Well we have more bad news for Aruntor. Worse news really. Last time we told him his fellow mages were in on the conspiracy he downed one of my wineskins. Now we get to tell him his buddy Paldemar runs the show. Taking a quick inventory, I’m thinking this time we tell him closer to the bar.

So that Kobold – the one with the note. that was interesting. The note said it was from someone involved with the conspiratorial nastiness we’ve been killing bits out of, and he was wondering if we’d meet him at a deserted location well out of screaming distance from the Hall. Sure. What the Hell.

First we went and confronted Aruntor though. Well, FIRST we had a long and inconsequential debate about how best to confront Aruntor. He seemed to be legimately shocked, surprised, saddened, suddenly thirsty, etc…. We wanted him to let us in the tower but he assured us there was nothing in there. Klajdu had a last ditch effort with “at least can we use bath room?” but no dice. Aruntor said there’s nothing in there anyway. Suuure. A bunch of sinister mages construct an arcane impregnable fortress underground that only they can enter through magical means. “Oh what’s in there”. “Nothing. Nothing at all. Honestly. Not a thing”.
OK. We’ll see what he says now. Hopefully he’ll start talking once we give him his news. Come to think of it, we shouldn’t let him get too drunk lest he become unintelligible. Maybe I’m projecting.

Anyways, we went! cause why not. It was an ambush but that didn’t make it any less fun. If I’m going to clamber about in dark tunnels being shrieked at in evil languages we might as well get to kill some enemies at the end to liven the mood. We had a brilliant plan that involved the sneaky contingent holding up the rear while the loud and rambunctious contingent blundered into danger. The plan showed its flaws when the enemy’s giant magical metal construct contingent started pushing a boulder into the doorway to separate us. But all was made right, if right means bashed in and partly dismembered before the warlock even got a good look at it.

When the action broke out, Carn asked for clarification whether we should fight the construct or not. Klajdu’s response: “What kind of question? Do we fight thing? We fight thing!!!”. Thus thing was fought.

Aside from the arcane construct there were some tieflings we fought too. Tieflings which stood up on the 10 foot ledge above us and rained down some fun things on us. Things which caught many of us on fire. One tiefling managed to catch Carnibald on fire several times and he wasn’t having any of it. Until that damned tiefling finally went down I don’t think any spell in the world could have persuaded Carn to attack anything else.

Speaking of fire, Distress was struck by the fire of a tiefling’s Hellish Rebuke and later on repaid the favor in kind, grumbling “We’ll see how it works for him.”
She was on the whole unimpressed with the tieflings, muttering about how they didn’t even have proper attacks. And when Splug suggested that being herself a tiefling she should try to negotiate, she said “I negotiate with knives”.

Splug for his own part always seems content during the battles and often rambled to himself cheerfully about which attacks he was doing, or would do, or had done, in which order. He was quite excited at one point to look at the corpse of a tiefling he had felled, and see that he had done some extra damage to it that he hadn’t even expected! Thus was the tiefling even more dead! Maybe it’s a raven queen cult thing.

Anyway, when we were done being unimpressed, and negotiating and really really killing them, nothing interesting could be learned of the bashed-apart construct or the dead tieflings themselves, but there were a 3 rather interesting pieces of parchment on one of the tieflings.
And an amulet which looked like it had been used to control the constructs.

The first parchment was a detailed map of the Well of Demons (ok fine it’s not a tavern).

The next was a note:

“I don’t care how you do it but deal with the adventurers. Take one of the bronze warders if you must. If they remain in the labyrinth they could disrupt my plans. Once you have dealt with them then take them to the gnolls — Paldemar”

And the last an even more delightful note:

“To Maldric Scarmaker, exalted chieftain of the blackfangs, and chosen of Yeenoghu. Paldemar offers you these corpses as a gift of ongoing friendship, that our arrangement might continue to be mutually beneficial. Your friend and ally — Paldemar. ”

What a lovely person. We all can’t wait to meet him. And he left such lovely notes for us. Perhaps we should have the notes framed. And later we can perhaps nail them into something, like Paldemar maybe.