Journal Day 4

While the rest of us were dealing with Irontooth and the kobolds, Dillius, Liam, and Krusk explored town a bit. Dillius told me when we returned that he spoke with the townspeople and found that Lord Padraig [I was misspelling that earlier] is generally well-liked amongst the townspeople. He also heard stories of an abandoned keep nearby, which has been laying in ruins for a long time but recently people have been hearing stories of noises & strange goings on in its vicinity. Liam and Krusk told me that they spent most of their time with Padraig and learned that he is descended from royalty of the empire of Narath. His family has been in the lower classes of nobility for as long as anyone can remember, one of the few families that have been consistently recognized as true and honest. Liam felt like he got a strong read on the lord’s personality and believes him to be honest and a good lord of the town, doing his best to govern responsibly, though sometimes nonetheless a little misguided—perhaps overly fixated on history & slow to change. He determined that Padraig is typically quite skeptical of adventurers, but seems to recognize that we can really help Winterhaven in a time of need and has accepted us readily. Padraig is taking our warnings about Allaron seriously and is doing what he can to beef up the town’s defenses, though his resources are limited. Along those lines, he did hire Liam and Krusk to spend a day training the Winterhaven militia. Liam worked out a deal with Padraig to buy & sell at his shops at very good rates.

When we returned to town, we filled each other in on what we’d accomplished and then went down to the inn for dinner. During dinner, a bard in town sang the sad tune “Darkness Falls,” about a man clad in white waiting for the 4 horsemen of death. In the song, he fights them off and defeats them and we’re told the hill on which the battle took place will always glow in his memory. It was a very moving tune.

We went to Padraig’s shop in the morning and sold all the gear we had brought back from the kobold lair, then purchased enough healing potions for every member of the party to have 2. We’re purchasing them at cost b/c of the deal Liam worked out, but we might consider purchasing the ritual from the shop as well for 75gp so that our ritual casters can create healing potions in the future. Selling the gear and buying the potions amounted in a net loss of 203 gp. The shop also sells bags of holding (one that can hold 100 lbs while weighing only 1 lb would cost us 500 gp).

While the rest of us were at Padraig’s shop, Dillius went searching for more information about the keep and met up with the scholar in Padraig’s employ, Valthrun, who promised to do further research and get back to us with more information. Dillius said that he developed some good rapport with Valthrun, and I expect that this relationship he’s developed will pay dividends.

We met with Padraig and he paid us for having killed the kobolds and we showed him the letter from Kalarel that we’d discovered on Irontooth’s body. We asked him about this keep we’d heard rumors about and he directed us to speak with Valthrun. He had very little else to say.

We decided to further investigate Ninaran, who it turns out is a female elf ranger not a male, while giving Valthrun time to carry out his research but Valthrun was waiting for us at the inn with more information.

Valtrhun told us that the old empire of Narath built this keep, not, as so many had assumed, to watch for marauders from the north. It was built atop a rift that connects this plane of existence to the Shadowfell. [The Shadowfell is one of the alternate planes of existence, a plane of shadow, the fey plane of darkness. Many think of it as an evil plane, and while it is not entirely so, it does possess many dark and dangerous beings.] This rift connects specifically to a shrine of Orcus located in the Shadowfell. The Narathians fought back an enemy that escaped from it, and then sealed the rift off and built this keep to guard over it and contain the threat. That seemed to be the end of the story, but now it seems like goblins have inhabited the site.

Then 80 years ago, Sir Keegan, who had been in charge at the keep, set into motion the events that would lead to its downfall. Perhaps the Rift’s influences were too strong to resist or maybe Keegan was driven insane by a demon or monster. We’ll probably never know, but at midnight one night he snapped for some reason and began to murder the inhabitants of the keep, starting with his own wife and children, then his own soldiers. He was too powerful for any one soldier to defeat but eventually they managed to mass against him and drive him into passages beneath the keep and then dispatch him. Then the keep was abandoned and eventually forgotten. An earthquake toppled the towers and many of the walls. Rumors have persisted of treasures buried beneath it, but few have dared to explore the place. Sir Keegan’s ghost supposedly still haunts the keep, roaming the corridors beneath the ruins. [I missed the transition, but …] Valthrun made a point of saying that some ghosts can be reasoned with.

If servants and cultists of Orcus are active in the area, Valthrun told us, then there is little doubt that they are working to open that rift to allow a tide of undead to engulf the area and there is no one to aid Winterhaven except us.

Valthrun told us that he would get the message to Lord Padraig that we were heading straight to the keep in an effort to stop Kalarel from opening that rift. Then we headed to the keep.

Nothing grows at the Keep of the Shadowfell, but someone has tampered with the ruins, clearing a path to a staircase that leads down into the darkness. Kellisa and I scouted down the stairs, moving silently, and observed that the stonework on the stairwell was quite fine—probably Dwarven. We could quickly smell the unwashed bodies of goblins and saw the flickering torchlight at the bottom of the stairs, so we went back and got the rest of the party and we moved down the stairs.

Goblins are cowardly, wretched creatures, interested in taking slaves and often enslaved by others. They tend to live in communal caves, only their leaders ever have private rooms, and their dens are usually riddled with fairly simple traps.

