The company defies an armed attempt to seize their riverboat, scouts the ominous heights of Castle Wittgenstein, and ultimately returns with food and caution into the haunted woods, where signs of hidden camps and darker forces suggest the true danger lies beyond the village itself.
In plague-stricken Wittgendorf, the party uncovers signs of ancient corruption, desperate cannibalism, and carefully tended lies, realizing that beneath the village’s suffering lies a long-buried secret still shaping its fate.
Arriving in plague-stricken Wittgendorf, the party confronts starving villagers and evasive masked guards, uncovers a burned-out Sigmarite temple, and begins to suspect that the castle’s nobles—and their forbidden knowledge—are the true source of the village’s slow, deliberate ruin.
The party uncovers the hidden lower sanctum of the signal tower, deciphers Dagmar von Wittgenstein’s heretical legacy, and resolves to confront the warpstone-corrupted horrors awaiting them in the forsaken village and looming castle of Wittgendorf.
The party purges the tower’s undead guardians, uncovers century-old maps and notes mirroring Etelka’s designs, and finally reaches a ritual chamber at the tower’s heart—where the true purpose of this place now looms before them.
The company returns to the accursed tower, uncovering a hidden lower door that leads them into a death-tainted crypt where the restless dead stir—and the first true horrors of the place finally reveal themselves.
The fellowship investigates a cursed signal tower where vanished dwarves and a spectral presence hint at dark magic tied to Etelka Herzen’s death.
The uneasy fellowship in Kemperbad resolves suspicion with steel, assassinating Etelka Herzen in her inn chamber and staging the scene as murder-suicide, yet leaving with heavier doubts than proof.
Learning that Etelka Herzen has returned to Kemperbad, the party tracks her group to the Golden Bull Inn, identifies their rooms, and prepares to strike once she leaves the city’s safety
The party’s hunt for the sorceress Etelka Herzen leads them into a dangerous game of cat and mouse through Kemperbad’s taverns, where serpent-eyed conspirators mistake them for someone else while their true quarry slips further toward the cursed Barren Hills.