We spend some more time around town but don’t find out too much more about the elves. Filarion plays at one of the local bars and gets quite the crowd. The name of the place is Akamagosh and caters to more of the working class crowd. The people there say that the elves left and then came back — most likely they were casing the city and then came back to steal the lute.

At the Golden Lute Filarion’s set is not met with as much enthusiasm, but he hears from the locals that they were waiting for something before they attacked.

We move on to the Slippery Fish where there is a big party going on. Filarion plays really well and everyone is having a great time. We don’t get so much information from them, however. We decide to turn in.

Later, Filarion visits the druidic grove where Mord is convening with the druid circle. The two ask several questions that the druid circle, firstly “Why did the elves take the lute?” which they respond “To draw the orks in.” They ask “What is their motivation?” and they respond “They think they are following Alona but are not.” They ask “Who are they actually following?” and the answer is “Erevan Elesir.” Erevan is a pretty severe elven god who is a trickster and hates orks.

We wake up to the smells of really good food and we eat and then visit the mayor. He says that he’s torn sending more of his men out. He can send six orks with us. We decide that we’ll use them as a rear guard and not go directly in with us. They will build some cover for us if we want to fall back.

Greedex, the local druid, comes with us. As we get closer, he says that there is a “shielded space” ahead of us. The elves must be using magic to protect themselves. Mord, Filarion and Dardenne go ahead and tell Greedak and Hadrian to wait for us.

We approach along with the unicorn and are told to stop by two elves who are ahead of us. We identify ourselves and say that we’re aware of the conflict between the elves and orks. They say that they are eladrin from the fae realms, and were told by Alona to root out the “corruption” in the forest. We say that they have been commanded by Erevan Elesir who is tricking them. They don’t believe us but Mord says that he can ask the god directly. They agree but we notice that there are warriors behind them ready to attack at a moment’s notice.

Mord’s divining works and the goddess speaks through him. She says that the elves are being commanded by Erevan Elesir. This causes a crisis of faith with all of the other elves and they seem to be questioning things. The cleric tries a spell as well, and says that we are telling the truth.

We suddenly hear a rumbling above us, it appears to be rolling thunder. An elf appears beside Hadrian and tells him to come with her. He detects evil and senses none, so he goes with her. They both approach us.

She goes to the other elves and says that Erevan was trying to use them, and he will pay. We can tell that this is Alona from her energy. She touches the leader and he breaks down crying. She summons Greedak out of thin air and introduces him to the elves as a faithful follower of hers for many years. She says that they could learn from him.

Greedak says “Our town welcomes those who come in peace, you could return and make amends.”

Filarion suggests that they return the lute that they stole.

The elves invite us to their town and say that they’ll disarm their traps so we can visit with them. They give us the lute and Filarion starts playing it. It is just a regular lute and is pretty out of tune.

Back at the ork town, the leader puts both of his swords down in front of the mayor — one is fire, one is ice so they sizzle when they touch. He asks for forgiveness.

Filarion plays the sacred lute in the town square but doesn’t do the best performance. The town is entranced anyway.

The mayor says that they are deeply in our debt and we can stay here any time we like.

We continue traveling west toward our mission that the druids sent us on. After a time we are attacked by three “howlers” — unnatural demon creatures. We fend them off but several of us are scared stiff by their cry. It’s determined that they are from another plane.

In the distance we hear the clash of swords. We go to investigate and see a group of elves fighting some orks in a skirmish. This is familiar territory for Hadrian and Dardenne, being warriors, and they both rush in to help the elves fight.

 

However, the others notice something and call for the combat to stop. With a spell, Mord creates a thick foliage for one hundred feet to stop people from being able to move. Filarion causes a huge stinking cloud to form as well.

The elves continue attacking and seem to be teleporting around. Mord tells Hadrian and Dardenne that the orks are dressed in finery and not acting like regular orks. Dardenne looks and finally sees it. He casts magic missiles on one of the elves and they start to move away.

