Party: Lia (Lvl 1 Elf Scout- Abigail), Sir Loden (Lvl 1 Human Knight- Ken), Devotchka (Lvl 1 Elf Thief- Mandy), Ashcroft the Flashy Magician (Lvl 2 Human Wizard- Victor), Anesidora (Lvl 1 Human Cleric – Clare), Kragg Mosshammer (Lvl 1 Dwarf Sentinel – Chris)

At the end of our last thrilling adventure, the blood-red swirling portal was 2/3 of the way full and only one more orb was needed to finish filling the portal and open it up. Everyone heads down the hallway to a large crypt with 3 paintings on the wall, one laying on the floor. Also, there’s a heap of dead Lvl1 adventurers who met a mysterious, deadly fate. A friendly ghostly apparition appears, introducing himself as Keld, and explains the following puzzle:
Four paintings, all portraits, need to be placed on the wall in the correct order. The current order is, from left to right- blank space (portrait on floor of Sigmund), Keld, Eleanora, Amarus. Keld explains that the portraits are all of his family and himself, and the puzzle was created by his brother, Amarus. You have one try to complete the puzzle successfully and put the paintings in the correct order and gain access to his brother’s inner sanctum. If you attempt the puzzle and fail, Keld will be forced to attack you (and he’s super powerful and no one’s ever beaten him). Here’s some family details-
Keld- Young, ghostly nobleman. Oldest of his siblings, brave knight, slain by his brother Amarus. Rather friendly.
Amarus- Younger brother, messes with a lot of dark necrotic magic. Only one of the portraits who is still alive. Coveted his sister in “unnatural ways”, causing him to be referred to (on occasion) by the party as “Amarus the Sister-Fucker”. Really hates himself.
Eleanora- Youngest of the siblings, loved by Amarus and was pretty bothered by it. Threw herself off the top of the tower.
Sigmund The Bloodaxe- Father, famous warrior, former lord of the land (about 80 years ago). Killed a lot of halflings. Slain and killed by beastmen.
One painting (of Sigmund) is currently on the floor because a random dwarf came through and looted the bodies on the floor / did not attempt the puzzle.
The party deliberates for a while and decides to put the paintings in order based on how Amarus views his family and his own importance in it. Their solution, from left to right: Amarus, Keld, Sigmund, Eleanor. It’s correct, and a compartment opens up under Eleanor’s painting with the final orb.

While the portal is now filled, there’s another room that the party hasn’t explored yet that they figure they’ll go check out first. At the end of the other hallway, they see a room.
There are 20 warrior statues in front of a giant, red demon statue with large gems in his eyes. Large mural and mosaics on the wall of a scary-looking guy with an axe mowing down halflings. Sir Loden starts moving forward and activating each warrior statue to create a path. The statues resist a huge amount of damage when they’re in statue form, but when you come within one square of them they glow with purple necrotic magic and try to grab you.
The party clears a path to the large, red demon statue. After some discussion about what taking the gems out of its eyes will do, they decide to be safe and just kill all of the statues first before removing the gems. They do so, and then Lia climbs up and removes both gems. With the gems removed, all of the statues would have come to life at the same time. When they hit with a normal attack, you’re pushed back one square.

Everyone goes back to sleep overnight in the crypt with the paintings, some people have really dreadful nightmares because they’re sleeping in a crypt. Once the party’s healed and fantastic, they pass through the giant, magical blood-red portal. Inside is Amarus’ work-study area.
It’s a large chamber, there’s a huge table in the middle with books and rituals and strange implements. Podium with a book is standing next to the table. Lots of bookshelves and stuff. There’s a humanoid ghostly headless figure behind the table, holding a terrifying sword made of necrotic energy. Also- 3 big and nasty skeleton warriors, 2 skeletal rogue types, legion of 9 skeletal minions with bows.
Cue a large, absolutely nasty battle. After taking out the headless ghost, everyone gets messed up by the repetitive minion attacks and the sneaky rogue skeletons. Ashcroft does this really convenient thing a few times where he pushes the big and nasty guys back through the portal for a turn. The party wins, everyone’s bloody and miserable.
Ashcroft and Anesidora pick up the book that they’ve been sent to retrieve for Ragni, discover that it’s a horrifying codex on how to raise the undead that, really, no one should be possession of. Sir Loden destroys the book (although the book fights back with a few bursts of necrotic energy), the party resolves to head to the goblin caves and confront Ragni, after a quick stop in Bralholme to rest up.

PREFACE TO THRILLING ADVENTURE
Lia and Sir Loden have been traveling together for a while (platonically). Eventually, they make it to the town of Greypoint in North Bralholme- a town that is cold and shitty, filled with fishermen, and there’s no real purpose in ever going there because it absolutely reeks.
They’re drinking at the pub, because in Greypoint you need to get drunk enough so that you can’t smell anything or you don’t care how bad it smells. In walk a Knight and a Druid Dwarf, looking exhausted and covered in blood. They sit down and have a drink with our two adventurers, eventually revealing that there’s a dungeon / ghostly tower to the East that might require some adventuring assistance. Lia and Sir Loden, inherently understanding that only a small, incredibly idiotic group of adventurers actually exist in Bralholme, decide to test their luck and go to fuck up some ghosts.

