After patching yourselves up after the gnoll ambush (particularly Ivan, who got the nasty arrow hit right at the start and had to spend the rest of the battle dodging around from inside the cart) you headed on up the road towards the keep.

When you got to the turn-off, you heard a weak call from up in the branches of a tree. It was a very injured, exhausted guy who introduced himself as Conn, and recognised Yunan and Bear from the tower. He was one of the people living in the tower with Firean. He said the goblins and their leader had attacked and killed or run them all off. He had survived by hiding in the well, and then when he got out and tried to run away he was attacked in the woods and only managed to escape by climbing the tree. By the time the creature left, he was too weak to come down on his own.

Sergi climbed up to help him down, and after slipping down the final 10’ (Bear caught Conn, Miroslav and Reed dropped Sergi) you decided to take him back to Threshold for healing and to collect your fee. You went back and stayed a couple of nights to allow everyone to recover a bit. Clifton Caldwell paid you for the escort duty, and you bade farewell to Grygory and Ivan, then you decided to head back to the keep to try to finish off the business – along with Conn.

Conn said they were mercenaries who did assorted jobs, and that they hadn’t understood Firean’s obsession with staying in the tower next to the goblins, but she had been talking about some sort of item and insisted they remain.

Once you got to the castle, you investigated the tower, with Conn as guide. The signs of the battle were everywhere. The lock had been shattered as if brittle, and there were dead goblins and dead residents on all levels, culminating in the body of Firean on the roof with an arrow through her throat. The dormitory had obviously been quite a hot battle…or maybe cold based on the temperature of some of the corpses. Not just deathly cold, but actively icy.

Digging through Firean’s papers, you found a scrap talking about the “six flakes of Traldar” with a note suggesting there was one in the depths of Ironwolf’s Keep.

And that’s where we left it. All that’s left is to head down and clear out the goblins…