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...