Session 4

The morning after Eastrock's summer festival, the streets are quiet and the weather is pleasant. Many of the revelers have left town for their own villages in the outlying areas. Before our heroes also depart, they make their rounds and meet up with their new acquaintances. Bharash drops in to the temple to see Esmry and discuss arrangements for Bharash's eagle egg. Esmry informs him that she would not feel comfortable taking any payment for the service, but she would ask that Bharash commit himself to the Church of the Seven Doors to the House of Heaven. Bharash is not comfortable with the bargain and simply just exhausted with all of the antics surrounding these eggs, so he respectfully passes and tells Esmry she may do whatever she likes with it.

After Bharash's trip to the temple, the whole group manages to find captain Argander, who is marching with his men and the priest Lexermis, accompanying the body of his fallen squire - Jondrew. Argander furnishes the party with a letter of introduction, should they need some credentials in the future. The party thanks him again for his help and departs.

En route to Stoneport, the party chooses again to take the shorter route and pass through Mossgarden, rather than Ashbarrow, much to Wolter's disappointment. Despite his dread about the decision, his superstitions turn out to be unfounded yet again when no harm comes to the party. In fact, while staying at Shelley's inn in Mossgarden, the party makes the acquaintance of a new friend, a half-orc of some sorcerous prowess. In addition, they manage to strike a bargain with Sinclair Tonney and unload their remaining eagle egg on him - thanks to the negotiating skills of Erkash Firetalker.

Upon arriving in Stoneport, the party is approached by the messenger who originally invited them to meet with Icano Vos. He tells them that Icano is ready to meet with them at the Red Pebble. That evening, the party makes their way to the tavern and amongst the patrons finds Garret's friend Alton Brushgather. Garret takes a seat beside Alton and discovers that after he told Alton to dig into Icano, Icano noticed him and offered him a job. Garret shows Alton the ledgers from the mine and Alton grows visibly concerned by what he sees.

With a snap of his fingers and a few words, Alton orders all of the patrons and the barkeep out of the Red Pebble. Once the bar is empty, Icano Vos emerges from the back room. He takes a quick look at the ledgers and asks the party what happened at his mine. The party tells him about the goblins and mentions the lone survivor. After some prodding, Icano reveals that the man who survived was Greyser Harth, who he employed to keep the books and forge tax stamps for the ore.

After Icano departs, the party splits up their pay equally among those were present for the actual descent into the mine, but Garret is feeling generous and fronts Erkash two hundred gold. Keg, who apparently has some sort of severe personality disorder, accosts another patron without any provocation. While the fight starts out in his favor, Keg realizes quickly that he is the kind of person who should pick on people his own size. Keg seems to have run out of options when his opponent picks him up by the throat, but Keg manages to cast a spell to put the entire bar* to sleep, save for himself and the elves in his company. Keg flees the area with Aramil in tow, but Alvalor decides to hang back at the tavern and distance himself from Keg's tomfoolery.

Keg and Aramil arrive at Keg's rented room on the plaza across from the university where they find a letter waiting for Keg. He instantly recognizes the handwriting as that of one of his old professors, Maglain Chulene, a gnome wizard of some repute. It seems that old Maglain has been enjoying the patronage of Lord Haren Reeve of Whitelake. Recently, Lord Reeve heard from his own son, Argander, about some heroes who he met at Eastrock, and the description reminded Maglain of Keg. Apropos of that, Maglain also happened to have some information he wanted to impart to Keg.

Keg and Aramil discuss the matter and decide to gather the party back together. Keg wants some company for the journey and he knows that several of his companions would love the opportunity to ingratiate themselves to a member of the nobility. After waiting a respectable amount of time, Keg returns to the tavern and manages to catch the rest of the party before they go their own ways. He invites them to join him and Aramil on the trip to Whitelake. No one has any better ideas about how to spend their time, so they agree to meet up the next day at the road to the old quarry and hike from there.

The party hikes for almost a week to reach Whitelake, arriving halfway into the sixth day. They locate Limewood Hall, Lord Reeve's estate and call on Maglain. The gnome wizard is getting on in years and has grown increasingly more forgetful, so Keg has to remind him about how his summoning. Maglain explains that after 'the accident' - which resulted in several deaths - he had lost his position with the university and a great deal of the respect he once commanded. Lord Reeve, in his graciousness and wisdom, invited Maglain to come continue his work at Whitelake and enjoy his patronage. In the course of his work, Maglain was consulting a catalogue of gnomish inscriptions from around the continent when he happened upon one entry that referred to 'Forgehands'.

