn't want to bring the gem into the lair of an enemy that is clearly searching for it.

The group then heads to the cemetery, and encounters the groundskeeper, who is stooped and impossibly hirsute.  He reads the note from Ballo and agrees to let them disinter the dwarf.  Ceinwynn casts speak with dead, but the dwarf, Silja, makes her Will save and reveals nothing.  Worse, the party must now wait a week to try querying her again.  On the way out, Marc taunts the groundskeeper about his appearance, and the latter grows agitated.

To prepare for the journey to Budhir, the group buys light horses and tack.  Arbrant also takes the opportunity to summon a toad familiar.

28 Feb 516
After two days' journey, the PCs arrive at the outpost.  They find it eerily quiet, but for the sound of a shovel breaking earth.  Peering around a stone building, they find a lone dwarf toiling in a long, deep trench.  He seems oblivious to their presence, and ignores their hails, until Marc asks him why he's digging.  He replies that these are his instructions.  When asked who gave the instructions, he tells the PCs to go visit "him" in the shrine.

Nestaron believes that the dwarf is under an enchantment, and Ceinwynn uses Spellcraft to confirm that it appears to be dominate person.  She casts dispel magic, breaking the ensorcelment.  The dwarf, Olaf, is disoriented at first, but soon explains that the Dread Watcher has indeed arisen.  The Sword of Conviction was removed from his corpse, and now he has enslaved most of the soldiers of Budhir.  Olaf realizes that he has ben digging their graves, in all likelihood.  Ivar, stressing his membership in Clan Samuelsson, instructs Olaf to deliver the news of the situation to the consulate.  He salutes and heads off on Ivar's horse.  The party climbs the outpost's watchtower, facing out over a wide valley, but sees nothing of interest.

The sanctuary entrance is located around a rocky outcropping.  Nestaron casts invisibility on Arbrant, who sneaks quietly into the entryway.  He hears skittering coming from the northwest, and then sees a trio of tentacled, baboon-like creatures (saltors) around a corner.  He slinks back and warns the party.

The PCs decide to rush in to surprise the saltors.  Arbrant, still invisible, fires a bolt hoping for a sneak attack, but narrowly misses.  Ceinwynn casts bless.  The lead saltor gallops in close to the PCs, and then lets loose a piercing screech that deals serious damage and stuns Ivar.  Nestaron's rat familiar is dropped and dying.  The other two saltors cast blur on themselves.

Marc charges and delivers a massive Power Attack on the lead saltor, nearly killing it outright.  Nestaron finishes it off with a magic missile.  Another saltor full attacks Ceinwynn, biting her for moderate damage, while the last one hastes himself.  During the melee, Marc finds himself adjacent to a statue that collapses and nearly crushes him to death.  Still, he, Ivar, and a critical hit from Arbrant's crossbow finish off the remaining enemies.

Ceinwynn heals the rat and the PCs, and they head northeast towards a large reflecting pool which contains another statue.  They approach to read the inscription, when three sickly gray creatures emerge from the pool, ready to strike!

XP awarded: 540 each for Arbrant, Ceinwynn, Ivar and Marc; 650 for Nestaron.

28 Feb 516, continued
The ghasts strike Ceinwynn and Marc, but their paralyzing touch fails, and their stench is similarly ineffective.  Ceinwynn counters by turning them, and they cower in the corner of the ten foot-deep pool.  Most of the party has no means of dealing with the submerged enemies, but Nestaron targets them with repeated magic missiles, killing one and seriously wounding the others.  When the turning effect wears off, the ghasts leap back out of the pool, only to be cut down by readied melee strikes from Marc and Ivar, and a disrupt undead from Arbrant.

The placard on the statue in the pool indicates that the figure is Geilir, and suggests that "silent reverence knows the way."   Noticing something at the bottom of the pool, Ceinwynn enters, using her freedom of movement domain power.  She gathers some treasure from a pair of dwarf skeletons (picked clean by the ghasts), and notices that there is a ledge ringing the pool.  Arbrant carefully makes his way around the ledge, searching the walls, and finds a secret door to the northeast, but doesn't see a way to open it.  Arbrant also searches the statue, and finds that it can rotate.  On Ceinwynn's suggestion, he turns the statue to face the secret door, and it swings open.

Ivar enters the secret chamber.  A ghostly figure rises up from a rotting corpse and accuses him of being an evildoer in league with Dread Watcher.  Ceinwynn convinces the ghost, named Jarngrimr, that the party's intentions are good, and that they are here to stop the villain, not aid him.  Jarngrimr is relieved, and explains that the ensorcelled dwarven guards of Budhir are violating and defiling the sanctuary even now.  He offers the party a trove of useful items, including a large quantity of holy water, and gives them a rough layout of the sanctuary.

The party heads back west past the sanctuary entrance.  They encounter a pair of doors to the north and south, neither of which was mentioned by Jarngrimr.  Arbrant listens at the south door, and hears some light footsteps.  The PCs open the door, ready for combat, but find a group of dwarven soldiers working on a mural that depicts Geilir in his battle against Dread Watcher.  The dwarves pay no attention to the party.  On closer examination, it seems that they are altering the mural, to depict Dread Watcher as the victor!  Not wanting to harm the dominated soldiers, Nestaron knocks them out with sleep spells, while Ivar wrestles one into submission.  The party hogties them all for the time being.

The door to the north has been barred and spiked shut from the outside.  Arbrant listens again, and hears something heavy and feral crunching bones and wood.  Combat seems a likely scenario here.  Arbrant carefully removes the impediments, and then the party bursts open the door.  There's a very hungry owlbear trapped in a chapel.  Ivar attacks from a distance with his spiked chain, but misses.  Arbrant also fails with a sneak attack.  The owlbear claws and bites Marc, and then drags him into the room.  To make matters worse, Marc triggers a Melf's acid arrow trap in the room's entrance, but the arrow misses him.  Ceinwynn rushes in to heal the fighter/sorcerer (getting hit by a recharged acid arrow trap), while the others focus on the owlbear.  Arbrant successfully sneak attacks it, while Ivar and Nestaron whittle down its hit points.  Arbrant finishes off the creature with another rapier strike.

Poking around the room, Ceinwynn finds a golden holy symbol of Gendwar Argrim (a waraxe carved with a dwarven rune) in the ruins of an altar, and pockets it for safekeeping.  Arbrant also finds a secret door in the north wall, leading to a dusty rough-hewn passage.  The PCs explore it.  About halfway through, they encounter some thick webs, and are surprised by a pair of massive spiders with razor-sharp legs (sword spiders).  The spiders try to impale Ivar and Arbrant with multiple leg attacks, but they miss.   The spiders then gain the initiative, and deal devastating full attacks on the PCs, dropping Arbrant, and seriously hurting Ivar and Ceinwynn.  The cleric casts prayer, and works on healing the injured, while the others fight off the enemy.  Ivar and Marc kill one (the latter using a Power Attack), and the other spider, already wounded by Nestaron, clambers up to the ceiling in fear.  The PCs bring it down with no further damage.  Ceinwynn resuscitates Arbrant.

There's a matching secret door at the end of the dusty passage.  Beyond is an ossuary, filled with bones and skulls, and an incongruous pair of rotting corpses in the center, seemingly held together by sinews.  Out of the corner of his eye, Arbrant notices that the corpses are twitching...

XP awarded: 1240 each for Arbrant, Ceinwynn, Ivar and Marc; 1350 for Nestaron.

28 Feb 516, continued
The sinewy undead, identified by Ceinwynn as kurges, rise and retreat, waiting to draw the PCs into the chamber.  Ivar charges and hits one with his spiked chain.  The scraps of flesh holding the kurge together give way, splitting the creature into multiple parts, surrounded by a cloud of stinging bits of bone and flesh.  Disturbingly, the separate body parts fight on, as if nothing had happened.  Ivar, Marc and Ceinwynn are all struck by the body parts and damaged by the stinging cloud, but they shake off the kurges' special attack (which Ceinwynn recalls is Constitution damage).  After a few rounds of battle, what's left of the kurges is destroyed.

Ceinwynn senses that the chamber has been defiled, and uses the wand of consecrate given by Jarngrimr to restore it.  Arbrant searches the ossuary shelves, and sees a glint of metal: it's a bastard sword, and clearly magical.  Ivar picks it up, and it silently conveys to him its appreciation for being rescued by a dwarven warrior.  It's the Sword of Conviction!  The sword indicates a desire to purge the sanctuary of the Dread Watcher, and the party readily agrees.

The chamber to the west is huge.  To the north is a dais, atop which is a throne, and on it, a figure which appears to be none other than Geilir Hjorrbjartur himself.  Surrounding the room are eight statues of great dwarven heroes.  Ivar goes in for a close inspection of Geilir, but realizes too late that it's a ruse.  It's the Dread Watcher, under the effect of a disguise self spell.  Dread Watcher reaches for Ivar with his withered hand, wounding him, but Ivar manages to avoid some more terrible effect.  The dwarf misses on a counterattack, and Dread Watcher again touches him, this time paralyzing him.  At the same time, six of the statues come to life, and lurch rapidly towards the PCs.

Ceinwynn uses another charge from the wand of consecrate to set up a turn undead attempt, and Nestaron has his rat familiar deliver an invisibility spell to the paralyzed Ivar, so that Dread Watcher cannot deliver a coup de grace.  Marc and Arbrant begin fighting the animated statues, the latter trying (and failing) to sneak attack with golem strike.

Dread Watcher casts miscast magic on Ceinwynn, potentially ruining her spellcasting.  She presents her holy symbol, but his innate turn resistance bolsters him enough to withstand even her most compelling turn attempt.  Marc shatters a statue with a Power Attack, and moves in to melee Dread Watcher.

Across the battlefield, Arbrant summons his giant praying mantis, and flanks a statue.  He uses golem strike to sneak attack it repeatedly, until it crumbles.  Nestaron reads Burgoyle's scroll of summon monster VI to bring a Large earth elemental into the fray.  Marc and the elemental pummel the undead enemy.  Things go from bad to worse for Dread Watcher, as Ceinwynn casts silence on the elemental, rendering Dread Watcher unable to cast any of his spells as long the elemental is within range.  Dread Watcher tries in vain to paralyze Marc and to escape the zone of silence, and is ultimately destroyed by a magic missile from Nestaron.  The party then turns its attention to the remaining animated statues, who are crushed with little ado.

Ivar's paralysis apparently being permanent, the party decides that they must rest.  Ceinwynn will prepare a remove paralysis spell in the morning.  During the night, a group of dwarven soldiers enters the chamber from the west.  They see Dread Watcher's corpse, and flee in terror to the south.  Marc awakens the party with a shout, and tackles the nearest dwarf.  Ceinwynn casts dispel magic, breaking the dominate person effect on all three dwarves.

Naturally, they are relieved to be free of the enchantment, and explain that they were in the adjoining ossuary, burying bodies at Dread Watcher's behest.  The party investigates, and after some digging, discovers the true body of Geilir.  They restore him to his place on the throne.  In the western ossuary, Arbrant also finds a small leather pouch containing a pulsing crystal dagger.   Ceinwynn recognizes it as a lich's phylactery -- Dread Watcher's.  Arbrant is eager to sell it until the others explain its purpose.  Marc smashes it unceremoniously.  The dwarves, unsure of what is still lurking in the sanctuary, decide to stay with the party overnight.  The Sword of Conviction seems to express a desire to be returned to the sanctuary and its guardians, so the soldiers take custody of it, and the whole group rests for the night.

1 Mar 516

The next morning, Ceinwynn restores Ivar's mobility.  The group heads south, and finds a door to an unexplored chamber to the west.  The dwarven soldiers explain that it's the shrine where Geilir slew Dread Watcher.  Arbrant hears some shuffling coming from within, and the PCs prepare.  Ivar opens the door, and sees a group of ten dwarves, all working assiduously to defile the sanctuary, and behind them, a hooded figure pinned to the back wall with a glowing bastard sword.  A wraith, supervising the dwarves' efforts, commands them to attack the party.  They rush forward to pummel Ivar, but Ceinwynn uses dispel magic to break the enchantment on four of them.  The freed dwarves then move to restrain the dominated ones, while the party fights the wraith.  Ceinwynn receives a chilling incorporeal touch that drains her Constitution, but the combined forces of the party are too much for the wraith.

