Upon entering the swamp, the oppressive swampiness starts to assert itself. Bugs, bug and more bugs bug the heck out of the party members, who slog from one semi-dry hummock to the next. The mists are thick and swirling and visibility is limited to a dozen feet or so. It is difficult to hear anything other than the drone of the blood-sucking flies and the splash of the character’s booted feet.
Suddenly a beholder looms out of the mist and demands tribute! The party is to place shiny object of value in this hollowed out dragon skull post-haste. While the res tof the group stammers and stutters to buy some time, the mage unleashes a spell of disintegration and vaporizes most of the beholder – which turns out to have been a hollowed out husk, kept aloft by unknown means. Curious. Well, up the rope!
The next day begins and the party slogs onward. Near the end of the daylight hours, some distant stones are noted. They are illuminated by the setting sun and a glimmer of something catches the mage’s eye. The following morning it is decided that as a hummingbird, he will go scouting. When he returns, he has interesting tales to tell. The stones are the wall and towers of a partially submerged keep of some sort. The entry gate is lying in the mud and the entrance is flanked by a pair of creepy statues. The place looks like it has suffered the effects of an earthquake, with a portion of the walls and buildings a good six feet higher than the rest. The whole of it slopes into the water and the remnants of a tower jut out of the swampy river that flows behind it. The mage passes over the tower on his way to investigate the glinting that was spotted the eve before. It turns out to be the remains of an adventuring party – and judging from the heraldry that is still intact, these are the Wolfmasters whom the group was sent to retrieve. The mage lands and changes into his human form to investigate what remains of the bodies – who all died a most violent death. Nothing intact remains of the party gear and it looks like everything was deliberately destroyed in a calculated act.
A band of horsemen approach through the swamp. Military unit or militia is difficult to say, but they wear a similar uniform – and the mage decides he has seen enough. Off he flies to deliver the news.
The group deploys a rowboat and the cleric tows the group through the swamp using his water walking abilities. They make a stealthy approach near the breach in the wall and climb through. The first door investigated opens into a small room with stairs leading down. They descend the steps and start investigating the below ground area.- which is quite damp and contains a host of undead in one of the first rooms entered. The paladin and cleric dispatch them and the group deploys trap locating spells and moves along the corridors, intending to scout as much as possible…
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