Iados was not present for this session; instead we made use of a fill-in character who may become a more permanent character in the future. Moving on with the recap...
During the party's short rest outside the tower, Iados was grabbed by a mysterious individual inside the tower. The party chased them inside, getting around the locked door (note for players in attendance: this is retconned in order for this section of the story to make sense), but found no trace of Iados or his mysterious abductor. They gave the tower a thorough examination; eventually they resigned themselves to give up on finding Iados until Erik had an epiphany to see if the mentions of "the butcher" literally referred to Cairnmoor's butcher (in other words, the DM all but told them this was what they should check -_-).
At the butcher's shop, Erik broke in through a window, and found that a number of zombies were being kept in the shop's meat locker. They moved to attack Erik, who hurried to the door to unlock it before the massive hulking zombie among the group smashed him to bits. He managed to get the door open, and the party went into action. The hulking zombie was mercifully inaccurate, only managing to connect with one attack - the one attack he hit with, though, did a staggering 21 damage and left Gwenn at 2 health. The zombies proved to be easy pickings, however, especially when the party was joined in combat by a halfling thief who lopped off the heads of two of the three horrors. This thief had appeared earlier, apparently trying to break into the butcher's shop during the fight, then sheepishly excusing himself when he saw what was going on inside - he later explained that he had done this to get the drop on the hulking zombie from behind.
This thief introduced himself as Reed, a "treasure hunter extraordinaire and all-around good-looking fellow". Reed explained he'd seen a number of rich travelers disappear into this shop, and he was here to recover what he could of the loot. After agreeing on a split, the party and Reed searched the shop and found a trap door leading to the cellar, from which a horrible smell was wafting. They headed down and found the shop's proprietor, Rolf, along with a cadre of zombies and their apparent leader, a particularly intelligent type of ghoul known as an Adept of Orcus. The adept had been conducting some sort of ritual with Iados' body - fortunately, Iados had not yet been harmed as far as the party could see. Harm was certainly intended, however, and the fiends were quick to attack the party.
This combat proved far more intense as Rolf and the Adept levied a number of devastating attacks upon the party, particularly on Reed. By the end of the fight, Reed was dead. In the aftermath of combat, the party helped themselves to the loot - only to find their coin purses had been absconded with, and Reed's body was nowhere in sight. They handed Iados over to the Temple of Pelor for healing, and set off after Reed (after a crit roll to find tracks). They followed Reed's tracks to the halfling town of Kinderwood to the southeast, only to find it mostly deserted.
Reed's tracks led them into a shop run by one Ferrel Halfcrest - a name Erik recognized as the once-great name of the sole Halfling noble house, the former rulers of all halflings before a civil war within the house tore it apart and left their name meaningless outside of antiquated loyalties some halflings still hold. Halfcrest revealed that Reed was his son, and a bit of a scoundrel at that - Ferrel forced Reed to return the party's gold, and explained that Reed had learned these thieving ways from his (Reed's) uncle Merric - Ferrel had tried to teach Reed to put these powers to use for noble causes, but had failed, as evidenced by his choice of lifestyle. Ferrel proposed that the party take Reed on as an indentured servant, in line with halfling custom, to repay his debt - he would still receive a cut as a member of their adventuring party to cover his living expenses, but would put his skills to use for them. If he were to steal from them again, Ferrel gave the party permission to kill Reed - a task Aludiana gleefully accepted to be her own as the party accepted Ferrel's proposal.
With that, Ferrel (revealing himself as the town mayor) granted the party free rooms at Kinderwood's inn to show his thanks. Heading over to the inn, the party found a very familiar halfling running it - this, they discovered, was Ferrel in a disguise. He revealed that, due to this being a halfling town, most of the halflings were out traveling during the warm months, and as such he stayed behind and ran all their establishments for them. He gave them their rooms, and after a night's rest they returned to Cairnmoor, Reed along with them, and checked on Iados. They found him to be recovering nicely, just needing to rest before he'd be ready to go again. They then spoke with Halpern about what they'd found in the butcher's shop - he seemed quite shocked that they'd discovered this, and when he asked them their source, he seemed to know who "I" was. He also suggested they investigate the windmill granary before returning to "I".
The session ended here. Reed's fate is indeterminate at the moment; the party wishes to keep him around as a regular character, since his acuity in Dex-based skills would be a significant boon to the group. We may find a player to take his reins, as he was a DM-run character in this session, or failing that I may continue to play him for the time being. I'll update you guys on this as I decide. Either way, I have a small working backstory for Reed, and I will look to post that in the next couple days for you all to read. Thanks for reading.
Remember, we are going to try and run a 2nd session this week during the usual Saturday timeslot - noon Pacific/2 PM Central start, running until 4 PM Pacific/6 PM Central. Let me know if you can't make this so I can get the message out to everyone else!
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