A search of the altar reveals a secret compartment containing gems, a few flasks of unholy water, a lens of detection, and a darkskull.  The party (again, not necessarily including Arbrant) decides to destroy the evil item.  The hooded figure is revealed to be a disguised dwarf, but the sword does seem to be magical: a +1 undead bane bastard sword, according to Nestaron.  Ceinwynn uses the holy water provided by Jarngrimr to reconsecrate the shrine, and then uses her scroll of restoration to counter the effects of the wraith's touch...

XP awarded: 2760 each for Arbrant, Ceinwynn, Ivar and Marc; 3000 for Nestaron.

1 Mar 516, continued
The party departs the sanctuary.  As they leave, however, Ceinwynn is suddenly struck blind and deaf!  She realizes that she is still carrying (and inadvertently stealing) the holy symbol of Gendwar Argrim, found in the chamber with the owlbear.  She tries to return the symbol, but it does not restore her sight or hearing.  Fortunately, she has prepared remove blindness/deafness, and is able to counteract the blindness at least.

2 Mar 516
En route to Dunhaven, Ceinwynn restores her hearing.

3 Mar 516
Marc awakens with a high fever and sagging, droopy skin.  Ceinwynn uses a Heal check to determine that he is suffering from skinripple, a disease caused by the kurges' slam attacks.  She casts remove disease, but he has suffered some Constitution drain in the meantime.  She will restore Marc as soon as they get to Dunhaven and can get the necessary components.

Back in Dunhaven, Ivar reports to the Dwarven Consulate on the events at Budhir, while Ceinwynn retrieves the Eye of the Night from Leira Ivie.  The party parcels out their accumulated loot and re-equips.

3 Apr 516
After a month's worth of rest, recuperation, and shopping, the PCs receive a note at the Lizard's Boat.  It's from Gorka the harbormaster.  The H.M.S. Fontenot is back in port for a few days, before it heads up to Beaudin, and thence to Arabo, in Nyambe-tanda.  The party is naturally very eager to investigate.

They meet with Captain Aldrich West.  West was not aboard the Fontenot on the previous voyage to Arabo, but he has a pair of crewmen that were: James Cullen, the ship's navigator, and his brother Peter.  Asked about Thurston Creed over drinks at the nearest tavern, the Cullens confirm that he seemed to be a changed man after spending time in Nibomay, but they were unable to put their fingers on why.  Certainly, they had no idea that he was a lycanthrope.   Peter Cullen remarks that a few Nyambans who had made the journey from Arabo to Teravide are going to be joining them for the return trip: specifically, the ambassador from the Empire of Nibomay, and her assistants.  West informs the PCs that Ambassador Nombeko is staying as a guest at Tallet House, home of Dunhaven's mayor.

4 Apr 516
The next morning, the PCs pay a visit to Tallet House.  They're able to draw on their increasing fame as the saviors of Falcon's Hollow, Fairweather and Budhir to be permitted to speak to Nombeko.  The ambassador herself has no time for the party, though, and immediately foists them off on her assistant Nonyameko.  Fortunately, she is much more cooperative.  She recalls hearing Creed whisper in Kordo to someone in the cargo hold of the Fontenot, but does not know to whom.   And just recently, she encountered another situation where northerners seemed to have unexpected knowledge of things Nyamban.  She was at the Dancing Dryad (a local bar and gambling house) when she witnessed a fight between two men.  One of them had his shirt torn during the course of the fight, revealing a tattoo that looked exactly the symbol for Na/inga the Warrior Queen, a fiendish orisha (divine spirit) of Nyambe-tanda.  Nonyameko explains that Na/inga is revered especially by shapechangers and by the mbUi, the gnolls of her land.  She doesn't know the man's name or what they were fighting about, and suggests that the PCs ask at the Dryad.

The PCs take her advice and head to the bar that evening.  Nestaron and Arbrant grease a few palms and are put in touch with Sirkka, a half-elf barmaid, who recalls the incident.  She explains that the man in question is none other than Edward Lassiter, the crass young scion of the notorious Lassiter family here in town.  Lassiter is here tonight, as he is most nights, playing poker in a private room.  Realizing they have little hope of insinuating themselves into the game, Nestaron and Ivar decide to take a more indirect approach, and buy Lassiter some drinks when he takes a break from the table.  Ivar tries to subtly indicate that he knows all about the cult of Na/inga from Thurston Creed, and that he wants to get involved.  Lassiter, by now a little drunk, picks up the bait, and reveals what he knows.  The cult consists of maybe twenty or so individuals, and they meet at the Lilybrook Orphanage.  There, a wizard named Katherine has been preparing a ritual which will give the cults' adherents shapechanging powers.  Lassiter reports that thus far, this power seems to have eluded him, but he is confident that with greater focus and more sacrifice, it will happen.  The ritual is apparently called "kadtanach," or so he claims.  The next meeting is to happen in two nights' time.  Lassiter agrees to sponsor the PCs at the Orphanage, to get them initiated into the cult.

5 Apr 516
In the morning, Ceinwynn meets with Leira Ivie and reveals some information about the cult threat.  Ivie is certain that she has been losing parishioners to the cult, and agrees to keep a watchful eye and assist the PCs as she can in their attempt to dismantle it.

There is some sort of commotion at the town gates.  Streams of battered, bedraggled refugees enter the town with tales of destruction.  An enormous scaled creature, perhaps one hundred feet high with howdahs on its back and support from gnoll archers, has devastated the village of Elston and the nearby countryside, and is moving on to new targets.  The party decides they must investigate quickly.  They ride out from Dunhaven, and encounter more refugees, along with a decimated contingent of Sacred Swords of Robitaille.  One of the Sacred Swords, Valentine Baxter, reports to the PCs that the huge creature, apparently called a kadtanach (!), has sacked Fort Chance as well.  He and his comrades had attempted several frontal assaults against the creature, but were unable to hurt it.  Worse, several of them, including their general, were petrified by some unknown force.  He suggests to the PCs that if they want to try to defeat this creature, they should try to somehow climb aboard, perhaps when the creature is sleeping or eating, overwhelm the gnolls, and take control of the kadtanach.  The PCs debate their next move...

XP awarded: 460 for Ivar; 210 each for Arbrant and Ceinwynn; 240 each for Marc and Nestaron.

5 Apr 516, continued
They decide to investigate the doings at Fort Chance.   A few hours later, they arrive to find it a smoking, smashed ruin.  Rooting around the wreckage, oblivious to the party's presence, is a group of bugbears.  The PCs decide to attack, capture, and interrogate them.  Nestaron begins with a sleep spell that fails to affect any of the bugbears but does alert them.  Marc charges in to attack, and is seriously wounded by their arrows.  When he gets into melee range, he is cut down with a Power Attack.  Arbrant hits one with an arrow, and Nestaron fireballs the bunch, seriously wounding them.  By now, Ivar has gotten into range, and kills one with his spiked chain, while Ceinwynn heals Marc.  Another bugbear tries and fails to sunder Ivar's weapon, and is then killed by the dwarf.  The remaining two surrender.

They explain that they're simply looting in the wake of the kadtanach, and have nothing to do with the gnolls.  They describe the creature in a bit more detail, and explain that it's accompanied by an armored caravan filled with archers, along with a platoon of gnoll cavaliers.

Rather than take on the kadtanach, the party decides to return to Dunhaven to decapitate the Na/inga cult and learn more.  They find the town in a panic, with guards manning the walls and digging trenches, citizens hoarding food and supplies, and the streets mostly deserted.  After a brief stop at the Cathedral of Fiset, the party heads to the Lilybrook Orphanage.  They knock on the front door, and are greeted by Audrey Lilybrook, a stern, elderly woman.  Nestaron, joined by Ceinwynn -- who introduces herself as a Fisetan cleric -- tell Audrey that the party is here to offer their help.  They would imagine there will soon be an influx of new orphans arriving in Dunhaven.  The PCs could act as guards for the orphanage, and help distribute food, clothing, and the like.  Lilybrook thanks them, but says that they'll do just fine, and declines their offer (except for the platinum Nestaron gives her).  Arbrant can tell she has something to hide, and decides to barge past her into the building.  She responds by aiming a scorching ray at the rogue that misses badly, and then calls for help.

Ivar and Ceinwynn both try and fail to grapple her (Ivar takes a hit from her cold iron dagger), but Nestaron successfully intimidates her into standing down.  She confesses to being part of the cult of the Warrior Queen, and with some prodding, admits that Lusala is at the orphanage, in the basement.  She argues that she has no idea about the giant creature terrorizing the countryside.  Just then, more cultists arrive, armed with daggers.  The party tells them to simply walk away, but they refuse.  They use command spells to get Marc, Ivar and Arbrant to fall to the ground, and another attacks Ivar with a dagger.  Ivar kills the cultist in melee with him, and then Nestaron places a fireball among the remaining group which incinerates the lot of them.  Lilybrook is again cowed, and agrees to lead the PCs to the basement.

She shows them a secret door behind a bookcase which she says will lead to the ritual chamber and Lusala.  There's also a closet door which she is reluctant to open.  The party forces her to, and discovers a horror inside: three malnourished and beaten children, held with leg irons and crammed into a tiny chamber.  The PCs immediately kill Audrey in disgust, and free the children.  Ceinwynn heals them and provides them with food, and instructs them to go to Leira Ivie at the Cathedral.  She asks them to ask Ivie for help in rescuing the other children.  They flee, and the PCs open the secret door.

Ivar is immediately surprised and sneak attacked by a gaunt creature with black skin, covered in a red slime (a babau demon).  Arbrant tumbles into flanking position and strikes back with a sneak attack of his own.  He deals solid damage, about half of which is erased by damage reduction, and also finds that the slime corrodes his rapier.  The babau lashes back with a claw and then retreats into the ritual chamber, stepping through some sort of magic circle with a painted unholy symbol of Na/inga.  Ivar and Marc pursue, damaging the demon, but suffering damage to their own weapons in return.  Ivar also steps on the unholy symbol, and feels a tingle, but is unharmed.  Nestaron hits the babau with magic missiles, penetrating its spell resistance and severely wounding it.  It tries to summon another babau for assistance, but fails.  It's soon surrounded, and tries twice to escape with greater teleport.  Both times, it is struck by attacks of opportunity, the first time ruining the spell, the second time killing it.

A search of the ritual area uncovers a few valuable items, including a strange wooden mask and a hand drum, a painted ostrich egg containing a magical substance, and several scrolls.  The scrolls are written in Gnoll.  Ivar explains that they detail the kadtanach summoning ritual, as well as means of controlling the creature: something called Davnak's helm.  If the helm is destroyed or the kadtanach is uncontrolled for an extended period of time, the creature will eventually break free and return to its plane of origin.

The PCs prepare for battle with Lusala...

XP awarded: 1698 each for Arbrant, Ceinwynn and Ivar; 1980 each for Marc and Nestaron.

5 Apr 516, continued
Arbrant searches the area for secret passages, when he and the team hear a muttering coming from behind a nearby door.  They gird for battle and open the door to find a tall, sinister-looking man with loose-fitting Nyamban clothes, accompanied by a hyena.  The man finishes chanting just as the PCs arrive.  A wyrmling red dragon suddenly appears, interposing itself between the two sides.

Ivar rushes in to attack the dragon, while Marc maneuvers past to get to the man, who can only be Lusala, of course.  The hyena attacks Ceinwynn but misses, and is then flanked by Arbrant and dropped with a sneak attack.  Ceinwynn casts prayer, while the dragon claws and bites Ivar.  Lusala casts another spell (a summoning spell of some kind, but definitely unfamiliar to the party), and Marc hears a strange buzzing sound.  Suddenly, he feels (but does not see) something burrowing into his flesh, causing severe Constitution damage.  Nestaron begins casting enlarge person on Ivar.

