Journal Day 7

When we stopped last, the ghost of Sir Keegan had just risen from his
sarcophagus and demanded that we state our business or prepare to die.
We answered that we had come to Shadowfell to insure that the rift
remain closed. When I told Keegan that we had heard stories about
what transpired in the Keep, but were not certain what had really
happened, Keegan replied that he had failed at his responsibility,
because “Orcus’s vile taint soaked through the rift and influenced my
dreams,” undermining his sanity and driving him to murder his wife,
children, and compatriots.

Keegan interrogated us about our plans and experiences. At first it
was difficult to convince him that we were telling him the truth, and
we each needed to play a part in the conversation. Yonah was
particularly effective in intimidating him when it looked like he
might distrust us so much that he’d resort to blows. Eventually we
convinced him that we were serious in our plans to destroy Kalarel,
and he offered his own sword to us, saying that he hoped we would
redeem his eloquent weapon with out exploits. He further advised us
to seek Bahamut’s boon at the altars and he might aid us in our quest,
and then he burst into a cloud of dust. We once again inspected the
dragon statues we had found, and realized that whoever bears one gains
a +2 to defenses against the foe who attempts to reopen the rift.

We decided to search the room further, when from Keegan’s dust some
foul creature from the netherworld coalesced and attacked us. None of
us had ever seen anything like it and couldn’t identify it at all, but
it was a creature from the plane of shadow. It attacked mainly by
surrounding us in clouds of smoke that attempted to dominate us, and
with necrotic ice or lightning attacks. The sound of the creature’s
laughter stirred some dim memory from my childhood—was this creature
involved in my parents’ deaths?

It was probably the most powerful single creature we had fought,
especially because of its power to dominate, but we eventually
defeated it. From out of its howling core, dropped a pair of items
when it was destroyed: a belt and a suit of platemail armor.

Since we had completely cleared out that level of the dungeon, we
prepared to descend down to the level where Kalarel had gone. At the
bottom of the stairs, we found 4 hobgoblins standing watch over a
door, with a Deathjump spider the size of a horse in a cage nearby.
[Deathjump spiders were tamed by the Drow and are used mainly by the
followers of Lolth.] As we came down the stairs, one shouted out
“shadow seeks shadow” and I replied with the password we had gleaned
from Balgron: “life fails in the dark.” They asked us what business
we had with Kalarel and, remembering the note we found back in the
blue slime’s chamber, I told them that we had been sent by Chief Krand
of the Blood Reivers, so they escorted us to their war chief.

They brought us to a big room and then went to fetch their chief. When
he came, we told him that we were there to see Kalarel, bearing a
message from Chief Krand. He was skeptical, but we totally bluffed
our way through the conversation, until he was finally convinced that
we were in fact an elite guard for Kalarel and one of the dragon
statues we had found was the new symbol for the Blood Reivers. The
War Chief then told us that we couldn’t talk to Kalarel because they
weren’t certain where he was—he went deeper into the dungeon and
hasn’t been seen for some time. The Chief said they’ve been waiting
around with nothing much to do and wondering when they would receive
further orders. The Chief asked us, then, whether Krand had sent
orders along to them. I thought for a second and then told him that I
wasn’t supposed to say, but we were there to evaluate Kalarel and,
based on what he had told us, we would be exercising extreme prejudice
in our … uh … critique of Kalarel, and I ordered him to gather up his
men and return to the Blood Reivers for further assignment. He seemed
surprised but called in some of his men and ordered them to gather
their gear.

We spent a couple of hours standing around scowling at the hobgoblins
as they prepared to march. At some point, one of the hobgoblins went
up to scout out the way and returned with news that the soldiers
guarding the entrance to the keep had been killed. The Chief turned
to us suspiciously, so I told him there was obviously an assault
underway so they needed to move on the double to get out so that we
could make sure that Kalarel was dealt with before the enemy arrived.
So the Chief and his men stormed out of the keep.

We avoided fighting 23 hobgoblins and the deathjump spider by bluffing
our way through that encounter.

We followed the hallway to where the Chief had indicated Kalarel had
disappeared. There were a pair of double doors with a board nailed
across them with “Closed” written on it in common. Yonah smashed the
door down and we found a short hallway that was remarkably clean and
free of dust. This warning wasn’t enough to make the battle with the
gelatinous cube in the hallway any easier, really. It was hard to see
in the failing light in the hallway and we tried to retreat away from
it, but ended up fighting both it and a pair of corruption corpses
(humanoid zombies in pools of their own rotting flesh, which were
difficult to fight because if you got close to them, they smelled so
fetid that it made it next to impossible to focus on fighting).

Once we had killed the cube and the corruption corpses, we found
another small room with a check inside it bearing the image of
Bahamut. Inside the chest were children’s clothes, a wooden toy
sword, a hairbrush, a pair of amulets, and some jewelry.

____________________________________________________

The loot:
10 gp
Medallion worth 250 gp (inscribed Drystan Keegan)
Platinum bracelet worth 200 gp (inscribed Ceinwin Keegan)
Hairbrush inset w/ mother of pearl worth 5 gp


Retribution Longsword +2 [Liam]
Ironskin belt (gain resist 5 to [some kind of?] damage) [Yonah]
Deathburst Rimfire Plate Armor +2 [Liam]
Safewing amulet +1 (if fall, drop slowly & land on feet, no damage
from fall of 10’ & fort/ref/will defenses +1)

XP:
1808