We go to the Pelor temple so Erik may cleanse it of evil. Erik and Finnan do the ritual for about 15 minutes and the others stand guard. A bolt of light beams onto the building and the ceremony is finished. This certainly attracted attention, so we run to the next possible place that the stone may reside, the Library.

Telrun and Finnan check the area and find no traps here. We head inside the library and we hear a cackling coming from a nearby room. Finnan picks the lock and we rush inside. There is a “magic” goblin wearing ill-fitting robes and laughing. There are five other guys here and books (natch), as well as alchemical potions. He is tearing pages out of a book to cast spells. One of them is a puddle of mud that becomes sentient and attacks us. We take out the baddies in the room, but then a bunch of wolves charge in.

We use the third scroll (the final one) and check for the stone, but come up empty again. Telrun ses an area of the stone wall that has been scratched away, by bronze dragon claws it looks like. There is a spot where the stone would have been, but it is gone. We loot the area of some gold and also magical chain mail — Erik takes this. Erik also finds a religious ritual scroll called the Hand of Fate.

We sneak over to the bath house. It has been mostly destroyed, but we find a half-concealed cave entrance. We go inside and the bronze dragon is there, his name is Tyristys. We ask her if she has the stone and she says yes, but we may not have it. We explain our situation and she asks what we have that we may trade. We say that we can get her a better home than the one she resides in — the tower on the river at Fallcrest. She agrees, but before she can leave we must move her treasure for her without losing anything. We agree and take the stone, but she has one last request — we can’t use it on her!

We enter the city of Kiris Dan through a secret passage that comes up through a manor house, the Kiris estate. As we come out of the tunnel we find ourselves in a cellar. There is a goblin standing guard here; we quickly take him out and hear noises in the next room. There is a hobgoblin riding a drake and a few more goblins and hobgoblins.

After taking care of the baddies, we do the ritual to check for the stone and come up with nothing. The next target is across the street. We walk past the stables and see dead horses nearby, and the stables have whargs and drakes inside. We move past stealthily.

We come to a spot with three temples nearby, and one is for the god Pelor. We head to the center temple, for the goddess of the moon, to start the ritual. We come across a man splashing in the temples’s pool, and he says that he is the heir to this village. We check the area using the scroll, and find that the stone is not here either.

Suddenly we are attacked by goblins, and the man turns on us. He has turned into a were-rat! Finnan is bitten by him and may now be diseased. We dispatch the goblins and the were-rat, and Finnan retrieves a silver dagger.

The Lord of Fallcrest, impressed with our work so far, asks us if we would like a disused building at the north end of town to use as our base of operations. We agree and thank him, though it sounds like the place needs a lot of work.

The Lord of Fallcrest gives us a wagon and two horses so we may track down a woman named Treona who can help us get the Dwarven scroll translated. She lives beyond the Ogre Fist Hills.

We crack on to Treona’s tower. During the trip it is raining heavily. We see a lantern in front of her house. Telrun suddenly notices that we are being followed and that they are moving to attack us. They appear to be wolves, and Telrun manages to calm them before they can attack. He gives them meat and they decide not to eat us.

We go to the tower and meet Treona. She reads the note and goes pale — a person named “Dreus” wrote the note, saying that Vekna is coming to destroy Fallcrest. Dreus is a woman that Treona knew. Her mentor, Katenthes, was also the mentor of Dreus. They lived in this tower. Dreus coveted Katenthes’ power and slew him using dark magic, then fled.

Treona asks us how we came across the note and we explain. Suddenly there is a loud noise as Finnan tries to break in to the tower and a trap goes off. He jumps into the river to avoid being discovered. We say that we don’t know who may have tripped the trap. Erik excuses himself to heal Finnan, and we explain that he was outside with the wolves.

Treona tells us that an artifact called the “Slaying Stone”, of which there is one left in the world. They were from the city called Kiris Dan. Now the city has been overrun by goblins, and there are 3 possible places it may be. The old library, an old temple or the Kiris estate. We are given a magical scroll that can be read to activate as a homing beacon to help us find it. We must bring the stone back to Treona for her to destroy or use it ourselves when we find it. We must get it before Dreus does — she may want to use it on the Lord of Fallcrest.

Finnan offers that he knows a lot about goblins; he was captured by them. Goblins are cowardly and weak, and will follow any bully like Hobgoblins or Bugbears. They typically follow Bane as a god.