When we came within view of the room, we saw a goblin across from us taunting us. I suspected a trap in the room, and warned everyone not to rush too quickly in, but then Krusk moved into position and quickly looked the room over, finding no signs of traps. So Yonah charged at the goblin and fell into a pit full of rats who attacked her. A number of other goblins, sharpshooters with crossbows fired at us from the shadows. They got a few pretty good shots in but we managed to dispatch those goblins in relatively short order. We found two sets of stairs branching off from that room and one hallway that led further north. We decided to explore that hallway, to clear out the rest of this top level before descending any deeper into the ruins.

At the end of that hallway, we found another door and could hear goblin voices behind it. We debated at first setting up a trap to lead the goblins out and ambush them but decided instead to just burst through the door and surprise them, and I believe our tactics worked quite well. The room was some sort of torture chamber, and inside there were 4 sharpshooter goblins, a larger goblin with a spear, and a nasty looking hobgoblin leader. Before he could even react to our attack, I hit the hobgoblin with my hunter’s bear trap attack, dealing a grievous blow. Yonah charged another goblin and used her thunder ram assault on him and the hobgoblin, knocking him into the fire pit with the thunder clap. One more blow, and he was finished off before he could even mount an attack. Meanwhile, Liam bullrushed the goblin with the spear into a massive iron maiden behind him, and pounded the door into his body a few times, keeping him trapped in the box and unable to attack until he was dead. Krusk killed the goblin asleep in the corner before he could even wake. One of the other goblins grabbed a hot poker from the fire and tried to mount an attack but in his surprise and haste, he missed Yonah wildly and impaled himself with the poker, dying instantly. Yonah knocked the final goblin to the ground with her earthgrasp attack, and I tried to question him about the other goblins in the dungeons—though the rest of the party seemed intent on just finishing him quickly—but he stupidly attempted to wrest himself from the ground and the skin was ripped from his body by the earth holding him pinned and he was dead.

The hobgoblin was wearing a pair of magical boots.

However, we heard the imploring voice of another creature coming from the side of the room containing a row of locked cells. In one we found Splug, a talkative and not entirely unintellligent little goblin. He agreed to help us defeat the goblins in this keep in return for his life, and in return for allowing him to take back a flask which the goblin leader holds. It took a fair amount of intimidating and pushing him, but he eventually said that this vial contains his own blood, held in order to compel his body to continue to do ghastly things even after death. He seemed quite upset at the idea and was emphatic that he wants that vial back. I promised him that if he truly serves us well and helps us through these ruins, and if this vial seems to be what he says it is, that we will allow him to leave with possession of it. My suspicion is that there is little chance he will actually follow through on his end of the bargain—the first time a fight or other situation gives him the opportunity, he will betray us. However, in the meantime, he seems to be giving us some good information.

He says the goblin leader is named Balgron the Fat, and he and a group of his elite guards, he says, lie in the room not far from the torture chamber, behind a pair of large iron double doors. When pressed, he told us that it’s pretty much impossible to open those doors silently; however, there is another way into the chamber, through Balgron’s escape route, hidden behind a secret door. That door branches off a passageway at the end of one of those flights of stairs we had not yet explored.

He also told us that an elf woman has been seen in the goblin tunnels. She passed through and down the other set of stairs, which none of the goblins ever go down because there is something really bad down there, but he doesn’t know what. Ninaran seems, indeed, to be that spy. I look forward to running into her again.

Irontooth had also been seen in these ruins, where he met with Balgron and bossed him around.

We went in search of this secret door. My eagle eye spotted it as soon as came around the corner, but Splug indeed pointed it out correctly to the party. He is certainly not trustworthy, but he does seem to be providing useful information, at least so far. The passageway continued down past the secret door into what Splug told us would be an excavation chamber, in which he warned us there would be some sharpshooters and some drakes—which are kin to dragons, used as guard animals. We listened to the goblins arguing with each other about having spent weeks digging without ever finding anything at all useful, and we decided to take these guards out before proceeding into Balgron’s chambers. That turned out to be a nastier fight than it should’ve been. We were getting tired and were more lax about strategy than perhaps we should’ve been. Nonetheless, we killed these guards without taking too terribly much damage.

We found a suit of magical armor on one of the bodies—Deathcut leather armor, which Kelissa is now wearing.

At the end of that battle, Yonah and I had just barely attained enough experience to move up to level 4.

There is one natural cave opening that leads off away from this escavation area and we heard squeaking down that tunnel. Splug tells us that the goblins have sent soldiers down those tunnels but none of them has ever returned alive, so they just stopped going down that way. The question is whether we check out those tunnels first, or just go after Balgron down that secret door. I’m guessing the latter, since whatever is down those tunnels has evidently shown no sign to date of wanting to come up out of them to challenge the goblins. We can take care of Balgron and then learn what threat lies down those caves.

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The loot:
[Padraig paid Kellisa, Gareth, Yonah, & Jalfred 150 gp for clearing out the kobolds. So that’s 37 gp each, and we’ll add the 2 gp remainder into the pot for day 4.]

-203 gp for healing potions
171 gp
(so for the day, we’re at -30 gp)

2 short swords
4 leather armor
5 crossbows & lotsa bolts
2 spears
10 javelins

Goblin stompers [Dillius]
Deathcut leather armer +1 [Kellisa]
Climbing claws [Kellisa – found last time, but I mistakenly left off list]

Experience:
All 6 of us in the keep received 475 XP. Jalfred received 238