Pilgrimage to the Moon Door

After the siege at Harkenwold is finished, Lord Ironfist heads north to Hammerfast to deal with some bandits on the King's Road. He sends G'Kar, Artemis, and Morwyn on a skiff down the White River to visit the Lord Mayor of Moonstair and remind her that she promised to send a dozen elven archers to join the league's militias in Therund.

When the party arrives in Moonstair they are well received, but the Lord Mayor advises that she needs her rangers to guard the pilgrims to the Moon Door, a magical portal that opens every full moon to the Feywild (and the means by which Neyvara and Morwyn the Eladrin have come to the lands of Nerath). Pilgrims traveling to the Moon Door have been plagued by two bandits who rob and sometimes kill and eat travelers. If they rid the town of this menace she can spare the men.

They inquire around town and learn from survivors of the attacks that the bandits are two half troll/half orc Kruggs. Moonstair is built on the ruins of the ancient Troll Kingdom of Vardar. The lands to the west of the river are still under the rule of the Troll King and his hill giant tribes. Orcs also are found in abundance in the woods of Harkenwold to the east of the river, so creatures like Kruggs are not uncommon in the area. Though smaller than trolls they fight with their ferocity and can heal quickly unless damaged by fire or acid.

The party disguises themselves as pilgrims, buying a mule to carry a small keg of oil. They also light some torches to carry and set off the next morning down the trail to the Moon Door. They come upon a turn in the road where the sweet smell of flowers barely masks the scent of rotting flesh. There the Kruggs leap from the bushes.

G'Kar charges forward to draw their blows while Artemis and Morwyn plant their torches in the ground and use them to light their arrows as they fire them at the monsters. Artemis uses a magic missile to smash a rock one of the kruggs used as a weapon, so it must resort to its clawed hands. The other holds a large scimitar. G'Kar holds them off for a while then retreats behind the archers badly bloodied, but one of the trolls circles around trying to follow him. The donkey is spooked by the battle and jumps, but artemis holds it.

The troll with the scimitar lunges forward hacking at the ranger and moon priest as they let loose more arrows. G'Kar opens the keg of oil on the donkey's saddle pack and begins to cover his weapon in it. Before he can recork the keg, the trollthing's rushes toward him and the donkey bolts, though it is cut down by the two krugs. It lets out one final bray and collapses on the trail, with lamp oil leaking everywhere. Morwyn fires a flaming arrow at the keg on the donkey's saddle and it explode blocking the trial and casting fire in a wide area.

The kruggs move away from the fire, and Artemis pins one in and hits it with a bottle of oil that sets it on fire. The monsters screams as it hacks Artemis apart, separating one arm and shoulder from his torso and cutting deep through his heart and lungs. G'Kar and Morwyn finish the beast as it's unarmed ally rushes off, vowing that its master Darcayn will punish them for this.

They take Artemis to the priests at the Moon Door. That night they take him through the door at midnight and perform a ritual in the Feywild to resurrect him. He gives them a large sum of gold to pay for the components spent to bring him back to life. The next day they continue further south following the Krugg's trail through the swampy part of Harkenwood.

As they follow the creatures path through the swamp, Morwyn's cat Kiara is struck by a poisoned dart. They move forward along the trail and in the distance a lizardfolk raider is sending more poison darts their way, but they shrug them off and advance. At a fork in the trail, a large blackscale lizard chieftain and a hunter leap onto the trial to strike out.

Artemis is knocked back by the large chief, but he returns equal force and shoves the chief back. The two bands fight for several minutes before the bloodied lizardfolk, not reknowned for their bravery, all beat a quick retreat back toward their village.

They find a small island with a clearing in the swamp. A broken cart has been dragged into the clearing and a terrible smell emanates. The sun is starting to set and the rain looks like it's moving in. They approach the ruined cart and find that the Krugg that ran away is taking shelter beneath it. He rises and begins to toss large rocks in their direction. Morwyn and G'Kar distract the monster while Artemis sneaks up behind him. Artemis sets his sword on fire and stabs the krugg in the back then breaks a bottle of oil over the monsters head, setting it and himself aflame. Artemis' allies quickly move in to roll the thief over in the wet grass to put out the fire on his cloak, then gently rouse him back to consciousness. They take shelter under the stinking cart full of some treasure and odd items.

