We arrive back to the keep and find that the guards are not on the battlements and the portcullis is up. We advance in, on our guard. We see a person strung up and dead, we recognize him as one of the workers from the Crossed Lances.

Heading inside, we see a wagon with supplies from the Crossed Lances on it. This may have been a “Trojan Horse” to let them gain access and then attack. We do not hear the sounds of battle, though. The kitchen has food that has gone cold and Sleeves is not there. The horses are fine.

Heading down to the jail, we see that Sleeves and Thomas are down here in a cell. We release them and they say that Geeves has gotten stranger with his behavior in the last few days, and has invited some people here. They were chanting and taking their clothes off. Thomas is completely catatonic. We mention to Sleeves that his stew is on the fire and he goes to check on it.

We head upstairs and on the stairwell we see Otto and Reinhardt. We hear an orgy going on behind them. They warn us that there is a sacred ritual going on and we can’t go in. Brokk says that he wants to go in but they aren’t buying it. They move to attack us and Vedasi tries to disable them. Jean shoots and arrow right through Otto’s eye, killing him instantly.

Brokk ascends the stairs and sees a disturbing scene of the orgy, and Geeves en flagrante with one of the barmaids from the Crossed Lances, but it doesn’t seem to be exactly him — his skin has a pinkish sheen and his tongue is elongated. He has a huge lobster claw where one hand should be, and goat’s legs. He reaches behind him without breaking stride and grabs a marionette. He manipulates it and causes Tobruk to attack Maruviel.

Geeves rears back and spits gobs of blue-green blood out of his mouth toward us. Tobruk is still charmed and starts attacking us. He finally snaps out of it and the elves and Jean light up Jeeves with arrow shots until he falls back, bleeding from both arms.

The villagers close in on us and start stabbing. We take a few of them out but there are too many. Brokk is stabbed in the leg and passes out on the floor, bleeding. The fight comes to an end and Jean tries to help Brokk but is not able to do anything. He is unconscious and breathing steadily.

Jean looks around and sees only three people that he recognizes; the rest must have been picked up on the road. We take the bodies out and burn them.

We go up into the tower bedroom and Geeves has redecorated there as well. A strange symbol is here, it is the symbol of Slanesh. His armor is discarded in a pile. Maruviel takes it. His backpack is here as well. It has some healing draughts, poultices, fey eyes, and someone’s actual eye.

Brokk tries one of the vials that says “Cure All” on it but it’s a spoiled potion and causes a strange condition for him. He decides to rest up.

The rest of the group buries the mask and the dagger that Geeves had in a branch off of our secret tunnel. And after cleaning up the keep, we plan on visiting Giovanni.

It takes us about an hour to get things ready and then we head upriver. In the evening we decide to camp rather than push through, at the captain’s recommendation. We fish off the boat and have a shore lunch.

That evening, we hang out by the fire and take watches. During the third watch, Jean sees some things creeping across the shore. They are goat-men and centaurs with bows and arrows. Vedasi wakes up and kills one immediately with two arrows. Gottfried tries to shoot one of them with his pistol but the thing explodes, blowing his right arm off. He screams in pain.

Tobruk is gored in the chest by one of a Bestigor, a minotaur-cow thing. He puts his axe right in the thing’s spine and it expires. Brokk runs up to the centigor that is near Gottfried and leaps at him like Brad Pitt from Troy and stabs him in the side of the head, killing him instantly.

We kill the rest of them, and Brokk heals both Tobruk and Gottfried although his hand is certainly gone. We talk about getting him a nice hook with different attachments. We search them and find some armor and weapons.

We head out and make it back to the keep by midday the next day.

We each take one healing poultice from Geeves and head upriver to Groghaven. It takes us several hours but is uneventful. The town is right on the river. This is a silver and iron mining town that has smelters and forges. It smells quite bad.

A government functionary greets us and asks us for a docking fee. He charges us 5 silver per day to dock which Tobruk pays. He tells us that the best place for us to drink being Dwarves, not the Drunken Shitpit, but Snotling Fondlers is our best option.