Arbrant summons his giant praying mantis to grapple Lusala, but the latter seems to have a freedom of movement effect on him, and slips away easily.  Ivar continues battling the dragon, and does substantial damage to it.  Ceinwynn casts silence on Marc, who's in melee range with Lusala.  The enemy is prepared, however; he has a metamagic rod, and casts a silent hold person on Marc, paralyzing him.  The invisible creature (a lobir) continues burrowing into Marc's body, while the dragon breathes on Marc, the mantis, and Lusala, doing trivial damage to the first two, and seemingly none at all to Lusala.

Nestaron completes his enlarge person spell, and launches magic missiles at Lusala.  Ivar drops the dragon with a full attack, and Ceinwynn casts remove paralysis on Marc.  Needing his damage reduction to be active, Lusala assumes hybrid form, which makes him look very much like a gnoll.  Interestingly, Ivar's spiked chain coated with silversheen seems no more effective against Lusala than any other weapon.  Nyamban lycanthropes are clearly different from northern ones.

Marc retreats to the back of the melee, where Ceinwynn is waiting with a restoration spell.  Lusala, by now substantially wounded, is finally free of the silence effect, but is still in hybrid form, and therefore unable to cast a badly-needed cure critical wounds even with his metamagic rod.  He decides instead to gamble, and casts an area dispel magic, which succeeds in getting rid of the mantis but fails to remove the enlarge person effect on Ivar, and also inadvertently dismisses the lobir invading Marc.  He tries to flee to the north, but is brought down by an attack of opportunity.  The party watches him bleed to death.

The room they're in is a torture chamber, and it has clearly seen recent use.  When Arbrant lifts up a strange wicker basket, he's attacked by a Tiny monstrous scorpion.  He and Ivar squash the thing without much ado.  A close examination of the basket reveals that it's designed to fit around a victim's head.

A search of Lusala's corpse reveals the aforementioned metamagic rod, around which is wrapped a ring.  Nestaron uses his artificer's monocle to determine that it's a ring of the darkhidden, which grants the wearer invisibility to darkvision.  More interestingly, though, the ring seems to be intelligent.  It's curious about Nestaron, but does not seem hostile.  When he separates the ring from the rod, the intelligence suddenly vanishes, and the ring shrinks such that it could probably only fit on an eyebrow.  Nestaron restores the ring-rod combination for future study.

Lusala has another item of note.  It's a small pouch, containing a few feathers, bits of bone, and rocks.  The artificer's monocle suggests that it's a spell completion item, akin to a scroll, of endure elements.  The format is certainly mysterious, however.

Ceinwynn opens a door to the north, but finds that it's trapped with whirring strands of razor mesh.  Arbrant disables the trap (just barely), and the party proceeds in.  This is Lusala's chamber, which he has kept rather spare and uninteresting, but for two items: an ivory headrest, and a map of the Dunstraths.  The map shows arrows heading south from the Ulfsberg Mountains to and through Elston, Ft. Chance, and Gadsworth, which the party recognizes as targets of the kadtanach.  There's also a dotted line from Gadsworth to Dunhaven.

The PCs leave the basement to find a group of Fisetans leading the remaining children out of the orphanage.  After conferring briefly with Leira Ivie, the party decides they are too spent to take on the kadtanach, and rest for the night.

6 Apr 516
At dawn, the PCs ride out from Dunhaven towards Gadsworth.  By midday they find a set of enormous tracks, along with hoofprints and wagon wheel ruts.  Ceinwynn tracks them northeast for several more hours until they reach Spender's Pass, a passage through a spur in the Ulfsbergs.  There, the kadtanach tracks suddenly vanish, while the wagon tracks head southeast, around the spur.  After some debate, the party decides to follow the wagon, rather than proceed through the pass.  Four miles later, they realize the tracks double up and backtrack, presumably as a diversion.  They head through the pass after all, towards Lake Walpole.  As they near its shores, Arbrant spies a thin trail of smoke to the northeast ahead of them.  They spur their horses on until they finally get sight of the creature, only two miles outside of Gadsworth.  It's seemingly reptilian in nature, but nightmarishly, preposterously huge, about 100 feet tall and perhaps three times as long including its tail, with multiple enormous howdahs on its back.  Above it circles a large winged creature.

The PCs belatedly realize they have no plan for getting aboard the creature, so they cobble one together quickly.  Nestaron casts invisibility on the whole group, and they rush towards the lumbering creature on foot.  Ceinwynn then casts fly on Ivar, who grabs Marc and heads up to the rear right flank of the creature, with the intention of dropping Marc off on a nearby platform and returning for the others.  As they approach, though, the winged creature (which Marc recognizes as an yrthak, with a powerful sonic attack) somehow notices the pair, and swoops down toward them...

XP awarded: 1452 each for Arbrant, Ceinwynn, Ivar and Marc; 1680 for Nestaron.

6 Apr 516, continued
Ivar and Marc land on an open platform at the rear of the creature, near a winch with a transport cage used for ferrying troops up and down.  Three gnolls stand guard here.  Ivar drops off Marc, quickly kills one of the gnolls with his spiked chain, and cleaves into another, killing him as well.  Marc kills the third.  In so doing, they break their invisibility, and trigger an alarm: a magic mouth opens up and growls loudly, alerting gnolls on a nearby ballista platform and in various howdahs.

The yrthak dives and attacks Ivar with its sonic lance, dealing substantial damage.  Down on the ground, Ceinwynn grabs Nestaron and Arbrant, and uses dimension door to transport quickly up to the platform.  More gnolls begin rushing over from the port side of the kadtanach, firing arrows.  Ivar counterattacks the yrthak, who bites Marc before flying off to set up another strafing run.  Nestaron fireballs the ballista platform, killing many gnolls, and also damages what is revealed to be an animated ballista.  Arbrant sneak attacks and kills a gnoll.

An axe-wielding gnoll appears behind the party, having climbed up from a basket hanging off the creature's right flank, while many more enemies rain arrows from the windows and crow's nests of adjacent howdahs.  Nestaron finds cover and casts protection from arrows on himself to avoid certain doom.  Ivar, still flying, charges and strikes the yrthak.  Ceinwynn scrambles up a ladder leading to the ballista platform, and triggers a prismatic mist trap.  She saves against the slow effect.  More enemies appear: a trio of gargoyles take off from a tall howdah on the kadtanach's left flank and land on the base platform, clawing and biting Marc.

The yrthak makes another sonic lance attack on Ivar, but the dwarf returns the blow and nearly kills him.  Nestaron finishes off the creature with magic missiles.  Ceinwynn begins smashing the animated ballista (which doesn't seem to be able to fire bolts by itself), while Marc and Arbrant flank the largest gargoyle and bring him down quickly with a devastating combination of Power Attacks and sneak attacks.  Ivar kills a second gargoyle.

A dozen gnoll archers and warriors continue to target the PCs, mostly in vain.  Nestaron drops another fireball in the window of a nearby howdah, instantly killing an entire contingent.  Ceinwynn continues to work on the animated ballista, while Marc and Arbrant dispatch the remaining gargoyle and more gnolls.

Yet another opponent suddenly appears: a humanoid hound, whose features somehow combine divine radiance and malevolence simultaneously.  Ivar rejoins the group and strikes the creature (a hound archon, but clearly quite evil).  The archon simply ignores most of the damage.  Arbrant summons his giant praying mantis to block the enemy's path to the vulnerable Nestaron.  The archon then attacks and drops Marc with a blow from his spiked chain.  Ivar tries to disarm the creature, but fails.  Arbrant courageously flanks and sneak attacks the deadly archon, and the latter teleports away to safety.  Meanwhile, Nestaron finally destroys the ballista with a magic missile, and Ceinwynn jumps down off the platform to resuscitate Marc.  Ivar flies up to a howdah and slaughters a few of the gnoll archers.

The archon returns once again, and is struck several times by the PCs before teleporting away.  The party and mantis focus on the remaining gnolls.  Then the archon returns yet again, this time having magically healed.  After being struck by Marc, he hits Ivar twice with his spiked chain, dealing the dwarf a negative level, and then bites him.  Ivar is down and bleeding out.  A combined assault from Marc, Arbrant and Nestaron finally brings down the archon.  Ceinwynn tends to Ivar, while gnoll archers kill the summoned mantis.  More gnolls await the PCs atop the kadtanach...

XP awarded: 3467 each.

6 Apr 516, continued
Arbrant, Nestaron and Ivar finish off the stray gnoll archers in the nearby howdahs.  A flying Ivar then ferries the group into the windowed deck of the large, central howdah.  They head down a ladder to the next deck, and find a human woman trapped in a cage.  She expresses great relief that she's been rescued, but her act is unconvincing to Nestaron and Marc.  Nestaron notices a spell component pouch tucked among her robes, and asks her a few probing questions.  The woman (whom Ceinwynn has correctly guessed is Katherine Silas, the wizard spoken of by Edward Lassiter) realizes the jig is up, and begins planning her escape.  In response, Ceinwynn smashes the padlock on her cage with her adamantine mace, sundering it.  Marc rushes in and grapples Silas, and Arbrant sneak attacks her with his sap, nearly knocking her unconscious.  She quickly surrenders.

Nestaron intimidates her, and she talks: the gnoll pilot wearing Davnak's helm is found in a howdah at the creature's yoke, under the catapult platform.  Silas also confirms the information gleaned from the scrolls found in the basement of the Lilybrook Orphanage: when the kadtanach is left uncontrolled for thirty minutes, it will begin to free itself from its harness and captivity.  Some hours later, it should return to its own dimension.  She warns the PCs about a basilisk located in the right ear basket, and a monstrous spider in the left.  Asked about the purpose of the kadtanach's assault, she explains that it was designed to smash all resistance in the Dunstraths, so that Lusala's gnoll armies could conquer the land unopposed.  The PCs bind her tightly, and then knock her out.  They find a trove of coins and loot under a secret trapdoor.

A narrow plank connects this howdah to one between the creature's shoulder blades, where the catapult platform is located.  Arbrant uses a scroll of invisibility and, balancing carefully on the plank, sneaks into the adjacent howdah.  The gnolls in that howdah hear him approaching.  Still, he has the initiative, and attempts a sneak attack, but fails, and retreats back to the central howdah as gnoll reinforcements arrive.  Ivar flies over and begins dispatching enemies, while Ceinwynn uses her greater skill shard to ensure she doesn't fall off the plank.  The gnolls are hopelessly overmatched and defeated.

With the combat ended, Ivar investigates the catapult platform, but triggers another prismatic mist trap.  Mostly unharmed, he then flies below the platform and spies the yoke howdah.  There are no guards there -- at least none visible -- and only one open window, facing the kadtanach's head.  He grabs Ceinwynn and the two fly in.  They notice a trapdoor leading down; when Ivar moves to retrieve the rest of the party, the ceiling crashes open, and four greatsword-wielding gnolls attack.  Ceinwynn repeatedly targets the gnolls with her wand of hold person to no avail, but in the meantime Ivar has cut the gnolls down one by one.  Ivar ferries the remaining PCs over.

Arbrant searches the trapdoor carefully, and determines that it's coated with an unknown substance.  When Ivar tries to wipe it off with a piece of cloth, the cloth sticks fast.  The adhesive trap thus defeated, Ivar opens the door, and investigates below.  Alone in a chamber with an azure symbol on the floor is a gnoll wearing a bone helmet.  The gnoll is either oblivious to Ivar's presence or unable to engage him, and so Ivar simply slays him, and grabs the helmet.  Ceinwynn attempts to put on the helmet but is overcome with vertigo, so Nestaron tries instead and manages to hold on.  He directs the kadtanach to reverse course, away from Gadsworth, and then removes the helmet for the time being.

The PCs decide to quickly clean up any remaining gnolls and search for loot before freeing the kadtanach for good.  Ivar, having drunk from Silas's potion of fly, again ferries the PCs, this time to the unstable head howdah.  En route, they notice a reptilian avian creature fly off from the wooden pod on the creatures rear left flank; presumably the creature knows what awaits if it remains behind.  The party slays the gnolls in the head howdah, liberating a nifty floodlight in the process, and moves on to slaughter a gnoll chef and his assistant in one of the rear towers.  Two howdahs remain completely unexplored, but neither seems to have an entrance...