Mord casts a spell on Hadrian that allows him to move through the foliage without being slowed down. Mord, Filarion and Hadrian help to heal the orks and they are very thankful.

The orks are appreciative and ask us to come back to their town with them, which is nearby. They speak common well. They explain that their town was founded by a bard that helped them understand civility and how to create a community, and these elves stole their founder’s magical lute.

They bring us into the town which is quite large and bustling. Their founder was named Aalavor Valren, who was a bard and a half-elf. They show us the statue in the center of town and it is a spitting image of Filarion. He is surprised and others start to notice. He is getting attention from a lot of the people in the town.

 

We meet the town leader named Silverleaf, and he orders that we should have hot food and clean linens to sleep on. They tell us the song and story of their founder and how he was captured by orks about 200 years ago and convinced them not to eat him.

They explain that they’ve had their troubles but have gotten along with elves. This attack was unexpected. The elves are also worshipers of Alona so it is very strange. They were here for 2 days and attacked a bunch of people and tried to take Silverleaf’s wife. Then they took the lute and fled.

We speak to his wife some more and she says that several guards died trying to help. The lute was being kept by the statue.

We offer to help track these elves down starting in the morning. Dardenne and Filarion feel personally responsible being elf-kin. They will be organizing a party and they have some trackers.

Hadrian goes to the inns that the elves went to, and doesn’t find out much. They stayed one night and paid, then left.

Mord speaks to one of the local druids and is also an ork. They enlist an owl to help them scout.

Filarion goes to the bard school and sees what he can find out there and Dardenne checks at the taverns, but they haven’t come up with anything yet.

We are at the crossroads inn, and Elauthin shows up and joins us.

During our free breakfast, two people come into the inn looking for us. They hand us an order from the church. There is an area near here that was a priory carved into a valley by Dwarves, including an ossuary (where bones were kept). The people there including two brothers that were a political power, became less godly and one brother started into the dark arts. The other one started doing mystical things. They rebelled and eventually the area was collapsed on top of them. Recently there have been “bad things” showing up there. Expeditions were sent to clear things out and nothing came back. The church sealed off the whole canyon and sealed the whole thing off and put up wards. They ask us to check it out and the cleric of the two says that he’s seen very nasty things there.

Filarion tells us what he knows of the area, and it appears that it’s less than a day’s ride. We pack up and leave right away. On the way, Filarion tells Elauthin all about our adventures and almost getting killed.

During our ride, we hear a huge noise coming from the left side of the King’s Road. We quickly hide in the thick brush across the road and we see two giant ogres crashing through the brush. We hear from behind them something coming, Elauthin says that it’s a “boulet” which is a very large carnivore. From several attacks we take down both the ogres and the boulet itself. We take off.

 

A few miles down the road, we smell something horrible. Elauthin looks nearby and finds a pile of flesh that has all of the bones taken out of it. We’ve never heard of anything like this before. Elauthin wants to take some of the meat to eat but Hadrian says that it is cursed and not to eat it.

We continue on and see the entrance to what used to be the valley. It looks like the wards have been broken. We rest for a while and then continue through. It is very narrow here but soon it opens up to be wider. We see a graveyard nearby that looks disturbed. Hardian tells us to be careful because this area looks evil.

Suddenly a ton of skeletons pop out of the ground around us and a “grave golem” made up of gravestones, grass and mud rises up. Dardenne uses lightning to damage several of the skeletons. Elauthin takes out tons of them with arrows. Filarion stands in the middle of the fray and creates a cloud of daggers in front of the golem. Dardenne, Elauthin and Darius yell at him to move out of the way and he finally does. Dardenne casts Ray of Frost on the golem a couple of times. Hadrian finally shield bashes and destroys it. When all of the skeletons are destroyed, they fade into the earth.

 

 

We move on and see a gigantic church. Darius sneaks inside and informs us that there is something big inside, along with what seems to be the two brothers.

