From my Apprentice Hunter journal:

I feel my heart racing even as I slow my breath to keep the mist from obscuring my vision or, worse, giving my position away. I feel every texture of the loam and half frozen leaves I am pressed down on, of the wolf skin I wear, and of the trees and bushes concealing me. My heightened senses subconsciously categorize and filter the thousands of scents vying for my attention, sifting useless from necessary, concentrating on the prey while remaining vigilant for signs of danger.

I feel them coming long before I smell them, and I smell them before I see them. They track me, thinking I am still who I once was, and they believe their numbers will be enough. They do not know that I have been home, that I have learned the way of the woods. They stalk me, confident in their skill and my ignorance, but the wind whispers their secrets to me.

...

I know where they are, how many there are, how they are armed, what their skills are. I know this because I have been tracking them, too. I have moved past their sentries, stepped over their sleeping forms, and slipped away into the night knowing that fewer of them would greet the morning.

...

I watch them creep by, as I have many times now, following yet another false trail I have laid to keep them moving in circles. They do not seem as confident as they had at first, and the strongest smell on the wind is fear and sweat. I have learned all I can from this hunt, it is time to be done with it. Tonight I will poison their food and water.

From my professional journal during the Keep on the Shadowfell missions, final entry:

I have never been as happy to see an overgrown lizard and a demon spawn as when Krova and Zar'za finally caught back up with us. There is just something comforting about having a Cleric nearby, even one like Zar'za.

With the party whole again once more we continued deeper into the ruins.

It wasn't long before we encountered an oddly shaped room full of undead, and the sound of their shuffling feet made me think that I had heard it before, back at the bottom of the stairs near the excavation room. There also came the sound of the weirdest wing beats I had ever heard, slightly reminiscent of a bats but different just the same.

I had a sudden flashback of going unconscious as giant mandibles closed in on me, and I panicked for a second. By the time I had regained composure the rest of the group had sprung into action, and I forced myself to concentrate on the battle at hand. My first arrow found its mark, the song of its flight resonating within me, and I became Retribution as I watched the Zombie fall. Krova became engaged with a Ghoul and several other Zombies, and Zar'za's scythe ran black with rotting flesh and blood. Lars began to send bolts of energy this way and that, and Lodi started to warm up his bow.

As the battle raged on I lost myself in it, no longer able to identify myself as the archer or the bow or the arrow, for I was all three. When the winged monstrosity made itself known as a major threat I switched targets without conscious thought, and my arrow ripped away chunks of its clay-like flesh.

All too soon the battle was over, though, and I again came face to face with the results of battle and of death. It was getting harder and harder to shake off the nagging doubts and confusion that I felt, and I was not finding the answers I suddenly sought.

We searched the room and found a nasty little tunnel going into the darkness, and we volunteered Lodi to find out where. It ended up being the sleeping quarters of the rotting corpses we just killed, and digging through the muck netted a very nice Viscous Short Bow +1 for him. Hey, you have to get some kind of reward for fighting your way through that kind of stench!

We decided to take a brief rest while we considered our next course of action, and Valthren took up his usual place against a column to write in his journal. I decide it was a good time to pull the group to the side to discuss our useless sage, when Lodi noticed Valthren was heading down the next set of stairs with a decidedly unfriendly look to him. The old bastard actually sneered at us, and his loathing was plain for all to see!

This would not do, and we could all tell it wasn't going to be a good thing if he made it to the bottom of the stairs. There was nothing left but to go on the offensive, and so we charged into battle.

I quickly ran into range and fired my bow as the rest of the group hurried to catch up, launching what missiles they had as they came. Krova rushed to block one side of the double doors just as Valthren got to them, and I did a bait and switch to block the other. Zar'za decided her crossbow wasn't doing any good and broke out her wicked scythe, while Lodi scrapped the idea of sending carved pieces of wood downrange and just started using whole trees. My god that little runt was bringing his A game to that fight! Lars put in his definitive resignation as only setting your ex mentor on fire can do, just in case throwing Valthren's cloths into the mud wasn't enough.

When the smoke cleared and the pieces of Sage neatly stacked we discovered that the turncoat had the rib with him the whole time, and that his journal was blank. He was obviously about to sell us out, and I hope he will entertain the Demon Lord Orcus for all eternity, I hear Orcus is fond of failures.

On the plus side Lars and Krova gained a few new trinkets, so it was a double win: We got the short term pleasure of killing the rat bastard, and we get the long term benefit of having a stronger group.