XP awarded: 2015 each for Arbrant, Marc, and Nestaron; 2280 for Ivar; 2365 for Ceinwynn.

6 Apr 516, continued
Nestaron casts his last fly spell on Marc, and the pair float up to the howdah on the creature's front left flank, where the gargoyles had been seen roosting.  They land atop the crow's nest, but find no means of entering.  Marc flies down part way and locates several shuttered windows around the howdah.  He smashes through one, and finds a chamber seemingly on fire, but in reality just sprinkled liberally with continual flames.  A locked trapdoor leads to a loot-filled chamber below.  Marc and Nestaron gather the items, and move on to the front starboard howdah.

Atop that howdah, Marc triggers yet another prismatic mist trap, but neither he nor Nestaron is harmed.  The pair force their way in, and find a bedroom filled with finery.  The level below seems to be a dingy gnoll barracks, but Nestaron realizes that it's an illusion.  In reality, it's Katherine Silas's study, as evidenced by the magic mouth in her voice placed upon a spellbook.  Arbrant is brought aboard to search for traps, but finds nothing.  Nestaron grabs the spellbook, and saves against a curse placed upon it.

After much discussion, towards the end of which the kadtanach seems to be shaking free of its control, the group decides to quit the creature at last.  Nestaron dons Davnak's helm, and gives a final order to the kadtanach to continue marching southwest away from Gadsworth.  The party gathers up all the treasure they can, storing much in Silas's bag of holding and using her silk hammock to carry a huge quantity of silver and copper which they plan to donate to the refugees at Dunhaven.  They disembark and retrieve their mounts.  After a half-hour, the kadtanach regains control of its will, and begins scraping against a nearby cliffside to shake off the enormous saddle complex.  It eventually succeeds, killing the few remaining gnolls located in the creature's ear baskets, as well as the basilisk and monstrous spider caged therein.

The PCs head to Gadsworth, and receive an ecstatic heroes' welcome, as the Sacred Swords, who mopped up the gnoll caravan that accompanied the kadtanach, rode ahead and heralded the party's arrival.  A night of feasting and celebration follows.  Despite the townsfolk's entreaties to stay awhile longer, the PCs decide to head back to Dunhaven the next morning.  They do so, with a wagon laden with their loot.

7 Apr 516
While camped the next evening, a storm strikes, and the PCs are startled to find an elf poisoning their rations and water.  The would-be assassin flees to Spender Pass.  The party tracks him all the way to a cliff face, into which a strange wooden door has been set.  The door is quartered along the diagonals, with metal handles set in each quarter.  The hinges suggest that the four parts would open outwards, like a flower.  There's also a human face inscribed in the door, where the segments meet.

When Arbrant goes to inspect the door, it suddenly comes to life, and delivers a breath weapon of wooden shards that deals severe damage to Marc and nearly kills Nestaron.  The party gains the initiative against the construct (a warding visage), and smashes it to pieces before it can breathe again.

Beyond the door is a polished stone complex, with small metal handles inset every five feet in the walls, floor and ceiling.  Ivar turns one such handle near the shattered door, and triggers a trap.  Insanity mist billows forth, dealing him Wisdom damage.  A minute later, he fails another save, and drops in a fevered coma.  Fortunately, Ceinwynn has a restoration spell prepared, and is able to revive him.

The group moves north into a central hub; there are passages to the north, west and east, each ending in a door.  Strange whining sounds and hazy blue flashes come from the corridors.  Nestaron uses mage hand to try to turn more of the handles, but to no avail.   Ivar heads down the east corridor and is suddenly flanked by a pair of creatures which bite at him.  Three more appear in the other corridors.  Nestaron identifies them as ethereal marauders, magical beasts that can shift back forth from the Ethereal Plane.  Ivar wounds one of his opponents, and Arbrant flanks another and sneak attacks, killing it.  Two of the remaining creatures vanish.  While the PCs focus on the marauders still on the Material Plane, the other two suddenly reappear, flanking the very vulnerable Nestaron, and they deliver heavy damage.  Arbrant sneak attacks and kills one, while Marc, Ceinwynn and Ivar battle the other two.  Nestaron becomes invisible and flees the scene.  Arbrant casts true strike, and then, on his next turn, sneak attacks and slaughters the final marauder.

At the end of the eastern corridor is a door with four rings set in its middle.  Arbrant searches it carefully, but finds nothing, so the group enters.  This is evidently a gallery of some kind; many shelves line the walls, all displaying finely-crafted items.  Arbrant notices something amiss with some of the shelves, though.  Just in time, he realizes that they're alive!  They're part of a mimic, and a huge one.  Arbrant strikes, hoping for a sneak attack, but misses.  The mimic's attack does likewise.  Ceinwynn then bashes it with her mace, but discovers that her weapon is now held fast by the creature's uncanny adhesive.  Ivar deals a negative level to the mimic with his +1 stygian spiked chain, but loses his weapon as well.  Nestaron attacks with magic missiles, while Marc throws a hand axe.  The mimic swings at Ivar twice and misses both times.  Ivar loses another weapon to the creature, before Marc, Arbrant and Nestaron finish it off, with no real harm done.  Moments later, the adhesive dissolves.  The PCs gather a prodigious quantity of loot, and drag it out to the wagon waiting outside the complex...

XP awarded: 1840 each for Arbrant, Ceinwynn, Ivar and Marc; 2380 for Nestaron.

6 Apr 516, continued
They re-enter the dungeon, and head down the western corridor.  At the end is another door with four rings.  Like the eastern door, each ring has a decorative pearl set in it.  Arbrant studies them and the door very carefully, and determines there's a trap.  With deft hands, he successfully disables it.

The room beyond contains numerous displays of masterwork and exotic weapons, including several silvered and cold iron weapons, and some adamantine arrows.  When Ivar goes to pick one up, he feels something moving nearby, and then a greatsword suddenly rises up to attack him!  Ceinwynn tries to sunder the sword, but fails.  The party soon realizes that the sword is not animated; rather, there's something invisible wielding it.  After weaving through the chamber and striking Nestaron, the invisible creature drops the sword, giving the PCs no obvious target.  The PCs guess as to its likely location, and manage to connect on a few attempts.  It moves again, dealing a critical hit to Marc.  Arbrant's keen hearing picks up its movements, however, and he is able to direct the others.  Ivar and Marc hack at it, and it dissipates into nothingness.   The PCs gather up the weapons and load most of them them into their cart.

Back at the central hub, they try the north corridor next.  There's a door, cut along the diagonal with no handles or knob, and adjacent to it, a panel with many strange symbols on the buttons.  Confirming the obvious, Nestaron's open/close spell does not open the door; they'll need to use the panel.  Arbrant examines it, and finds a magical trap of some kind.  The PCs will have to be careful about how they manipulate the panel.  They look at it closely, and then Nestaron conjures an unseen servant to push the buttons while the PCs back down the hall, a safe distance away.  The servant's first attempt is clearly wrong, as it triggers a burning hands trap, which destroys the servant.  Nestaron conjures another one.  Noticing that that one symbol is repeated four times on the panel, the PCs instruct the servant to press those.  The door opens.

Behind it is another door with yet more symbols.  The unseen servant implements the party's guess.  They're wrong.  A ray of stupidity shoots out from the panel, but misses Ivar badly.  Their next guess is the correct one: there are two pairs of symbols that must be pressed simultaneously.

A third door greets them.  The PCs immediately divine the pattern: all symbols are in pairs, except for a solo and a trio.  Alas, there's yet another door behind it, and none of the symbols repeat.  The PCs guess incorrectly that they must press the buttons that they had not already pressed in the previous panels.  The first door closes abruptly, leaving the fate of the unseen servant unknown.  They re-enter the correct code for that door, and find the entire area within filled with Evard's black tentacles.  The tentacles disappear after a few seconds, and the PCs examine the panel again.  They try a few more combinations, to no avail, but without triggering a trap.  At last, Arbrant studies the panel very closely, and determines that the corner buttons are slightly more worn than the others.  He presses them, and the door opens.

There's a huge chamber beyond.  The preserved remains of dozens of dangerous creatures are displayed here, including a bulette, chimera, and a remorhaz.  In the northwest corner, it appears that a section of floor is missing.  Arbrant notices that one of the nearby figures, a stitched-together humanoid, is not mounted like the others.  He quickly casts golem strike and fires an arrow.  It's a sneak attack against what Nestaron identifies as a flesh golem.  The other PCs leap to action.  Ivar and Marc move into melee, and discover that their weapons have trouble penetrating the monster's tough skin.   Ceinwynn casts bless.  Nestaron remembers a bit of lore that golems are immune to magic, and realizes that most of his skills will be useless in this fight.  He takes to the air to avoid melee.

The golem slams Marc and Ivar for heavy damage, so Ceinwynn steps up to provide healing.  Another golem reveals itself near Arbrant, and clubs him soundly.  The rogue then performs an accelerated tumble to flank the first golem, and sneak attacks again with golem strike.  Ivar, Marc, and Arbrant surround the enemy, striking repeatedly, but never quite finding the right material to bypass its damage reduction.  The golem gets in a few more crushing hits before it is destroyed.  In the meantime, a third golem has appeared.   Nestaron tries encasing it in a wall of ice.  It immediately escapes from the frozen hemisphere, but is quickly surrounded by the other PCs and brought down.

Nestaron tries a wall of ice on the remaining golem, but it disrupts the wall even before it forms.  Ceinwynn then strikes it with her adamantine mace, and finds that none of the damage is reduced.   Taking this cue, Arbrant fires adamantine arrows taken from the weapons display and wounds the golem.  The PCs finally destroy it.

They investigate the missing floor section in the northwest corner.   There's a platform about forty feet below, and a console with a lever in the down position.  It seems to be a lift.  The PCs are too badly wounded to investigate, though, and leave the complex to rest for the night.

7 Apr 516
They re-enter the next morning.  Ceinwynn calls for the lift, which arrives very slowly and noisily.  They come aboard and take it downstairs.

It's another large chamber, though not quite as big as the one above.  In the center of the floor is a large grating, into which is trickling a dark red fluid.  To the northeast is a large machine of some kind, with vats containing sickly-looking liquids.  Using his artificer's monocle, Nestaron determines that the liquids are essentially magic potions: specifically, a paralytic agent, and a preservative, like the gentle repose spell.  Tubes connect the vats to a humanoid figure, covered with a sheet, lying on a nearby table.  Ivar approaches and throws off the sheet.  It's the elf that poisoned the party's food!  He's naked and unarmed.  Ceinwynn makes a Heal check and carefully removes the tubing from the elf.  He is breathing and has a pulse, but is unconscious.  Arbrant comes in for a closer look, and realizes that the elf is faking unconsciousness.  Just as the elf reaches for a nearby scalpel, Arbrant draws his rapier and jabs into the elf's neck, warning him to stand down.  The elf complies for the moment.  Nestaron then tries to intimidate him into talking, but is unsuccessful.  As the party debates whether to kill him now or later, the elf reaches again for the scalpel.  Arbrant and Marc kill him before he has a chance.

Nestaron studies the huge contraption more closely, and surmises that it is used for creating the taxidermic displays above.  The PCs debate the meaning of this revelation: was the elf being punished by his liege for his failure to assassinate the party?  Or was he just a random victim of whomever or whatever lairs here?

After some speculation, they move on to examine the grate.  Nestaron peers below and sees something shiny; detect magic confirms that it's a magic ring.  Ivar starts to move the grate aside, when a massive black ooze pushes its way up!...

XP awarded: 2340 each for Arbrant, Ceinwynn, Ivar and Marc; 2590 for Nestaron.

7 Apr 516, continued
The ooze, a black pudding, begins flowing up through the drain.  Arbrant fires an arrow at it, and the creature splits in half, each half acting independently.  Ceinwynn tries bashing one of them with her mace, hoping that bludgeoning weapons don't have the same effect.  She has guessed correctly, and the pudding takes damage.  However, her mace is destroyed by the acid.  The pudding then lashes at Ceinwynn, slamming her and dealing acid damage.  She avoids being grappled thanks to her freedom of movement ability.  Her full plate armor manages to survive as well.

