Upon your return to the Prefecture in Wolfberg from your last foray, it was decided by the powers-that-be that your next mission is to deliver Cullen to the Dollmage’s lab so that he may be cured of his mysterious affliction. However, you find that such a seemingly sounding task may actually be quite difficult. Possible treachery from House Laerth in the mysterious disappearance of their forces from their defensive position around the lab, just as Sheriff Dominik of County Laerth advanced with his troops surely complicates matters greatly. Fortunately House Orod already had troops en route, originally intending to reinforce House Laerth’s position. Now, you are to accompany them so that they can retake the lab while you slip in and complete your objective.

On the morning of your departure, High Inquisitor Gurich calls on you once more. He explains that much damage was done in Dunmon approximately 2 weeks ago, which is being attributed to a group of Aegisians. Authorities at the County Laerth seat managed to receive funds from the Black Heron bank in return for a lien on church properties in Dunmon. The bank has graciously agreed to waive the lien granted one of their agents accompany you on further quests to ensure that the bests interests of the bank are served. The bank agent introduces himself as Aram, and with that you once again bid farewell to Gurich and head for the city gates to rendezvous with the House Orod forces.

At the gates, a half-elf wearing a symbol of the Order of the Silver Dragon approaches your group. He introduces himself as Narsane, a friend and colleague of Lyr. He claims that Lyr had asked him to accompany you, because he felt your contribution warranted further assistance from the Order, and the ends you fight for are surely in line with that of the Order’s. Though you have your suspicions, you don’t really have time to rebut his claims, for an individual in military regalia bruskly addresses you and beckons to follow him. As you do, he introduces himself as Darver, First Sergeant of Orod County Mountaineer company.

First Sgt. Darver leads you where the company bivouaced. Darver presents you to Captain Romsdalen, who asks you to act as eyes-and-ears while he leads the company into position. Promptly, the company mobilizes, and you watch as the eighty-some troops march with eight heavily-laden wagons in tow. A day later, the company reaches their destination and establishes position. The troops begin to drill as camp is set up, and war golems unloaded from 4 of the wagons.

The following day, you march on the Dollmage’s estate. The Mountaineer company breaks the siege allowing your party to slip in with little resistance. Once there, you find it curious that, in spite that the place is supposedly under siege, you see people about, apparently tending to the grounds. You draw nearer, pass through the gate, and behold a disturbing sight. The “people” tending to the grounds appear to be undead or constructs of some sort, all in the forms of women and children. You decide to continue toward the manor house. As you pass, each of the workers briefly stop to watch, and you observe that they are working in pairs – one woman and one little girl. An especially gruesome pair of zombies appear before you, gesturing to take the reins of your horses. Unnerved a bit by the help, you explore the grounds and manor, finding more pairs of women and children of the same mold as those that greeted you, all hard at work.

Though you are tripped up a bit by the estate’s defenses, eventually you find the Dollmage hiding in his secret lab below the manor house. He reveals that his daughter, Nina, has been kidnapped in the confusion of the siege on his lab. Though he seems concerned, he also shows no intention of acquiescing to their ransom demands. Instead, he coolly presents you with a list of ingredients that he will need in order to cure Cullen.

Many things on the list are readily available, though some are a bit more difficult to acquire due to the nature of civil war breaking out around you. A couple other items are more difficult to acquire, due to their genuine rarity. The one item that would prove most difficult to get your hands on is a philosopher’s stone. You attempt to be discreet in getting an idea of where you’d find such a thing, and learn that one may exist on the Blighted Coast.

You begin your grand journey, striking out south and crossing in to Grenmond. You travel the Kingsroad to Bre, encountering a few challenges along the way. During this stretch, Cullen’s unnatural hunger manifested, and one evening it became apparent that his disease was part sickness and part possession. Once in Bre, you hop a river barge down to the port city of Matizanga. After a couple days there, you board a trading vessel on its way to New Bolanta.