We head in and we see the two “wight brothers,” one of whom is a cleric in big armor and the other is a wizard. They have a giant bone golem. Hadrian and Filarion move in to attack and Elauthin and Dardenne stay back for ranged attacks. We take both of them out, while they grumble about having to fight us. With his dying breath, the wizard sunders the altar and the bone golem re-forms. We kill it again before it fully forms.

 

The party checks the area for loot and we find tons of gold, jewels and magic loot.

We recuperate for a while after being almost killed, and we decide to head back out. Dardenne is adjusting to being a woman.

After a day of travel, we notice that alongside the path, there are two bears that seem to be following us. We try and determine if they are going to attack, but it doesn’t seem so.

We move off but they keep following us. Mord speaks a spell on his staff and it turns into a unicorn. The beast communicates telepathically with the bears and learns that they’ve had their home, a cave near here, attacked by “tall creatures” that we guess are werewolves or gnolls. They came after us because Mord reminds them of their friend, who we assume to be a druid. They say that their friend may be dead; they saw blood but are not sure what happened to him.

Dardenne and Hadrian confer and agree that this is something that we should help with. Mord also wants to help the druid if he can. We head off the road and follow the bears through the woods.

After a while the bears stop and tell the unicorn that any further, we may get attacked by the things. We say that we’ll continue on from here. The bears, unicorn and Mord’s raccoon stay behind.

The party decided that we will plan this time instead of just rushing into things, since last time that didn’t work out so well. We decide that Mord and Darius will sneak up behind them, and the rest of us will draw them out.

Mord turns into a squirrel and crawls on the top of the cave. Darius hides toward the entrance. Filarion taunts the gnoll standing toward the entrance, viciously. Dardenne then creates a bonfire underneath him and he leaps to the side.

We start to attack and all the gnolls come out of the cave to see what is going on. Hadrian comes up and starts fighting. Dardenne uses his staff to create a lightning bolt that kills both of the hyenas and one of the gnolls. The other gnolls are taken out pretty quickly.

We head inside and clear out the small cave. All of the bodies are dragged out and burned. We look through the cave and find several items of interest. Dardenne checks and a few of them are magical.

Mord asks the bears if we might stay the night, and they agree. They also say that they’d like us to help them hang up their friend’s wooden figure on the wall, and we oblige.

Dardenne finds leather armor, a cylindrical metal flask that seems full of lamp oil. One of the

The next morning we head out and while on the road are attacked by a shambling mound of weeds. While fighting it, it spits out two zombies that attack us as well. After defeating it, we see that there are half-decayed dead bodies in it. One of the bodies has a patchwork cloak with some of the patches gone. There is some other equipment as well. An ornate bow with divots in it, a cap, and a jewel.

The next day we come up to a crossroads with an inn. We stay there for the night.

We are told by Mord and Filarion that there is a nearby “grove” (it’s assumed they are druids, but we’re not sure) in the southern part of Welkwood that need our help. The ranger has gone on without us and we’ll meet up with him when we get to the woods. Dardenne and Hardian hesitate before agreeing because they are enjoying the company of young women. The others manage to convince them and all of us pack things up to go. It will be at least a week’s journey.

We set off and the first several days are fine, but on the fourth day the weather degrades and becomes dark and eventually very stormy. We decide to take cover at a nearby cave, but some in the party see that this is not just a cave but rather a ruin with stone blocks.

We come through and arched entrance and Mord sends “Tubby”, his raccoon familiar through to check things out. It reports back that there is a slick downward grade here that is pretty dangerous. We brave it anyway and some of us (Dardenne and Hadrian) slide downward and get injured. The rest are able to come carefully down. Mord casts “dancing lights” so we have some illumination.

As Dardenne and Hadrian are getting up and dusting themselves off, a group of lizard-men come through the darkness and attack us with swords and pointed shields.

Filarion creates a stinking cloud in their midst, one is caught by the cloud and the remaining lizard creatures move around it and continue attacking. Mord summons two dire wolves to attack the lizardfolk and keep them occupied.  Darius sneak attacks one of them and kills him. Dardenne unleashes a lightning bolt from his staff that kills three of them.

