Arasu. (Jason)- A male fire genasi Ranger from Calimshan. Not much is known about him.

Barundar. (James)- A male gold dwarf Dragon Shaman from the Great Rift. A hard-drinking, short-tempered dwarf whose totem is the gold dragon.

Draelic. (Aron)- A male human Cleric of Tymora. Picture Two-Face, only without scars, without evil behavior, and with dice instead of the coin. Every decision he makes depends on the roll of his own personal dice.

Forsythia. (Allison)- A female half-elven Paladin of Sune. Just as insufferable as a Cleric of Sune, but with armor and a sharp sword.

Josey Sweetleaf. (Seth)- A male halfling Druid. Take a halfling, put a floppy hat on him, give him a slow country-style drawl, an easy-going laconic demeanor, a Dire Rat animal companion, and a cart drawn by a pony. There you are.

Kendrick. (Dibz)- A male human Rogue. He’s smooth-tongued and well-mannered, and is already moving towards being this fledgling group’s spokesman.

Kudzu. (Bruce)- A male human Druid. Kudzu worships Malar, the Beast Lord, and has already displayed his concern for animal welfare. His companion is a wolf.

Laurus. (John-John)- A male human Fighter. He hails from Waterdeep, and is keen on strategy and tactics. He’s wields a mean Glaive.

Sendar. (Chris)- A male human Warmage. Not much is known about him.

Our story begins on a cold night, the first night of the new year, 1374, the Year of the Lightning Storms. The place is the Trade Road in the Western Heartlands, southeast of Daggerford, northeast of Candlekeep. The High Moors lie to the north, and the Troll Hills and the Trollclaws lie to the south and southeast respectively.

There’s snow and freezing rain in the air, and a group of travelers, all unknown to each other, stagger into a warm in called the Wolves Den. In the space of an hour, nine of these people enter the place, looking for a hot meal, something to drink, a fire, and perhaps a warm bed.

The inn’s common room is filled with a score of hardened warriors, fifteen men and five women, all of them laughing, talking, gaming, and carousing, and the innkeeper seems to know them, since he’s joining in. He sticks all nine newcomers at two trestle tables in the back of the room. The only other clientele are a pair of regal-looking elves dressed in splendid furs, and an old man sipping his drink and staring fixedly at the candle on his table.

The innkeeper, Rolf, seems annoyed at all these guests, who are taking his attention away from this what is apparently a mercenary band.. In fact, the gathering has all the makings of some reunion of a military unit or some such. Anyways, Rolf half-heartedly serves the nine newcomers some food and drink, and tells them that the only rooms available are three rooms with four beds each. There’s also a flop area here on the ground floor, which can be utilized for a far lower price for the more economy-minded. Kudzu and Kendrick opt for the flop room. The others, after introductions are made, decide to use two of the rooms.

Rolf the innkeeper snarls at the old man and asks if he intends to stay the night, and if so, he’d better pay. The old man pulls out a two-headed platinum coin, and flips it to the innkeeper, who changes his tune just enough.

The old man wanders over to the two trestle tables and introduces himself as Abdiel. He seems pleased to see the party, and actually gives each person a piece of silver jewelry. He advises them to hold onto the jewelry, never be without it, at least until the next sunrise. Afterwards, they can do what they want with the pieces. They attempt to question him, but Abdiel simply says that he’s a collector of debts, and that he has taken a liking to this band of strangers.

After he leaves, a few of the mercenaries begin hitting on Forsythia. Although she initially flirts with them, they make known their intentions to take her from the common room, bring her elsewhere, and take turns with her. This looks bad. Just when it seems that things are going to come to blows, Kendrick steps in and tries to be diplomatic and diffuse the crisis by offering to buy the mercenaries some drinks. It works, and the mercenaries are mollified. The group also learns that the mercenaries are part of a group called the ThunderBlades. Eventually, the group decides it’s best to bunk down and steer clear of the increasingly drunken and rowdy mercenaries. The old man, Abdiel, bunks in the flop area as well, but the elves leave the inn.

In the middle of the night, around two in the morning, everyone awakens to the sound of screaming, shrieking, and what is clearly a struggle of some sort. It’s coming from everywhere. Kudzu and Kendrick, downstairs in the flop room, awaken and find Abdiel the old man gone. They dash out into the common room. Before they head upstairs, Kendrick notices that the kitchen door is hot and glowing. Checking it out, he sees that the entire kitchen (and Rolf’s rooms beyond it) are ablaze.

Meanwhile, upstairs in the bedrooms, the group is trying to get themselves together and armed for whatever it is that’s causing the ruckus, when spirits begin to rise out of the floor. Although they reach for the heroes, they are somehow stopped by a barrier. The rooms are as cold as the grave, and it’s clear that these phantoms are some form of undead. Frustrated at their attempts to touch the heroes, the spirits move on to other rooms.

As our heroes emerge from their bedrooms and into the hallway, the doors of the other bedrooms explode open and out stumble the mercenaries, no longer alive, but rather as reanimated dead. They see the living folk, and turn towards them slowly, shuffling towards our heroes.

The only person who decided to stay in bed was Draelic who, when awakened, rolled his dice to decide whether or not to get out of bed, or just go back to sleep and let events sort themselves out. The latter won out. Barundar the Dwarf, seeing at least a dozen zombie mercenaries shuffling in the group’s direction, starts to bellow “Get that priest out here! NOW!”