Our options for lodging is The Wicked Trickster or the Gypsy Lodge (where the decor is a little strange). The Trickster is run by halflings and we decide to go there. The owner is pretty theatrical and gets dinner ready for us.

We head to the forge which is huge with a lot of stock, but we quickly realize that the prices are quite high. There is reportedly a dwarven forge out of town a couple of miles with really good quality stuff, so we decide to head there. Vedasi is looking to sell the diamond that we got from the inn.

The dwarves are brothers, named Dhumaad & Grourford. They are not impressed with Brokk’s sword but go crazy over Tobruk’s axe. They actually weep when Tobruk lets them hold it. Because of this we are able to haggle with them better. Brokk is talked into getting a really nice hammer ordered and buys some other things. The others buy custom armor for a pretty penny. It will take the dwarves a while to make all of this.

They give one caveat — if we are monster fighters, we must watch out for the one inside the keep. They ask if we can put the screws to the Boss if we can.

When asked about the gem, the dwarves suggest going to the dwarf Regnard in town to sell it for a “fair price.”

They offer to have us come back and drink with them, and they roll out a barrel of Bugman’s finest which is very good beer. The elves and Jean partake as well. We are now immune to fear tests but it is like drinking 4 regular beers.

They tell us about the Boss. She wants to take the entire area over and take out Giovanni and Hauptner. She will probably take out Giovanni first with Hauptner’s help, and then take out Hauptner as soon as she has no use for him. He is smitten with her and they are lovers. She also dislikes elves with a fiery passion, the dwarves suggest that they stay home when we go to meet her.

We head back into town and they try to charge us, but Tobruk intimidates them and they back off. The next morning we get up and go to the gem store to try and pawn the blue diamond. The old dwarf here takes no notice of the customers until Vedasi slams the diamond down on the counter. He looks at it and seems to want to buy it. Vedasi haggles with him and is able to get 2100 crowns for the gem, silver platter and some other items.

Jean and Brokk go to see the Boss. She is in the mid-40s and is in good shape, very athletic, however she is not extremely beautiful. Her guards have pistols and there are a half-dozen men with her in very good armor and well-armed. She is very casual but says that we have made a lot of waves around here and she wants a cut. She asks for 10% of our earnings and says that we have two items she wants — the ornate dagger and the mask from the boat that we took over.

Jean puts his best game face on and says that he doesn’t know about the dagger and the mask, but he will ask the others in our party about it when we return to the keep. She believes him. Jean gives her the map that he made for her. She is very impressed and says that this will count as our tax for the next month.

It’s now about noon, so we get on the boat and head back north. On our way, Jean determines a way that we could visit the dwarves without going through Groghaven and overland rather than via the river.

Maruviel and Vedasi do a perimeter check one mile around the keep. Near the Winter’s Keep Pass, they come across a group of woodsmen cutting down trees. There are about a half dozen men  and a dozen children here. Continuing on, they find evidence of wood-elves in the area. There is a small grove of trees where they appear to be.

The elves go to the grove of trees and sees that they are “deep wood scouts.” Normally elves don’t care about anything outside of their forest, but the evils in the world have gotten worse and some elves have branched out to try to help in other wooded areas.

A male comes to greet them and Vedasi says that they have come to “meet the neighbors.” The elf says that they’ve noticed that the keep has new tenants, and that they travel with strange folk. Maruviel says that they have rooted out the evil of the black arrows. Vedasi says that his lord asked that he be a bodyguard of a mapmaker. The scouts visibly relax as they are discussing, though they say that it seems a waste of talent to defend one person. Vedasi agrees but he says that it’s in order to understand this area better.

The elf’s name is Thioros. There are several others who seem younger than him: Corlolvath, Koladoc, Thilvoth (males), Syrissen, Ylana (females). Vedasi mentions that we have river transportation and also the skaven, ogres and woodsmen are discussed. The woodsmen may work for Hauptner. The area that we’re in is the Hvargar forest.