You gather intelligence on what you might expect to encounter once you reach New Bolanta. Since the residents are formerly from the coast, you learn much of the challenges you face, namely those of the Blight and its remedy, the K’thirian Cure. You are told that the Blight drains life, turning everything to a fine grey powder. The Cure restores life, however it is indiscriminate in how it accomplishes this. Basically, it turns everything it comes in contact with in to plant life, and not just the Blight; animals and humanoids included.

Provisioned with items that should allow you to survive both the Blight and the Cure, you charter a ship of the line in service of the Eryl Consortium. The deal brokered is standard for such an outing, though there is concern that you may not have enough leverage to keep a philosopher’s stone should you succeed in finding one. You decide it best to not worry about such things now; you have to survive both Cure and Blight while striking deep in to the lands that belonged once to the Bolantans.

You take to the sea. About a tenday later, you land in the old port city of Brynvyr, which is consumed by the Cure. You pick your way through the thick growth, encountering one of the components of the Cure along the way; the Seeder looks like a giant tumbleweed, spitting out clouds of spores. The spores choke and try to germinate in your bodies, but you manage to rid yourself of them with the help of a wand of restoration. After that, you strike out in to the desert that is the Blight.

Each day within the Blight drains you both of body and mind. Before you’re drained too much, you use the wand again. And again. And again. Before long, you reach the gates of old Bolanta. The Cure has consumed this city as much as the last. Here, you encounter yet another component of the Cure: a Keeper. The first Keeper you see is being torn apart by a couple vaguely humanoid, vine covered creatures. You learn that they were once residents of the city, turned in to strange plant creatures by the Cure. Your new friends point out places where you may find a philosopher’s stone, should one still exist within the city.

After exploring the remnants of a research lab (wherein you find actual human survivors, untouched by Blight or Cure) and an ancient temple, you find your way to the remnants of the palace. Though crumbling, the palace by large is strangely untouched by vegetation. Your exploration leads you to the dungeons. There you face steel sentinels, constructs that fight intelligently, using the terrain and traps to their advantage. Deep in the dungeons you find what little was left behind; weapons with interchangeable enhancements, and yes, a philosopher’s stone, both closely-guarded secrets of the Transmutation specialists of Bolanta.

On your way out of the city, you encounter the third and final component of the Cure: the Guardians. The massive, spike-covered creatures are fearsome warriors, and surprisingly swift for plants. Your vine-covered friends help cover your escape, though, hoping that some day that they may be rescued and restored. This time around, you find swifter means of travel across the Blight. You use the final charges from your wand, board the waiting ship and travel back to Wolfberg by way of the Porter’s Union in Matizanga.

With all components in hand, you go back to the Dollmage. This time around, the trip from Wolfberg to the Dollmage’s estate seems like nothing, when before it was a long and challenging day and a half. The Dollmage is able to cure Cullen, of a sort. He reveals that the ‘cure’ will not invilve removing the disease, but instead remove Cullen’s consciousness from his diseased body to another, one that has no need for sleep or hunger. In essence, Cullen is to become a living construct. The process is a grisly one, and not all goes to plan. Cullen is successfully moved from one body to another, but his old body is now inhabited by something else, something that proceeds to slay the Dollmage and disappear into shadow before you can react.

Victor, the Dollmage’s silent construct of an assistant, follows you as you head back to Wolfberg to report to the crown. The Queen herself sees you, and she bids that Cullen, whom she refers to as ‘the prototype,’ undergo a field test. You are to find the Dollmage’s missing daughter Nina. Your first clue is to “follow the story,” the fairy-tale version of the Dollmage and his family as he had told you when you first met.

The first snows of winter begin to fall as you set out from Wolfberg once more. Your first interpretation of the clue is to follow the events of the story. In doing this, you come across different tellings of the story and come to the conclusion that if you find the correct version, you may find the girl. You do so, and you are led right back to Wolfberg. Soon you find yourself at the door of an old friend, deacon Norry.