Party: Lia (Lvl 1 Elf Scout- Abigail), Sir Loden (Lvl 1 Human Knight- Ken), Devotchka (Lvl 1 Elf Thief- Mandy), Ashcroft the Astonishingly Useful (Lvl 1 Human Wizard- Victor), Anesidora (Lvl 1 Human Cleric – Clare)

Lia and Sir Loden arrive at the incredibly tall, unpleasantly haunted and ghostly glowing tower. They run into our other adventurers (Devotchka, Ashcroft, Anesidora) and they decide to form a large party to travel deeper into the dungeons. After disabling the spinning-blade traps, they reach the former skeleton / bat room, which is now empty and contains some sarcophagi (and a big mystical purple fog on the wall). The party discovers two rooms under the sarcophagi:

Room 1- Stone chamber with a faintly glowing circle of purple runes, written in deep speech. There’s a crystal orb in the middle of the circle with a protective shield around it. Some of the rocks on the wall also glow and, when broken open, expel a gas that you can inhale in order to bypass the runes and go bleed on the orb. The runes read that if the circle is broken, death will be summoned and the circle will suck out your soul.

Room 2- Contains a tall evil statue in the middle of the room that is made up of four disfigured stone monsters. Each monster has its name written in deep speech on its back- touching or saying the words summons each monster (or all four). An orb is in the middle of the statue.

Ashcroft attempts to disable the rune circle in Room 1 by reading the runes and fails, summoning two humanoid shadow figures, infused with circle magic. After being hit, they turn invisible and when they’re invisible, they do way more damage. If they take a ton of damage they don’t disappear. They get killed thanks to Lia’s super-effective charging move, Sir Loden walks over and bleeds on the orb. A blood red swirl appears with the purple fog in the room upstairs.

In the second room, the party decides to summon each monster one at a time. The four monsters are- a small elemental demon, a small twisting air elemental demon, a blobby water elemental and a humanoid translucent thing. They only like to appear in the corners of the room, and when they die a sulfuric mist appears that causes 5dmg and lingers for a little while.

Ixam- small elemental, likes to appear behind people and mess them up.

Myrg- humanoid shadow monster, incredibly powerful, almost kills the entire party.

Pentuko- blobby water elemental, technically a giant monster. When bloodied he splits in two, with each smaller blob containing half of the bloodied hit points.

Alrastil- air elemental demon, immune to diseases and poisons, easier to kill when knocked prone. Does an incredibly powerful dust tornado move.

After a long, arduous battle, all four monsters are killed by the party. Someone bleeds on the orb in the statue and the blood red swirl in the purple fog grows larger. There are gems in the monsters’ eyes, we take them and we are super rich.

Ashcroft the Strange, also known as Ashcroft the Lech, Ashcroft the Weird, Ashcroft the Arrogant, Ashcroft the Bold, Ashcroft the Prying, and Ashcroft the Many-titled. While sitting at a local tavern pondering the complexities of his many appellations he stumbled upon a a most curious verse in his tome, it read “in the southern steppes stands a tower wreathed in darkness, where the infernal realm pierces through and the powers of corruption bathe the lands in unholy glory” Interest piqued, Ashcroft opens to the last page of his hand-me-down
magical tome and ponders at the last and only name to have signed it – Balthazar Bloodcloud.

“Balthazar Bloodcloud, never heard of him” He says to himself.

Aschroft begins to ponder about the complexities of personal monikers again and wonders why wizards always turn to histrionics and self aggrandizement whenever it comes to insignia. Also why they never seem to want to provide new books for their students…
regardless, he looks at the hand scrolled passage on the page and can’t help to wonder if such a place exists or why a student of the arcane arts would be so haphazard as to write something
of such gravity in his first year book on evocation and magical theory. He should know the repercussions of such brazen announcement. The last wizard he knew that openly commented about the scrying pool he
found in his garden was Alpheous the Impetuous who later became know as Alpheus the Apprentice Laden, and Alpheus the Annoyed. Theres a reason wizards and witches keep magical information secret, we’re a cadging bunch.

Interest still piqued, he looks out the smoke filled window of the tavern to the south and counts his coin in hopes he has enough for a wagon and an entourage of large men he can throw to the fire incase
things get hairy.

“Hmmm, only enough for a a few more rounds of ale, I better find some work”

Kragg rode in a caravan with Ragni Ironhammer, heading from Hillsford to Greypoint, when they were attacked by a group of goblins. They fought the goblins off, but some of the goblins made off with Ragni’s small, ornate chest. After the ambush, Kragg saw a humanoid wearing a black cloak, riding a black horse, who rode off back in the direction of the goblins.

Ragni offered Kragg 50gp to retrieve it, so Kragg tracked the goblins to a nearby cave. Outside the cave, Kragg fought a small group of goblins and then decided that he would need more help to ransack the cave and find the chest.