Session 3 Summary

The Graveyard

We begin this session with the heroes attempting to reach a consensus on where to rest for the remainder of the night. After some arguing, it came to a tiebreaker with Mialee's vote. After more arguing, the party decided to head back to Winterhaven, partly because of the Judge's stubbornness. The party traveled back to town, but found the gates closed. The Judge demanded entrance, but the guards refused, saying it was too dangerous to open the gates at the moment. The Judge became furious and Lord Padraig approached the heroes from atop the walls. Padraig announced that he could not open the gates for fear of Winterhaven being attacked. The heroes asked what the hork he was talking about, and Padraig pointed over to the nearby cemetary, where the heroes saw a few figures moving about in the darkness. Lord Padraig implored the heroes to save Winterhaven, but they had absolutely no intention of doing so, as they "were tired." However, Lord Padraig was well aware of the party's motivation, and offered a reward of 200gp, and suddenly the "heroes" were much more willing to help.

The heroes appraoched the graveyard and found it deserted with an evil-looking magic circle near the mausoleum. The heroes approached the center of the graveyard and zombies began to climb up out of the ground. Travok quickly identified the circle as being tied to the undead, but was unable to reach it. The heroes engaged the zombies, and it seemed the fight would be over quickly. However, from one of the crypts, the young elven adventurer known as Ninaran emerged and shot Merryweather in the back with an arrow. It was not immediately obvious, but this "betrayal" struck a telling blow to poor Merryweather's mental stability. The Judge, in his typical fighting style, ran straight at Ninaran and quickly became surrounded by some very nasty zombies with jaws so powerful that any bite delivered to a hero knocked him to his feet. The Judge held the attention of the tougher zombies and Ninaran while the rest of the party obliterated the weaker zombies. Unfortunately, the Judge was eventually overcome and badly injured. Chase ran over and ordered the Judge up, as well as engaging the powerful zombies. With the wave of weaker zombies destroyed, the party concentrated on the tougher ones and Ninaran. At one point, Ninaran pulled a completely unexpected stunt and tumbled past all of the heroes out of the crypt. However, she was no match for the heores and was subdued. Then, in the midst of combat, Merryweather approached the unconscious Ninaran and brutally slit her throat.


The rest of the heroes were stunned. They knew Merryweather had some anger management issues, but he had never acted upon them in the past. Mialee became furious with the halfling and threatened to attack him if he ever pulled such a stunt again. The heroes killed the remaining zombie while Travok destroyed the magic circle, but Merryweather's cruel act was still on their mind. The Judge, always the stoic, said nothing of the matter and simply set off on his return to Winterhaven. Before leaving, the heroes found a note on the unfortunate victim's person.


On the way back, Chase sarcastically remarked that he wondered how many times he had been unable to protect the party's captured enemies from the very people who helped capture them. As the party returned to Winterhaven, Lord Padraig greeted them at the opened gates with the payment. The Judge, irate with being "forced" to save the town approached Lord Padraig with the intention of punching him in the face. However, he was unable to conceal his anger, and Padraig noticed this, staying behind his guards at all times. However, he was happy to have his town saved and did not trifle with the Judge any further. The Judge needed to blow off some steam and stomped into Wrafton's Inn to go to bed. Wrafton knew better than to even attempt conversation with the livid paladin. The party finished up business with Lord Padraig and entered the inn. Chase spied Valthrun the Prescient at his normal table, and approached him. Valthrun, remembering the party's hostile nature towards him, immediately jumped up from his chair, but Chase was able to calm him down. Chase asked him of the shadow rift mentioned in Kalarel's previous writings, but Valthrun did not know anything about it. Chase peacefully convinced Valthrun to do some more research on the matter and went to bed.

Back to Shadowfell Keep

The next morning, the heroes set back out for Shadowfell Keep and luckily, the trip was uneventful; the heroes were all on edge after the previous night's disturbing events. After returning to the late Balgron the Fat's room, the heroes descended the stairs which led into a short hallway. Stealthily scouting ahead, Merryweather discovered another dig site straight ahead, as well as some more stairs to the south. The heroes decided went in to engage the goblins at the dig site, but found them difficult to appraoch, as the geography of the dig site created tall plateaus of land that the goblin archers utilized. Not wanting to play games, the heroes instead ducked into the nearby stairway to try to draw the archers out. Unfortunately, the heroes stumbled right into a cave-like lair infested with giant rats. The heroes now had to deal with two different groups of enemies at the same time. The Judge and Merryweather engaged the archers at the dig site, while Chase, Travok, and Mialee fought of the horde of giant rats. Unfortunately, the archers were accompanied by some lizard creatures, just like the ones at the ancient dragon burial site. The lizard things ferociously attacked the Judge, as attacking in numbers greatly increased their battle prowess. Meanwhile, Travok made short work of the giant rats, blowing them up many at a time, however, more and more poured from the back of the cave, followed by a huge ochre jelly. Tavok, and Mialee backed up, while Chase engaged the ochre jelly.