Thioros gives them a quiver of arrows that are “signal arrows.” He says to light and fire one of them into the air if we need help. He also asks us to be on the lookout for their signal arrows.

The elves return to the keep and we decide to head back to the tunnels. We head in but are not able to navigate very well. There are at least nine branches off of the main tunnel so far and we see that they keep spreading out. Maruviel suggests that we flood the tunnels, but Tobruk says that this would be a temporary measure. The other options would be to collapse the tunnels manually (needing lots of laborers) and to plant explosives. We decide to cut our losses and head back to the surface. Any plans against the skaven will have to wait.

We decide to head to the Boss’s castle via the river, but first we head to the woodcutter camp. We ask them to provide wood for the construction of our various efforts. The man says that his name is Maxwell (the others are Rolf and Theodore) and he explains that the wood belongs to Hauptner. He seems quite well learned for a woodsman. He says that he went to the university to learn to be an engineer, but. He says that we can’t have their lumber because it is promised to Hauptner. We offer them the ability to live in the keep and work for us, but Maxwell says that he will compromise for now because he doesn’t want to take the risk. They will do some work for us and assess the keep, but they need to keep doing work for Hauptner.

Suddenly we hear a crunching sound as something is coming through the woods. We see a group of forest goblins coming from the northeast. We start to fend them off and the woodcutters back away quickly to protect their families. Suddenly a huge spider descends from the trees and a goblin is riding it! He holds a wand of some kind and casts magic at us.

The spider advances on us and the goblin continues to attack. Arrows suddenly protrude from the spider’s thorax as we see Thioros and the other elves come to help. The spider goes down and some goblins that tried to escape are taken out by the elves.

We assure the woodcutters that the threat is done. The elves say that it’s strange for the goblins to be this far. Perhaps word that the Black Arrows have been removed has caused them to become more bold. In a stunning move, Tobruk thanks the elves. They say that they were merely protecting the area.

Maxwell says that he will come back to the keep and begin moving their sawmill to the river. The elves say that while we are in Groghaven they will make sure the keep stays safe.

Realizing that people are using these caves, we think about putting a watch here and either charging tax or kicking people out and letting them know that this place is under new management.

We head to the next area and see evidence of people climbing up the embankment of the gorge. It is quite rocky here and there are other caves above us. Vedasi free climbs up and ties a rope so the rest of us can go in.

Upon entering we see old bedrolls and a circle of stones for a fire pit. There is also a knapsack here with 5 gold and a small dagger. As we are looking around, Jean smells something strange, like a wet musty odor coming from the left wall.

We take a look and see a hidden fissure covered by stones and netting only about a foot wide. The air is clearly coming from the next cave over. We head over there and check the right wall of that cave. It smells much stronger here and gets worse toward the back of the cave.

There is a red flash and Tobruk dodges out of the way as a jagged curved blade comes out of the wall. It is a skaven, a man-rat, and they are wearing black armor and wielding swords. Several of them swarm from other entrances toward us. One has a globe of strange liquid and runs toward us. It explodes and three of the skaven are caught in the blast, as well as a few of our party. Brokk gets a big whiff of it and feels intense pain, vomiting and doubling over. He runs away from the fight, hacking and coughing.

The others continue fighting as more skaven come out, at least ten of them. They secrete a horrible smelling musk when they are scared or injured. We fight them off and one gets away. Before pursuing them we try to heal up, but Brokk completely fails at it, even with a poultice.

Picking through the skaven belongings, in a pouch Tobruk finds three pieces of glowing green rock, three nuggets of it. He is not sure what it is at first, but Vedasi realizes that it is refined Warpstone. It’s very dangerous, but common for skaven to use and even eat.

We head back to the keep and heal up, then sleep through the night. The next day Jean remembers that he took a book on skaven from the house we recently visited. It mentions the way that skaven wage war and an “under empire” which is where they live, including a city called Skaven Blight. They have a large empire underneath the ground. His other history books mention nothing of the skaven at all. Tobruk relates that they are second only to dwarves when it comes to engineering and that at least one dwarven hold was destroyed by the skaven. Vedasi relates that Britonia held back an attack by skaven long ago, and the wood elves fought against them other times as well.

