Well, we’ve taken the keep. I didn’t think it would go this smoothly - from clearing a room of relatively harmless bandits, to felling two great ogres, to managing to best 30 goblins, to finally taking out upwards of 20 shambling undead in the crypts below. Not why I expected when we had poisoned that barrel of wine. As they say, no plan survives first contact with the enemy. Thankfully for us, the enemy didn’t survive first contact with us.
Yet now we face a conundrum. It feels as though most of the problems we have faced thus far could be solved with a swift warhammer strike to the temple - this one is different. We have found some statues of the Redwood family under the bandit keep - clearly old Grellus’ dynasty is at its nadir, as at it’s zenith it seems to have controlled land equivalent to a small nation state. These statues are obviously forming part of a puzzle, and we haven’t yet cracked it.
As I write this one of the statues has begun to make bubbling water sounds. I’m starting to worry that we’ve found ourselves in the middle of a trap.
Oh well. Either we solve it soon, or put it behind us and face it on another day. Today’s prize is the bandit’s keep: I think we’ve settled on Four-Shield Keep, or was it Five-Shield Keep? I’ve lost track of how many of those blasted magical shields we’ve found.