The next day they see that there are dragon prints leading east and human prints going south on a trail. They head south and find the settlement of Marshglen where they tell the folk there that the bandits have been defeated, presenting the krugg's head. A farmer takes them back up the river to Rathmore where they catch a ferry north to Moonstair. The Lord Mayor fulfills her promise and gladly sends the dozen archers south to Therund to join the militas there.

As the party travels to meet up with their friends in Therund they see another barge on the river with a half dozen nobles struggling to stay afloat. The oarsmen are gone and the barge is taking on water, listing toward the western shore of the river, where several trolls and hill giants wait to eat their prey. The party orders their ship's mate to sail them alongside the barge and they bring several over the side successfully, but four of the nobles are already in the water and the current is taking them toward the trolls.

G'kar is too burdened by his armor and complains that he cannot swim as well so stays on the craft, but the ranger and rogue leap in and begin paddling toward the drowning nobles, rescuing three of them. The last noble, a young noblewoman is caught up by the trolls and giants and dragged off kicking and screaming to be eaten. One of the trolls in the water attacks artemis when he gets too close to the shore, but he eventually gets out beyond the monsters reach and it abandons the chase and returns to shore. Several rocks are thrown at the ship but they all miss and they continue on to Therund.

In the capitol city, Ser Eagleheart warmly welcomes them and they sit at his table at the Baron's feast. Later in the evening the militiamen from Sarthel and Vor Rukoth start a brawl, accusing one another of consorting with devils. While they honor Artemis' bravery as a hero they ask him to stand aside when he tries to calm their dispute and the melee continues until the city guard kicks both militia's out beyond the city's walls where they sleep off their spirits down by the river.

Seige of the Iron Tower

At first light the party assembles and learns that they have been reassigned. Lord Ironfist's old friend Ser Eagleheart, an old ships captain stranded with several of his men when his Zaarnathi longship was sunk in a storm, is ordered by the King in Mithraelfast to take half the Nentir milita south to Vor Rukoth and Sarthel, and to collect the milita strength of all three territories in Therund.

Ser Eagleheart drafts Stasi to repair a broken catapult, which has been sitting in disrepair in Hammerfast and is being shipped to Therund. Ser Eagleheart worships Kord as well and takes Darmak with him as a chaplain to their forces. Aelar, who's wanderlust is setting in and who has always yearned to sea the lands further south of the vale, pleads with Ser Eagleheart to allow him to accompany them on the march to Therund. Neyvara is sent on the skiff carrying the broken war engine down the White River to guard it on it's passage.

The seven militiamen from Hammerfast who were to accompany the party on their mission to assault the tower. Their leader G'Kar informs Artemis and Morwyn that he would just as soon lead his own men on this mission and let them stand watch as the siege forces move into place outside the tower during cover of darkness, judging that their bows may be put to better use against the Iron Tower's mercenary guards than in a tunnel fight. The milita's archer they call Captain, takes the quiver of 12 arrows of silence and they depart for the cemetery south of the Iron Tower to find the tunnel leading to its dungeons.

The sun is setting when they arrive at the cemetery. Lucky scouts ahead and says he hears some singing. They cirlce around either side of a large gravesite and statue to find a small unit of three mercenary women wearing the emblem of a red dog and red armor. They are merrily robbing the graves of those buried her and two are digging while their lieutenant urges them on. G'kar offers to bribe them to abandon their posts, but the women scoff at their meager offer of just 5 gold a piece.

As the farmers move in to attack one of the women, on orders to subdue them, she drops her shovel and takes up a greatsword, leaping from a grave and chopping off Piker's leg. The greatsword weilder is surrounded by four of the militamen and Cobb knocks her out with the butt of his sycth a moment before the leader runs her sword through his gut and the farmer dies squealing in agony like a stuck pig. G'kar squares off against the mercenary with the halberd, blasting her with lighting from his mind and stunning her, then joining his companions to take down the leader.

They all gag and bind the three mercenaries and leave them lying in the graves they intended to rob. They move ahead to a tunnel entrance covered by a grate and find an iron dog with the red dog emblem the women wore emblazoned on its side. The beast tears at the metal doors barking loudly to alert any allies in the tunnel behind it. G'kar considers feeding some of Lucky's potatoes to the monster, but they all agree that a golem made of metal probably has no taste for food, so he heaves the bars off the entrance so the metal dog can come out to greet them properly.

