¹  – For this session.

After closing the door to the keep, the party hears a loud pounding upon the door and a voice shouting, "Le' me in! I'm lookin' for me friends." Alabaster, Keldorn, and Meltara recognize the voice of their former party member, a dwarf named Cordrun. So, Throm opens the door to let him in and a short (by Throm's standards) female half-orc steps up to join the dwarf. As the party fills the halway inside the keep's front door, Emmeline can't get inside right away. Alerted by the dwarf's shout, archers on the roof start shooting at the dwarf and half-orc, and the half-orc takes an arrow in her shoulder. The party moves deeper into the keep to allow Emmeline to enter and avoid further punctures to her hide.

After moving deeper into the keep, the party finds a set of stairs going down and up. The downward stairs are blocked with large boulders and blocks of broken massonry. Sounds are heard near the top of the upward stairs suggesting that enemies are waiting there. Some party members enter a large central room and are fired upon by archers by a second storey balcony, and more thieves pour in through various door in the lower floor's main room.

In the midst of all the mayhem, Meltara and Keldorn try to take on the most powerful and heavily armed and armored of the thieves, and go down badly bloodied. Emmeline moved over to help them when Benton, himself, entered the room -- obviously frustrated by his troup's inability to dispatch the ever-growing band of intruders disrupting his operations. He quickly struck down Emmeline with a single thrust. As Emmeline fell upon the floor, a pouch tied at her waiste broke free and spilled onto the floor a very expensive-looking and ornate bracelet.

Benton immediately recognized the bracelet as one that he had specifically comissioned from a regional wizard, named Thrinator, who was known to be skilled in the making of magical devices. The bracelet was never delivered to Benton and he was convinced that the wizard was trying to cheat him, so he killed Thrinator, personally. Benton was pleased, though a little confused, to find his bracelet dropped at his feet. He quickly picked it up and slipped in on his left wrist -- then screamed in terror and pain!

Benton's paramour, Nastasia (a.k.a. Nasty) saw her lover in distress and went to help him while the rest of the band of thieves continued their fight with the party. The wizard who was once thought to be a librarian cast a Fireball upon the thieves causing them great suffering, then a second Fireball toasted them and reduced their numbers to something more manageable.

In the end, Nasty fled with her physically and mentally afflicted lover, Benton, and the the dwarf, Cordrun, was wounded too severely and bled to death before help could get to him. The thieves' keep was taken over by the troup of adventurers, and the captured prisoners (including the tavern keeper and two of the rooftop archers who shot Emmeline) were put to work digging graves for the dead.

A search of the keep turns up two secret rooms containing magic items and additional weapons. Of note: Meltara found her stolen holey symbol in one of the secret rooms and Vindahr got a bow obviously (to him) made by his own kinsmen. Throm found the plate mail armor that used to belong to a human fighter named Fred who had once been a companion of Alabaster, Keldorn and Meltara. Fred's body, along with the bodies of many others, was found dumped in a pit that was dug behind the keep.

As peace settles on the small abandoned village, newly liberated from the thieves, a faint scratching sound can be heard at the bottom of the lower stairs in the keep, as though something were tugging and pulling at the rocks and boulders that block off the basement of the keep.

[PCs level 1-3 get xxx XP; PCs level 4 get xxx XP.]