Since Nicalon knows that the party was heading towards the Electrum Eel when the ambush occurred, the party decides that staying there is no longer safe, and elect to lie low at the church for a bit. Brother Fabitor received the party's message, and dispatched a party of clerics and fighters to assist Kalerecent in guarding the sealed door in the Banewarrens.

In the meantime, the party remembers having spotted some "wanted" posters about town posted by the city watch, enlisting help in bringing down the "blue terror" stalking Verbobonc. They deduce that this must be the creature that they encountered in the Banewarrens. Apparently there have been an average of three murders a day, and the watch is getting desperate in tracking down this menace, offering a reward of one thousand gold pieces to anyone who can provide conclusive proof that the creature has been eliminated. The group decides to begin a systematic search for the creature in the city.

They don't have many leads to go on. Asking the few eyewitnesses who have seen the creature attack and have lived, the only pattern they can deduce is that the most recent batch of murders seem to have occurred mostly in the lower-income areas of the city: the dock ward, and several near the mental asylum. In all cases the murder descriptions are the same: the victim's spine has been ripped out and drained. Vangkor gets an idea that due to the locale of the attacks, the creature must somehow be feeding off the pain and suffering indigenous to the areas. The party spends the day looking for the creature, but has no success.

Brewfest 1

The next day the party resumes its search. It doesn't find the creature, but does get a lead on a recent murder that took place in a poor, run-down section of town. While scouring the slums of the city, the party encounters a young girl of about nine years, sobbing softly on the sidewalk. She is emaciated and dirty, but looking like she might have been a happy, healthy child had her circumstances been different. Her mother has been missing for several days, and she is close to starving.

Minaret feels strangely protective of the young girl, named Frannie, perhaps empathizing with her plight. WIth the help of the city watch, they locate the girl's residence, a dilapidated old tenement. They find no clues there, but the watch privately confirms the party's suspicion that the woman is the child of a young woman who was a fairly recent victim of the "blue terror".

Minaret cleans the girl up, and the party brings her to a meeting with Jevicca Norr at the Ghostly Minstrel. There Minaret makes arrangements that the girl should be given clothed and fed, and pays Jevicca to enroll Frannie at a formal school. She knows that while she cannot take care of the girl herself, that if she did not do something to help, she would be no better than those who neglected her when she was growing up. She gently explains to Frannie that her mother has died; she knows that the road ahead will be difficult for the girl, but emphasizes that this will be a fresh start for her, and her first steps towards a newer, better life.

Jevicca, meanwhile, notices the bone ring that Vangkor cannot remove, and mentions that it looks somewhat familiar to her. She agrees to look into it, and urges the party to find out who has the key as soon as possible, as their next move will probably be to enter the Banewarrens.

As if on cue, an acolyte of the Church of St. Cuthbert enters the Ghostly Minstrel looking for the party. He reports that Kalerecent has used the missive token given to him by the Church. He reported that he was being attacked by several enemies trying to gain access to the sealed door, and didn't expect to survive. He managed to report one significant detail about his assailants: that at least some of them were werewolves. This is all the party needs to get going. Abandoning their search for the "blue terror" for the time being, they make preparations to descend into the Banewarrens immediately.

The party enters the abandoned manor and makes their way down to the wine cellar. There they see the remains of a furious battle; many bloodstains coat the floor, and there are signs of a scuffle. They move in, and Fletcher notes that someone or something was recently dragged into the umber hulk's lair. Investigating, they see four bodies have been cast carelessly into one of the pits dug by the umber hulk. The corpses, two clerics and two fighters, all wear symbols of St. Cuthbert. This must be the team that Brother Fabitor dispatched to help Kalerecent guard the door. Unfortunately, it appears they ran into trouble before reaching the paladin... which means that he stood alone when he was attacked.

The party continues to the sealed door, and there finds Kalerecent, dead. Long claw marks score his body. The Sealed Door stands open, no longer pulsing with magical energy: it has been opened. The party hides Kalerecent's body in an adjacent room, vowing to return it to the Church later. Then they enter the Banewarrens.

As the party passes through the archway, they feel a mild disorientation. They recall that when Danar was corrupted and became the evil Eslathagos Malkith, the plane itself rejected the Banewarrens, pushing it into another dimension. The party's magic and abilities don't appear affected in any way, and crossing the boundary appears to have no other effect, so the party continues.

After passing through an entry room with two statues (one presumably of Danar and the other of his winged horse), the group ascends a stairway to the west. At the top of the steps is a five-way intersection, where they are ambushed by a gnoll ranger wielding a greataxe, along with a dire ape. The group manages to defeat the two without serious difficulty, but they are put on their guard that someone (something) knows that they are coming.

