The brave adventurers have decided to rid the town of Winterhaven of this Kalarel character who seems bent on opening some rift to a bastion of Orcus in the Shadowfell. To do this, they needed to go to the ruins of Sir Keegan's Keep.
The trip to the keep itself was uneventful. Once they arrived however, things started with a bang! Using the Remix encounter the party encountered a skirmisher, a trio of dragonshields, and a wyrmpriest. However, since they had already wiped out the kobolds in the lair, I reskinned them into goblins. There was no mechanical change, I just called them goblins.
All of the difficult terrain seriously limited the battlefield. There wasn't really any reason for the players to enter very far into the difficult terrain, so most of the action happened in the cleared area. Another change I made was to give the wyrmpriest
Snowden's Wand.
Upon entering the dungeon they immediately noted both the trapped center of the room and the surprised goblin. He, and his companions were quickly and quietly dealt with. They decided to explore through the hall to the northwest.
Hearing the screaming of a tortured being they burst through the door to the torture chamber. The rogue advanced on the hobgoblin torturer, the paladin on the goblin next to the iron maiden, and the warlord (using those lovely trade out rules) offered alternately the paladin and the rogue basic attacks. The paladin knocked the goblin into the iron maiden and slammed it shut. The goblin shoved his way out and tried to stick the paladin with his spear and missed. The Paladin then kicked the goblin back into the iron maiden, and latched it shut trapping him for the rest of the battle.
The rogue hopped over the now dead kobold, and kicked the torturer back up against the firepit, and then sliced at his face, causing him to fall back into the flames. Around this point the warlord ended up locked in the cage, while one of the goblins went to release his friend in the iron maiden. The wizard put a stop to that, and further added to the smell of charred goblin with a well placed burning hands spell.
That's right, the wizard cooked the goblin in the iron maiden!!
The hobgoblin pulled himself out of the fire, grabbed a poker, and swung at the halfling. The halfling ducked out of reach, and stabbed one of the goblins. The paladin came around and breathed acid on the already burned hobgoblin (and a goblin), who promptly fell backward into the firepit, dead before his body hit the coals. The remaining goblin was then quickly dispatched. After dusting themselves off and discovering the treasure (slightly burnt magical leather armor for the thief!), they then proceed to interrogate the goblin that was in the cell. The creature named Splug offered to help them out by carrying things and showing them around if he was freed. With but a moment of hesitation they agreed. Not to the carrying things, but as a guide. Splug spent a few of his first moments of freedom kicking the dead body of the torturer.
Splug then told the party about the chief, the diggers, the nasty big insect things, and the "ghosts". Splug was very vague on a lot of details, mostly because there was a lot he didn't know. They decided that they would come back and deal with the chief later. Luckily for the party, the sound of screaming, cursing, etc. was usual enough coming from the torturer that no one came to investigate.
They then moved to the southwestern area, fought some zombies, continued further south and fought a lot of skeletons. Due to the party's ability to deal with large numbers of clumped skeletons I turned up their refresh rate so that new skeletons would pop out every 3 rounds rather than every 5. The paladin failed his religion check when he saw the alter at the end of the corridor. The wizard on the other hand knelt right down, and the skeletons stopped.
Sir Keegan. Ok, I'll admit I barely attempted the "skill challenge". I made them roleplay it out, with only a couple of dice rolls. The paladin again failed a religion roll. Clearly he'd spent more time at arms practice than at temple study. Either way, the paladin got Aecris.
From there the adventurers decided to take down the goblin chief. They returned to the hall outside the torture chamber, and the rogue sneaked through the door and down the hall to scout. He saw the 2 guards, went back to get the wizard. Unfortunately the wizard wasn't nearly as stealthy, and the goblins flipped the table they were sitting at to use as a barricade, and called out an alarm. The rest of the party ran in and they dealt with the goblins as they arrived pretty handily. When Blagron finally showed up, he managed to get himself into position to flank, and promptly missed all of his attacks. As the rest of his troops fell he decided that running away was safer than facing a bunch of heavily armed and armored thugs.
The party searched through the goblin compound, and discovered an amulet of protection locked in the chest under Blagron's bed. Then they discovered the secret door. They figured there had to be one, since Blagron ran into his room, and there wasn't a way out that they could see. The secret door lead them down a tunnel which brought them around to the dig site.
Blagron and the sharpshooters were waiting for them atop some of the further pillars while the guard drakes snapped at them from below. The party and the goblins exchanged some ranged attacks, the party getting the worse of it. The rogue got tired of it, and decided that things would go better face to face. He ran across the first wooden plank, along the first pillar and ended up on the second plank. The goblin with Blagron on the second pillar decided to kick the plank out, dropping the rogue 10 feet to the ground. He landed poorly (max damage) and while he was thinking about standing up, the same goblin looked over the edge at the halflings prone form, and shot him with his crossbow to add further injury to his already bruised ego. Then he was pounced on by the guard drakes dropping him into unconsciousness.
Splug, thus far only managing to flank opponents, not actually connect with any of them, dropped down the ladder and rushed to the rogue's aid. He yet again failed to hit, but it did serve to keep the drakes from focusing on the unconscious halfling. The paladin tried to follow the rogue across the first plank, but it snapped like dry matchsticks under his weight. His draconic sturdiness kept him from much harm, and he then opted to charge the other drake.
Following all that Blagron hauled his corpulent form and lept over the gap to the first pillar to get a better shot at the wizard who had been pestering him with magic missiles. Unfortunately for him, the warlord jumped from the doorway onto the first pillar, and came down hard with his Thundering Longsword upon Blagron's head, and blasting him over the edge of the pillar. His head made a meaty thwack upon the uneven ground as his sightless eyes stared up at his slayer.
The paladin revived the rogue, and the room was quickly finished up before we called the game for the night.
