After a quick recap of our last session, the heroes headed down into the ruins of the keep for one last time. They gathered in front of the doors in the southern end of the statue room. When everyone was ready, Day threw the doors open and the sunrod that Ansis held pierced the darkness, revealing a handful of shambling bodies. Day entered, and the zombies converged on her from two different directions (south and west). Another sinister figure emerged from a staircase to the east, its gray skin pulled taught over a bony frame.

Kiran and Simpson followed Day into the undead warren, anxious to get to Kalarel and the rift. A zombie that was hidden behind the eastern door swiped at the heroes, but missed. One of the zombies from the west broke off and went after Kiran, but he stepped back and took it down with a bowshot.

As the adventurers made quick work of the zombies, a small, winged figure appeared at the southern end of the battlefield, and several party members felt the presence of something trying to touch their minds. They resisted, and the winged figure fled down the east hall while the ghoul engaged Day. All enemies were defeated just as the homunculus reached the doors at the end of the hall.

Day tested the east hall with her padded spear, but found no trapped floor tiles. I love to see how paranoid the players/PCs get, though I do have to be careful that their precautions don’t cause a lag in the action. They reached the doors and could hear the faint sound of chanting on the other side. Day opened the doors and I described the room using the text from the encounter. As the players placed their minis, several of them observed that the entrance on the map was actually blocked off from the main cathedral by some closed doors and walls.

Doh!

Even though I’ve read through the encounter several times before this, and noted the entryway on the map, I still forgot to take it into account. I struck from the record all the details but the sounds of three distinct voices chanting unholy rites.

The group moved through the rubble of the southwest walls until they can see two figures: the closest stood next to a column of glowing blue crystal and hefted a big axe; the other stood before a statue of a demon, blood flowing from the stone to a pit in the middle of the room. Both had their back to the party.

While Day signaled everyone to gather for a plan of attack, Darla decided to be a bit of an instigator and sent Gullyven forward close enough to shoot off a bolt of lightning at the nearest cultist. The gnome made his Stealth check, but his shot missed. The surprise round over, everyone rolled for initiative.

I had fun describing how the vampire minions ran up the walls as they closed with the PCs. And I was able to keep the berzerkers in play a little longer with the underpriest’s healing power. However, the dark creeper never really made an impact due to the party’s positioning, and they ended up capturing the Shadowfell denizen. The creeper didn’t give up much information, even in the face of Gullyven’s potent intimidation.

The PCs decided to tie up the creeper, knock it unconscious, and stow it in the back of the cathedral with the intention of taking it back to Winterhaven for justice once they finished with Kalarel and the rift. They moved to the pit and I described the four mechanisms at each corner that raised and lowered the chains. This was a change I made from the module, as it didn’t make sense to me that Kalarel would slide down the chains and climb up them whenever he wanted to move about the dungeon. So, the chains attached to the corners of a platform that acted as an elevator.

As the players descend, I had the decrepit skeletons fire their arrows. The party stayed in the central pool of blood, wagons circled. Gullyven was intent upon shooting Kalarel where he stood by the altar, at least until the skeletal sentinels advanced. Then the gnome sorcerer investigated the magic circle, hoping to disable it like he did in the graveyard, but learned that it would require the interruption of the whole ritual that opens the rift.

Meanwhile, Ansis used his Wall of Light power for the first time. Between the wall and Simpson’s bard song, the party had some decent defense bonuses and was gaining temp hit points at the start of every turn. I did get to fire off the wight’s horrific visage, pushing a couple of them out of the wall for a turn, but for the most part they hunkered down and blasted away.

When the first sentinel fell, Day made a charge for Kalarel. The scion of Orcus was knocked prone, but teleported to the magic circle. With the way clear, Gullyven headed for the altar and deciphered what is needed to counter the ritual: the five statues of Bahamut needed to be placed in a particular pattern on the altar, and the words of the ritual spoken in a different order.

I really liked that the updated version of Keep on the Shadowfell included a skill challenge to close the rift to the encounter. However, as has been the case so far in my experience with published WotC modules, examples of what a successful check equates to are rarely included. So I came up with the statues. Gullyven proceeded to race to his companions, grab their statues, and return to the altar.

Unfortunately, Gullyven failed the third, fourth, and fifth checks of the challenge. I was disappointed–I had really been rooting for the PCs to succeed in the challenge. So, when I made one last glance over the write-up for the skill challenge, and discovered that each failure resulted in a necrotic attack by the altar, I decided to roll back the challenge to the first failure. I rolled the attack and hit. I then asked Darla if she wanted to continue in light of the consequences. She did, and Gullyven succeeded on his next attempt.

Then he failed again. And again. I went totally soft on the players this point and asked if anyone wanted to aid Gullyven. The three other Arcane/Divine PCs pitched in and it was enough. This sequence repeated itself two more times before they finally succeeded in the challenge. Everyone was envisioning this shouting going on between the four as they fought:

Gullyven: “That didn’t work. What do I do next, guys?”

Everybody else: “Put the statue there. No, over there! And that one goes there.”

Gullyven: “I don’t know how to say this last word.”

Everybody else: “How do you spell it?”

It elicited some good chuckles.

With the ritual countered, the undead unanimated, and the rift sealed. I hadn’t made good use of The Thing in the Portal up to this point, only attacking Ansis once with it. I forgot that the upgraded version had a much greater range on its sliding attack than the original, and for some reason had it stuck in my head that it only attacked once Kalarel was in the magic circle.

By this time, the heroes had knocked some 40-60 hit points off Kalarel, he was the only enemy left standing, and we were at least an hour over our designated end time. The outcome of the encounter a foregone conclusion, I asked the players if they minded calling it a victory and stopping for the night. They agreed.

Our next session will be an interlude from this campaign. DeeAnn is going to DM a Paragon-level one-shot. I’m looking forward to playing. Following that, we’ll return to wrap up some loose story-ends. Then I plan to present the group with several hooks that will lead them to Thunderspire.