Category The Tormentors

Soon enough the group encounters a large tower – one of seven that the villagers described as housing the armes and beasties of the elemental lord’s hosts. The first tower is 100 feet tall and has a large bridge sticking out of one side that leads into the mountain. The tower is bypassed. The second tower looks just like the first and is also given a wide berth – well, as wide as possible on a snowy cliff. The third tower looks like the other two – except for the flock of skeletal mini-pterodactyls that start swooping around the tower top. Ok – on to tower number four – or maybe further – once the party sees that the bridge has a large section missing out of the middle. Or maybe not as the tower doors burst open and an enraged frost giant pummels Bababobo into the snow...

The party investigates the final locked door – and finds itself quickly embroiled in a battle with a form of beguiling and insanity-provoking undead monster. It ensnares two attackers in rapid succession, which provokes a bit of consternation among the remaining members of the party. Magic arrow and magic missiles fly and the beast is defeated quickly enough.What loot it has is taken, and the well in the room is investigated. A hidden ladder leads the group downward into an escape tunnel that deposits them in a hollow boulder near the edge of the treeline, outside the moat. Neato-keen…but the cart and horse is still inside the moat. Crap.

A new ice bridge and a rapid jog reunites the group and its gear...

Sleep is not yet forthcoming, so further investigations are undertaken, but the castle seems largely uninhabited at this point. Some resting happens and then more investigating occurs. A body is found – a woman long dead and in her hand, the imprint of a coin. They climb a set of stairs – curiously carved to look like gargoyles says Gala – and then are attacked by gargoyles that crawl out from under the stair treads. Gargoyles are battled and slain and investigation reveals a wall of new construction. It is battered down and a room lies beyond – a well is capped by a carved lid and the pattern in the center is the same as a strange coin taken from the rope-monster’s lair.
More investigating and further discoveries and a bit of magical investigation of items found so far and the group is ...

Withdrawing from the tower’s vicinity while the ungern patrol is still out seems like a great idea and the group skedaddles overland while avoiding the worst encounters the scrublands have to offer. They journey to Ludensheim, where they pick up a large quantity of cached loot and alert MIles of the golem factory on his northern border, then off to Botkinsburg and then to the port. A sail across the bay and within six months the group has landed in Impiltur. Wares are sold and bought and the Torm church is appraised of the progress of the party in the quest to undo the evil.

After some time, the group re-equips and departs to retrace their steps returning to Ludensheim in some 18 months time from when they departed...

Rising early, the invisible party skirts the ungern camp and approaches the rubble piles near the tower base. Drawing upon information gleaned through a flyby, the Malformed one climbs up the side of the tower and drops a line to the res tof the party. Within minutes, the group is on the roof of the second floor and begins investigating.
A lovely entrance gallery ringed with crow statues – statues filled with some kind of smelly tar – is left for later and the group presses on.
They discover a priest of some sort apparently locked in a trance and communicating with a statue of the Horned One. When the group slays him, the statue bellows and this has the unfortunate effect of drawing all guards in the vicinity...