Norry is acting strange, so you decide to act. The deacon and his two friends fight back. After the battle, you find evidence that the good deacon was much more than he seemed. There were many different disguises and traveling papers, and Nina in a back room. Victor made to free her, and once they embraced, he spoke. It seems that the Dollmage had time to transfer his being into his construct companion before he was slain. The Dollmage speaks to you briefly before teleporting Nina and himself to parts unknown.

With your mission complete, you report back to the queen. You are recognized for your accomplishments, but receive no rewards beyond that. Those of you with the church are invited to winter at the Prefecture; Cullen returns to the Queen’s service, Aram back to the bank, and Narsane to his order.

Three months later after the winter snows had melt, each of you receive invitation to speak with high Inquisitor Gurich.

Following the consecration ceremony, Priest Orward thanks you for your service, and informs you that your obligation with the church is fulfilled. With your faith renewed, you ask the Priest if there is any further service you could perform for the church. Though he does not have anything else for you at this particular temple, he does recognize that these are troubling times for the church, and your services could be of further use. He sends you on a pilgrimage to the Prefecture in Wolfberg with letters of recommendation. Coincidentally, on the way out of town, High Inquisitor Gurich asks that you come see him the next time you’re in Wolfberg.

Your first order of business once in Wolfberg is to spend your respective shares of the haul from your last adventure. Satisfied with your purchases, you pay a visit to Gurich. With him is a young Inquisitor named Tone, who has approached Gurich wishing to assist with the investigation of the Cardinal’s assassination. Gurich, frustrated with the Sheriff of County Laerth dragging his feet on the investigation and the church’s non-involvement, charges you to look into things for him. Since your investigation goes against the church’s official stance, he reminds you to do your best not to draw attention to yourselves. After your meeting, you remain in Wolfberg for a tenday to prepare and gather clues to determine your next step.

On Gurich’s suggestion you travel to Dunmon, seat of County Laerth, to begin your investigation. You reach town and promptly report to the local Aegisian temple. Priest Philip ushers you in to the once-grand temple from the streets of a seedy-looking district. He proceeds to inform you of local politics: the sheriff enacts the rule of law with an iron fist, utilizing skeletal guards to enforce strict curfews, and that the faithful of Otego are persecuted most. He lauds you for your chosen quest, but warns you to keep a low profile. Since worship day service is the next morning, you stay the night and decide to poll the congregation for more information after mass. The congregants are quite informative, telling you what they know about the two wererat warrens in town (the Gnarled Bones and the Pit Pests), and a pub called “The Dive” which seems to be the hub of the criminal underworld within the city.

You soon learn that “The Dive” only really becomes active after dark. You wonder how that could be, with the strictly-enforced curfew and all. You find that the criminal underground is literally that, underground. Thanks to the advanced sewer system, thieves and cutpurses could operate with near-impunity – only if they could survive the labyrinthine sewers. On your way to “The Dive,” you discover this to be more difficult than it sounds, as you lose Dimitri to one of its perils. After regrouping, and sending Isuv to take Dimitri’s remains to his family in County Orod, you brave the tunnels again and reach the pub at the preferred hour. Hoping to get an “in” with one of the wererat warrens, you do your best to talk up an individual who may be a wererat, surrounded by a group of lowlifes. Hours pass, and notice someone at a nearby table keeping tabs on you. The ‘wererat’ leaves, without his friends, and you follow him into the sewers. You lose him, but his friends jump you. During the scuffle, the individual watching you earlier jumps in to assist you. After he introduces himself as Cullen, and tells you that you mission is known.

The following day you rendezvous with Cullen, who hints at being an operative for the Crown. You also find that the Sheriff has also officially outlawed Otego worship. Cullen assures you that this is illegal, but the politics behind reversing such edicts are tenuous. You want to warn Priest Philip, but you can’t seem to find him in the temple. Without his guidance, you use magical means to contact Gurich to see how you should proceed. He advises that you let the Priest worry about the edict – you should concentrate on your investigation. With this, you feel that staying in an Aegisian temple to be a poor idea, so you procure lodging where Cullen is staying, a place called the “Cock and Spaniel.” Along your way, it becomes evident that the edict has had an effect on the populous, as rioting breaks out around you.