Ivar bashes the same pudding-half with the metal grate.  He damages it severely, but loses the grate in the process.  Nestaron then drops a fireball behind the two oozes.  One is destroyed, and the other badly wounded.  Marc bashes the remaining one with the flat part of his throwing axe (not wanting to risk his magic flail), and Ivar power attacks with a morningstar, killing it.  The PCs retrieve the ring from the drain, which Nestaron identifies as a ring of four winds.  Arbrant puts it on.

The group heads south down a corridor lined with gruesome tapestries and trophies.  Around a bend and through an archway, they spy a smallish insectoid-looking creature with four arms, standing near a huge panel with four buttons.  Ceinwynn has the initiative and rushes in.  The creature, a xill, pushes a button which drops a portcullis in the archway, splitting the party and nearly impaling Ivar.  He then turns and fires an arrow at Ceinwynn with deadly accuracy.  Arbrant responds by firing an arrow of his own, not at the xill, but at the button.  He hits it, and the portcullis raises again.  Nestaron tries blocking the other buttons with a wall of ice, but the xill disrupts the wall before it forms.

Ivar and Marc enter the chamber, and a pair of ethereal marauders materialize to bite them.  Ivar wounds one of them as it maneuvers around to flank him.  Ceinwynn tries to halt the xill with hold person, but the spell is completely ineffective.  The xill responds with a full attack from its longbow and short swords.   Arbrant flanks and sneak attacks an ethereal marauder, killing it.   Nestaron launches a magic missile, but fails to penetrate the xill's spell resistance.  Marc focuses on the remaining ethereal marauder while Ivar steps up and deals heavy damage to the xill.  The xill presses another button, opening a pair of pit traps, one of which is directly beneath Ceinwynn.  She leaps to safety just in time.   Ivar finishes off the xill before it can press any more buttons.  The rest of the PCs dispatch the remaining ethereal marauder after it vanishes and reappears.

They gather the xill's loot, and find a bone scroll case.  In it is a weathered map, with notes written in a language unfamiliar to Ceinwynn.  She uses comprehend languages and discovers that it shows the location of the Duverger Crystal Mine, in the great steppe to the southwest of the Dunstraths.  The PCs are curious about the mine, and about the unpushed buttons.  They move a safe distance away, and Nestaron conjures an unseen servant to push the buttons and see what happens.  One controls a net released from the ceiling; the other, spikes which emerge from the north and south walls.  On their way out of the complex, Nestaron discovers a secret door, behind which the elf assassin's gear is stashed.  They gather it, head back upstairs, and leave for Dunhaven.

9 Apr 516
On the road back, the party encounters a group of merchants and travelers who recognize them.  They speed ahead of the PCs to town.

As the party approaches Dunhaven, a delegation rides out to greet them.  All of the town councillors are there, dressed in finery, led by Errol Tallet, the mayor.  He bows low to them, thanks them for saving Dunhaven and all of the Dunstraths, and accompanies them to Town Hall where he presents them with garlands and announces a three-day feast in their honor.  At the feast, Ansgar Ballo, the dwarven consul, pulls Ivar aside and lets him know that he is truly a member of Clan Samuelsson.  Ivar's name will be inscribed on the Wall of Heroes back in Thelvenheim.

26 Apr 516
The PCs have rested and recuperated for two weeks, when they are approached by their old colleague Dormandian.  The dwarf invites them for a drink, not surprisingly.  He explains that he has been in contact with an old drinking companion from Thelvenheim, who is also the chief archivist of the empire.  At Dormandian's request, he has done some research on the Eye of the Night, and has learned some very interesting information.  The Eye was a component of the Oculum Infernae, about which the PCs have already heard.  The Oculum was a sort of transdimensional device with a very sinister purpose, created centuries ago by the conjurer Albrecht Skullshank.  It was comprised of a series of magical lenses which focused the light from the sun of Avernus, the first layer of the Nine Hells, onto a special obelisk.  In so doing, the device was to "tune" the Material Plane to share the alignment traits of the Nine Hells, and also permit direct teleportation between the two planes.  Before the plan could be completed, Skullshank was defeated by a combined force of dwarves and gnomes in the Duverger Mines, and the Oculum destroyed.  It is clear to the PCs, though, that he has returned, and the Oculum project with him.  They prepare to investigate the mine immediately.

27 Apr 516
The party leaves behind the wooded valleys of the Dunstraths and enters the great Gervaisien Steppe, a massive rolling grassland in the center of the continent.  In recent years, this has become hobgoblin territory.  The PCs must proceed with caution.

Near the end of the first day, they spy a group of horsemen on the horizon.  The horsemen show a white banner, indicating a parley.  The PCs respond in kind, and the two sides approach.  There are ten riders: nine are hobgoblins, most of them archers.  The last, the leader, wears a familiar tiger motif.  It's Ellie, or rather Elif, Stavis's childhood-sweetheart-turned-fierce-warrior-of-the-plains, whom the party met at Fort Chance some months ago.

She recognizes Arbrant and Ceinwynn, and asks about Stavis.  Ceinwynn reveals Stavis's fate, but Elif seems unmoved, and gets down to business: What is the PCs' purpose in coming here?  Ceinwynn responds truthfully, which only seems to anger Elif.  The party is not to approach that area, she says; it is a site holy to the goblin peoples, where their ancestors forged a truce amongst themselves, and erected a shrine to Bargrivyek, a goblin deity.  She demands that the party return to the Dunstraths, and will escort them there herself.  Ceinwynn makes a very persuasive plea, arguing that what lurks in the Duverger Mines threatens all of them.  Against her better judgment, Elif is moved.  She expects to be punished by her il-khan, but agrees to take the party to Haviq (the goblin name for the area), provided that they steer well clear of the shrine.  The party agrees.

28 Apr 516
The next day, as they approach Haviq, they notice that there is a subtle purple tint to everything, as if they are viewing the world through a very mild filter.  Ceinwynn notes that purple is a color associated with lawful evil.  Most of the PCs -- Ivar being an exception -- also feel a certain unearthly weight upon them.  Nestaron feels it most of all, and suspects that they might be experiencing the effects of planar alignment.

Soon thereafter, they locate the mine entrance high on a rocky hillside.  There's evidence of recent activity, although Elif confirms that the mine has not been active for many years.  The party enters, while Elif and the hobgoblins wait outside.

They make their way past several blocked-off tunnels, and find a chamber with a round wooden platform, a winch, and 100 feet of rope.  The PCs quickly determine that they can take the platform down to a lower level.  They climb aboard, balancing themselves as best they can.  Marc, with assistance from Ivar, mans the winch.

They make their way down about fifty feet, but fail to notice a large knot in the rope.  The platform hits the knot and lurches, throwing the PCs off balance.  Arbrant and Nestaron stay on their feet, but the other three fall prone.  The balance on the platform is then upset, and the whole thing tilts, sending all but Arbrant sliding off the side.  Fortunately, Nestaron had been ready to cast a fly spell for just this eventuality, and keeps his concentration long enough to get the spell off.  Marc casts feather fall, and Ceinwynn has a ring which provides the same benefit.  Ivar has nothing, and drops fifty feet.

As the dust clears, and the PCs land (hard or softly), there's a screeching from above.  Arbrant, still clinging to the rope, looks up and sees a swarm of bats headed his way!...

XP awarded: 2860 each for Ivar, Marc and Nestaron; 2910 for Ceinwynn; 3110 for Arbrant.

28 Apr 516, continued
Four of the party members alight in a dark chamber filled with greenish vapors.  Arbrant still clings to the rope in the shaft above, as a swarm of bats descends upon him.  The PCs at the bottom hear strange whispers coming from the east, but have to focus on the bats first.  Nestaron yells at Arbrant to get ready, and then launches a fireball right at the rogue.  Arbrant twists away just in time, as Nestaron knew he would.  The bat swarm is completely immolated, and Arbrant feather falls to the ground.

Suddenly, a pair of creatures emerges from the mist.  They are vapor demons, mostly-insubstantial elemental monsters with horns and claws.  One of them makes a beeline for the vulnerable Nestaron, while the other attacks Marc.  Nestaron is clawed and poisoned, and loses four points of Constitution.  The other creature completely envelops Marc, who manages to avoid inhaling it.  Nestaron turns invisible and flees to the south edge of the chamber.  While Marc, Ivar and Arbrant strike at the creatures, occasionally foiled by their concealment in the heavy mist, one of them surrounds Ceinwynn.  She breathes it in, and begins coughing and losing Constitution.  The other PCs rally and destroy the vapor demons before more damage can be done.  Ceinwynn restores Nestaron's and her own Constitution.

They head east down a tunnel.  At Nestaron's suggestion, Ceinwynn looks for and finds tracks: two different sets, in fact.  One belongs to a nearly skeletal humanoid, and heads to the northeast; the other was obviously made by something very large and bipedal.  They elect to investigate the giant tracks first, and follow them to a heavy wooden door.  Arbrant listens at the door, and hears some faint clinking sounds beyond.  Arbrant then searches the door, and finds a trap.  He tries to disarm it, but fails, and triggers a burning hands.  Fortunately, he evades the blast and suffers no damage.  However, he has alerted whatever is in the room.

Both sides prepare for themselves for battle, and wait for the other to open the door and make the first move.  Neither does.  While they are waiting, Nestaron cleverly drops a wall of ice behind the party to prevent an ambush.  Several rounds elapse, and still nothing has happened.  Arbrant then tries to unlock the door, but fails.  Eventually, the unseen opponent grows weary of the waiting, and unlocks the door for him.  Ivar opens it, and sees a 12-foot tall humanoid with fiery orange hair, coal-black skin, and a massive greatsword, about to come down upon him.  It's a fire giant!   The giant misses, thanks to Ivar's Dodge bonus.  The dwarf counterattacks and connects, while Marc steps up to melee as well.  Ceinwynn casts prayer, while Nestaron begins casting enlarge person on the dwarf.

Ivar is now toe-to-toe with the fire giant.  It's not a good place to be.  The giant strikes once for maximum damage, and then connects again with a critical hit.  All told, he's done about 80 points of damage, and nearly kills the dwarf outright.  Luckily, he misses with the finishing blow.  Ceinwynn heals Ivar as best she can, and the enlarge person takes effect.  Nestaron now begins enlarging Marc as well.  While the two fighters melee the creature, whittling down his hit points, Arbrant tumbles in the room, and fires a giant bane arrow at it, scoring a critical hit.  Nestaron strikes it with magic missiles, and eventually the giant is slain, but not before whispering, "Thus falls Chundag."

The PCs examine his chamber, and find a large number of potentially valuable pieces of quartz.  They also find a masterwork gemcutter's kit, some platinum coins, and a number of papers scattered upon a huge desk, which they ignore.  They heal up, wait for the wall of ice to evaporate, and head southeast.

There they find a cavern whose walls are composed almost entirely of quartz.  They feel some sort of humming or vibration.  When they peer around a corner, they spy a bipedal creature, vaguely reptilian in appearance, with no eyes and multi-part ears.  It's a destrachan, and for some reason, it is tethered to the back wall of the chamber by means of a fine silvery chain.

Arbrant fires his bow, dealing a sneak attack.  The creature responds by letting loose a wave of destructive harmonics that catches all of the party.  Arbrant is unaffected, but everyone else is, including the familiars.  Nestaron fireballs the enemy, seriously damaging it.  The fighters then destroy the destrachan before it can act again.  On closer examination, the collar and chain are made of mithral.  The party beheads the destrachan and takes the collar.

They continue to the southeast, and find another locked door.  It's the lair of a small wizard, apparently.  Nestaron finds a pair of spellbooks, along with some other rare texts, which he puts in his bag of holding for safekeeping.  They gather up some more treasure, and then realize that they failed to read the giant's papers.  They head back northwest.

