Back into the caves....

I'm concerned. Lately, I've been catching glimpses of odd shadows that seem to follow me from the caves. Elvis and Christopher told me that they've noticed them too. It's becoming worse and often times I can hear whispers telling me that I must become the "shepherd of souls". Is it my mother nagging me from the afterlife or could it be something less concerning?

Anyway, back at camp we rested a bit and took care of some business over the next few days (partying mostly). Claus mentioned that he can spare no more men for us to take in the caves, so we decided to approach Lord Alexey Romanov to see if he's able to spare some of his workers. Upon approaching his manor, the gate was closed and the place was oddly quiet. We spoke to Alexey's servant (?) and he told us Alexey was not available. We asked if he had any men who we could hire to help us explore the caves, but were told that the labourers are gone now since the construction was finished. So we left empty handed, but curious as to Lord Alexey's whereabouts.

Next, we spoke with the monks about an interesting sceptre we obtained from the corpse of that large minotaur. They claimed that it originally belonged to the last good king of the Thracians, King Agamemnon (who ruled about a century ago). The librarian in the monastery mentioned that the king also owned a mystical sword he used to do away with the evil necromancers. This item was forged by the Purple Giant (which is the planet the monks worship). Maybe we'll be lucky enough to locate this artifact.

While running errands in town, some of the residents implored us to find out who or what was behind the kidnappings in Ilyria. We mentioned that we could use some muscle in the caves and one man, Nicolas, was willing to come with us. His brother was kidnapped and he wants to know what happened to him.

Once we were back in the caves, some of the denizens seemed to be ready for us. A group of them ambushed us with fire bombs, but luckily we took no major damage so we retreated to a safer area. Moving quickly, we eventually made it to the room where we killed the minotaur, but unfortunately there was no trace of our dead comrades. After searching the area, we located a secret passage to a roughly cut tunnel system where inside was a room with around 20 hyena-men. However there was no hyena TID-DEH!! We were able to avoid them and continue on. The next room was disturbing. In it we discovered many corpses spiked to the ground. The most disturbing part was that these creatures (some human, others abominations of hyena-men and goat-men) were still slowly writhing around. Not dead, yet somehow not alive either. Possibly the Death's Head is nearby. We must continue to investigate these tunnels and find that item.....

The party vs. some GOAT-men