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At the campfire the adventurers set up for the night they are suddenly attacked by ten adversaries, who look human.

However, it soon becomes clear that these are werewolves; three archers, six soldiers and the werewolf leader. The battle is hard, but as the number of soldiers diminishes, the morale of the others is shaken more and more. When the bard the party has met earlier joins in the battle on the adventurers' side, the tide turns further and further.

Finally, after three knockouts and on low hitpoints the adventurers manage to kill the werewolf leader and get one of the archers to surrender. The others are either dead or have fled.

The bard, who proclaims himself to be the new werewolf leader, thanks the characters for their help. Apparently the tribe of werewolves is a friendly one, and was living peacefully in the now burnt-down village. When their original leader went to visit the town with the poisoned well he got poisoned, but instead of become sick and dying he became insane and paranoid.

He killed some villagers and bullied the weaker-minded members of the tribe into helping him hunt down all those who were 'against' him. This behaviour led to the discovery of the werewolves by the villagers whereupon they decided to burn the village and move further south.

The bard suggests that the characters accompany them to this village to announce to the people there that the werewolf menace has been eradicated, and then they will together rebuild the burnt village (without telling the people that there are still werewolves left, of course).

After setting everything right the party travels back to Fallcrest, where they tell the Lord of their adventures. The Harkenwold seems to be safe for now, and the Aurum had something to do with the disturbances.

The characters get to keep the loaned equipment they got before they started on the quest, and are asked if they would be up for another mission. They certainly are and accept some more equipment which they will also be allowed to keep after completion of their new mission, which will be in Sharn, city of towers (among other things).

Last time we left the party they were having it out with four groups of zombies. With some effort they manage to defeat all the groups, and also the dread knight zombie who was hiding in one of the groups. On his body they find a large pearl-like object.

The group continues to the previously found teleportation circle, and manages to activate it with the pearl. They teleport to a dark location filled with alchemical equipment, and a corpse in black robes.

The group searches for and finds a trapdoor leading up, to what appears to be the cellar of a house. There's lots of equipment here too. Another trapdoor leads up to the only abandoned house in the village.

The group search among the equipment (and the body) and find a book containing a Raise Dead ritual. They also find a passage which leads to the well of the village. It also leads a little bit further, but then comes to a stop. Apparently this passage is the way out for the zombies; there is a ladder leading up the well.

The group climb up out of the well, and re-enter the inn. There they find 9 bodies, all slain by what looks like vicious clawing. Thinking back, the group figures out that nine is one too few; apparently the bard they rescued is not dead, but nor is he is in the inn anymore. They find a bloody handprint on the sill of the window through which they climbed onto the roof.

While some of the group searches among the remains and in the rooms the wizard studies the Raise Dead book more closely. A piece of parchment falls out. It reads 'J. Maybe this will help with your endeavour. Remember: twice counter-clockwise, twice clockwise at the end. T.' There is an Aurum emblem on the paper.

Puzzled as to what it means, the group does some deep thinking. They figure that 'the end' may not be a point in time, but a location: the end of the passage by the well. They investigate, but find nothing that can be turned in any way.

The dwarf then jokingly rotates himself counterclockwise twice and clockwise twice, and is gone. The rest of the group do the same, and they all appear in a room filled with even more alchemical equipment.

This equipment appears to still be functioning, goo continually drips out of one end and runs down a dain of sorts, into the wall.

The wizard identifies a particular stone as the fuel for the alchemy and removed it, whereupon the dripping stops. Determined to find out where the fluid goes, the dwarf peers into the drain. At the other end is a light, and when he listens carefully he hears the fluid dripping into something.

The warlock teleports himself back to the passage, and takes a look in the well. It appears the goo drips into the water and dissolves. This must be what's causing the people to rise as undead. The wizard also determines that the goo can make people sick. Luckily, the party has not been drinking any fresh water from the well, only ale and water from their skins.

The party decide to burn the villager's corpses lest they rise as undead. The mayors corpse is asked (through a speak with dead ritual) what happened. He tell of six figures decending down the stairs in the inn, turning to wolves and killing all his companions. Then they questioned him about the party, whereafter they killed him too and left.

Unsure as to their next move, the group decides to head out onto the road, being as visible as possible in the hope that the 'bad guys' will come to find them.

The last session ended as the adventurers piled into the inn.

In the inn are ten men, all that is left in the village. After the first mysterious death of a villager for a fever that the priest in the temple of the village could not cure, undead started appearing at night. More people got ill and died, and came back as zombies. It was then decided to send the women and children to the next village down the road until the cause of the illness was determined. This was about three weeks ago.