The west exit from the five-way intersection leads up another flight of stairs, opposite the stairs they entered. The party continues up this route. However, upon moving past the stairs, Minaret inadvertently causes a hidden trapdoor in the floor to open. She jumps back just in time, narrowly missing falling into a pit, from which comes a mechanical slamming noise followed by a "zap" sound. The party cautiously peer over the edge; the pit goes down thirty feet, to a flattened floor that shimmers in the party's light source. Carefully the party makes its way over the pit, and continues on its way. About twenty feet past the pit trap, the hall ends in another steel Vault Door. Mindful of the warnings of the dangers of opening these doors, the party backs off and retreats back to the five-way intersection where they encountered the gnoll and his dire ape.

The party decides to go south next. This way leads up another set of stairs to a room with double-doors to the east and a single exit to the south. Another pit trap lies in the floor here, but it looks to have been damaged by some sort of seismic activity to the point where it could not be triggered even if the party desired to. The party continues through the door to the south, which leads to a hallway which widens into a root. Their light source can just make out the far wall when they are abruptly stopped. An invisible wall of force blocks their progress. After several futile attempts to get past the wall, the party turns around again. Deciding to defer the double-doors in the broken-pit room for now, they return once more to the five-way intersection.

This time the party takes the northwest exit. This also leads up a staircase, and once more the party narrowly avoids a trap at the top. Minaret hears a click as she steps forward, and dodges back just as a stone wall slams to the ground where she stood a second before. The deadliness of this trap soon becomes apparent, as the wall begins to move to the north. It soon becomes apparent that walls have fallen on all four sides of the trap surface, forming a small stone cube. This cube is now sliding to the north, apparently by magic. It enters an open area to the north. From there, it slides into a corner, which holds an immensely deep pit. The cube-trap doesn't stop; it simply slides over the side of the pit, plummeting a hundred feet to smash to pieces at the bottom. The party begins to realize that they may need to be more cautious in exploring this place.

The room containing the pit is actually a long, wide hall leading east. It goes on for sixty feet, after which it splits, with the northern half descending a staircase and the upper half continuing forward. A low, almost subaudible throbbing comes from the area beyond. The passage opens into a catwalk lining a larger, square room; the staircase leads to the ground floor of this room. Inside is a device very similar to the one encountered near the Sealed Door that was guarded by Kalerecent: a large, copper sphere with many metal rods and draconic-looking engravings stands upon an iron tower. Unlike the previously-encountered device, this one looks complete and undamaged, and it seems that the throbbing sensation is emanating from this device. The party puzzles over this object greatly, especially Richter. However, they do not reach any solid conclusions about what it might be, and decide to leave it alone for the time being.

A door on the south side of the catwalk above leads to a ten-foot by ten-foot room, containing another door leading south. Although the party is usually suspicious of such rooms, no harm comes to them as they pass through, and the second door is unlocked.

Beyond is a longer hallway continuing south, with an alcove to the immediate east. The alcove contains a relief of three plate-armored warriors; each holds a shield in one hand, and raises their other hand above their heads, as if to throw something. Small depressions exist in each of the warriors' hands, as if they once held an object. What attracts the party's immediate attention, however, is the sound of battle to the south!

The hallway continues thirty feet, ending in a partly-open door. Beyond, the muffled grunts and curses of several monstrous-sounding combatants can be heard. The party quickly begins preparing themselves, casting defensive and offensive spells. Vangkor flies up above the door, and the others ready an assault the moment something comes through. The battle in the other room only continues for another twenty seconds or so. There is a meaty-sounding thud as something extremely large falls to the ground, then a sudden silence. The party barely dares to breathe, but nothing happens. Finally, Ian can stand it no longer. He bravely marches forward and flings the door open.

He has time to make out four monstrous figures: a large spider, an ettercap, a sphinx-like creature, and a large ogre, when abruptly another figure floats down from above the door in the room itself. A long robe conceals most of its body, but the writhing tentacles of its octopus-like head are impossible to mistake: an illithid, a mind-flayer! Before Ian can do more than shout, he feels a massive blast of mental energy from the creature, and is knocked senseless.

The others act quickly. Vangkor, still flying above the door on the hallway side, sees the illithid's lower half as it floats down in the room. Quickly he casts haste, then another spell. Abruptly, fiery bands wrap themselves about the mind-flayer's body, pinning it. While it still can move through the air, its attack potential is limited. It retaliates with another mind-blast, bringing down Fletcher and Minaret. At the same time, the ogre steps forward, unexpectedly casting a spell that sends an ice storm howling down the hallway, further damaging the party. Richter darts back into the room behind the alcove, sending several blasts of Boccob's searing light at the creatures. Then Vangkor turns the tide with a succession of sonic-substituted spells, culminating in a sonicball that takes out the ogre, the ettercap, and the large spider, and severely wounds the mind-flayer. He and Richter then engage in a vicious battle with the hieractosphinx. The mind-flayer, perhaps distressed at the sudden twist in fortune, decides to abandon its only surviving companion, and abruptly vanishes. The heiractosphinx is brought down quickly after.

