The Return of the Ring

Leaving the gnome tower, the party descended from the mountains toward Mirror Stone to relieve the people’s concern over the undead invasion. Finding an orc near death on the trail, the warden granted his near kin’s last wish for a honorable death before setting the party on a path of revenge against the spiderish beasts that had waylaid the warrior. That battle finished, the party arrived in Mirror Stone to find the village barricaded against haphazard kobold attacks. 

After convincing the elders that the village was safe from further attacks, the party stumbled upon the miserable tale of a drunken elderly dwarf with the penchant for relieving himself without much consideration for property or person. Damlil Broadtoe explained that he had followed his great granddaughter, Worlanda Roundhead, up the Harrow river, trying to rescue the girl before she found trouble over her rather large head. It seemed the girl had won a treasure map after a long night of Three Foot Gambit. With a close friend along, the young dwarf left her clanhold in search of the treasure. Sadly, the two dwarves fell in with unscrupulous adventurers who stole the map for themselves and left the girls battered and alone in the middle of the wilderness. Never one to back from a fight, Worlanda refused to follow her friend back to the clan, deciding instead to chase after the thieves to retrieve her property.

Hearing of his granddaughter’s fate, Damlil took up his shield and hammer and tried to follow in her tracks. But old age and rough country left the man humbled and beaten in Mirror Stone. The party found the once great warrior in a drunken stupor in a pile of hay soaked with his own urine. Agreeing to take up the dwarf’s cause, the party made ready to attempt the Black Barrow Hills after the young dwarf.

Wanting to wrap up a loose tie before heading out, the party investigated the mystery behind the ring missing from dead Joshua’s finger. After questioning several of the villagers, the party discovered that a man named Galvean had drugged the local responsible for watching over Joshua’s body the night the ring went missing. Rummaging through the man’s house, the party avoid a well hidden trap before finding a stash beneath a loose floorboard and recovering the ring. Unfortunately, Galvean escaped into the dark night after loosing a bolt into the warden’s arse.

After returning the ring to Alicia Greenleaf, Joshua’s granddaughter and the ring’s rightful owner, the party began rounding up information about the Black Barrows before beginning a trek into the hills.

Map of the Upper Harrow Valley

Story So Far Part Two

After recovering from the foray into the elven tomb, the party ventured into the mountains north of Mirror Stone, picking up the trail of the undead gnolls. A trail which ended at an obscure stone tower hidden deep within the forest and built downward into the mountain.

Forging ahead, it was not long before the party caught up to the gnolls, finding the decayed beasts embroiled in a heated melee with the denizens of the strange tower, undead gnomes.

The stone walls of the tower rang as gnomes clashed with gnolls and the party battled against both. Finally the party fought to the library of the gnomish priestess, ending her un-life and the gnomish threat after a great struggle. In her writings that survived the fight, the party learned that the gnomes had uncovered a magic deep within the mountains that somehow had transformed their bodies into lifeless animations.

Not so surprising to those versed in the peculiarity of gnomes, their new un-life delighted the gnomes as they could continue the operations of their mining without need for sleep or food. Sealing themselves away from the outside world, the gnomes would have happily worked the ages away until the world ended.

The party then found a human imprisoned in the cells below the library. In return for his freedom, the man explained that he and a compatriot had come to the region after uncovering several books referring to a forbidden power buried deep within the mountain. Piecing together nearly a dozen different sources, the men believed the magic to be a stone with the power to turn life to death and giving the wielder power over both. When they found the tower and first encountered the gnomes, they immediately understood what had befallen the gnomes.

Skilled in the necromantic arts, the men raised the gnolls from a nearby ancient battlefield to provide the brute strength needed to assail the tower. Unfortunately for the party's erstwhile captive, he had second thoughts and tried to dissuade his former friend, a man named Volkar Beckett, to give up the dangerous plan and reseal the gnome’s tomb. As a cost for his turn of conscience, the man found himself left to rot away in a cell while Volkar continued along with his evil plan. Freed from his bonds, the man bid the party luck and scurried from the tower as fast as his legs could carry him.