Unfortunately we are quickly overwhelmed. Dardenne is stabbed several times and goes down. Things get worse as three trolls step around the corner. One attacks a wolf and kills it. Another troll throws a rock at Mord barely missing taking Mords head off.  Behind them we see a shimmering black-skinned dragon. It uses its acid breath weapon on us and Hadrian and Filarion go down. Just as the breath weapon is released the area around the party is plunged into darkness.

Darius runs away up the ramp and escapes. Thanks to Ehlonna Mord was shielded from a portion of the dragon’s acid and is able to trigger a teleport spell and gets us a mile away. Once revived Filarion uses a spell to create a small hut for all of us to take refuge in. About an hour later Darius comes running into camp suprised to see most everyone there and alive.

In the morning the group decides to return to Homlett to see if they can get Dardenne back from the dead. Mord takes Dardennes body to the Druid’s grove. The Druid agrees to perform the ritual of rebirth on Dardenne. His naked body is rubbed down with oils and unguents. Then his body is put upon a large stone and covered in dirt, leaves and other natural items. After a a few moments there is shifting on the stone and Dardenne has transformed. The body that has been chosen by Ehlonna is that of a female wood elf. Dardenne is once again amongst the living.

The temple faithful rouse us and let us know that a wagon train has been hijacked. They ask us to rescue it. They think a larger group of insurgents are heading toward the temple.

We rush to the wagon train, and there is a group of orks that are holding it. We take care of them, and move toward the second group that was encroaching with a bunch of combatants. We take them all out.

After checking through everything, we discover that they were transporting holy items for the temple, and they are extremely grateful. At this point, our debt to the temple has been fully paid.

Each of us receive a “legendary” item.

We head down the stairs to an area we haven’t explored yet. It is a man-made cavern (room 30) that opens into a natural cavern that is quite large but enclosed. There is a large pool here. We start searching around, but something moves in the water. It appears to be a large crayfish. Dardenne fires at it with arrow but doesn’t do much damage. Hadrian goes to attack it but almost slips into the pool. He swings again and slices it in half. We drag it to the surface so we can eat it.

Looking around, we find some treasure. There is a platinum pin that Filarion puts on. A scroll is also found with spells on it. This is an 8th level scroll with the 2nd level spells Push, Stinking Cloud, and Fly. Dardenne takes this.

We come back up the stairs and go left through another hallway. It twists a couple of times and opens to a room with lots of alcoves (Intact Crypt – special #). We start checking it out but don’t find anything. At the end of the room is a sarcophagus. We move to check it out but we are ambushed by zombies from behind. Hadrian cuts one of them in half, Dardenne slices another and Elauthin takes out the third.

We look around further and find that one of the crypts has a hole in the back. We start check it out but Darius is looking at the sarcophagus. It emits a huge burst of energy and Darius drops. Hadrian grabs him up and hauls him away just as it emits another burst. We heal Darius and he tells us that before the pulse occurred, he saw two bodies behind it. Filarion tries to use his grappling hook to grab them, but he hooks his leg instead. Painfully, he pulls it out and has Darius toss it instead. He manages to hook both of them and pulls them out.

The two people are searched, and it looks that they have unicorn sygaldry. On them we find several items including cleric spells, druid spells and a staff. Mord takes the staff and briefly passes out. He wakes up with a smile on his face and says that it provided a direct connection to his god. It is a very powerful magic item. Filarion takes the breastplate with the unicorn on it.

We decide to try to get into the sarcophagus. Dardenne casts Detect Magic and sees that the lid is covered by runes which must be causing the magic. Filarion sees on top of the coffin the design of the body underneath and it looks like it is an evil wizard. Brother Gregory uses the scroll to remove the magic for a while, and Elauthin, Dardenne and Hadrian push the cover right off and it smashes into the corner. However, the runes are still active.