We quietly opened the double doors and were blasted by the stench of blood and death, and I watched in horror as a Priest at the altar across the room casually tossed aside the body of one of the townsmen. Apparently killing the Hobgoblin Chief did not prevent the attack on the village, we had been too late.

The room was large, and broad channels of blood were flowing in arcs from either side of the altar toward us, converging into a grate in the center of the floor and pouring down into the unknown. The evil was so thick in this room it made it difficult to breath, and the bodies discarded haphazardly at the base of the altar was sickening.

Again the fury of battle consumed me and I let fly two arrows, one of which took the Priest in the shoulder as the rest of the group engaged the enemy. Zar'za ran up the middle swinging her scythe after discarding her useless crossbow, and a welcome and familiar sight greeted us as Lars' Flaming Sphere sprang to life near our Cleric.

Krova charged through the broken down double doors to our right in an effort to flank our enemy without disrupting the choke point created by Zar'za and the flaming sphere, and Lodi and I quickly followed only to find that our Paladin had slipped while tyring to jump the river of blood and lay sprawled across the floor. A small shadowy form sprang to take advantage of Krova's helpless condition, but his dagger glanced harmlessly off of Krova's armor.

Lodi and I were more concerned with interrupting the ritual that Lars assured us was in progress, something he said he could feel through The Third Sinister Rib we took from Valthrens pack, and so we left the lizard to his own devices and sent fletched death toward the enemy Priest. At the time I had been impressed with Lars' observation, but in retrospect I recall the Priest yelling about the ritual, which kinda takes away from the effect a bit.

It was about this time that girlish screams emanated behind us, and we knew Lars had visitors. A lot of them, it seemed. Risking a quick glance in his direction I saw that he was holding his own, so I let him be for a moment while I took stock of our situation.

Since killing the priest did not stop the ritual I could only assume we needed to clear out the room and investigate it further, and we were running out of time. Glancing back toward Lars I saw he had the situation well under hand, so I concentrated my effort on the enemy Rogue.

The battle went quickly from there and everyone once again accounted well for themselves, although I was beginning to feel the effects of my personal demons, and my accuracy began to waver. Lodi was starting to show signs of fatigue, too, and his wicked bow fired fewer trees.

Zar'za, on the other hand, was just getting started. I found her standing in a pile of bodies, blood hanging off of her fearsome scythe in strings. From the burn marks all over the floors, walls, and corpses I could tell Lars had been quite busy as well. Even Krova had managed to get himself upright long enough to account for a few corpses.

We searched the room and found to our dismay that the ritual was actually going on below us, and the only way down was through the grate. Looking through it we saw the blood running down chains to drip off into a pool far below us, leaving us with the unappealing choices of jumping into the blood or climbing down the slick chains. We opted for plan C and tied off our ropes so we could climb down them instead. I followed Krova down on his because I didn't want to ruin my silk rope, as expensive as that stuff is!

As we dropped off the ropes into the pool of blood we knew our worst fears were realized: the Demon Lord Orcas was beginning his entrance into our realm, and wasn't all that pleased that we were crashing his party.

The guy at the altar on the dais across the room seemed to be much happier about it, and for some reason that wasn't much of a comfort either. He said he was quite pleased we brought the rib to him, since his lackey Valthren wasn't competent enough to do it himself. It turns out this guy, Kinslayers son it appears, had promised Valthren eternal life or some such, and the idiot believed him.

It does make me wonder why Valthren bothered to save me earlier, though, I am told I survived the spider only because he pulled me out of harms way. If he was supposed to bring the rib to this guy wouldn't he have had free passage? It certainly looked like he believed it when we headed for the doors of the altar room above. Perhaps even fools know caution sometimes.

A quick survey of the room showed the altar against the wall in front of us, a portal and a spell circle to the right, and various undead scattered about the room. Two of those undead guarded the steps up to the altar where K had been chanting from a book in his effort to summon Orcus.

Having little choice and less time, we charged into combat. Or at least, everyone else did. I found the sight of so much blood and death unnerving, and the image of spider mandibles crunching down on me chilled me to the bone. I tried to shake the feeling off but was only partially successful, and I was slow to join my companions.

K grabbed an amulet at his chest and teleported to the summoning circle just as Lars sent bolts of energy into the book he had been reading. Krova charged K while Zar'za engaged the skeleton guards approaching from the steps of the dais. Since K had screamed when the book was damaged we surmised that it had to go, and Lodi launched himself after it.

