Re-entering the manor house is a mix of trepidation and excitement. Half the key is in hand and it seems likely (hopefully) that they’ve battled and defeated the worst of the occupants…except maybe the ghost in the gate towers – but they’re pretty sure they don’t need anything from over there. So they return to the tower top where they spied the hellhounds. Now that the dog-loving goat-demon or whatever it was is dead, they set about committing caninicide.

Further investigation results in them slaying the skeleton crew that nearly ended their adventuring career on the first visit, slaying a ghoul, finding a hidden trapdoor in the roof of a square tower and retrieving the second half of the coil-key...

The party spends more time investigating. They make their way to an old kitchen, now walled off from the rest of the house. There they encounter the brute and a few more ratmen, plus some standard issue rats. Digin gets a nasty bite and it seems clear that he will be infected with some terrible debilitating disease before too long. Hopefully his robust constitution will prolong the agony – err…allow him to resist the ill effects.

The silent gnome is sent ahead to scout the top of the stairwell and he spies some larger than normal rats, one with a mane of tentacles. Now, the gnome is no biologist, but that seems odd. The rest of the light footed folks are summoned and they attack the rats with all they have...

Since the gates of Oldtown close at dusk, the totally inconspicuous party decides to hide out near the fortified manor house, Luckily, it is on a lot that has not been tended to in years, so the weeds are quite tall and provide ample cover from casual passers-by. They spend the evening hunkered down, hoping no one calls the guard to investigate why a bunch of murder hobos are lurking in the darkest of the hillside thickets.
Finally it is dark enough and the group approaches the structure and does a quick once ’round to see if there is an obvious back door to exploit. It seems the house was built for defensibility so no entrances are visible. Now the question becomes – through the front door or up the outside wall?

Fingers is given a spider-climb spell and scales the wall, trailing a leng...

The party lounges about a bit and considers options. It looks like they’ve been put into play on the chessboard, but for whom and to what end…none can speculate. Well, they all can speculate, but choose to avoid that line of conversation. By and by – as they pass another evening in the tavern next to their flophouse – they are contacted by the armorer’s apprentice. It seems he is upset and wants to piss off the lover that jilted him. Saif lover is involved in a fencing and smuggling operation, and the blacksmith’s buddy tips off the group as to a chest being moved through the sewers by ogres, on its way to the docks. The ogres are supposed to bring the chest to a wagon that will be parked in the alley down the street from the flophouse (how convenient!).

The group spends the next three d...

Hope springs eternal, but the initial surveys of the jail cells reveal nothing but skeletal remains and a room that apparently doubles as the bottom of a pit trap – so it doesn’t seem like Fingers is present. Sadface. Oh well, does that mean we only split the treasure by five now? Perhaps…perhaps.
The intrepid group is running out of food, so they cannot stay any longer without risking starvation and/or cannibalism, so off they go. They eventually reach the surface and find themselves embroiled in a bit of a diplomatic row with some elven druids that take offense at their desecration of the mysterious standing stones.

When Bayga convinces them of the truth – namely that the stones are just the crenellations atop a very large tower that has sunk into the swampy boglands – the druids react...