Back in the crystal-filled room, they are confronted by an otherworldly menace investigating their trail of destruction: a bone devil.  When Marc approaches to melee, the devil attempts to place a wall of ice around him, but Marc disrupts it.  Arbrant turns invisible, and tries to maneuver around the devil to flank it in subsequent rounds.  Nestaron drops a fireball behind the enemy (catching Arbrant in the area of effect), but the devil simply laughs it off.  He is immune to fire.  (For his part, Arbrant simply evades the blast, as expected).  Marc then charges, but when he gets within five feet, he is caught by the devil's fear aura.  He drops his flail and turns to flee.  Before he can take a step, though, Ceinwynn casts remove fear.

The battle becomes a matter of attrition, as the devil has damage reduction that the party cannot seem to bypass, and also very strong spell resistance, making Nestaron's attacks unreliable.  The enemy turns invisible, but is foiled by Ceinwynn's invisibility purge.  Arbrant moves into flanking position, but now he is affected by the fear aura, and spends the rest of the battle cowering in a corner, as far from the devil as possible.  The devil stings both Marc and Ivar, poisoning the latter; he teleports around the battlefield; and finally summons a mob of lemures as cannon fodder to protect him.  The PCs gradually whittle him down, though, and Marc delivers the finishing blow.  They mop up the lemures and head back to the giant's room.

The papers, written in Undercommon, seem to be plans for the Oculum Infernae.  The party plans their next move...

XP awarded: 2317 each for Arbrant, Ceinwynn and Ivar; 2880 for Marc and Nestaron.

28 Apr 516, continued
The PCs decide to follow the bone devil's tracks back to his original location, and then find a spot to bed down for the night.  They discover a chamber where a large quantity of cheap quartz seems to have been mined out.  In the corner is what appears to be a pile of clothes and bedding.  Arbrant searches it, and discovers to his horror that it is really a pile of decaying corpses.  He finds only a few pieces of flawed quartz.  The PCs decide to head back to Chundag's office to rest.

29 Apr 516
The night seems to pass without incident.

The party heads down the southeast passage exiting the crystal chamber.  It leads southeast and deeper into the hillside for nearly 1000 yards, and begins to grow warmer as it descends.  Arbrant thinks he hears a very faint flapping sound, but neither he nor the party can see anything.  Arbrant reads his scroll of invisibility.  Nestaron hurls a lightning bolt at the sound, but it does not seem to connect.  Ceinwynn guesses (correctly) that whatever was here is gone, and has probably sounded an alarm, so the PCs head quickly down the passage, before any more preparations can be made by the enemy.

Moments later, they find themselves at the northern edge of a lake of fire.  In front of them is a pool of bubbling magma, more than 200 feet across, dotted with islands of rock.  On the opposite "shore" they can see a device consisting of multiple lenses, held in place by a black steel housing.  The largest lens is mounted on the southeastern wall of the chamber.  Through it, the PCs can see a swollen red sun, baking a hellish, twisted landscape.  The light from this sun passes through successive lenses until it is focused into a brilliant, malevolent purple beam that strikes a basalt obelisk standing about twenty feet away.  The light seems to penetrate the earth.

Of more immediate import, they see a pair of figures flying in the air, above the lake of fire.  One is an attractive female with large feathery wings, a sword, flaming bow, and a coiled rope; Marc identifies her as an erinyes, a devil.  The other is a gnome, encrusted with various gems.  He greets the party, offering them congratulations on having made it this far, but explains that he has refashioned the Eye of the Night, and thus has no need of their services.  With that, the erinyes fires three flaming arrows at Marc, connecting all three times.  It seems she has been hasted.

Arbrant, invisible, summons his giant praying mantis and sends it towards Skullshank.  The mantis stops about ten feet away; something is preventing it from approaching any further.  Ceinwynn uses Spellcraft to determine that it's repulsion.  Skullshank counters by casting mass hold person on the group, targeting everyone except Arbrant, whom he does not see.  Ceinwynn makes her save, but Marc, Ivar and Nestaron are held fast.  Ivar's turn comes next, and through force of will, he shakes off the spell.  Ceinwynn grabs Ivar and the still-paralyzed Marc, and dimension doors across the lake to the Oculum.

The erinyes destroys the mantis with arrows, and then turns to Nestaron, hitting him as well.  Suddenly, another erinyes appears, right in front of the invisible Arbrant.  He's not so invisible after all, it seems, but she was.  The second erinyes cuts at the rogue with her sword.  Arbrant lunges with his rapier, but misses, dropping his own invisibility.

Meanwhile, Skullshank casts a quickened shield and targets Ceinwynn with a heightened Tasha's hideous laughter, then heads towards the southern shore; she shrugs off the spell.  Ivar bashes the Oculum with all his might, doing severe damage, and Ceinwynn uses remove paralysis on Marc.  The dragon disciple then smashes the Oculum, destroying it.  Skullshank is enraged.

Nestaron shakes off the hold person, but the airborne erinyes drops him with a pair of arrows.  Her third arrow lodges in Arbrant's side; fortunately, his ring of Moradin negates the fire damage.  Arbrant breaks off from the erinyes he is meleeing, and pours a potion of cure moderate wounds down the elf's throat, bringing him back to consciousness.  Across the battlefield, Skullshank tosses an orb of force at Ceinwynn, doing heavy damage, but not enough to put her in immediate peril.

Ivar tries to melee the wizard, but repulsion prevents him from getting in range.  On the northern shore, Nestaron uses a scroll of teleport to bring himself and the rogue to the far side of the lake, adjacent to the Oculum.  The party has regrouped.  Ceinwynn uses mass cure light wounds to restore everyone's health.

Marc now rushes towards the gnome wizard.  He pushes through the repulsion effect, and makes a grab for the enemy.  He succeeds, gets hold of him, and strikes with his claw.  The claw does no damage, however; Skullshank is protected by stoneskin.  The erinyes now head south, and one of them invokes an unholy blight against Ivar, Marc, and Ceinwynn.  It has little effect against the mostly-neutral group.  Arbrant casts true strike, hoping to get a chance to sneak attack Skullshank, but the latter, in turn, uses dimension door to escape Marc's grasp, ending up on the northern shore.

Nestaron begins casting enlarge person on Ivar, and Ceinwynn casts fly upon him.  Marc waits for an opportunity to strike.  Arbrant launches an arrow all the way across the lake of fire, which hits, thanks to true strike.  It simply bounces off Skullshank's stoneskin, though.  The erinyes return fire, and Skullshank casts flesh to stone on Arbrant, petrifying him.  Ivar takes off to fight the erinyes, and Nestaron's spell completes.  Ivar strikes at the nearest erinyes with his spiked chain; some of the damage is reduced by her magical protection, but it is damage nonetheless, and the first that any PC has dealt in this encounter.  Ceinwynn casts teleport to bring Marc and Nestaron with her back to the north shore.  Arbrant is far too heavy in his petrified state and must be left behind.

Marc, again within range of Skullshank, tries to grab him, but is unsuccessful.  Nestaron likewise misses with a dimensional anchor.  The gnome then casts defensively and places a cloudkill on top of the PCs.  Nestaron fails his save, takes Constitution damage, and is knocked unconscious and is dying once again.  Ivar kills one of the erinyes, and begins working on the other.  Ceinwynn then restores Nestaron to health, or as healthy as he can be with a lowered Constitution.  The elf casts fly on Marc to pursue the flying gnome.

Skullshank uses a gemscroll of transmute rock to mud to trap Ceinwynn and Nestaron.  Ceinwynn replies with dispel magic, and manages to remove Skullshank's stoneskin and repulsion.  Marc attacks Skullshank and wounds him badly.  Ivar then joins in as well, striking the wizard with his spiked chain.  The remaining erinyes sees the handwriting on the wall, and greater teleports away to some unknown location.  Nestaron casts fly on Ceinwynn.

Skullshank casts displacement on himself, hoping to avoid most the melee attacks coming his way.  But Ceinwynn hoists herself and Nestaron out of the mud, towards the fray.  Nestaron launches a lightning bolt at Skullshank, and it's too much for him to withstand.  He begins to drop into the bubbling magma, but Marc swoops in and grabs his corpse before it can touch down.  The PCs strip it of anything valuable, and throw it, along with the remnants of the Oculum, into the lake of fire.  Ceinwynn restores Arbrant to flesh with break enchantment.

When they return to the surface, Elif and her riders are still waiting.  The strange purple tint recedes before them.  Elif is impressed, but cannot allow herself to be overtly congratulatory, and dismisses the PCs with a curt sendoff.  The horsemen ride away, leaving the party to make their own way back to the Dunstraths.  They take it as a measure of respect that Elif does not insist on escorting them...

XP awarded: 2880 each.

2 May 516
The PCs return to Dunhaven after their victory over Skullshank.  They sell loot, buy new equipment, and prepare for their next adventure: investigating the crypt of House Reynard in Majeau, to see if Arbrant's signet ring really does provide access to a hidden vault.

Arbrant advertises an interest in acquiring a retinue, and immediately finds takers: a group of young rogues, eager to make their names in the employ of one of the great heroes of Dunhaven; along with François Fleury, an experienced ranger.  They are happy to accompany the party to Majeau.  Indeed, Fleury originally hails from there.

8 June 516
The party sets sail from Dunhaven aboard the S.S. Caroline, a small trading ship headed for Montolieu, a port on Majeau's northern coast.  Captain Warren Clancy explains that the journey should take a few weeks to a month, depending on winds and currents.

29 June 516
The voyage thus far has been unremarkable, and the Caroline has made good progress.  The ship is clipping along about five miles off the coast of Gervais, 130 miles southeast of Narbonne, when the winds suddenly die down.  The crew of the Caroline let out the sails as best they can, but the ship is stalled.

Suddenly, the ship lurches downward; it's as if the water level has magically dropped by ten feet.  A whirlpool forms, and though the crew valiantly tries to escape it, the ship is trapped, and begins to shake violently.  The PCs notice something emerging from the waves a few hundred feet off the starboard bow.  Nestaron casts fly on himself, and hovers just above the pitching deck of the Caroline.  Ivar heads to the bow, waiting to battle whatever appears.  Marc tries casting expeditious retreat, but cannot maintain his concentration amidst the maelstrom.  Arbrant and François ready their bows.

A creature appears from out of the sea; it's a giant, about twenty feet tall, with green skin and hair.  It levitates just above the surface, and then gestures.  The water off the starboard stern of the ship coalesces into a long arm with a huge fist.  It bashes the ship, splintering its timbers.  Ivar makes his way aft, maintaining his balance, and strikes at the watery arm with his spiked chain.  It seems that it can be damaged.  Nestaron casts fly on Marc, who then uses his desiccating breath weapon against the arm.  It's very effective.  Ceinwynn casts fly on herself.  Arbrant fires an arrow at the arm, while François mans the ship's ballista.  He turns the clumsy device, and fires, striking it dead on.  The sea giant swims toward the ship, while the arm bashes the gunwales once again for maximum damage.  The crew continues to have difficulty keeping the ship upright in the whirlpool, and the Caroline is slowly breaking apart.  Ivar continues to strike at the arm, while Nestaron flies off the deck and shoots a lightning bolt at it.  Arbrant's arrow finishes it off.  The giant swims closer, as the ship begins to take on water.

Ivar flies out to melee the giant, suffering an attack of opportunity in the process.  The giant has cover from the water, and is unharmed by Ivar's attack.  Marc dives into the water, then pokes at the giant with his silver ranseur.  Nestaron fires another lightning bolt, and it strikes the giant squarely.   The elf adds to the damage with his veil of storms. When the giant emerges from the water to battle his assailants, Ceinwynn drops a readied flame strike on him.  He suffers the full force of the spell, and also attacks of opportunity from Marc and Ivar.  The giant retaliates by striking Ivar twice for serious damage, and then reaches out to hit Ceinwynn as well.  Ivar and Marc -- dropping his ranseur to the ocean floor, and using his flail -- full attack, and Nestaron lashes out with another devastating lightning bolt.  The giant, thanks to his Diehard feat, still stands.  Arbrant finishes him off with a well-placed arrow.  Nestaron gathers the giant's loot (a huge necklace and a pair of magical anklets) before its corpse sinks to the bottom.

