Gameplay Here.
Just having finished up a task elsewhere in the River Kingdoms, it was fortunate timing that you got the summons via messenger-bird to report to the nearby settlement of Thornkeep.
The missive was brief but Venture Captain Stormeye is known to be a man of few words.
Come to Thornkeep quickly. There's important work to be done. Find me at the Thirsty Ogre.
-Venture Captain Gallard Stormeye
Thornkeep lies about 10 miles from the broad, sluggish West Sellen River and the ruins of the once-prosperous town of Mosswater. The settlement is a disorderly, ramshackle affair that huddles on a low hill beneath the bramble-covered walls of its namesake castle. The presence of the castle provides the people of Thornkeep with just enough protection to deter the many pirates and brigands of the nearby River Kingdoms, while offering Thornkeep's own entrepreneurs a safe base from which they can prey on traffic along the West Sellen or the Crusader Road. Thornkeep's also become a bit of a cultural melting pot where the likes of the local kellid tribe, visiting scholars, and even a small troupe of goblins have found a way to live in relative peace.
Without major incident the party arrives at the Thirsty Ogre and it's immediately obvious that this is not one of the more demure places to find refreshment in the thriving settlement. All manner of tough customers offer their patronage here including a table full of drunken kellids loudly bantering around a pair of arm wrestler and a trio of goblins chortling in glee as they take turns lighting each other on fire. Strangely enough everyone seems to give one table a wide berth where the only presence is a hulking ulfen man with a wild dark mane and mismatched eyes - Venture Captain Stormeye.
Enora excitedly waves hello to the bear of a man. "Oh hai!" She says before excitedly sitting down. "What's up?'
Adowyn gives Enora a look askance as she draws attention to the Pathfinders, then shrugs and takes a seat. I guess anyone coming to sit with Stormeye is going to draw notice, since he's been sitting so conspicuously alone in this place.
She gives the massive Ulfen man a nod and lays a companionable hand on the flank of Leryn, the sturdy wolf at her side. "A job for us, I hear?" she asks laconically.
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A burly orc enters the Thirsty Ogre, pausing to scan the room impassively. His green-toned face shows little expression as he identifies the group of Pathfinders and begins to move toward them. He carries a longsword at his side, and he seems somewhat ill at ease, his dark eyes moving restlessly as if he expects trouble from any side. On his right cheek he bears a scar: a longsword, blade down, with rays extending outward around it.
Arriving at the table, the orc nods respectfully to each of its occupants in turn.
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After using an angry scowl and a grunt to get an overly nosy neighbor to turn around, the Venture Captain reaches under the table and drops a battered bloodstained wayfinder onto the table.
"Her name was Jess and she was the only one from her team to make it back to the surface. Damned Dreng told me that place was clear", he growls before taking a long draw from a large tankard.
"There's a dungeon under Thornkeep - the lab of some long dead mad wizard. About a month ago, Venture Captain Dreng tells me another team cleared out the place and asked that I send some of my local cubs down to catalog it. Three days ago Jess stumbled out a bloody mess. Whatever got her tortured her - based on the scars and stitches it looks like she was taken apart and put back together a dozen times. She died in my arms."
"And you need the place cleared out properly, eh?" Adowyn asks. "Shouldn't be a problem. Any idea what got to this poor Jess? Did she say anything 'fore she died?"
Shaking her head in disgust at what can happen in the world, she adds, "The first team, the one that didn't finish the job, did they say anything about what they ran across in this wizard's lab?"
"Sounds not-fun. Yea, what slackuses did they have?"
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"Undead and otherworldly monsters", Gallard answers. "But that doesn't mean that's what attacked my people."
Getting back to the actual mission, the big ulfen shakes his head.
"In situations like this the Society would have me work with local law to see this threat dealt with but we're in the River Kingdoms. The only justice here is blood for blood. I don't just want that place cleared out - I want whoever or whatever killed my people punished in a permanent way", Venture Captain Stormeye growls while clenching a calloused fist.
"I'd like nothing more than to go down there and tear the place apart myself but there's other business in Katapesh I've got to attend."
"Yep, you can count on us!"
"I'm used to being called in when the law isn't available or helpful," Adowyn replies. "I'm ready to go."