Looking in the coffin, we see four spell books and a wand along with the robe-covered corpse. There are two rings. We take everything and sequester ourselves in the pool room for the evening.

Dardenne checks the wand and sees that it is indeed magical. He uses it to check the other items and sees that the shield and one of the rings is magical.

Later, Dardenne goes out into the hallway and tries to check out one of the spell books — the blue one. He opens the clasp and suddenly there is a burst of cold air that almost freezes him. He wraps the clasp with cloth so he can’t accidentally touch it again and looks in the spell book. There are several first, second and third level spells in the book.

The next morning after some rest, we go down the tunnel where the ghouls came from and find their nest. We find a spell scroll for the cleric, and see around here a bunch of narrow caverns that go into a maze. We decide not to risk it and go to the outside and the other end of the caverns.

Entering the other area, we wind our way through several caverns and end up at a closed gate. We try to lift it but cannot. Eventually we find a secret closet with a lever that lifts the gate. We go up and see that we’re at the entrance of the moat house. We realize that we have missed something and go back down. Almost immediately we see a secret door that we missed. Inside is the nest of the ogre, where we find a very find elven cloak and a chest. There is treasure in here.

There are two doors in this room. Darius picks one of the locks and we see something moving. We think they are undead but they are actually starving prisoners, two humans and a gnome. They are thankful that we’ve saved them and move out.

We continue on and find a room of junk. Further through, we see what appears to be another burial area. We are attacked by zombies. After the first wave, several more run at us. Brother Gregory turns several of them and we take the opportunity to attack them as they flee.

After the battle we search the adjacent rooms and find a bunch of equipment here. There is so much that it takes us a long time to load it up.

We start heading upstairs and two oozes attack Hadrian and Darius.

Hadrian charges through the fire, taking some damage and his armor starts on fire. He swings his sword and wounds several. The others don’t risk running through the fire and take some shots from the other side with arrows and spells.

The men attack Hadrian and wound him into near-unconsciousness. He stumbles back through the fire and heals himself. Brother Gregory lays hands on him as well and he recovers.

Suddenly we are covered in darkness, and it becomes completely silent. Someone has cast silence and darkness spells in this area. We work our way back to the hallway entrance but the darkness goes on for a long way. We finally emerge and reconvene at the end of the hallway. We spike the door behind us and the other one next to us that leads to the gnolls. After an hour of rest, we hear rattling at the door that leads to the gnolls. Later, there is banging on the door we came through. We decide to leave, but leave them a present–we squirt several oilskins worth of oil underneath the door and light it on fire. We hear screaming as we hastily leave.

We spend a day back in town and heal Hadrian up to full at the temple. We re-arm and the magic users re-memorize their spells. Dardenne casts Identify on the armor he recovered after we fought the assassins, and finds that it is +3 magical chain mail. He dons it and the group moves back to the moat house.

We enter the same door we were at before, and all the bodies are still here. At the end of the hall we open a new door and see a nicely appointed room, but there is nothing here. We loot the bodies of the guards and find very standard weapons and armor, but a good amount of gold, silver and some platinum.

We move back down the hall to the gnoll door and open it. There is a long, narrow diagonal hallway here. We do not detect any traps and continue on. At the end there is a turn and another door. Darius opens the door and sees several gnolls here. Dardenne quickly casts a sleep spell on the ones that he sees and several fall asleep. Darius throws an oilskin at the back row as a molotov cocktail and they start on fire. We see behind them several bugbears and an ogre. We slam the door and spike it, then squirt oil underneath the door and light it. We then lay down caltrops and more oil in front of the door and wait.

A short while later, we hear commotion down the hallway behind us and several bugbears are coming up. Mord casts an entangle spell and several of them are completely bound. We move up and take out several of them with arrows, including the ogre. The mage gets away, however, and casts more darkness on us.

After the darkness dissipates, the gnolls in the far room ask to be let go. We wait until the darkness dissipates but the fire and caltrops are still there. As soon as the binding goes away, the gnolls turn and run.