Since then the male population has dwindles down to these ten men. Among them are the mayor and his son, the undertaker, the inkeeper and his son and the blacksmith. The priest seems to have fled the temple one night, and the other men of the village seem to have been either killed or taken away by the undead. Those killed later rise from their graves as zombies.

The group decides to investigate the surroundings of the village during the daytime. They follow the tracks of the undead into a field west of town, where they find the remnants of what appears to be a one-way teleportation circle, with bone dust as a catalyst.

After this discovery they also visit the next village which appears to have been burnt down. There they meet a wandering bard who had made his camp there in order to write a song about a burning village. After searching a bit, but finding nothing new, they return to town, about an hour before sunset.

Back in the village they are told that one of the farmers has not returned from his field. Some of the group decide to investigate before the sun goes down and they find some almost dry blood in the farmer's field. They also find tracks, but cannot follow them out of the field. It appears the farmer was killed in daylight, by one assailant.

That night the group leaves the inn to sit on the roof and wait for the undead to leave to the teleportation circle. At around 4 am the zombies start moving west and the group follows them, hoping to overtake them to the circle. The zombies however notice their followers and close in to attack.

A battle ensues.

After resting up a bit the party continues along the road, back into the forest. After a steady walk through the forest they emerge on the other side just as night is falling. The party makes camp at the edge of the forest. The night passes quietly, just interrupted by a few far off hols, but nothing nearby.

In the morning the party continues their journy towards the Harkenwold. As noon nears, they find that the road has become extremely muddy, and when they come to the point where they have to cross the White River it looks like there's been a water surge of some kind - the bridge is gone. All that remains are a few stones on either side of the road, and a wild 50 foot wide river.

To get to the other side the party hits upon the following plan: the wizard will perform the Tenser's Floating Disk ritual, and levitate himself over the water while one of her companions sits on the disk. Then the warlock will use his power to teleport over and switch places with the wizard, causing the disk to return to the other side of the river.

Then the wizard brings along the cleric (the dwarven fighter was the first one to go across on the disk), leaving only the paladin on the other side. Because the paladin has some cool 'snap-my-fingers-now-my-armour-is-gone'-armour he decides to swim across. The wizards levitate has ended by this time. The party does throw the paladin arope just in case, and he ties it around his waist.

What should have been a reasonably easy swim for the paladin turns into 2 minute struggle to keep him afloat, but finally he reaches the other side. After drying off a bit the party resumes the journey southward.

As it's getting dark they near the Harkenwold, and in the distance instead of seeing the many light of a village they see just one light. Stalwartly, they continue on. As they get nearer to the inn the party notices shadows moving between the houses lining the road. All the windows of the houses seem to have been boarded up.

Skeletal wolves beset the party, and it seems that there is no end to them. Every time a pack is killed a new pack appears. Although it seems easy to kill the wolves at first, it seems to get harder and harder. Finally the warlock decides to try to get to the door of the inn, the only place with light in this village.

Skeleton Warriors appear from around the corners between houses and attack the warlock, prompting the warrior to rush to his aid. As the warlock gets to the inn door, he notices that all the windows are boarded up, except one pane. Behind this pane is the light that te party spotted earlier on, a simple candle.

Knowing that they need to get into the inn before the wolves and warriors wear the party down the warlock attempts to open the door but finds it locked. Inside he hears shuffling and mumbling. He yells at the door, 'Open up, or our wizard will send a fireball through your door. You'll be in the same trouble as we are then!'. In the meantime the wizard is also making her war towards the inn.

In the space between the nearest house and the inn waits another Skeleton Warrior, and it only approaches as the wizard and warlock coax the people in the inn to open the door. Just as they are about to open the door the Skeleton attacks, and the residents of the inn refuse to open the door until it is gone.

The party slowly makes its way towards the inn, fighting wolves and Skeleton Warriors. Finally, with two of the Skeleton Warriors destroyed the wizard manages to unleash one of her trademark Thunder waves, and forces the nearest Skeleton Warrior away from the door. The door quickly opens, the party hustles inside, and the door is closed, locked, barred and barricaded again by the people in the inn.

If you've been reading this blog, you may now be wondering what happened.

I'd prepared a story and some monsters, and when the sessions actually started it looks like I threw most of what I had prepared overboard.

This is not entirely true. Although I was planning to have the wolf ambush in the first session, I decided that due to the lack of equipment and in the interest of introducing the Aurum into the campaign I needed the group to do some other stuff first. Enter the evil tiefling .

Then I changed the ambush a little bit in that there would be reinforcements and the wolves would not try to flee, just to make the encounter a little tougher (it turned out to be a rather long thirteen round encounter now) and perhaps more interesting. The rest of the story with the undead... I don't know. I might keep it, or I might try to change details of that too, to keep more to the wolvy theme.

