Before Marten’s funeral the village elder, Skelf Piper, explained to us how the funeral is going to happen at the shrine of the badger at the Tree of Life. The whole village, every man, woman and child, went to the funeral, and left the village empty save for the guards from Morgansfort. It took the whole day. Bubo created a headstone for the boy’s funeral place to commemorate him; a great gesture in addition to the wolf pelts and the money. “Marten, beloved son, may you rest forever in the Tree of Life”.

During that time, the Captain of the guards told Darion that he and one other were returning to Morgansfort by boat in two days time. When Darion told him that they were still going east, he didn’t understand. Neither did Skelf Piper, who asked if we were out of our minds. Apoqulis gifted him with a gemstone for good luck, even though everyone thought we needed that more.

That evening we also spoke with our friend, the widow.

Forest

And in the early morning we set out, back through that same forest, with Vaeva scouting the way.

Again, two encounters! First, Vaeva discovered eight more wolves busy eating an orc. We carefully evaded them. Then, we ran into a bunch of orcs busy eating some wolves! We attempted to look friendly and harmless, but that was the wrong tactic. They rolled a 2 on their reaction roll and grabbed their axes to hack us to pieces.

Darion roared defiance and waited for them to taste his steel while Bubo tied up the donkey. Behind the orcs, their leader yelled at them what they should do to our dead and broken bodies in the very near future. But Apoqulis cast Silence on the leader, so his hateful commands suddenly stopped, and Heidel cast Hold Person on the four lead orcs, stopping two of them in their tracks, with a third bumping into them and also stopping. Which left one single orc in the lead, who noticed the silence and her comrades stopping, so she also slowed and halted.

Then Bubo called out in Orc: “We have powerful magic, of a might you can’t imagine. Continue to annoy us and die.” They were stunned to hear him in Orcish while their leader was raging in complete silence, and he had their attention. Then he added: “With one move of our hands, we can snap your necks. And we will.”

Then we turned and walked away, exuding confidence. That worked, and they decided not to push their luck.

During our night watch, a bear wandered by, but we were lucky: It was not aggressive, just curious, and Apoqulis threw it some rations, which it gobbled up before moving on.

Grassland

Finally we passed out of the forest and discovered wide open fields, and a hunting tower in them. Climbing it, we saw human structures in the distance. And also wild animals. Apoqulis wanted to hunt them, but Darion held him back: “We don’t know how the locals feel about these animals, or who may or may not hunt them. We are strangers here. Let’s not kill until we know more.”

But fate decreed otherwise: Suddenly two giant bees buzzed at us, and we had to defend. Our slingstones missed their mark, but Bubo calmly nocked and arrow on his brand new bow and tested the weapon: A doublette! With one single arrow he pierced both of the insects. The threat was gone, and we all complimented Bubo for his masterful shot, which he humbly attributed to the good bow.

Apoqulis wondered if it would be useful to harvest the stingers and poison of these bees and bring them with us to the village; again Darion held him back, with the same argument as before: As strangers, we should tread lightly.

Stormwing

We approached the structure slowly and openly, and it turned out to be a palisaded village: The barbarian village Stormwing, our destination. We had chosen the right path. Six guards stood chatting at the gate, relaxed and easy. One of them met us and asked our business, and we explained that we were here to learn about Stormwing, its history, and its castle. “Castle?” he asked. “More like Keep.” He was friendly and allowed us into the village, leading us to their elder, a bald tattooed warrior going by the name of Gwyngad.

Apoqulis tried to explain our desire to learn more about Stormwing Keep and the tribe, although he spoke about his Church a lot and mentioned tomes of wisdom and libraries and generations of scholars — and lost his audience. The locals just scratched their heads, until Darion translated it into a more compact: “We are here to learn the story of your people.”

That they got, and from that basis they understood better when Apoqulis again explained about writing books for the Church’s lore vaults.

But what really brought them around was Heidel. Seeing a dwarf in their midst they were excited.

Then they told us the most amazing lore.

Endbringer

Centuries past, the forebears of this clan lived at the ancient Keep Stormwing, three full days to the southeast. They were strong friends of the Dwarves of the Clan of the Obsidian Path, in an almost forgotten age when Creatures of Darkness and Terror ruled the lands. Humans, Dwarves, and Elves resisted the Evil. But a day of decision came: There was an epic battle, mighty and hard, of Devils and Monsters against the ancestors of Clan Stormwing and their queen Sturngun. That was at least 500 years ago. There were great days of strength when Sturgun, wielder of the blade Endbringer, fought shoulder to shoulder with the Dwarves under their legendary hero Olouk Ironbreaker and his daughter Ateahilda.
Their enemy was the Great Devil Sukrot and the Infernal Vega.

Many brave warriors were lost, but in the end Humans and Dwarves triumphed. Sukrot was not really killed, even though he was vanquished and the Queen got named “Slayer of Sukrot” from then on.
In fact, Sukrot was imprisoned underneath the Keep, in a dwarf-crafted dungeon. Now it is the task of enterprising infernals and chaotics alike to some day re-awaken Sukrot, raise him back to power, and return the age of cruelty.

However, even after the Humans of Clan Stormwing wandered here to make their abode in this valley far from the castle, the Dwarves stayed and guarded Sukrot’s prison … until, one fateful day a mere century ago, they fell. They were wiped out by invading orcs; and no Dwarves were seen in these parts here ever since. Even in ther absence, the friendship that the Clan extends to all dwarves from the mountains has proven to stand the test of time. But what about the imprisoned devil?