The militiamen surround and beat the thing down. As it chews on G'Kar's hammer and a bit on his leg, the rest of the bunch each grab a leg and they pull until the clockwork thing comes apart at it's seams. They rest outside the tunnel a while as G'Kar nurses his dog bites. They light torches and explore the tunnel, seeing a door in the distance and a side tunnel leading to a charnel house full of bones from old graves that had been exhumed to make room for more generations over the years. Three more iron defenders lunged out barking from the charnel house attacking Lucky. The three got a hold of his torch arm and a leg each and they separate his limbs from him with greater ease than the militia dismembered their brother not long ago. Lucky's sack of old potatoes spills open onto the floor, and in the melee G'kar and his three remaining men beat down the iron beasts with a log of furious and loud clanging.

Once the charnel houses guardians have been defeated they take a breath and move to the doors at the end of the hall, abandoning all hope of surprise. Ever vigilant, they see a huge man approach them who had been hiding back in the charnel house when they past. They recognize him as a local villain, Ser Scarthane, an enormous human standing a full head taller even than G'Kar who was 6'2. Ser Scarthane is loyal to Nazin Redthorn, the usurper of the Iron Tower, though he is no more a knight than Redthorn is a lord. His honor and sword were lost long ago and now he fights with a great axe and bears Nazin's Wyvern Crest on his breastplate.

Scarthane rushes up to hack at G'kar who is bloodied in the melee and falls back against one wall. The mul's companions surround Scarthane, driving him back as G'Kar recovers long enough to through a mental blast of lighting at the goliath-like foe. Ser Scarthane goes down fighting, but takes the poor archer named Captain down with him, cutting his body in twain with a violent downward thrust.

They listen at the door at the end of the hall, but hear nothing. They nudge the door open to find an abandoned room with three magical circles surrounded by candles and two empty barred cells. At the far end of the room is an open door and stairway leading up. Chip the miner crosses the room and a half-orc archer guarding the hall shoots an arrow far off its mark to stick in the floor. The miner takes refuge at the edge of the door for a moment, and then reaches across the doorway to grasp the door. The guard's arrow finds its mark this time, fixing a bullseye through Chip's heart. He stumbles across the doorway and manages to close and bar the portal before collapsing in a pool of his own blood.

G'Kar and John the Brawler are the only two men remaining and G'Kar has taken up the captain's bow and magic arrows of silence. G'Kar sees that one of the magic circles has a black magic sword in it that appears to old and dug out of ground. It is covered in greenish and red rusty stains that appear to have become a part of the longsword. First he throws a magic scroll from a nearby table into the circle, and when nothing happens, he kicks over one of the candles surrounding the magic circle containing the sword and the bluish runes fade and disappear.

Reaching into the circle to take the blade, a shadowy spectre takes hold of the weapon and appears before his eyes, swinging at him. Two more spectres appear out of thin air and flank G'kar and John as they fight desperately to destroy the shades as the candles begin to flicker and die and the chamber darkens. They beat the things down and G'Kar tosses the shades black sword to John the Brawler.

Determined to yet win the day, the two men open the door and charge up the stairs. John is caught by an arrow, but keeps moving, drawing the half orc guard's fire. The archer steps back and looses another that goes to wide and misses, then retreats up the stairway toward a door at the end of the passage. He leaps up several of the stairs in one long bound. As John runs up to pursue, the section of stairs the guard lept over gives way and he clings to the side but manages to crawl back to his feet. The guard puts a final arrow through John's neck and he rolls down the stair as G'kar reaches out with his mind and draws the guard down toward him and into the pit. The guard scrambles to hold the edge of the pit but after another strike he falls with a dull thud into the shaft below, sliding off into the darkness below of the trap.

G'kar finds the door the guard was watching halfway up the stair and sees that it is locked. He listens, but hears nothing through the heavy wood so he breaks it open. Inside he sees a deep pit chamber 30' down with a platform suspended over it. Opposite him across the hall is another great door with a lock with a handprint and runes on it. Down in the pit a Wyvern is feasting on the half-orc guard who has broken both legs and is screaming as the dragonlike creature rips at his flesh.

As G'Kar recoils and steps back into the stairway, 10 mercenary guards from the tower above lead by a helmed commander wearing Nazin's wyvern crest. He takes up the black magic longsword and runs down the hall to the foot of the stairs. The guards throw some arrows his way then give chase. They try leaping across the pit trap, but three of them falter and fall to their doom and into the wyvern's lair below. He boards the door and hastens out of the dungeon back through the tunnel to the cemetary.

