A few days of travel gets them on the road to the wine country. The spring air is bracing and the light showers help minimize road dust. It is towards the end of the third day as the group is rounding the bend in the road leading to the wineries when a body is spotted. It is inside the vineyard grounds and looks reasonably fresh, so Kael and Fingers go take a look. The victim is a middle aged man who has been slashed – as if by beast’s claws – but the ranger knows no beasts with a finger spread like the wounds would suggest. As they spur the wagon horses to a greater turn of speed, some of the party goes overland when they spot the glint of steel and see two figures battling near the main road to the house.
When they arrive they spot a humanoid tiger finishing off their opponent – so the group engages, if only on the principle that blood begets blood. The tiger-man is a stubborn foe, proving resistant to magic, yet casting spells of their own. They engage with the group but are wounded from previous battles and fall fairly quickly.
Some searching and head scratching goes on. It would appear that the man from the field and the armor clad woman are the owners of the land. The group is unhappy with so many questions, so the next morning Sniffles returns the woman to the land of the living. She is cooperative, given that the group has returned her to life. She tells a story of missing families and sinister figures spotted among the vines. Things get less happy when Sniffles wants to animate the corpse of her husband to serve as nursemaid for the kobold skeleton they insist on bringing with them. Relations deteriorate, but Bayga wants to maybe score with the new widow so he intervenes on her behalf.
Attentions turn to the tiger man. Sniffles animates him next while Bayga prepares a spell to detect untruths. Some conversation is had, and Bayga notes all the lies told. Eventually there is a reckoning and Sniffles convinces the beast to enter into a partnership, with the party as silent partners in a wine enterprise. This sounds good for a second or three and then the reality of working with magic resistant tiger people who are apparently part of a larger collective starts to sound like a lot of work. A few seconds later, the tiger man, the husband and the wife are turned to zombies. The party discusses what they’ve learned and plans for the morning. The tiger folk have infiltrated and taken over a temple the vintners sponsored a few years The plan is to roll on in with the animated tiger man, as though they are in the know.
They use spells to fly across the terrain and haul the zombietiger with them. The church doors are closed when they arrive, so they open ’em up and go inside. Two priests are leading a sparsely attended service, one playing the harp and the other railing against the approaching end-times! The priests note the animated tigerman and one of the congregation jumps up to confront the party, then a few more follow suit.
While Fingers and Kael try and deal with the immediate threat, an invisible Kegdrain moves into position as Bayga looks for a target. One priest produces a large black staff and turns one of the faithful into a ghoul. The other grabs a set of meat hooks and charges the party. Zaal fires a ball of fire into the rear of the church and Sniffles blankets the area with a Dispel Magic – which cancels the illusions masking the priests and reveals them to be tiger men. No surprise there for the group, but a huge surprise for the faithful, most of whom flee the area. Bayga splashes the false priests with the chaos skull, once then twice, while Zaal shoots arrows at the onrushing foe. Though Kael and Fingers have a less-than-stellar opening round or two, the balance of power swiftly tilts in the party’s favor and all the imposters are slain.
Sniffles and Kael drag the bodies out the front of the church and proclaim that the threat is ended. The workers seem unconvinced, but are shaken enough not to make too big of a fuss right now. Sniffles tells them to return home while they secure the temple grounds. Meanwhile, other party members have determined that there is a hollow beneath the altar and there are signs of excavation. A rather elaborate excavation, it seems. Fingers is volunteered to investigate and goes as far as he dares,. the tunnel is crude, but becomes larger and more well worked as one moves away from the temple.
An intercept course is plotted and the group goes overland to see where the origin might be. They don’t fined the tunnel entrance, but they do find a bunch of decidedly non-agricultural looking fellows lingering about the place, so they kill them and investigate. Eventually they find the vintner and his murdered family stacked behind some cords of wood.
Sniffles takes a few days and manages to return the man, his daughter and young son to life. Bargaining ensues and information is exchanged. Sniffles hatches a plan whereby the vintner will train Bayga’s family in the art of grape-wrangling, and they will annex the remaining vineyards, splitting the land with the vintner.
The party determines that the tunnel mouth is at the next vineyard over, and once they arrive defeat four flesh golems made from the bodies of the other missing winemaking families. A wel constructed and magically dug passage extends from inside the former farmhouse and dives into the earth, presumably terminating at the temple.
Laurels are not to be rested upon and Fingers takes to the skies with his phantom steed. He returns with a report that the most distant plot of land has been converted into a holding area for prisoners – presumably workers from the vineyards – and the guards are busy building what looks like a dock.
The party plots….