Descending further into the tower, the party had several misadventures with a mechanical lift encountering and killing Volkar. With the necromancer's death and the realization that the stone's one great limitation was that it could not be excavated from the bedrock of the mountain, the party ended the threat of an undead invasion upon Mirror Stone village.

Story So Far Part One

After weeks of traversing the mountain range, the party descended from the high pass to find itself in a thick forest. After fighting off a nest of large spiders, the party discovered the body of an unfortunate traveler from a nearby settlement named Mirror Stone. The poor man had been out on the road in search of his wayward wife. At the least, your courage kept him from the eternal embarrassment of being spider kibble.

The party headed further down into the strange land, following a trail laid out by a series of ancient elven waystones nearly buried by the forest overgrowth. Suddenly the cries of a young girl broke the calm quiet of the rainy day. Hurrying toward the commotion, the party fought off several groups of kobolds harassing a villager named Samuel Greenleaf and his daughter Alicia. Samuel explained that they were from Mirror Stone and had been on their way to visit the girl’s grandfather, Joshua Pollian, when attacked by the kobolds outside of Joshua’s house. Wanting to get his daughter back to the safety of the village, Samuel asked that the party see after Joshua.

Finding the Pollian's shack ransacked and determining the old man had fled for his life toward the village cemetery, the party took up the chase.

Pollian, the aged caretaker of the village’s cemetery, had fled into the cemetery’s mausoleum with the kobolds nipping on his heels. A fateful decision as the kobolds cornered him in the mausoleum with no apparent chance of escape.

By the time you arrived, Joshua was dead and the kobolds were rummaging through the meager treasures of the tomb. A large group of the kobolds pushed past the party to escape back into the forest, their war chief triumphantly holding an ordinary-looking urn above his head.

After dealing with the remaining contingent of kobolds, the party examined the corpse of poor Joshua Pollian, revealing two oddities about the old man. First, his half-elven heritage, thin but unmistakable. Second, strange tattoos around his wrists, written in the same ancient elven language you found on the way-stones, named the dead Joshua as a ‘Keeper’.

An even more exhaustive search of the mausoleum uncovered a secret entrance to an elven tomb unknown to even the townspeople of Mirror Stone. Worn elven lettering above the doorway identify the entombed as the ‘House of the Golden Eagle’.

Leaving the mausoleum, the party ran into Saffa, the matriarch of Mirror Stone. After thanking you for helping her friends, she explained that the town and the kobold tribes have lived in relative peace for long years. She had no reason for the sudden attack on the town’s graveyard as certainly nothing of interest to the kobolds could be found among the town’s burials. Questioning other villagers provided little useful information. You did learn, however, that Joshua was the only caretaker of the graveyard for as far back as even the oldest citizens could remember.

Following the trail of the kobolds into the hills overlooking the town, the partycaught up with little nasties just as a large group of undead gnolls fell upon them. The chief of the ‘bolds, no longer sure of whatever power he ascribed to the urn, tossed the ‘relic’ to you, obviously hoping you could wield its ‘magic’ to turn back the gnolls.

As the undead killed some of the kobolds and carried others away, you hurried back to Mirror Stone, the urn safely in hand. Just as morning broke over the mountain range, you ran into Saffa and a knot of townspeople following your trail to lend what aid they could. Saffa confirmed your thoughts that the urn was just that, an urn. Why the kobold chief thought differently, no one could guess.

Already concerned about the kobolds’ sudden agitation, once she heard of the undead gnolls, Saffa asked for your help in keeping the town safe.

Convinced that the kobold unrest and appearance of the undead gnolls are somehow connected to the elven tomb you discovered (or perhaps just because the tomb offered more promise of treasure), you headed back into the mausoleum. Before entering the tomb, you realized that during the night, someone had entered the mausoleum and taken a ring off Joshua’s finger.

Entering the tomb, you were beset by the stone sentinels and skeletal guardians of the Golden Eagles. After releasing and defeating a red drake that had been captured by a minor Eagle mage, you decided to withdraw and gather your strength before venturing further into the tomb.