Things looked grim for the heroes, as the Judge began to receive some serious injuries at the hands of the archers and lizard things. However, Chase was able to hold his ground against the ochre jelly long enough for Mialee and Travok to hit it several times. At the dig site, Merryweather stabbed the lizard things in the back while they engaged the Judge, and only the archers remained. The ochre jelly, giving up on defeating Chase, slithered past him and went for Mialee. However, it had taken significant damage at this point and ended up splitting into two smaller ochre jellies! In a bold move, Mialee turned her back on one of the oozes to try to retreat, and the thing hit her down before she was able to move. Luckily, the smaller yellow ochres were easier to deal with and were dispatched. Finally, the party concentrated on the annoying archers and defeated them. The party was victorious after a long and dangerous fight. After a few minutes to catch their breath, the heroes searched the dig site and found a holy symbol that increased one's abilties in combat. It was easily decided that the Judge would make the best use of it.

Terror from the Deep

The heroes decided to continue investigation of the caves under Shadowfell, and found some heavy bronze double doors covered in fungus. It appeared that someone had hastily scrawled a message into the fungus:


The heroes, unfazed by the foreboding message, opened the heavy doors and descended a short staircase leading to a large pool of water with a small island at the center. Unfortunately, none of the heroes were very observant, and no one notiecd small ripples coming from the water. Merryweather, seeing a pile of loot on the island, jumped over the water to investigate. As soon as he approached the loot, a giant blue slime emerged from the water to attack the halfling! Merryweather retreated from the island over to the party, where the blue slime engaged them. The ooze immediately erupted disgusting acid all over the entire party, which proved to be very difficult to remove. The party attempted to fight the thing, but it simply kept showering them with acid, and eventually let out a horrible stench which made things even worse for the heroes. It became apparent that the heroes were not prepared to defeat the blue slime after the previous battle.

Unfortunately, leaving the chamber proved to be difficult, especially as Chase was taken down by a flurry of pseudopod slams. The party had to think fast, and Mialee decided to swim over to the island (as she was unable to jump the distance) and lure the thing away long enough for the others to escape. Unfortunately, Mialee herself was at the brink of death and in a diffcult situation. Luckily, she had just recently acquired a new spell which allowed her to repeatedly damage a creature and disorient it, essentially preventing it from sensing her. She did this repeatedly to the slime as the rest of the heroes dragged Chase out of the room. Finally, in a brilliant stroke of good luck, Mialee found a healing potion in the pile of loot and rushed back to the party to pour it down Chase's throat, saving him from certain death.

The heroes had managed to escape with their lives, and vowed to come back to destroy the slime later, except for the Judge, who made it clear that he had no intention of facing the slime again. Badly in need of rest, the party returned to the dig site and camped on one of the plateaus, once again except for the Judge, who refused to sleep in the wilderness. At a great risk to himself, the Judge traveled alone back to Winterhaven to sleep. There's no telling what would have happened had the Judge been attacked that night. In the morning, the party waited for the Judge to return before heading further into the caves below Shadowfell Keep.

The Kruthik Nest

The heroes entered a small chamber with some very small passages leading to the east. Merryweather was the perfect candidate to scope out the situation on the other side, and approached one of the holes, only to fall into a pit trap. At the bottom, Merryweather found the corpse of a goblin, along with a some kind of baby-reptile-insect-looking thing feeding on the corpse. Merryweather, taking a liking to the thing, attempted to feed it, but it ignored him. After retreiving a few poitions off of the dead goblin, Merryweather climbed out of the pit and investigated the adjacent chamber. It turned out to be a nest of the reptile-insect things known as Kruthiks. The party decided to utilize a pincer attack on the nest, with the less stealthy people attacking from the adjoining passage to the south. The nest was filled with many Kruthik hatchlings, a few young, and one adult. Mialee and Merryweather attacked from the small passages, while Travok, Chase, and the Judge attacked from the south. Unfortunately, the Kruthik young went straight for Merryweather and Mialee, while the rest of the party dealth with the group of hatchlings and adult. The things did not prove to be too diffifult, but Mialee became overwhelmed with two of the things attacking her, and was forced to teleport into the main room. The battle was shorter compared to the previous two and the Kruthiks were defeated. For unkown reasons, a pile of loot was located within the nest and the heroes gathered up the coins. Having reached the end of the caves, the heroes must now decide where to go next. And what happened to Splug?