As I ran to assist Krova we noticed that the wounds we had inflicted on K healed themselves, obviously from some connection to the spell circle. It didn't even seem to matter when Lodi threw the book into a flaming brazier, so our hunch must have been wrong there too.

Zar'za and Lars now had their hands full dealing with the undead in the room, because the third undead creature kept reanimating the skeletons as quickly as they fell.

The battle quickly became one of attrition, we were beginning to tire. Lodi was no longer launching trees, and K seemed to heal what little damage the arrows dealt him. At one point Krova got too close to the portal and Orcas himself attacked him with tentacles that attempted to drag him through, but Krova's strength proved more than a match and he quickly broke free of them.

It was a problem I myself had to face not long after, and Lodi had to rescue me. That alone should describe quite clearly how bad off I was mentally, and having a second close call so soon threatened to push me over the edge of sanity. I was at my breaking point, a fact not at all helped by the knowledge that being drug through the portal would have been a fate far worse than mere death. To add to my deteriorating mental state, I barely resisted the necrotic affliction K infused me with before it killed me even as Lodi worked to save me from the demon lord.

In plain terms, I was worse than unhelpful in that combat, I was a liability. When Lodi came to save me he was attacked by the tentacles that had been dragging my unconscious form, and he barely dodged them in time to avoid the same predicament.

It wasn't that I was totally useless, I did manage to accomplish a few things, and I did draw some of K's blood. I even managed to move him out of his spell circle once, and my desperate barrage of shuriken seemed to turn the tide toward the end of the battle, but those were almost accidental benefits. Had I performed like I should have, had my mental state been stable, this would have been a very different battle. As it was we triumphed only because the others accounted so very well for themselves.

Zar'za harvested skeleton after skeleton, taking down first one and then the other in her effort to kill them and keep them killed. Lars flung bolts of fire and energy into all three undead, scorching bones and blasting them apart, but to no avail at first. It wasn't until I blinded the enemy that they finally put them down and kept them down.

Krova, meanwhile, had switched from trying to carve K up to trying to heal him. It seemed like a very odd thing to do to me, but I was having enough trouble just trying not to go insane. Lodi's attention was split between trying to keep me alive and trying to kill K, a job he did with admirable precision.

Once we were all able to concentrate on K as a group the fight went much faster, and we were able to produce more damage per unit time than he could heal. It was a hard fought battle, but he eventually fell lifeless at our feet. The moment the light faded from his eyes we heard an unholy roar as Orcas made a futile grab for K's body just before the portal closed up, leaving a blank wall in its place.

Tired, bruised, and bloodied we made our way back out of the ruins and back to a decimated Winterhaven. The Hobgobblin raid had been devastatingly effective, and the rabble that was left of the ruined town was lead by the Dwarvin blacksmith. The bodies of many familiar faces were piled high, Lord Pendrag among them.

Not having the energy to go on for the day we settled in to get what rest and respite that we could.

For myself, I have been thinking hard since closing the portal on Orcas, and I have come to a fundamental conclusion: I value my life, and I want to live it. I have come to see it as being far more precious to me than I ever thought, and I begin to wonder how my race can be so indifferent to it. I refuse to live the way they do, and the way they have taught me to be. The trick will be figuring out how to be true to myself at the same time, because I do love adventure. What worth life, if it is to cower behind locked doors, never coming out to savor it?

I have decided that I must rediscover myself in light of what I now know. I must again seek the experiences of my earlier years, but with wiser eyes. I know that sounds odd coming from a youth of less than 150 years, but not all wisdom comes from age, much comes from experience.

No more will I approach each day like it is one of an infinite span, and instead I will treat each like my last. No more will I be content to take the opportunities presented in battle, from now on I will make my own. No more will I be the prey.

Let this be a final warning to all, where once I was content to lay in ambush, The Wolf in the Shadows has learned to hunt!

Even the passage of so much time cannot erase the emotions induced by that first near death experience, or the changes it wrought within me. Rarely have I ever been as profoundly effected by an event as I was then, no matter how much I tried to cover it with humor and bravado in my journal, and it left its mark on the rest of my life.

