Siegfried quietly pocketed the Neverwintan royal charter as the moans of the undead outside the ruined cottage grew louder. He scooped up a handful of ash and cast protection from evil on himself as he followed Varien out the front entrance of the derelict structure.   Varien used his divine sense to reach out through the haze around him and detected a large number of ghasts and zombies within range, including a large concentration to the southwest. He shouted a warning to Alec and put up his sword as he heard the crackling sound of another ash ghast breaking loose from its petrified covering.   Alec drew his borrowed moontouched longsword as the first, and then the second, and then the third zombie stumbled into the aura of moonlight cast by the enchanted weapon. He stood in the gap between the two ruined cottages and slashed violently at the approaching undead. He could hear the unhinged cackles of at least two ghasts echoing through the fog before him.   Erwen scooped the last of his purloined coins into his satchel and began to creep along the wall of his refuge, taking care not to alert the horde of zombies, who were stumbling against the loose planks and threatening to knock the weak wall right down on top of him.   Radegast stepped to the western wall of the cottage and peered through the broken clapboard slats at the approaching group of shambling creatures. She cast shatter on a point within their midst.   There was a thunderclap that bowled over the mob of zombies and ghasts.   Radegast charged her lightning bow and moved back towards Varien and Siegfried.   Siegfried narrowed his eyes as he took in the shape of a scampering ghast that loped towards the group. “Raw meat! Fresh flesh!” it hissed as it rushed towards him, claws outstretched. He sent two eldritch blasts into the creature’s midsection, shattering its ribs and peeling away chunks of seared, rotting flesh from its bones. “Take care not to breathe too deeply,” he snarked at the writhing creature.   Erwen exited the ruined house and peered round the corner. In the wan light cast by Alec’s sword he could see a large group of ghasts and zombies righting themselves after the shatter spell sent them sprawling. He saw no reason why they should be in such a hurry and cast erupting earth .   The dead ground beneath the undead horde began to churn as slabs of primeval rock, clods of turned soil, and a semiliquid slurry of stirred ash were thrust upwards, pinning, crushing, and otherwise snaring most of the creatures.   Erwen’s sharp eyes caught a flicker of movement in the branches of a long-dead tree, its bark shorn off by scalding ash nearly half a century ago. It was a small grey squirrel, the first living creature he had seen on this side of the magical hedge barrier. The tiny animal twitched its nose and scurried away from the mayhem unfolding before him.   Erwen’s sharp eyes narrowed. He wildshaped into the form of a giant eagle and swooped after the fleeing rodent.   The slow-moving zombies pulled themselves free of the rubble and attacked Alec, who dodged their blows.   On the other side of the ruined houses, the first zombies lumbered into close range and tried to slam their fists down on Varien. He parried their attacks with deft thrusts of his shield. Suddenly the zombies were thrown aside by their more agile brethren – two ghasts, their jaws open in a sick parody of a human smile, tongues lolling as they clawed the paladin.   Inside the second ruin, Bob moved to the western wall and shouted at Alec. “Brother, move!” Alec obliged by pulling himself through the wrecked window frame. Satisfied that his brother was out of the line of fire, Bob drew on the power of Sune and cast a spell that was normally a little out of his reach – flame strike.   His deity proved faithful as a pillar of fire descended from the heavens, illuminating a vast dome within the ash cloud that blanketed Thundertree. He turned the crowd of zombies and ghasts into walking torches for a split second, causing several of them to burst apart like burnt logs at the base of a roaring campfire.   “Beauty,” whispered Alec as the firelight glinted in his eyes.   There was a banging sound to the south. The Trevelyan brothers spun about to see a ravenous ghast trying to force its way through the tattered wall of the cottage, jaws slavering.   “I can see you…” the creature hissed. “I can smell you!”   Alec took the measure of the ruined cottage’s wall and rushed forward, breaking through the wooden slats and hurling himself at the remaining enemies. He slashed with his sword, but his shouts of triumph turned to shouts of pain as the ghasts descended on him from their hiding places.   “There was a ghast right here for you to deal with, and you just up and run outside instead?” Bob asked, incredulous. “We have got to work on your impulse control, my brother!”   