"Good to know, but I'm used to making do with what I've got," Adowyn says. She stands and moves toward the door, Leryn padding by her side. Over her shoulder she says to her fellow Pathfinders, "No time like the present for administering a little of the Society's bloody justice! Let's go."
"Nope. I got all I need." Enora says rifling through her pack, revealing various wands and scrolls. "Yay! Let's go. Bye Mr. Bar."
Following the directions on the Venture Captain's map, the party heads outside town and, after easily spotting the overly inconspicuous pile of rubble matching the description noted on the map, it doesn't take long for them to find their way inside the dungeon. The passage immediately below the surface is moist and loamy but the trail of bloody footprints heading out indicate that this is definitely the direction the late Jess fled from.
Adowyn studies the soft soil for any tracks that might indicate what manner of creatures have passed this way, and examines the bloody footprints as well.
Adowyn and Mrachni picks up signs of the insect and critter (the non-monstrous types) activity you’d expect an in environment like this but no signs of anything man-shaped or man-sized. The scent of blood and panic-laced sweat is heavy in the air for those with more powerful olfactory senses.
The bloody tracks seem to originate from further in the dungeon.
Following the bloody tracks toward their source, the party moves through several abandoned halls decorated with elaborate arcane notations and artwork but the area is otherwise largely inert. The group finally arrives at a corner of the dungeon where it looks like the earthen wall has recently collapsed. The result is a narrow opening that would be a squeeze for an average-sized human to fit through but the bloody tracks clearly came from here.
Enora just skips along, not being inconvenienced by the tunnel at all.
It takes a heroic effort to get Mrachni’s powerful frame through the opening but with a final grunt he emerges into small room of well-worked stone – a far cry from the earthen tunnels above.
A ten-foot-wide hallway curves north, where a flight of stairs descends to a corridor leading to a octagonal central chamber. Iron bars separate this room from the eastern and southern hallways, and the floor of the chamber is painted with what appears to be a night sky filled with stars.
The northern section of the hall surrounding the central chamber features a single shelf that runs along the north and west walls. Dozens of ancient books sit on these shelves, but time has caused the words to fade from their pages. Scanning the spines reveals many text written in an ancient language on a few of them.
The stars painted on the central floor constitute a map of the night sky - a star chart that places Golarion's solar system at the center and dozens of other smaller stars in the outlying reaches. More text is carved over the western doors.
The tang of blood is still heavy in the air here but there's otherwise little signs of activity. Pushing the western doors open reveals an enormous chamber.
This thirty-foot-diameter room seems something like a silo-the domed ceiling rises twenty feet above, and the floor drops away into darkness below. A ten-foot-wide stone bridge with no railings crosses the shaft to a hall and door in the opposite side, yet a one foot-wide gap separates the bridge from either hall. Below, two additional archways lie in the north and south walls of the shaft, thirty feet below the level of the upper entrances.
A flickering, ghostly image of a vaguely humanoid monster with the deformed head of a fanged bird and two coiling serpents for legs stands a the center of the bridge.
It speaks in a strange tongue. Every few seconds it speaks again but in a different language.
"Hey, that's the deminz lord of dark elfs."
"The mad wizard, Nhur Athemon sent us."
The image nods slightly and replies.
It fades from sight a moment later.
"I don't wanna be purged, better not touch anything."
"Let's check out this upper level first," Adowyn suggests, "so we don't leave any surprises behind us."
The doors open into an area of unworked stone. This large cavern is bisected by a 30-foot-deep chasm. A ratty looking rope bridge crosses the eastern ledge to a western one, which winds down to a hallway 20 feet lower.
Guarding the bridge are two skeletal horrors. They're shaped roughly like large flightless birds but each have two heads that end in sharp hooked beaks. They immediately attack!
Enora will raise her staff in the air and fire off a barrage of magic missiles.
"Pew pew!"
Enora’s missiles pummel the nearer skeleton with lethal force, splintering the dead thing’s brittle bones.
She and Mrachnia both recognize these creatures as fairly standard skeletons of some alien wildlife.
"You guys need to boop them, not sword them. They is skeletons."
Leryn springs forward and bites at the nearest skeletal bird-beast.
Once her wolf companion has the undead horror distracted, Adowyn steps forward and looses two blunt-headed arrows at it.