The ship is saved, but is definitely the worse for wear.  Captain Clancy explains that they will have to try to limp into port at Narbonne, and then spend a few weeks on repairs before setting out again.  Ceinwynn has a better solution: as the crew keeps the ship afloat overnight, she prepares several repair ship spells. The next day, the ship is back in working condition and headed once again to Montolieu.  Naturally, the party's payments are reimbursed.

1 July 516
The Caroline drops anchor in Montolieu's harbor, at the mouth of the Capouillet River.  The town is gray and weatherbeaten, and strangely silent.  The only sounds come from the gulls circling overhead and the occasional banging of shutters.  There are few people in evidence.  When Arbrant draws from his canteen, he gags.  The canteen is brimming with warm blood.  The party cannot explain this unsettling incident.  Captain Clancy purchases horses for the PCs, and they head north along the road to Majeau City.

En route, they pass through what appears to be a ghost town.  There are two dozen buildings, most of them collapsed or burnt.  Weeds grow high, and there is trash strewn everywhere.  There is not an animal in evidence, not even a bird.  Off the side of the road, the PCs hear a creaking rhythm of wood on wood, coming from a darkened porch.

Ceinwynn approaches, and for a moment, thinks she sees an old man with his neck twisted, as if broken, sitting in a rocking chair.  She blinks, and he is gone.  The chair continues to rock, however.  When it stops, Ivar sits down.  The chair is warm.  The PCs decide not to spend the night here.

2 July 516
The party approaches the old capital city.  The outer walls, smashed by the armies of John LeClair some years ago, seem to have been mostly repaired.  There are a few guards walking their parapets.  The Capouillet emerges from an open gate on the north side of town.  To the south, there are tall, sheer bluffs from which the river tumbles down, forming an impressive waterfall.  A few buildings are visible atop these bluffs, but appear ruined or burnt.  A pair of massive stone staircases wind up from the lower sections of the city to the bluffside.  François confirms that Reynard Palace, and the crypt, are above.

The party finds the nearest inn and tavern.  Nestaron, improbably posing as an historian with the other PCs as his bodyguards, asks the bartender about the bluffside area.  He learns that the area is completely under the control of organized and armed gangs, some little more than youths, others tougher, who prey upon the residents of Lower Town and one another.  The staircases leading to the bluffside are both guarded, and no one is permitted up (or down, obviously) without permission of the magistrate.

The PCs head to City Hall, and note along the way that the city seems vastly underpopulated for its size.  After a long wait, they are granted an audience with the magistrate, Lucien Cotard, an old barrister who has been in charge of the city since it was reclaimed from the Drouinistes.  Cotard looks them over, and with a weary optimism in his voice, asks if the PCs are representatives of the Empress.  They consider lying for a moment, but think better of it, and admit that they are not.  Cotard seems deflated.  He has been hoping for years now that Charron would again take notice of its old possessions in Majeau, and send a force to reclaim the island and establish order.  He laments that his men are too few and too exhausted to defeat even the armed gangs that lair in the bluffside, let alone subdue the whole island.

If they do not represent the Empress, why are they here, he asks?  Nestaron again tries to pose as an historian, but Cotard is having none of it.  Historians are not this well-armed.  Ivar explains that a ring brought them here, the signet ring of House Reynard.  Cotard doesn't understand what they intend to do with this ring, so Arbrant abruptly announces that he is here to re-establish order, in the name of House Reynard.  He is Arbrant, crown prince of Majeau.

The other PCs stare at Arbrant in baffled astonishment.  Cotard concedes that Arbrant seems awfully sincere in this statement, but dismisses him as delusional.  All of House Reynard was put to the sword hours after the Drouinistes breached the walls of the city, and at any rate, a ring is proof of nothing.  He humors Arbrant, addressing him as His Majesty, but chooses to take the opportunity represented by the PCs to strike a blow against the gangs.  He furnishes them with a writ of permission to scale the bluffside stairs.  Outside Cotard's office, the PCs ask Arbrant about his royal heritage, but he assures them that he was only bluffing.

That afternoon, they ascend the stairs.  François leads them to the outer palace gates, which are rusted and broken.  Ceinwynn spots a few human tracks leading in and out, but there is no one in evidence.  They enter.  From a distance, they can spot the palace itself.  Two of the building's three wings are utterly destroyed.  Only the north wing remains mostly intact.  There are a few other structures as well, including a white marble building tucked among a grove of trees.  François informs them that this is the crypt.

They descend the stairs into darkness.  Past rows of burial niches, with plaques inscribed with the names of Reynards going back through the centuries, they find an open chamber.  On the back wall is a mosaic with the Reynard coat of arms, the Imperial flag, and a depiction of Reynard Palace, from its glory days, shown from the rear.  Standing in front of the mosaic is a statue of an angel, with sword outstretched.

This must be the place, the PCs reason.  Ivar examines the mosaic closely, while Arbrant inspects the statue, and Nestaron casts detect secret doors.  The sorcerer discovers a hidden passage on the back wall.  At the same time, Arbrant finds that the ring finger on the angel's right hand has some light scuffmarks on it.  He places the signet ring on the statue's finger, and it speaks:

The ring is one key, but another is needed.  I can guide you, but I cannot lead you.

XP awarded: 1620 each.

2 July 516, continued
The PCs head towards the palace.  The rusted inner gate creaks audibly in the faint breeze.  Ceinwynn searches the area, and finds evidence of recent humanoid tracks, heading in and out of the palace grounds.

There's a fountain here, along with a well, a few smaller buildings, a tower, and the north wing of the palace itself; the rest of the structure has long since collapsed in a heap of rubble.  Ivar wants to examine the fountain first, and does.  There's nothing of interest.  Nestaron goes to check out the well, and is immediately set upon by a Gargantuan monstrous spider lairing within.  Fortunately, the spider misses.  The party counterattacks.  Both Ivar and François are bitten -- the latter poisoned, as well -- but the spider is dispatched without much ado.

The PCs decide to focus on their mission instead of exploring.  Nestaron opens the front door with open/close.  The party feels a strange and unsettling chill as they enter into a large foyer.  The place has clearly been ransacked, and an enormous chandelier has crashed onto the floor in front of them.  Standing near it are three young people, with their backs facing the PCs.  They seem to be whispering something to one another, but it is inaudible.  When Ceinwynn approaches, the three turn to face the party, and, with disturbing smiles on their faces, slit their throats with jagged pieces of glass.  As blood pours out, they lunge for the PCs, only to vanish before reaching them.  Ceinwynn finds the bodies belonging to the three apparitions behind the chandelier.  All appear to have been killed by something sharp.

The party heads upstairs, in the direction pointed by the angel statue.  There's a tattered carpet here winding around a long hallway.  Something seems to be moving underneath it.  It makes a sharp move towards the PCs, and a swarm of angry wasps emerges from the carpet, right in the party's faces.  It turns out to be illusory.

The PCs now hear a strange thumping sound coming from the north, but choose to ignore it for the time being.  Instead, they head south, into what looks like a study.  Arbrant searches carefully, and finds a secret door heading west, which seems to lead to the spot where the angel statue's sword had pointed.  The door is locked, and Arbrant is unable to defeat it, but Nestaron knocks it.

Beyond is a dusty workroom of some kind.  It appears to have escaped the sacking suffered by the rest of the house.  The walls are lined with mounted taxidermy, and there are some tools and chemicals on a workbench.  More interestingly, there is a small angel statuette in the corner, identical except for its size to the one in the crypt.  Arbrant searches it, and discovers something scrawled underneath the base: "Tower Basement."

The group decides to investigate the thumping sound.  It appears to be coming from behind a door at the north end of the hallway.  They ready themselves and open it.  In a bedroom is a human male, blood caked on his head and hands.  He mutters to himself, over and over, "Must tell her," and he bangs his head against the wall, seemingly oblivious to the party's presence.  The walls are covered from top to bottom with the word "Rebecca."

The party tries to interact with him, but he ignores them.  Ceinwynn then casts calm emotions.  He quiets down, but is still unable to communicate with the PCs.  He is clearly insane.  The party notices a bloody implement in the corner of the room, and speculates that he slew the trio in the foyer.  Ivar knocks him out, and the group leaves him for now.

They head for the tower, and its basement.  Debris covers the tower floor, but Arbrant clears away some wooden planks and discovers a trapdoor.  Just then, Ceinwynn feels something wet crawling between her skin and her armor.  Now there are several creatures, and they are biting and clawing at her!  She quickly strips down with the help of the other PCs, but finds nothing there.  Detect undead is equally fruitless.  The PCs open the trapdoor, and descend.   As they do so, a palpable sense of evil, radiating in waves from the building itself, seems to permeate their very beings.  All but François succumb, and their minds are filled with depraved thoughts and urges.

The basement below is, for the most part, unremarkable.  It is dark and dank, and shelves along the walls hold sundry bits of mundane equipment.  There is, however, a large grating in the center of the room, and surrounding it, a huge reddish-black stain.  Adjacent to it is a wooden block, stained likewise.  More red spatters appear on the low, dingy ceiling.

The PCs survey this scene for a moment, when suddenly dozens of human hands reach up through the floor, grasping at the PCs.  Blood rises up through the floor as well, forming a shallow pool.  François is targeted by a phantasmal killer attack, source unknown.  He believes fully in the illusion, but manages to steel himself against the touch of his greatest fear, and survives.  The hands and blood dissipate, but something worse appears: an inky, foul blackness which coalesces and congeals into a roughly humanoid form in the center of the chamber, near the grate.  This creature, a Huge taint elemental, is all too real.

Arbrant fires an arrow at it and hits, but he is unable to locate a vulnerable point for a sneak attack, and furthermore, much of the arrow's damage seems to be simply absorbed.  Ceinwynn casts prayer, and Nestaron launches a devastating lightning bolt, supplemented by his veil of storms, which greatly weakens the elemental.  The elemental, with his great reach, slams Ivar for heavy damage.  Marc charges, drawing a painful attack of opportunity in the process, but misses.  Ivar strikes repeatedly with his spiked chain, whittling down the elemental's strength.

The party and elemental trade blows for several more rounds, with Arbrant summoning his giant mantis for support.  Ceinwynn casts flame strike, and the elemental counters by using his Surge of Malevolence feat to assist with his save.  It's of no use, and he is struck for full damage.  Nonetheless, he batters Marc and Ivar repeatedly, delivering a dose of corruption -- the physical equivalent of the depravity already inflicted on the party -- to Marc in the process, before he is eventually destroyed.  The PCs begin poking around the basement, when the elemental simply re-forms!  The PCs fight once again, with Nestaron using multiple lightning bolts and magic missiles, and attempting to destroy the wooden block, hoping that it's the source of the elemental's power (it isn't).  Ceinwynn's attempt to consecrate the area is similarly useless.  The creature tries to dimension door to the corner of the chamber to slam Nestaron, but loses its concentration in the ensuing attacks of opportunity, and is soon destroyed again.  When it re-forms a third time, the PCs realize that they not going to best the creature with brute force, and beat a hasty retreat.

They ascend to the roof of the tower where they find another corpse, still holding her sword.  They head back into the palace on the second floor.  They find and bypass a bedroom which has partly collapsed.  Near it is another bedroom, this one belonging to a child, complete with mangy old teddy bear.  As they examine the area, a ghost suddenly appears in their midst.  It's an old human male, and his neck is broken.  He turns to Arbrant, and yells, "Behold what you have done!"  With that, his appearance turns horrific, and most of the PCs find themselves greatly weakened by fright.  The ghost vanishes as quickly as it came.

Pausing for a moment, Ceinwynn and Nestaron consult one another on the maladies inflicted on the party back in the basement.  They determine that the PCs have somehow acquired the taint of evil in their bodies and minds, and must find a way to purge it soon.  Ceinwynn knows several spells that may be of use, but they must act quickly to avoid permanent corruption and depravity, so they resolve to quit Reynard Palace for the time being...

XP awarded: 1260 each.