It may be a result of the length of time my race lives, under normal conditions, or perhaps it is our legendary ego. It is probably a combination of the two, but either way we are encouraged from a very early age to believe that we are eternal. A thousand years may not seem all that long when you are a youth of a hundred years or so, but when you have lived as long as I have and have savored all of life's pleasures so often that they lose their flavor, a thousand years seems an eternity. Most of my people willingly step across the veil, believing it to be far preferable to the agony of a bored existence.

That has never been for me, I have never been that bored. There will always be one more lock to pick, one more dungeon to crawl, one more evil to defeat. I am very old, though, and I find that I must rest much longer between adventures. That is when the true danger comes, when I am sitting alone by the fire and memories come unbidden. There are times when I stare into the fire and think to myself that perhaps I have grieved all that I can, and that I am not strong enough to bury any more friends.

So far I have always found something to occupy my time, to keep me busy and distracted from the pain, like this work with my journals. But I feel it coming, that time when it will no longer be enough, and I too will take that final journey.

But it is not now, and I am yet strong enough to continue.

From my professional journal during the Keep on the Shadowfell missions, entry four, part two: Did I ever tell you about the time I almost died?

I found my group battered and bloody, but resting. Since Lars, Lodi, and I were still in good condition we decided to let the others rest while we did some more scouting. I don't know what I was thinking, mistakes like those can be fatal.

We proceeded down nearby stairs with Lodi and I in our usual Outrider roles, although with only one other group member that kind of loses meaning.

We were able to see we had a welcoming committee waiting for us in the room, and we didn't want to leave without saying hello, because how rude would that be? So we sent our arrows down range while slowly backing up the stairs a little ways to create a choke point, and they showed their appreciation by yelling excitedly.

Things were going quite well as the three of us invited Death to crash their party, but unfortunately he turned out to be an equal opportunity griefer and came for me in the form of a huge spider that our hosts had unleashed. At least now I know what they were yelling, I suppose, but I would have rather been ignorant.

I don't really remember much after seeing the monstrosity charge us, as it came up the wall and over the hobgoblins we had choking the base of the stairway. It slammed into me with bone crunching force, and its venom began to cloud my mind. The next thing I knew I was waking up in the safe room with the rest of the party, and Lodi and Lars were asking if I was healthy enough to head out again. I was, and we did, but I was quietly beginning to question my immortality.

After thoroughly searching the room at the bottom of the stairs we discovered all the bodies had been removed, but we found no signs of who or what had removed them. When we searched its adjacent rooms we discovered a living Dragonborn encased in webbing, and we quickly cut her free. As she retrieved her equipment she explained to us that she was a Paladin of the Silver Flame, and introduced herself as Vosh Glimmerscale. I am beginning to believe those Silver Flame folks breed like rabbits, but who am I to complain about such an incredible stroke of luck? She volunteered her services as meat shield, and we gladly accepted. Everyone was so relieved that I don't think anyone even noticed that I responded a bit more enthusiastically than normal, but even if they did I do not think they would have made the connection. After all, who would know the doubts forming in my mind?

After introductions were made we set out again.

We hadn't gone far before I noticed an irregularity in the walls that turned out to be a portcullis trap, which I quickly disabled. Since it was obviously guarding the nearby room we proceeded with caution, which turned out to be a very good thing because the room belonged to the Hobgoblin Chief, and he wasn't at all happy to see us.

The battle was fierce and both sides took heavy damage, but when it was all over and Vosh's pick firmly planted into the Chief, only one side had casualties. The rewards were high, though, with quite a bit of gold to be found and a shiny new Vicious Dagger +1 for yours truly. We also found battle plans to invade Winterhaven, and an offer by a group calling themselves The Bloodreavers to purchase any slaves the Hobgoblins brought back. I can only hope that by killing the Chief we prevented the raid.

We set off again after a brief rest, and eventually came to a very worrisome room. The room was relatively small, but had three statues in it. In the center was a giant statue of a swordsman, and in two corners were statues of Dragons. The room was quite obviously trapped, but I wasn't sure how, exactly. Attempting to find out nearly cost me my life, as time and again the statue of the swordsman took swings at me. Vosh finally got impatient and charged the thing, reducing it to rubble with her pick.

We prepared to take our leave of the room but found the exiting hallway to also be trapped. It was moderately long, with a pair of statues at each end and water on the floor. The statues were cherubic and had vases on their heads, and the vases were hinged. I could tell it was a water trap wherein the hallway fills with water to drown the occupants, and explained it to the group. Because the trap was both mechanical and magical I needed Lars' help with it. It was a fairly simple affair, and we disarmed it easily while Vosh got impatient again and got a bit singed for her effort.