Erwen-Eagle kept his sharp eyes on the scurrying squirrel as he flew through the ash cloud above Thundertree. It was no easy trick, considering how the squirrel’s pelt blended in nearly perfectly with the piles of ash that had settled in drifts amid the dead trees and broken building blocks.   Erwen-Eagle tucked in his wings and dove at the squirrel, his talons ready to seize the tiny animal.   No joy – the squirrel bounded towards a building and disappeared through a small hole at the base of the foundation.   Erwen-Eagle let out a scream of disgust as he wheeled about. He took a second look at the building the squirrel had wriggled into and his eyes narrowed. The house, though smallish, appeared to be in better condition than the ruined and dilapidated structures nearby. Its doors were reinforced with heavy iron bands, and thick shutters protected the windows. Erwen-Eagle’s gaze was drawn towards the house’s flat mansard-style roof, where panels of glass had been fitted in two rows that evoked the look of a greenhouse. A ladder lay on the flat roof next to the glass structure. Erwen-Eagle landed, his claws finding purchase on the shingles. He dropped out of wildshape and pressed his face up against the glass. Condensation obscured his vision, but he could make out both light sources and movement in the room below. Siegfried deftly slashed at the approaching ghast with his axe, severing its head from its neck and sending a geyser of black blood shooting skyward. He heard the sounds of Alec being overrun by the horde of undead and turned to dash towards his comrade, towards who, in spite of himself, he felt a bit of responsibility. “Must be the sword I’m turning back for,” he thought to himself. “A useful tool, yes.” He ignored the painful parting slash of a ghast’s claws as he bolted for the Trevelyans and once Alec was in view, cast healing word .   Erwen rubbed the glass with his sleeve and took another look. He could make out a large worktable covered with a bubbling alchemical apparatus, and a pair of creatures moving along rows of what looked like potted beds of greenery running the length of the building in the middle of the room. The foliage was supported by a network of copper pipes through which water, and other, strange-coloured liquids, dripped onto the fronds and into the roots of the plants. The two creatures looked like awakened plants of some variety – one was a bundle of buds and stems that strolled languorously, while the other’s body took the form of a voluptuous female humanoid, but whose head looked like a Venus Flytrap. Erwen blinked at that. The grey squirrel was there too, running in a short, agitated figure eight, chittering excitedly at the two plant creatures. One of the glass panels was hinged, held in place by a simple hook-and-eye latch, which Erwen carefully flipped open and pried apart until he could wriggle through. He dropped down and landed on the floor of the greenhouse lab. The grey squirrel’s agitated chittering went up an octave as it scampered about. The walking Venus Flytrap hissed at Erwen, its fringed mouthflaps peeling open as it stretched out its vine-like arm to entangle the druid. As the vines constricted around him, pulling him towards its gaping maw, Erwen wriggled a hand free and using his druidcraft sprouted a peace lily. There was a grey blur as the squirrel wildshaped into the form of a thin, grizzled old man, his eyebrows each as bushy as the grey squirrel he had been masquerading as only moments before. “Stay your hand, Petunia,” he rasped. The flytrap’s vines slithered away. Erwen looked up at the druid who stood before him. “Dad?” he asked, his eyes as big as saucers as the Halfling handed him the lily. The elder druid picked acorn shells from his beard. “I find that prospect unlikely, little one,” he said. He handed the lily to the Flytrap and put his hands on his hips, giving Erwen an appraising glance. “Now, it is customary for a guest to properly announce his presence around these parts, especially when dropping in unannounced!” He pointed a finger upwards to the open roof panel. There was an unsettling stretching sound as Petunia’s vine-like arm reached up to close the hatch. The druid folded his arms. “Now then, Lightfoot Halfling, who are you and where did you come from?” Erwen took a deep breath and began to tell the druid everything, starting with how trolls had murdered his family in the Lluirwood Forest when he was just a boy.   