We come to another room where a group of kobolds are playing a game with a swinging ball of slime, attempting to stick it to a pile of skulls. We kill them quickly, but in the next room we find 2 drakes. Erik gets stuck to the floor with goo for most of the battle. There are jewels on one of the nearby ledges; Telrun takes them.

We enter another chamber with a large boulder perched upon a ledge. Finnan discovers the trap that would drop it on us and disarms it. There are more enemies here including a shaman. After defeating them we find that he has a silver key and a folded up note that is written in Draconic.

We come to a dead end, but Telrun sees a keyhole filled with mud. He unlocks it and we come into a large chamber. Suddenly we see a white dragon before us! Finnan runs and jumps on his back, scoring 232 hit points on him. After a protracted battle we finally defeat him. There is a chest in the room with 100 gold and a life drinking war hammer.

We take the kobold ears back to the Lord of Fallcrest and he pays us 400 gold for our trouble.

We go to the Nentir Inn, a new establishment across the river in the wealthier part of the city. We let the watch know where we are going. The hotel is nice; it costs 5 silver per evening. Erik and Telrun stay in one room; Rocco and Benn stay in another. It costs 2 silver for dinner. The guards tell us that we are to see the lord of Fallcrest, a man named Marclay. His family established the city hundreds of years ago. We leave to see him after dinner.

We share our experience at the orphanage with him, and he is impressed that we handled the situation ourselves. We also let him see the note that we found. Asking if he could use our skills to handle another situation for him — a group of kobolds are attacking the local merchants. They are at an abandoned manor house. We agree, and load up with a small keg of oil and some traps, and a map of the location.

The manor house does indeed seem abandoned. Telrun checks the are for traps and indeed find them going to a trap door in the ground of one of the towers. We encounter undead kobolds here.

After dispatching the kobolds, we go down one level and see defiled coffins. In the corner there is an altar with a bag atop it. There are two statues with plate mail armor on the sides. They have darts that fire at us. The altar is of Tiamat, the god of greed that chromatic dragons worship. In the bag there is 60 gold.

Continuing to the library upstairs, we hear more screams. There are four figures in the room — a zombie hulk, a robed man and two other zombies. Two more of our orphan friends show up and we kill the zombies. Checking the corpses, Finnan finds a cloaked dagger. They have the symbol of Vekna on them; a cleft skull. Vekna is the lord of the undead.

We go to check in on the nun in her office across the hall. She is Sister Annabel, a priestess of Pelor. We find her mangled body on the floor. Erik, also a follower of Pelor, says a prayer over her body. Checking the other rooms, we find them similarly trashed.

We go back to the first floor, taking some of the survivors with us. We see the town guard and fill them in on the situation and have them take the survivors. We continue to the office of the orphanage and find nothing.

We head to the cellar and find that the Vekna cultists tunneled in. There are more baddies here, 3 zombie dogs. We dispatch them and move into the tunnel.

We find an adjacent room and find a necromancer controlling more creatures. We kill him and he dies praising Vekna. We find some gold, a pearl and two healing potions on his person, as well as a wand of fear. We also find a note on him, but it is in a strange Dwarven dialect that none of us can read.

We head through the end of the tunnel and end up in an abandoned house that the cult must have been using. It is 2 blocks from the orphanage.

Back at the orphanage, the guards are cleaning up the bodies. We let them know about the necromancer and his lair in the abandoned house.

We go back up to the third floor and search for anything that they may have been looking for, but find nothing else of note.

Our heroes grew up in an orphanage in the town of Fallcrest in the Nentir Vale. We’ve returned there after having been gone for five years. We are Telrun a Druid; Erik, a Cleric; Rocco, a Knight; Benn, a Shaman; and Finnan, a Rogue.

The town of Fallcrest is divided into a more affluent section in the north and a poorer area in the south, separated by a river. The empire of Nerath was in the south 100 years ago, since it fell things have gotten worse in the area. There are bandits and monsters everywhere now. The town is relatively unchanged however. There is a new inn across the river, and the Blue Moon Alehouse is considered the best tavern. We are all at the alehouse; Erik buys the first round.

We hear some commotion outside, and go to check it out. It is near the old orphanage we all lived at. Getting closer we see what appear to be zombies attacking! We dispatch the ones outside and hear screams from in the building.