Laurus, his Glaive at the ready, begins a systematic cutting down of the newly created zombies. Josie lowers the a rope out the window situated at the end of the hall. Kendrick runs upstairs (and sees the zombies with their backs to him) and yells out that the inn is on fire. Kudzu chooses not to go upstairs; instead, he dashes out of the inn and runs to the stables, to save any horses that may be there.

Draelic is roused from his sleep and he manages to turn and destroy five zombies outright. Josey, Forsythia, and Sendar shimmy down the rope to safety outside, while Arasu fires arrows at the zombie horde, and Kendrick, Barundar, and Laurus engage the undead in melee. Draelic manages to turn three more zombies, and everyone agrees that it’s a very good idea to jump down the rope.

Laurus, Josey, Kendrick, and Sendar circle the inn and find no tracks in the area. Kudzu discovers that the stable has twenty light warhorses, the mounts of the mercenary company. He evacuates them to safety while the rest of the group starts trying to put out the fire. Unfortunately, the inn’s supplies of alcohol and flour go up, and it’s clear that the place is a total loss.

By four in the morning, the flames are dead. The group starts tidying up the stable for a place to sleep for what’s left of the night, when they see Abdiel standing on a snow bank. He congratulates them on their surviving the crisis, and that if they wish to learn more answers and also do the right thing, to dig in the remains of the burnt-out inn. He then prophesies that, as their adventures began in fire, so shall they end in fire. A burst of wind, some swirling snow, and he’s gone. Attempts at finding his tracks yield none whatsoever. Weird.

The party digs in the inn’s ruins, and eventually clears a path to the cellar. In one of the four rooms, they find a large stone lid with chains on it. It takes the combined strength of Forsythia, Laurus and Barundar to open it, and a hideous stench pours out of the hole, rendering some of the group ill. Most importantly, Forsythia and Laurus are nauseated and let go of the chains, leaving Barundar to go sailing through the air as the lid comes crashing back down on the hole, shattering in three pieces.

Once the shattered lid is removed, the party looks down in the pit and sees dead bodies in various states of decomposition (the further down you go, the older and more decomposed they are). At the top of the heap is a recently dead (within a tenday) warrior sort, with his throat slashed.

As the group begins the grisly task of sifting through the dead, two things become apparent: first, the faces of many of the specters that attacked the inn were the same faces as many of the dead. Second, all of the bodies died from a blow to the head, a blade to the chest, or a slit throat.

It becomes clear to the party that these dead need a proper burial. After a discussion, they decide to make a funeral pyre, and say a blessing. As they do this, they see a host of spirits, gratefully heading towards the east, where the sun’s about to rise. They voice their thanks for a decent burial at last. One of the spirits is the man who was clearly the most recently killed, a noble knight of some extraction. This spirit begs the party to take up his quest, and as he tries to explain it, the celestial choir swells up, drowning out some of his words. What’s more, the pull from the east is becoming irresistible. He manages to utter a partial message, with the words “keep”, “princess”, “dragon”, “rescue!”, before he’s dragged off to his eternal reward.

The final two spirits are that of an old man and an old woman, clearly a married couple. They thank the group for the burial, and explain that they ran the inn, which they called “the Cat and Hearth”. Then, this mercenary band called The ThunderBlades stayed there one night, and one of their number, Rolf, decided that he wanted to retire from the mercenary business and make a fortune as an innkeeper instead. So, while his comrades looked on and cheered, he murdered the old couple and declared the inn his, renaming it “The Wolves Den”.

But his crimes didn’t end there. According to the old couple, Rolf was a psychotic who occasionally murdered wealthy guests in their sleep and dumped their bodies in the pit in the cellar, then sold off their goods. Apparently, he didn’t do it often, so as not to attract too much attention. His final victim was this noble knight who was on a quest, only to get killed in his sleep, his quest now unfulfilled.

Until now…

Before the old couple drift to the east (they tarried longer since they were dead longer), they warn the characters that the mercenary band is actually a bit larger, and not all of them were present in the inn during the night of vengeance. They also mention that more answers will be found at the keep at the crossroads. After a final “thank you”, the old couple, reunited at last, go to eternity.

It should also be noted that the group found two small stashes of coins, weapons, and magic that Rolf apparently had secreted away in the event of dire need.

The group decides that they should just strike off to Crossroads Keep, a place that Laurus passed by while traveling from Waterdeep to this locale. At about Highsun, they find the road blocked by a pack of wild hyenas, which advances hungrily at the party. As the animals attack, some members of the party notice that the animals all wear collars.

Kudzu casts an Entangle and traps three of them. Laurus slays a pair. The hyenas rally and attack Sendar, dropping the warmage. A few more are slain, then Josie uses Speak With Animals and actually manages to intimidate the three entangled ones. Cowed, they tell Josie that their pack serves a band of gnolls north of here, on the edge of the moors. The hyenas are sent out to harry a likely band of travelers, then the gnolls can swoop down and engage the weakened, bloodied victims.

While the party tends to Sendar, Josie extracts a promise from the hyenas that they will not return to the gnolls, but rather go off elsewhere on their own. With the promise given, Kudzu releases them.

With Sendar healed, the party continues their travel west to Crossroads Keep. Upon arrival, they sell of the majority of the warhorses they rescued from the inn’s stable. They then hole up at an adventurer-friendly inn called the Duck and Bucket, and get some badly needed sleep.

When we take up again next time, the group clearly has some questions that need answering, as well as a gnoll lair that needs eliminating.