Setting out on our own had turned out to be a bit more challenging that we had expected, and so we decided to rest in the next room for a bit and wait for the rest of the party to catch up to us.

I cannot help but chuckle to myself as I read the next passage in my journal. I was so brash in my youth, so full of myself. It was inconceivable to me that my talents would not be enough to see me through any situation, and I behaved accordingly.

Shortly after the battle in the trenches I slipped into the shadows, letting my group continue on without me. There was only one exit from the excavation site, forcing the party to backtrack into areas I was already familiar with. I knew I could catch back up with them shortly, and I really wanted to know what kind of threat was at the bottom of the stairs we had just passed.

I eased down the stairs as far as I dared, given the absence of any form of light, and listened intently. I remained that way for some time, until I was absolutely certain that whatever it was in that room had no intention of following us. Even simple fights can turn into suicide missions if we get flanked at a critical moment. Once I was satisfied the threat was low, I hurried after my compatriots.

Even though it took me quite some time to catch up to the group again (it turns out that tracking wasn't as simple as I had thought it would be), I still to this day stand by that decision. That doesn't mean it wasn't a reckless one, but it followed sound theory. Having the chance to do it over with the wisdom of age I would obviously have done it differently, but we needed to know we weren't setting ourselves up to be ambushed. I did not, however, have the wisdom of age, and I was convinced that I was immortal.

That turned out to be a belief that would soon be tested.

From my professional journal during the Keep on the Shadowfell missions, entry four, part one:

We had gathered enough information by this time that it became apparent that our next step was to stop the summoning of the Demon Lord Orcus, which we all agreed would probably not end well for us if he managed to enter this realm. We gathered provisions and set out on the trail to the keep, but unfortunately Valthren insisted on joining us. I can only hope that he ends up being more helpful than he appears to be, but in the end I guess it doesn't matter to me either way, as long as he doesn't get underfoot.

The trail started out rather easily, but became more and more overgrown the further we traveled, although there were plain signs of recent use. Lodi and I eventually took up outrider positions, scouting ahead as necessary. Things went fairly uneventful until I suddenly realized that with Valthren here, no one was guarding the rib. After some discussion and Valthren's persuasion we decided that it was safe enough back at his tower, and we continued on. The more I thought about it, though, the more convinced I was that something wasn't right. I wasn't able to put my finger on it, and so I kept my peace. It was something of a comfort that Zar'za and Lars had taken such a great interest in keeping an eye on the old man, however.

We eventually came to a place where the forest simply stopped, giving way to a withered and blighted area that emitted such malice and evil that it was obvious where we were even before spotting the entrance to the ruins. Our first steps into this blackened land chilled us to the bone, and a weight settled down on us like a mountain of despair.

I don't know if it was paranoia magnified by the area or if my hunch had had enough and would no longer be ignored, but either way I decided I would go no further until I could satisfy at least some of my concern toward Valthren. I convinced the party to take a quick rest before continuing, and we eased back into the forest at the edge of the corruption. As soon as we left the blighted area the intense cold and foreboding lifted, and we all breathed a little easier.

Resting was, of course, a ploy to have a chance to examine Valthrens pack. I was able to get a quick look at it with Zar'za's help, but my hands were still a bit numb from the cold and I wasn't able to examine the pack as thoroughly as I wanted in the time available. So much for satisfying my hunch.

The keep was even more oppressive than the surrounding lands, it's entryway reminiscent of a gaping maw leading into the black abyss. It was with much trepidation that Lodi and I silently crept down the stairs, once again taking up outrider positions.

The room at the bottom of the stairs was fairly large, and I could only dimly make out the guards at the far end. I signaled to Lodi and we immediately took the initiative, sending arrows down range. My arrows found their mark but Lodi wasn't as lucky, and the guard survived long enough to sound the alarm. I took a javelin to the thigh before the group had a chance to react, and then all hell broke loose.

Krova charged into battle as only the Dragonborn can, and Lars lit the room up to show us just what we were facing. Zar'za drug the useless sage down the stairs to the rest of us, and Lodi fell into a hole. I swear he must have been a Pit Dweller in another life, but judging by the girlish screeches he emitted when the rats went after him, maybe not.

Krova charged down the left side of the pit, and his weapon sang the song of death. I took the right side, putting arrows to flight as fast as I could identify targets. At one point I pushed a goblin into the pit Lodi found, and ended him with an arrow.