The party is still somewhat stunned from the ferocity and suddenness of the battle's beginning and ending, and even more surprised that they still stand after fighting such powerful foes. The bodies of the monsters are searched. The creature the monsters were fighting appears to be a large, decayed-looking bear; close examination reveals that the bear is dusty and sewed-together, apparently an animated construct of some sort. It bears nothing of value, but the others carry many weapons and other equipment. In addition, each creature wears the same type of bone ring... except for the ogre, who wears another symbol all too familiar to them: the inverted black triangle of the Elder Elemental Eye. Here at last is the first clue to a link between these creatures and the cultists the party has been seeking. What that link is remains to be discovered.

After a brief rest, the party continues down a passage to the south, which ends in a door leading west again. The door is locked, but Minaret manages to bypass it. The door opens to a large, circular chamber. In the center is an iron pillar. The floor is three-quarters stone, with the remaining quarter metal, shaped as if a pie wedge. The ceiling also has this division, but opposite the floor (the majority is metal, except for the wedge where the floor is metal). Both floor and ceiling are on circular tracks that circumvents the room. Upon the metal section of the floor is an iron staircase leading to the stone section of the ceiling, in which there is a small opening. The center column of the room has four switches vertically aligned. The party groans... the whole room is obviously some sort of devious mechanical puzzle.

Vangkor, still flying, decides to hold off on the switches and explore the opening in the exposed stone of the ceiling above the steps. He flies up, but cannot see much of the dark area beyond, due to the awkward angle. Hoping for the best, he flies up into the opening... and disappears. At the same moment, there is a sudden burst of sound that fills the chamber, damaging the eardrums of the rest of the party.

After the echoes die off, the others, while not totally surprised at what has happened, are torn. Do they follow their companion into what might be a deadly trap, or do they wait for him to return, hoping that he is not mortally wounded? Finally, Fletcher decides that further debate is a waste of time while their companion may be dying. Lacking any flying ability, he boldly climbs the steps and enters the opening in the ceiling... where he, too vanishes.

The rest of the party then hears his voice, but seemingly coming from a ways off. There is a long wail, cut off abruptly by a dim thud. Ian and Richter shudder, as they are forcibly reminded of the ranger's fall to his death in the obelisk chamber.

Before the party can debate further on what to do next, Vangkor abruptly flies into the room, looking pale. He says that when he passed through the opening in the ceiling, he was teleported... directly over the hundred-foot-deep pit the party had narrowly missed earlier! Luckily for the mage, he was still flying, and easily flew to safety. However, mere seconds later, Fletcher appeared in the same location. Unfortunately, the hapless ranger had no means of keeping himself aloft, and he plummeted all the way to the bottom, where he surely must have perished.

Abandoning the circular chamber for the moment, the party runs off towards the pit, hoping to somehow get their companion out to be raised. Unfortunately, in their haste they forget one minor detail, and as they round the corner near the pit, they accidentally trigger the cube trap that uses it! With a click, the walls slam down once more, with the party members just barely dodging back in time. They breathe a sigh of relief... and then the cube begins moving again. It slides over to the pit, and plummets down. A few heartbeats later, it again crashes to the bottom. The party stares down after it, shocked. While Fletcher may have been raisable before this, his body is surely now smashed to a pulp, beyond their means to retrieve. With heavy hearts, the party decides to retreat from the Banewarrens and lick their wounds. They bid a sad farewell to their ranger companion, gather Kalerecent's body, and return to the surface.

Brewfest 2

The church is saddened but grateful for the return of Kalerecent's body. After performing some divinations, the Church determines that Kalerecent's spirit is content and does not feel the need to return, so he is interred with honors in the Church mortuary.

After resting and healing up overnight, the party does some information gathering. They meet with Jevicca, who encourages them to continue their explorations, and reminds them again that they are each entitled to 2000 gold pieces worth of magic items from the Inverted Pyramid for their efforts. She also has news for Vangkor regarding the bone ring. It appears that the ring is worn by members of a secret organization of monsters, called the Pactlords of Quaan. Long ago, this secret society was formed with the singular goal of eliminating humankind from the Oerth. Its members are all monsters of wildly different types who would otherwise never collaborate; however, they are united by their common hatred of humanity and the Oath of the Pact, which is sealed by the wearing of the Quann rings. Unfortunately, from what she has learned that once a Quann ring is worn, there is no way to remove it while the wearer lives. Vangkor shudders, and reminds the party to take the ring off him the next time he dies in battle.