Keg's attention is immediately piqued and he asks after the record. Maglain tells him, regretfully, that it was but a footnote. However, he continues, the site where the inscription can be found - an old gnome stronghold - is just a few days upriver from Whitelake, along the left tributary of the Valin. Keg is excited to get going and discover what hidden truths this place might hold about his family's lost glory, but the day has already grown long and Maglain invites the party to pass the evening in his company with Lord Reeve and to spend the night at Limewood Hall. After nearly a week on the road, the offer is too tempting to pass up.

The party arrives at the village of Bendmellow and elects to camp in the woods closer to where they know the old gnome fortress to be located. After they set up for the night and take a look around the area, they locate a cave in the rocky dome on the river and decide to hazard a quick investigation. As the mouth of the cave is at the rise of the river, the chamber within is flooded and the water rises to our heroes' hips. Garret, being as tall as he is, opts to ride on Bharash's shoulders, as the water would otherwise have been at his neck. The party discovers that the cave ends in a large chamber that contains little more than a beveled, circular set of stairs that rise out of the water to a stone door.

As they are investigating the cavern, a large trunk formed from the pool around them rises up and slams Aramil beneath the water. As Aramil struggles to break free, his companions fall upon the water weird and strike it. Aramil manages to escape the elemental's grapple and stumble out of its reach. Keg casts a bolt of magical frost at the water weird and when it strikes, a malevolent, angry face freezes inside of the elemental's body, locked into a cackling visage.

Alvalor, draws the elemental's attention when he contrives the brilliant idea to cast the spell 'Destroy Water' on the water weird. The monster writhes and twists in pain as a portion of its form evaporates. The elemental understands, instinctively, what Alvalor has done to it and glides invisibly under the water toward him before it bursts out from the surface and tries to slam him under the water. Alvalor braces himself behind his shield and manages to stand firm as the elemental crashes into him.

Bharash strides over to Alvalor to intervene, channeling the divine might of his god into his blade and strikes, cuts the water weird squarely in half. As the last semi-solid constituents of the elemental's body sizzle and bubbles into steam, the party decides that while they're victory was a decisive one, they have expended enough resources to warrant a rest before proceeding.

The group settles in for the night and determines the order for the overnight watch. During the fourth shift, Erkash hears something in the brush around camp. Despite his keen vision in low-light conditions, Erkash is unable to see anything moving about. He calls out to whatever might be there, but receives no response. Thinking he might be losing his mind, Erkash wakes the nearest of his companions - which happens to be Keg - to confirm that something is indeed creeping around the site. Keg realizes quickly that they are not alone, but before he can confer with his companion, Erkash whips a bolt of fire in the direction of foot steps. His spell misses whatever might have been lurking in the dark, but at least it seems to have scared it away.

In the morning, the party sees in the plain light of day that the creature stalking around them overnight left small effigies numbering one for each member of the group hanging from the branches of the trees above, wrought from animal bones, sticks and twine. Erkash and Keg share a brief, concerned glance; they each understand that whatever it was that walked amongst them in the night has marked the group as its quarry.

Wading through the flooded cave again, the party returns to the stone door at the top of the staircase, where Keg attempts to open it. When he grasps the handle, a bolt lightning courses through his body, but he shakes it off and plods on down the hallway. At the other end of the chamber, the party passes through another door and emerges into a large square courtyard with walls that slope outward, away from the center of the space. The old flagstone floor has long since been overtaken by brambles and weeds and a large oak has irrupted in the far corner.

Bharash, Keg and Aramil begin crossing the courtyard to investigate the door on the far wall when they crash through the brambles into a square pit occupying the center of the room. As they land, eight feet beneath the surface of the courtyard's floor, a trio of animated skeletons bursts out of both the doors to the left and right and rush the remainder of the party. Bharash ties a rope to his waist and hoists himself back out, allowing Keg and Aramil to quickly scale the wall and gain the courtyard's floor again. Erkash springs forward and stretches out his hands, pushing forth a huge plume of magical fire that he fans across the three skeletons at his flank. The skeleton's wobble and fall apart at their joints, their bones blowing away in the heat.

Bharash moves into position and breathes out a line of fire that catches the last skeletal warriors in its path and they curl as their bones singe but they do not crumple over. The rest of the party jumps forward and seizes the opportunity to destroy the undead in hand to hand combat.