Mission 04, Journey to Shadowed Keep
Party: Hilniflit, Franmar, Fledermaus, Exandra, Ioelena, Finial
Day 0: Settled up with the city taxes for Mission 03 loot. Guild Kitty after buying supplies: 425 GP, 5 SP
Day 01: The party, after meeting with Ashryn to settle taxes, gets a message from Yanos Fazumin at The Arcane Codex, Library of Knowledge and Scrolls saying he has news for us. He says the bone white sticks Hil brought back from the last mission are evidence of a fey protector-of-the-grove expiring. However, he can't explain why there are buds growing back.
(P) then heads South out of Westmarch towards the Bugbear Stronghold to check in and see what's up. The night at the edge of the woods is uneventful.
Day 02: As (P) heads south through the woods, Fledermaus finds a shortcut that brings them to a small temple covered in writhing snakes. Hilniflit speaks with the snakes and learns just about nothing at all except the snakes like their home. The snakes allow (P) to search the temple and they find it is dedicated to Sarenrae, god of the sun and depicted as a rising angel. They find a ceremonial table with an ornate ceremonial dagger (too delicate to use as a weapon). Franmar decides to take it without the party's knowledge and then second guesses himself and quietly returns it as the party moves on. The night in camp passed uneventfully.
Day 03: Light rain slows (P) progress and even sets their nerves on edge as they were startled by a party of raccoons that Hilniflit decided not to talk to. When the party arrives at the Stronghold, they find it covered in a swarm of crows, feasting on the goblin corpses the party left behind. They decide to make camp in the stronghold, so they begin by moving the corpses out to the garbage moat. The crows aren't very happy about this, but at least we left them their meal instead of incinerating it. You're welcome, crows! Near dawn, the watch was engulfed in an unexplained swarm of moths and bugs.
Day 04: The rain clears and as (P) moves on to Dulwich, they come across a man painting in the wilderness. He is painting a picture that appears to be Fledermaus fighting a large, silver cat. (P) begins to grill the painter and he responds by fading away, leaving his painting behind. (P) inspects the painting and find everyone in the party is somewhere in the painting. Before they can lay hands on it, it fades away as well.
(P), bewildered and kind of skeeved out, move on to Dulwich where they head straight to Saini to ask about the painter. She doesn't know anything about him and has never heard of anything like it. When asked about the Shadowed Keep, she says it's filled with bandits, lead by a she-devil. She also mentions that she has heard the great adventurer, Valentein (who once held the Keep) possessed maps to Khundrakar, the dwarven mine to the South. She offers (P) 200gp if they would bring those maps to her. (P) asks about getting copies made and she says they'd be worth significantly less if there were copies.
(P) decides to spend the night in the Dancing Bear Inn. Hilniflit meets a sad young woman named Cora whose father has gone missing recently. He is a fisherman and disappeared on the lake at some point. She begs us to see if we can find him, but she doesn't know enough to even know where to start looking for him aside from the fact he's been missing for a week. Hilniflit tells Cora to write Hil at the Guild if she uncovers any more clues.
Day 5: It's windy as (P) approaches the Shadowed Keep. The Keep is rectangular, with a high stone wall. It has a tower in the Southeast corner near the entrance and a donjon (castle condominium) in the opposite corner that is a couple stories tall and partially unfinished. The gate is found to be slightly open, with enough room for one to slip through at a time. Just as the party slips in, a half-elf named Firean, wielding a spear emerges from the tower, followed by a male human named Cullen and his wolfhound (Fang). Firean asks (P) what it is they're doing here and the party tries to play it off like they didn't know the Keep was occupied… and that we were um… cleaners. Here to uh… clean the Keep. Firean doesn't buy this and asks if we are bandits or adventurers and (P) admits they are adventurers. Firean then mentions that the donjon is infested with goblins. They mostly keep to themselves, but they come out occasionally and her bandits do their best to keep them contained.
(P) boasts about their track record for slaughtering goblins wholesale. Firean is skeptical, but she tells the party that if they deal with the goblin infestation, she will let us keep some portion of whatever loot we find. The party agrees. No oaths sworn or handshakes (or even any specifics)… so we'll see how that goes.
(P) enters the donjon and searches the ground floor level. There are no sign of any actual goblins, but the party had to fight off various vermin like giant rats and giant spiders. Next to the Great Hall is a stairwell with its walls covered in Blood Moon goblin paintings on the wall. It's assumed this is the entrance to their caves. Upon closer inspection, the party finds a secret door off to the side of the stairwell. This leads to another stairwell that goes down underground. Thinking they have found a secret entrance to the goblin caves, the party heads down to find a long hallway with lit torches at the end and a demonic face carved into the stone over a locked door. As the party approaches the door, they are attacked by two small fire elementals that spring from the torches.
After a short battle, the party finds the torches are ever-burning torches that give off low heat and stay lit forever. (P) then notices that the demon carving's mouth is open and it goes pretty far back. Hil gets on Franmar's shoulders and looks into the mouth to find a button deep in the back of the hole. She uses one of the ever-burning torches to reach the button and the demon's mouth slams down, biting the torch in half, but sparing Hil's arm. The locked door is now open, but some kind of gas fills the room and bad things might have happened, but not to Hil, so we'll just keep going.
The party pushes into the next room to find it filled with loot. Suddenly, a large skeleton of a snake with a human head rises up and attacks the party. Hilniflit's aversion to the undead causes her to create a five foot rolling ball of flame that hits the creature. As she concentrates on keeping the ball of fire on the creature, the rest of the party assails it with weapons and summoned ponies and it's destroyed relatively quickly. (P) searches the room and finds an incredible amount of wealth. Hilniflit has pressing matters back in Westmarch, so she decides to transport back with the loot and leaves the rest of the party to explore the remainder of the donjon.
Hilniflit's loot haul:
454 gp, 5 sp, 18 cp