No one truly lives in Keep Stormwing now, it is home to wandering chaotics … or so the Clansmen think. But we know better. Someone is there right now, waiting. Waiting for an emissary… a teacher.

A job for a cat

Now, these news change some things. Hezeroth the cat was told that somebody was there in Keep Stormwing and had need of magical aid in order to set something or someone free. The answer is obvious. The person in need of magical aid or, more importantly, magical teaching — let us call this person X — does not have all the knowledge to raise the Great Devil. But this X signed a treaty with an entity of the beyond. And this signatory power — our cat’s master — took Hezeroth and sent him out to fulfil the contract. Which has not happened yet, because Hezeroth got captured.

All eyes on Hezeroth. Is this cute cat really the key to tilt the world back into a fiery hellscape, lorded over by Sukrot the Great Devil? He is forced to, as all demons are: bound to the words written. Even though the choice was never his, but of his Master, the one who holds the treaty with X.

The logical leap of most minds for many was: How can we kill Hezeroth to prevent this?

Darion argued otherwise: Hezeroth clearly did not actually want to teach this contract partner what he needed to know. Yes, he was duty-bound to honor the contract of his master. But he had been delayed right away when he was captured by the Necromancer. Now he was using every trick in the book to delay his quest even further. He could have pushed us to go faster. He could have threatened us. He could have gone alone! It was not rocket science to find this keep, especially not for someone like Hezeroth who did not have to fear much in these forests.

Instead, he had bided his time with us, had waited with us, gone on detours with us or at least waited for us to complete our detours; he had shown us the Shadow Devil, something he wouldn’t have needed to do and which actually held us at the lake for longer. He had gone into the forest with us, but also returned to the village with us. He was doing anything he could even remotely justify to slow himself down.

And what would happen if we were to kill Hezeroth, provided we would even succeed? His master would send another like him — and potentially one with more eagerness to do his job, and one who would not be waylaid by a Necromancer.

Nay, said Darion, we want Hezeroth right where he is, happy, healthy, and here in this village, armed with one or two reasons why he cannot go these last few miles just yet.

Contract Lawyering

At this point there was already some intense planning happening. In fact, the party went and asked Hezeroth about this contract and its wording, and quite openly, if there was any way how he could wiggle out of the obligation to help this unknown person X in the Keep.
“Interesting question!” said Hezeroth, and guessed that he would need a whole day to check the text and find out.

Mingling

The village also had a store run by an Elf, a trader called Galaeron.

Stunningly, it was the cousin of Morgansfort’s tough-nut trading queen Sardi. He was a lone wolf type, isolated from other elves. But even he had heard, even back on the faraway island he came from, of the village of Stormwing, and so he travelled here to, quite literally, set up shop.

Stunning, that the people in Morgansfort had barely an idea about a village that was so well spoken of that even Elves took up the journey to get here in particular.

We spoke with various people and learned that Stormwing Keep was not a small thing either. It had six or seven towers and a wall, quite an imposing fortress. Darion could not help but picture himself as the future Lord of this long abandoned Stormwing Keep, or rather, the future “Castle Darion”. Once we had saved the world, someone would need to guard the prison, rule the land with a benevolent hand, and make sure that his loyal subjects were save from harm.

Meanwhile, Bubo and Galaeron got along very fine, poking fun at the humans.

We further learned that the epic Queen Sturngun was buried in the so called “Queen’s Crypt“, presumably a big pile of stones. We suspected that she might be laid down there together with her mythical blade Endbringer. One more thing for Darion to covet. A mighty ruler needs a mighty weapon.

And yet further we found out that another stranger was in the village. Was this a remote barbarian village or a main traffic hub?

The new man was a veteran Adventurer named Matrius RaedWolf, a hard, no-nonsense vampire slayer, armed with whip and crossbow. He was on the trail of a very vicious vampire clan called “Clan Noctis” and was here to hire Henchmen for his quest.

And so quickly can a group of successful adventurers in their own right “downgrade” themselves to the rank of Henchmen: because how could we resist that??

Much more intense planning followed.

The Plan — or

more fittingly titled,

the series of half-baked ideas

• Step 1 – we go vampire hunting with Matrius
• Step 2 – on the way we grab the magical sword from the Crypt of the Queen
• Step 0, before that, we learn more about the Genealogy of Stormwing
• Step 0.5, before we go out to hunt vampires, we already discuss contract law with Hezeroth and look for a loophole
• Step 3 – we free Hezeroth of his obligation, ideally voiding the contract in total, but otherwise buy some time.
• Step 4 – we scout the Keep Stormwing to discover how strong they are there: theories range from anything between “a lone lunatic” over “a small group of cultists” to “300 orcs bent into service by a black magician” or even “300 orcs bent into service by a cult”! We had to see them and find out, otherwise we could not make a practical plan to take them out.
  At the same time, we had to break Hezeroth’s contract before that, because he would be too hard pressed to explain why he did not do his job if he was clearly just 100 yards away from his destination. So yes — Step 4 will need some preparation.
• Step 5 – the grande finale: We take out X, foil his plans, and keep Sukrot imprisoned down below Darion Keep for another 500 years.

Morgansfort