The Switch Over

This week’s season had a new location in both game terms and real terms. After missing a week due to new jobs and friends visits the party were very keen to play this week and as myself and Bethany were in Bristol on Friday night we moved the gaming season to Sunday. This meant we were playing after Sunday lunch at the in laws. Also as the party has conquered the Keep they were looking for a new adventure.

As we had played through the published adventure H1: Keep on the Shadowfell the logical thing would be to move to H2: Thunderspire Labyrinth. I could have just retired Eric, Bob and Frieda and explained that the characters meet some new adventurers in the tavern and sent them packing to Thunderspire Mountain, but this did give me a chance to write a mini-adventure to explain the party switch over. As a DM this gives me a change to see how the templates for encounters work in practise.

I decided quite early on that I would hook the party by kidnapping the “old” adventures and that there would be a theme of undead in the adventure, mainly due to having an entire Warhammer undead army. This helped focus my selection of monsters as originally I had every monster on the monster builder available. I will go into more detail of each encounter and how I built them as the party completes them.

We last left the adventures outside the keep’s ruins having just closed the shadow rift. After a quick scout around the area the party headed back to Winterhaven to a hero’s reception. Lord Padraig regaled at the feat that the party had accomplished and invited the whole party dine with him, his wife and children in the manor house. But he had to quickly excuse himself as in the excitement of the party returning that he had forgotten he was on guard watch this evening due to the shortage of soldiers in the town. The thought of a goose and all the trimmings seems to divert the party’s attention away from why the Lord was being a lackey for the evening so this point did not come to light until later.

Over dinner Bob, being his over friendly self, and seeing an opportunity as the Lord was otherwise engaged tried his luck with Lady Padraig.

Almost as soon as his best chat up line had left his lips Lady Padraig cast a baleful look upon Bob, forcing him to cower before her. Bob dared not approach her again that evening and focused on his wine, something one two many of the party also did. By the time the party retired to bed Frieda, Eric, Eligos and Bob were all very drunk. With only two rooms free at the manor house the party bunked together Eligos, Glen and Rodney in one room and Bob, Eric and Frieda in the other.

During the night Rodney was awoken by the sound of glass shattering, unsure what had broken the glass he sent his trusted rat, Hawkeye, to investigate. When Hawkeye failed to return he woke Glen and Eligos from there deep sleep. The adventurers found that the other room had been ransacked; the window had been smashed from the outside and the other half of the party and their belongings were gone. In there place they found two vampire spawn; one with a dagger in his chest and the other hit with a radiant blast. Out of the window Rodney saw in the darkness a Vampire mounted on a skeletal steed, a Wight on what seemed to be a wolf also handful of flying zombies. Across the back of each mount lay black sacks, Rodney deducted that these must be his follow adventurers.

Glen at this point was quite happy to go back to bed and sleep off the ale and goose he had consumed, but with a little encouragement he went to fetch Lord Padraig.

When Padraig entered the room he recoiled in horror at the scene before him, he could not offer enough apologies to the party as not only had the party been hijacked in his home but also while he was on guard. He then noticed that one of the vampire spawn was one of the town guards. He then went on to explain to the party that people from the nearby farms had been mysteriously disappearing and that over the past couple of days two of the towns guards had also vanished. He called for Valthrun, the town’s sage, to cast his wise old eyes over the transformed townsman. Valthrun was unsure of what magic was a work so returned to his tower to scour through scroll to try and find an answer. Not knowing where the Undead were heading and unable to chase mounted foes the remaining party members retired to bed to wait for news from Valthrun.

The next morning Valthrun had found a scroll which read:

Dark Gift of the Undying

To be performed between twilight and daybreak

Quench blood of rite subject and have subject quench yours until they passed over

Bury subject in unhallowed shallow grave

Commence prayer and mantra to Orcus until daybreak draws nearer more so than twilight dwindles

At the following sunset a Vampire lord will arise

Ritual will leave you weakened for days after completion

Realising their companions were in grave danger and that the three of them would not be enough to overpower the undead body snatchers they asked the Lord if he had any men willing to help them. The Lord did not have any of his own men to spare as they were already down to the bare minimal but he had called for a party to investigate the disappearances a few days ago as he did not know if the party would ever return from the keep. He knew little about these adventurers, the only information he had was that they were recommended to him from Faren Markelhay, the Lord

Warden of the town of Fallcrest. They were due to arrive at Wrafton’s Inn within the next couple of hours, so the party went into the Inn to see if anyone else had any information and to wait for the would be adventures.

The inn was fairly quite as it was still quite early, but as usual Eilian the Old was in attendance. The party asked if he had heard anything about the disappearances in the area, he had heard that there had been some rumours about increased activity around the Silverkin Mason which he thought was odd as no one had been seen in the Silverkin estate since Jacob Silverkin returned home to find that all of his family had left or died including his two sons. He also showed the party where the Silverkin estate was on their map.

Shortly after a dashing looking half-elf walked into the inn, he pulled down his rain soaked hood to revel long golden hair. Salvana’s steely demeanour seemed to melt away as the half-elf spoke to her, she pointed giddily over to the table where the party sat and the half-elf approached.

“Salutations! I am Lord Vicrael of Feradirn, commander of the Praetorium Corvax, how may I be of assistance to you friends”. Came the pompous greeting from Vicrael, and the rest of the conversation followed in a similar vein. He asked the party about the keep and discovered that is was not just a Goblin lair as he had first thought but was in fact the site of great evil. Keen to find out more, as he felt it would be key to his missions of ridding the vale of Orcus’ minions, he agreed to help the party in finding Bob, Eric and Frieda as he felt they would be the best party members to fully explain the keep and the shadow rift to him. He then signalled outside with a loud whistle, a half-orc then walked into the inn, this was meet with gasps, but these were nothing compared to the astonishment that meet his companion. The next figure though the door was a 7’2 Minotaur that had to stoop the whole time while in the inn. These two were Lord Vicrael’s travelling companions, Hogar the Half-Orc ranger and Minron a Cleric/Fighter Minotaur. Hogar demanded to know why the party had not captured Kalarel, as he would have, instead of killing him, Glen who had been very quite while Vicrael spoke, sharply replied if we had waited for you the whole vale would be overrun with undead. Vicrael diplomatically stepped into and moved the conversation back to the rescue plan.