After having picked out some useful equipment and resting for a day the party decided to get on the King's Road to the Harkenwold. By majority vote the decision was made to go on foot, as taking horses would only cut one day from the fifty mile journey.

The first day and night were uneventful. The second day saw the party enter Harken Forest, north of the White river. Somewhere in the afternoon the road led the party out of the forest, to continue beside the White river. Almost immediatly wolf howls were heard and the group noted that the southern bank of the river was rather foggy.

Wolves were spotted north of the road and the party prepared for battle. Kor'dyn (the Elven cleric) alerted the others about some howls he heard coming to the south, but that didn't seem to be an immediate problem.

Four large gray wolves and one even larger gray wolf attacked the party from the dense forest. The wolves used their bite attacks to trip the party members, keeping the from gaining strategic positions.

After three rounds of combat two of the gray wolves lay dead, one slain by Kor'dyn's greatsword, the other blasted by Storm (the Eladrin mage)'s Magic Missile. Thorim (the Dwarven fighter) heard noise in the underbrush, coming from the north and notified the rest of the party.

Two more gray wolves appeared from the forest and attacked the cleric, whereupon he decided to move from his position to stand closer to his fellows. Unfortunately this opened the way for these wolves to attack the mage.

Seven rounds of hard fighting later three of the large wolves and the larger wolf, which was now seen as the leader of the pack, were still alive. The latest wolf casualty had been an effort of teamwork, as it was uncannily lucky in avoiding its deathblow, but finally it well to the cleric's greatsword.

The remaining wolves disengaged and moved southward, closer to the river. The melee fighters in the party (the cleric, the dwarf and the Dragonborn paladin Vash) moved in to engage. A savage howl pierced the fog, and the wolves suddenly all bit at their opponents in a coordinated effort.

The next few blows seemed to do no damage at all to the wolves, even when they connected. Quinn (the Human warlock) attempted to trick a wolf into damaging itself using one of his nasty spells, but the wolf turned on Storm instead. In the meantime the cleric was spending most of his time on the ground, being continually tripped up by one of the wolves.

Another three rounds later the battle was finally over. Whatever had been lurking in the mist had seemingly no interest to engage the party directly, so the decision was made to rest for a while before continuing along the King's Road.

Yesterday saw the beginning of my adventure. The party had just finished off Paldemar in Thunderspire Labyrinth and returned to the Seven Pillared Hall.

There Rendil Hlafmoon told them of a message he had received from some distant uncle in Fallcrest which stated that the Lord Warden of Fallcrest was looking for this group of adventurers, because he had heard good things about them (probably from the escaped slaves).

The party decided to go to Fallcrest to meet with the Lord Warden. The Lord told them about a group of villages that make up a locality called the Harkenwold. He explained that no news from there had arrived in two weeks and he was worried.

The party immediately speculated on what might be happening, but the Lord Warden asked for silence. He first needed the party to do some local investigating. A Tiefling had come to stay at the Nentir Inn and the Lord Warden had reasons to suspect this Tiefling may be plotting against him. Being a just Lord he needed some proof and wanted the adventurers to go and find out more. They agreed (without even discussing payment ).

The adventurers trooped down to the Nentir Inn where they were indeed approached by the Tiefling. A skill challenge followed wherein the adventurers had to try to get information on the 'job' the Tiefling needed done from them without arrousing his suspicions. They passed (3 successes, 1 failure - 2 failures would have seen them fail) the test and were told to go find a horn that was located on some land just outside of town, but which was inaccesible to the Tiefling as the guards from the nearby gates would probably arrest him. He also mentioned to the group that casualties were 'always possible', giving the group some idea of the ruthlessness of this guy. Furhtermore he accused the Lord Warden of being a member of the Aurum, but everyone saw through that lie and the group as a whole came to the conclusion that the opposite was probably true.

On the way back to their inn, the Warlock managed to use his streetwise ability and teleport to slip away from the group and report their findings to the Lord Warden. The Lord told him to go ahead and dig up this artefact and hand it over to the Tiefling. The Warlock took this message back to the group.

At midnight the group went down to the site (some ruined houses, lots of rubble). The guards were not as vigilant as usual and managed not to spot the adventurers without being too obvious about it. After some searching the Paladin found some stairs leading to the basement of a large dwelling. There they found the remains of a storage vault, within which was located the Horn of Dismissal. (The group did not know what the horn did at this point).

As the group left the cellar they were set upon by two starving grey wolves which they defeated with extreme ease, and they made their way back to their inn. There they slept till mornign and then set off to see the Tiefling back in the Nentir Inn.