During the commotion, Tal gleans a bit more information – the ‘wererat’ you met at “The Dive” was the Cardinal’s suspected assassin. Doing your best to lay low and not get involved with the riots, you hatch a plan to flush out the killer. Nearly a tenday passes. Your plan obviously did not have the desired result. You return to “The Dive” to gather more leads. You find that your current exploits have gained you a bit or notoriety, and quickly discover the name and location of your enemy – Teodor of the Gnarled Bones. This time you elect for a more direct approach, only to discover that Teodor has been causing too many problems and has been sent to a safe house in Tanrot. Wanting to waste no more time, you begin to head out of town, only to discover that Philip is scheduled to be executed. Evidently, Priest Philip had a hand in the riots. You are able to spring him from the gallows, but your daring rescue attempt drew too much attention. Philip covers your escape from the city; you lose most of your possessions, and nearly your lives.

You cut across the country heading north toward Tanrot, doing your best to avoid towns and main roads. You do cross one highway, which carries refugees heading away from Dunmon. This draws attention of some highwaymen, but fortunately not any authorities. You have no problems crossing into County Vermidit, though you do note the building of troops on its borders. You note that leaving may be more difficult. You keep trudging forward through hills and valleys, meeting up with a traveling knight, Sir Eandor, and his squire Lyr. Their assistance helps you survive a wyvern attack just south of Tanrot, though Sir Eandor pays the ultimate price for his valor. Lyr accompanies you the rest of the way, wishing to carry out his master’s quest.

Tanrot is a quaint village, and its people act strange around you. Nonplussed, you continue your mission. Again to try to draw out Teodor, to no avail. Instead of attempting another ‘covert’ operation, you approach the local lord and ask for his cooperation. Count Vermidit agrees to deliver the assassin, if you are willing to help him in a matter disturbing one of his villages. He asks that you help a small contingent of troops contain the outbreak of a disease, one thought to have been wiped out long ago, tearing through the village of Faridge. He wants you to neutralize the outbreak and bring back one infected to best understand the forgotten disease. Lyr is eager to help, as Eandor’s order sent him on much the same mission.

You find the contingent’s camp empty, and the town much the same. You discover a few bodies, and only 3 survivors holed up in the mayor’s house: a Vermiditian soldier and two children. In the house, you discover what you believe to be the source of the disease – a black ceramic-like shard that seems to absorb the light around it, which Lyr quickly takes command of. After dusk, you find some of those who have succumbed to the disease, or more accurately, they found you. The disease manifests itself by transforming its victims into mindless killing machines, only identifiable by the victims’ completely back eyes – sclera, iris and all. During the attack, Cullen gets bitten. His eyes turn black as the infected, though he maintains his faculties. He soon discovers that he can “speak” with the infected, if not command them. Over the course of the next couple days, you find more of the villagers and the rest of the soldiers, all of whom are infected. One, however, ended up much like Cullen and has taken command of those he has rounded up. He wants to round up the “deserter” and the two children and return them to the Count. The disease seems a horrible fate, so you do the honorable thing and stand in his way. In order to fulfill your bargain with the Count, you keep one infected and allow the three survivors to flee.

After witnessing the how virulent the disease is, you don’t feel entirely comfortable with your deal with the Count. He holds his end of the bargain by chaining Teodor in an abandoned mine. When you discover him, it is apparent that he is under a compulsion of some sort. He begs for his life, for your assistance in apprehending the true criminal, but shows no remorse for what he’s done. He claims that someone from House Laerth is the mastermind, however you’re not totally convinced. In spite of being chained to a wall, he becomes more resolute and defiant, so you decide to dispatch him in the interests of justice.