At the entrance to the tunnel he sets up a choke point and kills off four of the guards who try to follow him through. The fifth guard refuses to pursue him and his commander kills him for disobeying before G'kar ends him as well. The remaining archer covering the hall makes a quick retreat back to the Iron Tower.

G'kar finds the three mercenaries still lying in the graves, struggling with their bonds. He demands the leader tell him where Nazin is. She says that there is secret passage in the wall of the Wyvern's lair leading up the third floor where he has his chambers. She says he is seldom guarded there as he likes his privacy. For this information he tosses a dagger into the grave so she may eventually free himself and then he heads off toward his forces to provide this information.

As he stands at the cemetery gates, about ready to end his efforts to open the gates and prevent a long drawn out siege of the Iron Tower that will cost many more their lives, the Mul thinks a moment then turns and walks back into the cemetery. In the distance, the mercenary leader has already fled, without freeing her two fellows. G'Kar offers them both freedom and their gold plus more spoils if they follow him back into the Iron Tower. The two mercenaries agree and tear off their red dog emblems. Once they were called Lala's Bitches. Now they were G'Kar's Bitches.

G'Kar heads back into the tunnel, back to the Wyven's lair. They use the silence arrows to keep the platform from creaking as they cross to the far side and over to the wall with the secret passage. The stones rumble as they open the door to the secret stair and the Wyvern rouses. It lashes its poisoned tail at them but cannot strike before they close the door again.

Rising to the third floor, they open the portal to find Nazin with his witch. G'kar offers a reward to the first to kill the witch and then charges in to engage Redthorn. Redthorn tries to flee back down the passageway to his Wyvern and G'kar follows. The Witch envelopes the mul in swarm of flies at the entrance to the secret tunnel but he fights his way through the swarm.

Nazin beats a fighting retreat down the stairs but G'kar is the stronger warrior and his corpse rolls down the final flight to the Wyvern's lair. When G'kar checks on the witch she is dead, but has killed the two mercenaries. Her death knell peeling the flesh from their bones, leaving only a skeletal visage on both their bodies.

G'kar takes Nazin's body, sneaking back through the Wyvern's chamber as the beast feeds and unlocks the cell to Baron Stockmer's cell. He gives the Baron the black magic sword and the Baron holds off the Wyvern as he ascends the secret passage to open the front gate with the Baron's hand.

On the main floor he rushes past a huge orc to open the door with the magic lock. The forces outside led by Lord Ironfist, Morwyn, and Artemis charge inside and take down the lumbering hulk. A one eyed orc beats a retreat as a wereboar attacks him, then retreats as well against the surge of militamen filling the tower's halls.

G'Kar rejoins the Baron who has subdued the Wyvern and they both join the troops upstairs to clear the rest of the tower and capture the fleeing mercenary guards. The mul's victory is widely celebrated in Harkenwold and the surrounding villages. He drinks the best ales and wines, he keeps the treasure he found in Nazin's strongbox, and he gets to keep the gold he promised to Lala's dead bitches for killing the witch.

Meet G'Kar and his Hammerfast Militiamen

Born to a human barmaid who had too much fun with random Inn patrons. G'Kar is a half-dwarf, more commonly referred to as a Mul. One of the benefits of living in an Inn was the constant exposure to many different languages. He grew up poor and constantly roaming the streets. This taught him to always keep his eyes open for whatever could be awaiting him around the next street corner. He won many street fights not from being the fastest or the strongest, but from his persistence and refusal to give up.

One day a heavily armored stranger witnessed G'Kar's endurance in his latest street fight and invited him to study in the ways of the psionic warrior. Knowing he had no future in his current path in life, G'Kar agreed. Being instructed privately in a warehouse in Hammerfast, G'Kar excelled at all training that was demanded by his new master. His master stressed the importance of knowing everything there is to know about your enemy to exploit their weaknesses.

Wearing scale-mail and sporting a shield, G'Kar is a Battlemind, focusing his mental might at enemies through his mighty craghammer. Standing 6'2" and weighing a solid 245 lb, G'Kar is an imposing figure, he has grown accustom to being in control of a given situation.

G'Kar leads a unit of six stalwart militiamen from Hammerfast. His second in command is an old sailor they refer to as Captain who is the only man among them with a sword and shortbow. Lucky is a rogue who fights with a sack full of potatoes. Chip is an old miner who carries a club. Piker and Cobb are both farmers and wield scythes. John the Brawler the oldest and best fighter, just as dangerous bare handed as with any blade.