Sensing that the party needs another member, the group scours the city, and eventually encounters a human named Lex. While perhaps less "pure in spirit" than the recently deceased Fletcher, Lex reports himself to have a fair degree of experience with infiltration and stealth. Hoping his talents will turn the tide, the party accepts him into the group. They then return to the Banewarrens.

The party returns to the five-way intersection, and this time moves down a passage to the southwest. There they encounter an area of freezing cold which they cannot for the moment breach, so they double-back and decide to re-explore the area to the south of the broken trap. The invisible wall of force still stands, but the party notices that what they took to be an empty room beyond is actually a continuation of the passageway; the far wall is no longer there. However, nothing the party can do can get past the invisible wall of force.

Eventually frustrated, they pass through the double-doors to return to the "Iron Pie" chamber. Here they discovered that the orientation of the room has changed; instead of being in the northwest quadrant of the room, the "wedge" in the ceiling now reveals the southeast quadrant. Remembering too well what happened to Fletcher, the group is leery to enter the darkness above the stairs; however, Vangkor bravely volunteers and casts another fly spell to investigate. This time he is not transported, and flies up into a small, dark chamber above the room. The chamber is empty except for a single lever. Vangkor attempts to move the lever, but is unsuccessful. He returns to the others and reports what he has seen.

Guessing that the switches on the iron center column must have something to do with the puzzle, the party spends a great deal of time cautiously experimenting with the switches. They discover that every time a switch on the center column is flipped, the floor and ceiling rotate on its metal track, exposing a new area of the ceiling. Each exposed section of the ceiling contains an opening leading to darkness, accessible by the stair on the moving floor section. However, the only other obvious effect happens the first time the party flips a switch; in addition to the rotation of the floor and ceiling, a loud crash is heard outside the room. Quickly investigating, the party realizes that the far wall of the area beyond the invisible force field has dropped back into place. It appears that someone or something solved the puzzle, but the party inadvertently has reset it. They spend over an hour puzzling over various combinations of switches, but the puzzle's solution eludes them, and they eventually become frustrated with trying.

Abandoning the puzzle for the time being, they realize that the east wall has two doors; one they have passed through already, and opens to a north passageway leading to the bear-golem chamber where the battle with the Pactlords took place. The other door is locked, but is picked with some difficulty. Beyond is a long passage heading south. Cautiously the party continues.

After about sixty feet, the party finds a door on the west wall of the passage, with another door at the hallway's end twenty feet further. The west door is locked, and this one the party cannot seem to bypass, even with Minaret and Lex's combined efforts. The party moves on to the southern door. This door is also locked, but the party manages to pick this one. The door opens to reveal a large scorpion construct of metal that whirs and lurches forward to attack. At the same time, the door in the western wall of the passage opens, revealing dozens more (smaller) scorpion constructs, four of which also move to attack. The party acts quickly, and manages to slam both doors before the creatures can engage. The doors lock automatically, and the constructs appear unable to re-open them. Relieved that they have avoided combat, the party decides to retreat once more.

The party is extremely frustrated at this point, as they know that something lies beyond the wall of force but they seem unable to discover how to get there. Realizing that one of the only areas they haven't explored lies beyond the freezing trap southeast of the five-way intersection, the party returns there to try and bypass it. After several attempts, the party manages to disable the trap and move beyond. After climbing a pair of short stairways, the passage turns south, opposite a door in the wall to the north. Lex cautiously opens the door to the north. Beyond is a narrow passageway going east and west, with doors at each end. When he casually lets go of the door to inform the others, he is surprised when it slams shut violently of its own accord. Cautiously he opens it again. The room beyond is still empty, but when he releases the door, it again slams shut. Not wishing to have more to do with that particular door, the party takes the passage turning south. This climbs another stairway, then opens into a larger room. In the southern wall is a door surrounded by an elaborate but old-looking fresco depicting tall winged humanoids with swords flanking the door. Three squat humanoids of bronze, their bodies jointed and hinged, rest unmoving on their haunches. The party, their nerves now drawn tight as a drum, decide to retreat rather than risking another encounter. The day has grown long, and they decide to make camp in the area outside the Sealed Door, rather than returning to the city above. They hole up in the same room where Kalerecent hid, setting a doubled watch. During the night they hear noises and see the flickering of torchlight coming from the sealed door area. Minaret and Vangkor quietly investigate (without a light source), and see what appears to be a single, dark-skinned humanoid female looking out the Sealed Door. She looks around for a bit, as if she has heard something, but does not seem to notice the two adventurers watching her. After a brief inspection of the catwalk area, she returns through the Sealed Door deeper into the Banewarrens, her torchlight gradually fading out of sight. Vangkor and Minaret quickly wake the others, but by the time they return to the area all is quiet and dark. Rather than push their luck, the party decides to continue their rest and investigate further the next day.

Brewfest 3...