The dust soon settled and the rest of the group finished exterminating Lodi's pets, and we took stock of the current situation. We were a bit tired, a little nicked up, and we were babysitting a completely worthless old man, but all in all we were doing fine. We continued on.

We explored the area for a bit, and other than an odd tapestry hanging right in the middle of the hallway, which Lars gleefully set on fire, things were pretty quiet.

Eventually we came to a place where we could hear what sounded like excavation ahead of us a little ways, and to our right stairs again led down into total darkness. While we were trying to figure out which direction to go first Lars attached light to a rock and sent it bouncing down the stairs and into the room. We immediately heard a slow shuffling sound, but the light illuminated nothing. I tried to convince the group that we needed to deal with this threat or risk being flanked if we continued on, but apparently sound tactics are lost on this group. The best I could get was that those in the back would keep an eye behind us, but that was little consolation. There was nothing I could do, though, I had been out voted.

Continuing on, Lodi and I snuck ahead to scout the area the sounds of work emanated from, and discovered it was indeed an excavation site. There were trenches dug into the floor here and there, with a dirt ramp going down from the hallway we were in, and board walkways spanning the trenches in spots. There was a goblin across the room from us spouting orders down to whatever was working in the trenches, and there were lizards patrolling below. Lodi and I crept back to the group and shared this information, and the group agreed on a plan of attack.

Lodi and I snuck back up to the rooms entrance, and my two arrows took the goblin in the throat. With the element of surprise maintained, the group descended on the trenches like retribution, and the fight was short and bloody. I did manage to get myself bit by one of those damned lizards, but at least it wasn't in the same leg that took the javelin.

We took a short rest and patched ourselves up, preparing to continue on.

I become acutely aware of the smell of burning tallow and old parchment as I lean back and close my weary eyes. I have been working at this for days now, and it seems that I have made little progress. Ordinarily such things matter not to those with lifespans as long as mine, a life long enough that mortality seems to be the problem of the lesser races.

I am old enough now, though, that mortality is very real to me indeed, and I face it with mixed emotions. Like most of my kind I view it as a chance to finally rest, to escape once and for all the trials and tribulations of a millennium and more of life. On the other hand, the biggest issue facing most of my race at this stage is boredom, and that has never been my concern. It would have been much more likely that I develop a terminal case of excitement than die of boredom.

So in a way it is therapeutic to get away from the world while I write this book. It does bring back a lot of memories, though, and even the good ones are laced with pain. So many friends, so many good people long turned to dust. It is only through a sense of great duty that I continue this work, that I attempt to pass on wisdom hard won through centuries of blood and pain and loss. My vain hope is that such a work will help to spare others the same or worse, but I remember myself all too well at that age to be able to fool myself much.

Still, I must try. For now, though, I need rest so that I can begin again fresh. It is a long and tedious process to sift through so many entries, making sure only the useful information is compiled into this central work. As unlikely as it is that anyone will read the edited version, it is nearly impossible to imagine anyone reading all the individual journals, much less keeping the time line straight.

From my professional journal during the Keep on the Shadowfell missions, entry three, parth two:

We entered town battered, bruised, and exhausted, but also mindful of the fact that we had the work of at least one shapeshifter to deal with. As long as it was only that one then we were fine, having just killed it. Judging by the mood of the group I don't think any of us truly believed there was only one, however.

As we entered town and were greeted by the same Alzheimer syndrome we have come to know and to love it became obvious even to my astute group that perhaps there was something odd going on. We decided it was time to speak with the local Lord.

It took Krova only a moment to confuse the guard enough to gain access to the keep, and we soon found ourselves in the presence of a very bed-ridden Lord Pendrag. After a bit of investigation it became clear that he not only had been poisoned, but that it was an ongoing thing. In other words, we still had an infiltrator, shapeshifter or otherwise.

After some discussion amongst ourselves we agreed that there was something very wrong about Delphina the flower girl, and that she would be our next obvious person to investigate. The problem was, this wasn't the first time we had tried to investigate her. Both previous attempts failed miserably, so this would need to be a bit more involved than the standard shadow method.

Several of us set up along various places on routes we had seen her take before, and others took viewpoint vantage. Having been spotted once before while following her I took no chances this time and chose the tried and true rain barrel technique.

