Walking through the razed town, we don’t see anyone else alive after the orc attack. The group tries to check for a trail where the orcs may have come from, but we can’t find anything.

On the other side of town, we see a farmstead off in the distance. Above us, there are clouds massing for an oncoming storm. We think that perhaps it may be magical in origin, but the senses of the people in the group say otherwise.

We head toward the farmhouse and on the way we see orc tracks going through the fields. As we get closer to the house, we don’t see any more orc tracks but there are human boot prints everywhere here.

Aliga checks the house and finds nothing. Porodo goes in the basement and there are barrels of rotten food, but he finds a trapdoor underneath one of the barrels. He calls the rest of the group down.

We open the trapdoor and it is a shaft that descends for quite a ways. Eilenos descends first and sees that there is a long stone hall. The others come down and we start searching around.

We hear a scratching nearby, but we’re not sure what it is. We go through a door and there is another stone room with a basin in the center. Next to that is a forge. Another couple of rooms on this floor do not have anyone in them. In the south room there is a spiral staircase that descends.

On the lower floor there is what appears to be a chapel or worship area with pews and an altar. Sarthisis has his lizard knock over the altar to see if anything is underneath, but there is nothing.

A room off to the right appears like a bedroom. There is a loose brick in the wall and behind it seems to be some magical items. We open it up and there are several items here:

Small book – green leather with a tree on it
Brown leather (larger) – beasts on the cover
Brown leather – screaming face. This is a torture journal.
Scroll — non-magical, a list of 15 names. Off to the side there are names of seven places.
Slaver’s shackles — magical shackles that slow the person down
Sack full of gold

The text references “Malignus” who Eilenos remembers as a follower of Galignan and Necros. He amassed power and wealth and an army of followers. This group must be a cult of his followers. The book has dates of all of the torture victims. One of the names, Carter, is listed in the book and rings a bell. Porodo remembers Carter was one of his rangers. Unfortunately he was likely killed here about three months ago.

In the next room there are a bunch of torture victims. We free two of them, an elf and a Merikii and two seem to be okay. They say that they were kidnapped by cultists, but they seem to have left recently. We find their stuff in a nearby chest and they gear back up.

The new people, Charon and Imra, meet Nadia and Josephus. Josephus says that they have the touch of destiny about them, and that they should come with us.

The weather hasn’t changed, and it is still raining hard, so we decide to stay here for the night. Aliga is nominated to watch, and in the middle of the night he sees something outside and wakes the rest of the group.