With your mission fulfilled, you journey back to Wolfberg. You pass a couple companies of Vermiditian troops, well within the borders of County Noble, along the way. Wolfberg seems to be in a state of emergency, as you pass through multiple checkpoints as you navigate the many districts on the way to the Prefecture. You relate your tales to Gurich, and on Cullen’s request, to the Chancellor. Both wish to speak with Lyr and study the artifact, but by this time he had already skipped town to find a keep of his order, the Order of the Silver Dragon. Inundated with new information, agents of the Church and the Crown confer to decide your next mission.

You find that civil was has broken out – it seems that the edict handed down by the Sheriff of County Laerth, the subsequent riots, coupled with the lack of investigation into the Cardinal’s murder, precipitated events that caused the Queen to enforce her rule – much to the displeasure of Count Ferdinand of County Laerth. Ferdinand belongs to House Vermidit, and has an immediate ally in County Vermidit. Their forces quickly marched on County Noble, slowed by troops from House Laerth, a dispossessed house looking to regain their lands. Laerth had concentrated forces around the Dollmage’s lab, claiming to protect the facility for the Crown. The Dollmage, not only an integral resource for the Crown’s defensive research, is important in Cullen’s case. He purportedly has a method to cure the mysterious disease, after a fashion. The details are fuzzy, but the procedure has supposedly been performed successfully at least once. Therefore, the discovery of House Laerth’s possible treachery is troubling on many levels.

Troops from County Orod were already en-route to reinforce Laerth’s position. Your part is to travel with the troops, assist Cullen to the Dollmage’s lab to be cured, and to see just what exactly House Laerth’s plans are and what they plan to get out of such a situation – especially how it pertains to the Church of Aegis.

As the faithful of Otego, belonging to the Church of Aegis, each of you decided to offer your services and do some mission work for the church.  Since each of you showed some special qualities above the average follower, you were charged to help protect some other missionaries who were helping to construct a larger temple in the village of Kalholm.  It seems you could not have arrived at a better time.  Most of the workers had come down with a mysterious illness.  You quickly discovered that the sickness was foodborne, being spread by diseased rats, seemingly under the command of a larger, sentient rat.  With the warehouses quickly cleared of the infestation, and the workers on the mend, construction could get back on schedule.  That would not last for long, however, as supplies and raw materials coming in from surrounding areas were being intercepted.  These raids escalated in the sacking of a local quarry.  Tracking down the culprits was fairly easy, for they were trying to lure you in.  Unfortunately, their ploy was their folly, and they were quickly dispatched.  You captured a lone survivor of the band, a hobgoblin scout, who offered his expertise of the area on condition of his release.  He reported the movements of a small colony of hungry giant ants on the move to the quarry, which still had not delivered enough stone to complete the temple.  The ants were relentless in their advances, though through careful planning and some ingenuity, the entire colony was destroyed.  Finally, with the temple nearing completion, some of you are sent to summon a cardinal capable of consecrating the grounds.  The morning of the event, you find he had been assassinated the previous evening.  Appearantly, from the recognition of the tracks leading from the room, a large rat, or more likely a wererat, was the perpetrator.  There was not much time to devote to the investigation, since the temple still needed to be consecrated.  This time, a High Inquisitor was sent with additional guard.  He was able to complete the ritual successfully.

Some other events of note:

• The local constabulary seemed quite suspicious of you, and verbally abusive at times.  In fact, the Sheriff’s Deputy in charge was trying to extort protection money, or possibly some other assurances, from the temple.
• While traveling to Wolfberg to alert the church that the Cardinal had been assassinated, you encountered a young girl with strange, dark eyes named Nina.  She was quite interested in traveling with you, and shortly after you had allowed her to come along, you discovered that she had viciously murdered another traveler.  Fortunately, a royal patrol had come along and convinced her to “go home.”  Later, you discovered that she belonged to someone known only as the Dollmage, and that she had killed before….
• The hobgoblin mercenaries carried a bank token and a copy of their contract, which you seized.