All in all we did quite well, I thought, given the track record this group has with concealment. In the end it didn't make a bit of difference because Delphina simply didn't show up. We were going to have to do this the old school way.

We started with the local inn keeper, doing it by the numbers. True to form she had all the answers, from recent changes in Delphina's personality to the location of her home. She even provided us with an alibi for visiting, in the form of a soup to help Delphina feel better.

After a good long chat with the inkeeper we set out for Delphina's, soup in hand. When we got to her house the place was dark, and the front door was locked. I quickly let us in, and we were shocked at the state of the place. Everything was torn up, like the place had been searched, and the stench was unbearable. To make matters worse, Delphina's corpse was in her bedroom and appeared to have been decaying for weeks. We had never met her, and had been walking right by the second shapeshifter the entire time.

This was not good news. To make matters worse, it looked like her house had been used to manufacture the poison, and there wasn't an antidote present. On the bright side, if there is such a thing at times like this, Zar'za thought that perhaps if we could find the source of the poison then she could formulate something.

It took us a little while but we eventually found what we were looking for, and returned with enough for Zar'za to do her work. We must have been an amusing sight: a group of heavily armed men and women carrying bushels of flowers. My only consolation was that no one would remember this in the morning.

While Zar'za was busy creating the antidote we all took some time to rehash what we knew so far. It suddenly became apparent that the easiest way to affect so many people with an ingestion poison would be to lace the well with it. Once Zar'za was finished with her concoctions we headed to the well to investigate.

Sure enough, the signs quite plainly indicated that this was the vehicle for the poisonings. We decided the best thing to do would be to stake out the well to see if we could catch whomever was poisoning the town, and so back into the rain barrel I went.

Unfortunately, even with all of us either hidden or perched at crucial vantage points we had as much luck as when we tried to find Delphina. We finally had to give up and continue on with our business.

Zar'za mentioned that we should notify the local healer, a Nun who we had met when we first talked with Lord Pendrag. Three of us set off to speak with her while the rest continued to watch the well.

We arrived at the Nun's too late, though, as we found her in a pool of cooling blood. We couldn't have missed her assailant by all that much, but by long enough that we could not track them. Not having the luxury of propriety, we helped ourselves to anything that seemed useful, including a book of some sort for Zar'za.

When we told the rest of the group what had happened, we decided we were running out of time and that we were now in a situation where inaction would almost be worse than the wrong action. We poured most of the antidote into the well, knowing that there wasn't enough of it and that the effect would be diluted, but that it would work eventually. We reserved only enough for Lord Pendrag and his closest guards, the people we needed to recover the fastest.

When we entered Lord Pendrag's chambers we found ourselves face to face with the Nun. You know, the one we found dead, but who was now looking very much alive and healthy. We corrected that situation, with Zar'za leading the way.

I don't think Zar'za is actually a Cleric, I think she just trained in it a little as some kind of twisted personal joke she is playing on everyone else. I have known Berzerker's with better bedside manners and less blood lust, but hey, you can't argue with the healing spells she has hit me with. Or that scythe. Definitely not healthy to argue with the scythe.

Anyway, we fought to subdue and not kill, so it wasn't long before we were face to un-face with a changeling. The changeling kept taking on faces and forms of people Lord Pendrag was fond of, in an attempt to convince him to let the creature go. Zar'za and some of the rest of us wanted to just get our answers and kill the thing (giving Zar'za the benefit of the doubt concerning wanting answers), but Krova was in full Paladin form, arguing about fair trials and such.

To me that was a pretty simple thing. We knew the creature murdered, we had solid and unequivocal proof, and we had sharp things handy. No sense in risking it getting away, just kill it and be done with it.

Ahh, well, that would be the downside to traveling with a Paladin. The buggers are pretty useful, though, so you have to take the bad with the good.

In the end, Lord Pendrag issued a death sentence to be carried out at dawn, and Zar'za volunteered to be the executioner. See what I mean? I have heard about Clerics administering Last Rites, but I don't think this is what they had in mind...

I feel myself startle back to awareness as the sounds and smells of battle fade into the ancient past where they belong. Memory is a fickle thing, allowing some experiences to slip through its grasp while maintaining a death grip on others. I would that we had more choice over which memories were forgotten and which retained, and which were vivid and which were soft. Even now as I set my quill to parchment I can taste my own blood from injuries sustained during events long ago faded from the rest of the world, but as clear and sharp to me now as if they happened but moments ago. After all this time it would seem only the physical injuries have healed.