We decide to undertake an effort and check around the keep to see if there are threats around. We take some of the cloaks and swords and spread them around the lower caverns so it looks like they were hit by skaven and this is why the rifles and such are missing.

It’s determined that the skaven are the gravest threat. We start planning a trip to a nearby city to get help in defeating them. We haven’t decided where yet — either to the Boss, Hauptner, or someone else.

After leaving the house, we notice that no time has passed which is very strange. We are exhausted and head to the Muskrat for a few drinks. After this we return to the boat and the crew is ready to go. They have returned with some supplies.

As we head upriver, we break down the stage and lash the wood to the deck for future use. It gets late and we have to stay the night on the river at a place the crew chooses.

In the morning, we leave at around 10am. In the early afternoon we see four small, fast boats heading downstream toward us. We get nervous and ask the crew about it. They say that it’s likely “tax collectors” who are employed by the Boss and they are going to ask us for money, or even take our ship.

Gottfried, our captain, says that usually they just collect money and let people on their way. We heave to and they board, two boats on either side. They have crossbows and one person with a longbow. They come aboard and ask us what our business is. The man’s name is Gunther and knows Gottfried. We tell them that we are bringing supplies north for the people in the region. Jean tells him that we got the boat because the previous owners were killed in the troll attack.

Gunther says that he heard about the troll attack and that we were instrumental in helping. He says that because of this, his boss Sasha would like to see us. This can be at a time of our choosing in Groghaven. We agree and say that we’d like to pursue partnership.

He asks for us to pay the tax and we convince him that if we’re going to work for his boss, he may not want to be asking us for money. Tobruk looks menacingly at him and Gunther decides to take his leave.

As we continue, Jean starts a very detailed and ornate map of Sasha’s area that he plans to present her when we meet. Upon reflection, he adds more strategic details to the map.

We stay the night again on the river and the crew cooks for us. Vedasi stays up and starts hearing some noise from the woods, a big crashing sound. He goes to investigate and sees a seventeen-foot-tall giant lumbering through the woods. It seems to be quite drunk.

Vedasi shoots the giant in the same leg twice. The rest of us try and creep up on it. It passes out and almost falls on Tobruk but he is able to leap out of the way. He grabs Brokk and slams him on the ground. The others continue attacking and finally after getting up and falling down a few times we finally kill him.

There is a halfling in a cage at the giant’s waist. We find the key and unlock him. The halfling’s name is Thomas, and he is a farmer. We ask him to come along with us and he agrees. Vedasi takes the giant’s head and testicles as souvenirs.

We head back to the ship and explain what happened to the crew, and they are pretty incredulous. The head of the giant is mounted on the bow and testicles are mounted at the stern. The next day we travel back to the keep and introduce Thomas to Sleeves and the others.

We decide to check out the caves. There looks to be a staging area and some storage here. We go back and check the one at the level of the riverbank. There are similar things here.

We come across twelve greatswords that are marked with the symbol of Averland, which is used by their military. They must have been plundered. We find another long crate that is sealed. There are three Hochland rifles in here. Sylvia seems to know what these are, and they are worth 600-700 gold crowns.

We search past the next door and it is a cloakroom. There are some coins here, and the dates on the coins is 2329, and we are almost 200 years later, in 2521.

The next room is a small reading room. There is a desk and some other furniture. A suit of armor stands in the corner. A book is open on the desk, and Jean reads it to see that it is all about torture. Suddenly two irons come out of the fire and attack us. Brokk believes that he is being shackled.

Vedasi takes the book and hurls it into the fire, but some sort of a demon that looks like a dwarf emerges and begins to attack us. Jean is petrified with fear.

The demon shoots a pincer out toward Geeves and hits him in the neck. Tobruk smashes it and it dissipates into dust.

We search the rest of the room as Geeves heals Maruviel who was badly hurt. Jean finds some books that discuss monster hunters and skaven. Geeves takes the suit of armor and puts it on.