They handed him the Horn, wrapped in cloth, and as soon as he unwrapped it and held it in his hands he was arrested by four members of the Lord Wardens personal guard, on suspicion of conspiracy against their lord.

The Captain of the guard then took the group to see the Lord Warden who was most pleased with their progress and the fact that the Tiefling now couldn't use the Horn against him. The group was given the mission of finding out what was happening in the Harkenwold, and to aid them they were each loaned a magic armor and a magic weapon of their choice (one level 6, one level 8, core rulebooks and adventurer's vault). Also they were allowed to trade in their items and gold for other items (the previous adventure had had sparse treasure, and mostly items that nobody could or would use). If they succesfully completed the mission in the Harkenwold they would be allowed to keep the loaned items as a reward.

For my first encounter I have decided to use some custom gray wolves that have been leveled up to level 8 and 10. The level 10 wolf will be the pack leader and has some abilities to reflect that.

If the leader is bloodied it will try to flee, along with any normal wolves that are left.

Gray Wolf    Level 10 Brute (Leader)
Medium natural beast     XP 500
HP 134; Bloodied 67
AC 22; Fortitude 23; Reflex 21; Will 22
Speed 8
Initiative +6
Perception +13
Low-Light Vision
Standard Actions
m Bite • At-Will
Attack: Melee 1 (one creature); +13 vs. AC
Hit: 1d6 + 5 damage. If the wolf has combat advantage against the target, the target falls prone. A prone target takes 1d6 extra damage from this attack.
m Trip • At-Will
Attack: Melee 1 (one creature); +11 vs. Reflex; Unlike the Bite attack, Trip only attempts to trip the target and causes no damage.
Hit: The target falls prone. Dwarves suffer a -1 on their saving throw to avoid this effect.
M Hamstring • At-Will
Attack: Melee 1 (one creature in light or no armor); +13 vs. AC
Hit: 1d6 + 4 The target is slowed, save ends.
M Go for the throat • Encounter
Attack: Melee 1 (one creature); +11 vs. Reflex; before this attack the wolf can shift up to 3 squares
Hit: 2d10 + 7 damage, and ongoing 5 damage (save ends).
Minor Actions
C Howl • Recharge 5 6
Effect: Close burst 10 (gray wolves in burst); the target gains a +2 bonus to attack rolls until the end of the howler's next turn.
Str 17 (+8)    Dex 12 (+6)    Wis 17 (+8)
Con 24 (+12)    Int 6 (+3)    Cha 17 (+8)
Alignment unaligned     Languages —


Gray Wolf    Level 8 Skirmisher
Medium natural beast     XP 350
HP 89; Bloodied 45
AC 22; Fortitude 20; Reflex 20; Will 20
Speed 8
Initiative +9
Perception +12
Low-Light Vision
Standard Actions
m Bite • At-Will
Attack: Melee 1 (one creature); +13 vs. AC
Hit: 1d6 + 4 damage. If the wolf has combat advantage against the target, the target falls prone. A prone target takes 1d6 extra damage from this attack.
m Trip • At-Will
Attack: Melee 1 (one creature); +11 vs. Reflex; Unlike the Bite attack, Trip only attempts to trip the target and causes no damage
Hit: The target falls prone. Dwarves suffer a -1 on their saving throw to avoid this effect.
M Hamstring • At-Will
Attack: Melee 1 (one creature in light or no armor); +13 vs. AC
Hit: 1d6 + 3 The target is slowed, save ends.
Str 16 (+7)    Dex 17 (+7)    Wis 16 (+7)
Con 17 (+7)    Int 5 (+1)    Cha 13 (+5)
Alignment unaligned     Languages —

© 2010 Wizards of the Coast LLC, a subsidiary of Hasbro, Inc. All rights reserved. This formatted statistics block has been generated using the D&D Adventure Tools.

It's finally going to happen: I will be DM-ing my first 4th edition adventure. The characters will start at level 8, continuing on from a previous adventure.

In my head I've thought of the plot that will run through-out this adventure: something involving werebeasts in a town where people are not quite aware that they are surrounded by the fiends, although if you look carefully there are many hints towards this.

For the first session, the players will be attacked by a pack of wolves as they travel towards said town. These wolves will actually be werewolves in animal form, but the players will not be able to find this out easily.

When the players arrive in the town it will be just after sunset, and the town will appear empty: no-one at the gates, no people in the streets and no lights in the windows. As the NPCs near the inn at the center of town they will hear shuffling feet and moans of approaching undead. The players must hold off htese undead while finding a way to enter the inn. Inside the inn are several scared people who will not open the door for anyone, until convinced that it's a good idea.