2 July 516, continued
Before leaving, they retrieve the insane man from the blood-encrusted bedroom and bind him.  They leave the Bluffside with him in tow, and hand him over to the city's gendarmes for safekeeping, while they search for a means of curing him so he can be questioned.

3 July 516
After a night's rest, and gathering the necessary components, Ceinwynn uses restoration spells to cleanse the taint from the party, before its effects can become permanent.  The party then decides that they need to conduct further research before heading back to the palace.  They head to the magistrate's office for another interview.  Cotard explains to them the history of the palace: during the Drouiniste occupation, it was used as a headquarters, and many hundreds, perhaps thousands of prisoners were slaughtered there over a very brief period.  He has heard rumors that the place is haunted, and is not surprised to hear what the party has discovered there.  When asked about the possibility of obtaining a heal spell or scroll, he replies that the largest and wealthiest temple in town belongs to the Langevists, but Ceinwynn might not be especially welcome there.

The temple is as advertised, and stands in marked contrast to its mostly impoverished surroundings.  After paying a small entrance fee, the PCs (sans Ceinwynn) gain the attention of the Langevist bishop, Hugues Duvernois.  Nestaron explains their request, and Duvernois seems happy to help, if the elf would consider "joining the winning team" (i.e., becoming a convert).  Ivar walks out, but Nestaron and Arbrant briefly flirt with the idea of at least pretending to go along (Arbrant perhaps not even pretending).  They both purchase copies of the Langevist holy text, The Black Book, but ultimately can't commit.  Duvernois is disappointed, and tells them that if they still want his help, they'll have to pay a hefty fee: 500 gp.  Nestaron relents and pays the fee.  Duvernois takes the money and gives the party a name and an address.

At the address given, they find a decrepit hovel.  They knock on the door, but there is no answer, and when they try to peer through a window, they find it blocked.  Eventually, though, an old haggard figure greets them at the door.  He is unkempt and filthy, with stringy hair and dirty fingernails.  He introduces himself as Roger Sutherland, asks their business, and invites them in.  The hovel is filled from floor to ceiling with books and papers, leaving only a narrow path for walking.  Sutherland is cooking a foul-smelling stew with unknown ingredients.  Only Marc has the courage to try it.  After exchanging a few more pleasantries, he agrees to sell them a pair of heal scrolls at a surprisingly good price.

Nestaron inquires about town for the location of an arcanist's guild, and finds one, a small group headquartered in a renovated mansion.  He speaks with Mikulas Sestak, a gnome wizard.  Sestak tells Nestaron what he knows about taint elementals, which is little more than Nestaron does, but he is quite certain that they do not normally re-form when slain, even in tainted areas, so something unusual must be causing that.  Nestaron speculates that it might have something to do with the the ghost they encountered, and Sestak agrees.

The PCs visit the insane gang member in the gaol where he is being held.  Ceinwynn casts heal, and his demeanor changes instantly.  He is stunned to find himself behind bars, but soon realizes where he is and how he got there.  He is Etienne Perreau, a member of the Falls Bridge gang.  A little more than a week ago, he and some of his comrades had decided to explore the ruined palace and see if there was anything worth stealing.  They discovered little of interest, but found the place intriguing, and decided to headquarter there.  At first things were normal, but then strange things began to happen: they would hear strange whispers or music, see visions, feel a bitter chill.  Eventually, Perreau found himself overcome, not in control of his body.  He slaughtered his friends one by one, and shut himself in an upstairs bedroom.

The PCs ask him, Who is Rebecca, and what must Etienne tell her?  He remembers only dimly: Rebecca is important to "him," and "he" must find out if she is safe, and tell her what befell him.  Perreau struggles to recall the name of the spirit that possessed him.  He comes up with a name: Tarryn.

Nestaron and Arbrant use their Knowledge (nobility and royalty) to confirm that Tarryn is (or was) the name of a noble house in Majeau, and that Rebecca was a daughter of that house.  Arbrant sends his rogue followers to gather more information about her, and they report back that evening that she is still alive, and in Majeau.  She's a member of the Furies gang, based in L'Auberge Chat Jaune (the Yellow Cat Inn).  The PCs resolve to head there in the morning.

4 July 516
Following François's lead, the party ascends the western steps to the west bank section of the Bluffside.  This area is more commercial than the east bank section they have already explored.  En route to the inn, they spy a figure seated in an alleyway, motionless.  They approach cautiously, and see that it's a human male, dressed in rags, with a completely blank expression on his face.  He doesn't seem to realize that the PCs are there.  They hear an unearthly cackling coming from around a corner.  Seconds later, enemies are upon them: a pair of humans, armed with short swords, with the same blank expressions, along with a hulking creature (a gray render) and a figure dressed in a fool's motley, all in gray, with a doll-headed scepter in one hand, and a mouth full of crazily broken teeth.

Arbrant gains the initiative, and sneak attacks the gray render.  The fool (a gray jester) targets the rogue with a deep slumber spell, but he saves easily.  The gray render then bites Arbrant and grapples him.  Ceinwynn casts freedom of movement on Arbrant, allowing him to escape, while Marc and Ivar move up to melee.  Trading blows, the PCs manage to dispatch the gray render and one of the rogues, but the gray jester hits Arbrant with his scepter, causing the latter to fall prone with uncontrollable hideous laughter.  Marc grapples the jester while the other PCs try to melee him or damage him with magic missiles and spiritual weapons.  He has very high spell resistance and damage reduction, though, and the fight is slow going.  Ivar does succeed in disarming his scepter, however, and Ceinwynn finishes off the other rogue.  Over and over, the jester tries to inflict Tasha's hideous laughter on Marc, but he saves every time.  Arbrant finally shakes off the effect of the spell and sneak attacks the enemy, killing him.

Ceinwynn casts restoration on the person slumped in the alley, and he snaps out of his torpor.  He is terrified, and tries to run away.  The PCs capture and question him, but he has little information to provide.  They arm him and set him free.

Soon they arrive at the boarded-up Yellow Cat Inn.  Out front, they see a pair of young toughs guarding the door.  They approach, and tell the guards that they'd like to see Rebecca.  The guards don't seem to be willing to let that happen, so Nestaron intimidates them, and they quickly open the door.  Inside are six more Furies.  When they reach for their clubs, Nestaron fireballs the group, killing five of them, and outraging Ceinwynn.  While Nestaron works on intimidating the survivor (a pretty easy task), Ceinwynn argues forcefully that he and the others have acted like criminals themselves.  Party unity hangs by a thread.

The remaining thug agrees to take the party to Rebecca, who is downstairs.  They pass through a secret door, and then into a small antechamber.  Behind a curtain, a voice calls to them, apologizing for the rude greeting, and asks the PCs to enter so they can have a conversation like civilized men.  The PCs are rightly very suspicious.  Nestaron uses open/close to push aside the curtain, revealing a young woman -- Rebecca, surely -- and a most terrible sight: a beholder, eyestalks pointed right at the PCs, and a tall automaton standing at its side.

Arbrant downs a potion of invisibility immediately, and steps out of the way.  François launches a volley of arrows at the beholder, to no effect.  Marc steps up to melee, and strikes the beholder with his flail.  It's a critical hit, but the beholder only absorbs some of the damage.  The rest has been magically transferred to the automaton, a shield guardian.  The enemy then retaliates.  Eye rays strike at Marc, François, Ceinwynn and Ivar.  Luckily, the first three make their saves (especially lucky is Marc, targeted with a finger of death).  Ivar fails his, however, and is asleep on the floor.  The shield guardian batters Marc with its fists, defending its master.  Nestaron is about to launch a fireball that would catch Rebecca in its area of effect when Ceinwynn stops him.  He instead steps into the room, making himself more vulnerable to the beholder's eye rays.  He fires a lightning bolt and activates his veil of storms, for good measure.  Ceinwynn drops a flame strike on the beholder and shield guardian, doing heavy damage.

Arbrant slinks into the room invisibly and fires an arrow, a potential sneak attack, at the beholder.  It misses, and he is now visible.  François bravely steps in front of Nestaron, but misses with his own arrow.  Marc full attacks, hitting the beholder twice, and Ivar once -- intentionally -- to wake him.  The beholder then aims his disintegrate ray at Arbrant, and hits him squarely.  The rogue is reduced to a pile of dust.  Other rays miss Marc and Nestaron, while François makes another save.  The enemy then opens his central eye, but instead of the expected cone of antimagic, it's more of a focused beam, aimed right at Ceinwynn.  The beholder is badly wounded at this point, though, and begins to back away.  Ivar and Marc connect with attacks of opportunity, and Nestaron finishes the creature off with his veil of storms.  Another lightning bolt dispatches the shield guardian, and the victory is won, although at great cost.

With the death of the beholder, Rebecca snaps out of her enchantment.  She is confused and scared, but Ceinwynn quickly reassures her and wins her trust.  Ceinwynn explains why the party has come for her, and then laments the loss of Arbrant.  The name provokes an immediate reaction from Rebecca.  Arbrant is responsible for her losing her father!  Years ago, just before the war, James Tarryn caught a young Prince Arbrant stealing from him.  He insisted on prosecution, rebuffing the Reynards' attempts to buy his silence.  Eventually, Arbrant's father, to avoid political embarrassment at a critical time for the Principality, had Tarryn arrested.  Rebecca never saw him again.

The other PCs are not entirely shocked to learn that Arbrant was indeed the prince he claimed to be, but the rest of the tale is very interesting indeed.  The whole story has now come together: Tarryn was executed in the palace tower, and his vengeful spirit remained behind.  When the palace was used as an abbatoir during the occupation, Tarryn's rage bound the souls of the victims, and the haunting became exponentially more intense, until the entire palace took on a malign will.  Putting Tarryn at ease might be the key to undoing the haunting.  The PCs uncover the beholder's treasure (triggering a nasty chain lightning trap in the process), gather Arbrant's dust and lead Rebecca to the palace.

James Tarryn does not take long to arrive.  Rebecca calls out to her father, and he is shocked and overjoyed to see her.  He is still angry, though, for he does not see Arbrant, and cannot vent his rage.  The party realizes that they must restore Arbrant sooner, rather than later.

Fortunately, Roger Sutherland is still available, and what's more, he can cast resurrection for them tomorrow, provided they can get the diamonds.  Flush with cash looted from the Yellow Cat Inn, they are able to do so with little difficulty.

5 July 516
Sutherland resurrects Arbrant.  The PCs let on that they know his secret, and he is chagrinned.

The group returns to the palace, with Rebecca still accompanying them.  Tarryn appears, and prepares to assail the object of his vengeance, when Arbrant apologizes to him.  He begs forgiveness from James and Rebecca.  When the latter accepts, the ghost is finally satisfied.  His hostile mien melts to a tranquil look.  He bids farewell to his daughter, and dissipates.

The PCs now hope that they can defeat the taint elemental in the basement permanently.  They escort Rebecca to the grand stairs to Lower Town, and Nestaron gives her a gift to help rebuild her life.  They return to the tower, and head to the basement.  The taint of evil is still present, but it is clearly weakened.  The elemental rises up, but it is much smaller, and the party destroys it with little ado.

Arbrant thoroughly searches the shelves for some useful clue, and finds a yellowed piece of paper inscribed with the image of an angel.  On it is written a short musical phrase.  No one in the party is much of a performer, but Arbrant gives it a go, and hums the tune.  Nothing happens.  The group returns to the crypt, places the ring on the finger of the statue, and tries again.  Still no luck.   Finally, they head to the secret chamber on the second floor.  This time, when the tune is played, they hear a creak behind them.  The jaw of the stuffed tiger has opened, revealing a switch inside.  They flip it, and head back to the crypt.

Arbrant slips the ring on the finger once again, and hums the tune.  The back wall of the crypt slides away, revealing the long-promised vault.  Inside is a fortune in gold, gems, and other treasures.  The greatest of all of them sits atop a velvet pillow: a dusty but beautiful crown.

End of campaign.

XP awarded: 3700 each for Ceinwynn and Ivar; 3890 each for Arbrant, Marc, and Nestaron.