The group heads to the next room on this floor and it is another sitting room. There are dust covers on everything. We see a portrait of a chaotic beast-man with a goat’s head standing over two fallen warriors. We hear a gurgling sound and blood stars gushing from the painting. The dwarves are just able to get out of the way. Suddenly the beast man steps out of the painting and attacks us. After a few quick strokes he is destroyed as well and the room gets noticeably colder.

We head up the stairs and down a hallway and see a room that is horribly decorated. There are pentagrams everywhere. We mess them up and nothing happens.

In the next room, there is a bed here and a ghost appears. It is a middle aged man and he claims to be the manservant of the owner. He says that a magical ceremony was performed in the ceremony room or the attic and the house became cursed, and he died.

The next room is quite large and has half of a pentagram. Two more abominations are here. Jean shoots an arrow through the woman’s third eye and she crumples to the ground, dead. The man rushes at us and Tobruk crushes his arm and then takes the top of his head off. The pentagram in here is nicely made and is inlaid with silver. Brokk messes up the pentagram and nothing happens.

We go through the doors and there is a small staircase here. There is a deep dark on the stairwell and we ascend for what feels like forever. Finally we reach the top and there is a door ahead. We hear a hideous laughter. There are three thrones in the room with small tables between. Each one has a plain gray robe lying on the throne and each table has a golden bowl. A sealed vial and a towel are next to each.

Brokk sits on one of the thrones but nothing happens. We approach the door at the end of the room and a ghost appears. The room gets very cold and he is wheezing. “Last ones to come. You must destroy it or perish! I meddled with time and raw chaos! Now it comes to destroy!” A black claw emerges and squeezes the ghost. Then it falls apart and is destroyed.

The doors swing open and we are sucked into it. The room continues on forever it seems. There is a pulsating sac of a beast with tentacles in front of us. It drips goo and has a protruding eye, and faces are screaming in its intestines. Whenever it is hit, it spews burning blood onto us. We destroy it and get away before it bursts.

Back in the previous room, we see the paintings have changed to show the modern day. Tobruk jumps through the painting. We follow him and suddenly we are on the street. We look behind us and see that there is no house. People look at us funny. We decide to go back to our boat.

Geeves checks the ring that Brokk found and it is not magical, but it has a nice ring to it.

After a long day of negotiation and figuring things out, we stay the night at the Muskrat this time. The owner lets us use our rooms that we had already arranged for. We drink at the bar and have a good time. Gottfried and the crew stay here as well.

The next morning we have breakfast. As we are here, a letter is delivered to Jean by someone named Leviticus Hanik. He has invited us to his home. We decide to go and head up to his house. It is an older area of town. We make a loop around the house and see that it’s not very well taken care of.

Going up to the front door, we see a note stuck there that says to wait in the smoking room, as he is taking care of a small matter. It is signed by Hanik. We head inside and it is quite dilapidated here. There is a mist inside and it is cold, even though it is summer outside. There are pipes all around and we take a look.

Suddenly a small hookah and figurine on the mantle emerges and begins smoking and an avatar of flame begins emerging. It attacks Brokk but he is able to get out of the way. He tries to smash the figurine but breaks part of the mantle. Geeves uses a breeze spell but it doesn’t dissipate.

The elves grab a rug and smother the fire spirit with it, and it goes out. Jean looks outside and sees people walk by, but suddenly they appear as if they have older fashions, as if they have traveled through time.

We try to get out the front door, but it is locked. The door will not break and neither will the windows. We search the smoking room and find a small bone key inside a drawer. There are no locks to open in this room, however, and the key doesn’t work on the front door.

All of us head into the next room which is a dining room that is all set. As we enter, the doors slam shut and the candles light. Geeves uses a spell to make a gust of wind again and the candles go out. Suddenly the candles and steak knives rise up into the air and menace us. Brokk jumps onto the table to attack one of the knives and slips and falls on the ground. A candelabra smashes him on the head. We smash them after a long battle.

