Chapter 14: The Dread Temple

After resting in Keladrien's tiny hut for an hour, the group emerged from it and explored the room. They found a hand-shaped key on a hob goblin captain, and several cells that served as living quarters for the goblinoids. In one of the cells, they discovered a massive black dragonborn prisoner. He explained that he had been taken captive by the goblinoids and held in the cell for several days. His name was Yelmic The Ashen, and he proved to be a powerful warrior wielding a massive two-handed warhammer. After gathering his gear, he joined the group as they ventured deeper into the temple.
The next room they entered held two wyverns feasting on several dead goblinoids. The wyverns had broken free of their chains, and attacked the group as they opened the door. The party blocked the hallway and prevented both creatures from attacking them at once, and eventually slew both creatures. In the room they found various arms and armor, including a magical set of plate armor. Keladrien identified it with a spell and discovered it to be cursed armor that would render the wearer more vulnerable to fire. They decided to keep the armor in their bag of holding, and pressed on. The group had to double back, as they faced a locked door their key could not open. They traveled back into the bloody room and took an eastern door that led into another chamber. Pan rushed into the room and found two orcish necromancers working on raising wights. The necromancers and four wights attacked Pan, but not before he unleashed a flurry of blades upon one of the wights. Try as they might, the wights could not breach his defenses as he blocked every swing coming at him. As the rest of the group entered the room, the battled raged on. Keladrien fired bolts of flame at the wights, while his undead minions fired arrows into the fray. Nalzmyr and Yelmic battled the wights, but one of the necromancers managed to cast a spell against Pan that brought him low (despite Nalzmyr's best efforts at counterspelling them all). As the wights died one by one, the group turned upon the necromancers and slew them shortly.
One of the necromancers held another key in the shape of a gauntlet. The group decided to rest again to recover resources and mend wounds, and after their rest in the tiny hut they used the key from the hobgoblin captain to open the next door. Keladrien summoned his familiar and sent his zombie to open the door, allowing the hawk to fly in and investigate while Keladrien peered through his eyes. The room held a large shrine to Bane, along with 16 goblinoids in a trance around it. After returning to the the other locked door and discovering it also led to the same chamber, they devised a plan to take care of the horde of enemies. As they piled around the door and prepared for the fight, Kathra entered and immediately conjured a wall of flame around the altar. The flames engulfed the goblinoids, slaying them all instantly.
The party attempted to scout out the next chamber in a similar fashion, but Keladrien's familiar was slain instantly as he entered the room. Behind the door waited a host of goblinoid leaders, no doubt having been alerted by the agonized screams of their minions in the shrine chamber. The group prepared for the battle and had the zombie open the door again. Awaiting them stood a massive, horned and spiked orc of some demonic origin as well as several goblinoid leaders (a hobgoblin warlord, orc war chief, orc cleric and a hobgoblin mage). The Tanarruk proved a mighty and extremely aggressive foe, slashing at them with a greatsword and biting the throat out of the zombie. Meanwhile, the hobgoblin warlord and orc war chief entered the fray as the hobgoblin mage and orc cleric used their magic to aid their fellows and assault the party. Pan unleashed a flurry of blades at the Tanarruk, while Keladrien fired bolts of flame and rained arrows from his skeletons. Yelmic managed to break the ranks of the enemy and slay the orc cleric, while Nalzmyr shrouded himself in the shadows of moil and made a difficult target for the orc war chief. Baen stayed behind, hounding the enemy with missiles from afar. A fireball from the hobgoblin mage brought Pan down and badly wounded the rest of the group, and Kathra used her clerical powers to heal them all and bring Pan back into the fray. Before the mage could throw another spell at them, the other goblinoid leaders had been slain and the group bared down on him. Yelmic called upon his draconic ancestry to spew forth acid at him, and Pan rushed in and slew the mage with two swipes of his scimitars.
With the goblinoid leaders dead, the group searched the room and found a chamber 15 feet down with steps and a path leading to a door. All around the path and along the walls and ceiling were extremely sharp stone shards. Keladrien sent his skeleton down the path, and it was ripped to shreds as the shards animated into a cloud of razors. After some deliberation, they chose to send Yelmic down to try to open the door at the end of the path. He was quick enough to reach the door and open it before the shards animated. Inside, he found the temple's coffers containing the treasures of the ancient temple as well as more recent acquisitions by the goblinoid cult. They collected the loot and placed it in their bag of holding, and finally left the temple. Outside, they recovered their horses and Keladrien prepared a tiny hut spell for them to use to rest for the rest of the day and night. In the morning, they returned to Everlund with their plunder.