We head out of the room and Vedasi hears a strange scraping sound. It is kind of like metal on metal. Also, the elves smell meat cooking. We go into another room and we see a horrific scene. There are two zombies and one is turning some meat on a spit. They turn to attack us and Brokk begins seeing visions of small men. It’s all very bizarre. We destroy the zombies and the little men, and search the room but find nothing else.

The door to the south of us is larger with gargoyles on it. We see a lock and the key fits into it. We open the door and there is a grand staircase.

We go into the door next to us and there is a small room. A spectral entity attacks us and wraps its hands around Tobruk. Brokk is terrified. Thankfully Tobruk kills it, and Brokk finds a gold ring under the bed.

As we come back ashore, the Harbormaster greets us and professes his thanks for saving the town from the river trolls. He says that he will pass on this information to Prince Hauptner and perhaps there will be a reward, but not right away.

He also offers us free room and board in the town for tonight as well as free docking fees. Jean makes sure that we are put up in the Shooting Star, which is the nicest place in town and also the place that turned us away when we first arrived. The maitre d is not happy to see us, but the harbormaster explains the situation and he smiles through his teeth at us and bears it.

Jean orders the most expensive thing on the menu for dinner and requests the finest room and sheets. Tobruk takes a bath and gets it all filthy. Jean steals the terry cloth robe from the room when we leave.

We begin looking for a boatman who can handle our boat to take it up the river, and we find an older man named Gottfried Schmalls. Geeves speaks with him and he agrees to come to our boat and check it out. He thinks that it is river-worthy and we would just need to get rid of the stage. We offer him 100 gold for 2 months. We will get him and all of his crew, which includes Diego Calabria, a Tillian; Giles Simone, a Britonian; Udo Richter, an Imperial; Silvia Batanero, an Estallian; Vera Holz, an Imperial. Vera appears to be Gottfried’s first mate. He will help us load up our barge and fix up the landing area a mile from our keep as a trading outpost.

Gottfried also mentions that we may have some caverns under the area of our keep that we could use for smuggling and storage. We will have to deal with “the Boss” as she may try to extort us. Schmalls agrees and he says that he will tow his boat behind ours.

Jean confesses to Tobruk that he is actually the reason that his room was broken into. He gave the woman Tobruk’s room number when they agreed to meet later. He didn’t trust the woman and thought that they might break into the room, but that Tobruk would be able to handle whatever happened.

As we are finishing our conversation with the harbormaster, suddenly we hear a loud bell ringing in alarm. Almost immediately we see three river trolls emerge from the water and start to attack people on the piers and nearby boats. They are vomiting a horrible substance on them, smacking them with huge clubs and eating them.

Vedasi fires off several arrows but they don’t seem to have much effect on the trolls. The dwarves run back to shore and then across to the other pier to reach one of the trolls. Tobruk attacks one of them several times and finally fells the beast, therefore becoming an actual “slayer of trolls.” He also yells to the others that the trolls are vulnerable to fire and also that they are stupid.

The third troll swims away. A fourth troll emerges out of the water near the town and the elves.

Brokk attacks one of the trolls but gets vomited on. Maruviel starts firing flaming arrows at it. Jean takes a lantern and hurls it toward one of the trolls but also hits Brokk and Tobruk. One more lantern toss immolates the troll entirely and he falls into the water.

The fourth troll continues to attack the elves and Geeves approaches, using a small pin to cast a shock spell on him. The others continue to shoot flaming arrows at him until one finally hits him in the heart and he dies.

Geeves heals everyone using healing draughts and poultices. We look through the troll’s bodies and find XXXXXXX. Deciding we’ll go after the trolls, we ask the harbormaster for a skiff. We head after the fourth troll and take the skiff into the troll lair. It is smelly and close in here and we see the troll and his victim (one of the townspeople) is here. After we attack it for a long while it finally goes down.

We search the area, though it is filthy, and we find a dwarven rune axe wrapped and in fairly good shape. Also there is a wood elf cloak that is magical. These make you harder to see and harder to hit by some weapons. We also find four healing draughts.

We leave and take the remains of the townspeople, and later make a small caern for their bones.