Varien and Radegast stood back to back as the shambling zombies began to encircle them. Varien landed a divine smite on an attacking ghast, knocking it back in a flurry of ill-aimed claws. Alec continued to curse and shout as his undead opponents wore down his defences. A snarling ghast knocked his parrying blade aside and sank his broken teeth deep into the fighter’s neck. Alec’s eyes rolled back into his head and he stumbled back. “No!” Bob shouted through the slats. There was a splintering sound and suddenly the ghast was on him, biting and clawing. “First I’m going to bleed you,” the ghast cackled, “and then I’m going to roast you until you’re well done!” “The hell you are, foul creature!” Bob unlimbered his mace Lightbringer and spoke the command word that caused it to glow as bright as a torch. The ghast shrank back, hissing and covering its eyes. “Back, abomination! The power of Sune compels you!” He swung the mace clumsily, and the fleet-footed ghast ducked easily. Bob spat out a curse, fired off a quickened spell and followed it up with a healing word on his brother. Siegfried’s voice was suddenly at his ear. “No, no, that won’t do, Robert. Your grip on that mace is too tight. You must keep your fingers loose, you see. Like this.” Siegfried surged past Bob and hacked at the ghast with his axe, adding a flourish that knocked the creature back through the hole it had made in the south wall. Siegfried turned, smiling. “You see? Nothing a few tutorials won’t fix.”   Erwen nursed a mug of hot tea as he sat on the druid’s work stool, Petunia’s leaf-like appendages massaging his back as he continued the story of how he had been taken in by a pack of wolves as a small child and over the years had made his way from the Lluirwood to the Sword Coast. “So anyway, here I am,” he concluded. The druid’s bushy eyebrows twitched. “And what’s your name?” Erwen prompted. “Ah yes, I didn’t have the opportunity to introduce myself since you decided to spin your tale into such a rich tapestry,” the druid replied. “I’m called Reidoth.” “Rudolph?” Erwen asked. Reidoth frowned. “Reidoth,” he repeated. Then he shook his head. “You must slow down, boy! Don’t you see the trouble you have caused me this day?” He waved a robed arm in a northwesterly direction. “First you ignored the sign, and then you riled up the locals! It won’t do, you see!” Erwen slurped a long slurp of his tea and decided there was a little something extra in the brew. “But you’re here!” he said. Reidoth harrumphed. “Well, that’s different. I walk the road between Phandalin and Thundertree, and fancy myself a bit of a caretaker of this mouldering old ruin and her secrets,” he said. “There is an abundance of strangeness in the plant life in these parts, if you haven’t already noticed.” “You’re from Phandalin?” Erwen blurted. “I’ve been to Phandalin, many times in fact and I think-” “Whoa, slow down,” the smaller of the two plant-like creatures wheezed, a puff of pipeweed-smelling smoke emitting from his mouth. “Like, you’re talking a mile a minute, man!” “And who are you?” Erwen asked excitedly, suddenly in the mood for making new friends. “The name’s Bud, man,” the plant creature says. “I tend the master’s, uh, special crops.” “Bud? That’s great!” Erwen said. He fished around inside his cloak and came up with Stemly. “I’d like you to meet Stemly.” “Whoa, a potted plant?” Bud puffed as a sticky string of resin dripped from the side of his mouth to pool on the wooden floor. “That’s like, my two favourite things, man.” “Hi there, Bud!” Stemly chirped, waving his leaves. “Fascinating,” Reidoth said, bending down to look at Stemly, who was positively blossoming in the warm environs of the greenhouse. “Where did you find this little specimen?” “Oh, he was on a windowsill in an inn at Helm’s Hold,” Erwen said. “I needed to solve a crime, and Stemly here was the only witness, so I did my druid thing on him, only it’s like the spell never wore off.” “Helm’s Hold, you say?” Reidoth frowned. "Those zealots ignore my sign too, at their peril I’m afraid.” “Yeah, well,” Erwen shrugged, and then remembered what he was supposed to be talking about. “Wait, about Phandalin. Qelline Alderleaf was the one who mentioned your name to me in the first place.” “Ah yes, Qelline,” Reidoth said, a wistful expression on his face. “And how is young Carp?” “You know Qelline?” Erwen asked, suddenly very uncomfortable. “And Carp?” Reidoth smiled wryly. “Oh yes, I know Qelline quite well. Quite well indeed.” Erwen wasn’t sure what to do with that. Then current events caused him to shake his head. “Wait, wait. What about my friends? You were sitting there on that branch watching us?” “Well, yes,” Reidoth said. “I am the Watcher of the Woods, you know. Sort of goes with the territory. I find that I have a talent for avoiding the clumsy creatures when in the form of my favourite woodland creature.” His busy brows twitched. “Hold on, what about those undead out there?” Erwen said. “Are they with you?” Reidoth drew himself up to his full height, insulted. “Stuff and nonsense! Those foul abominations are not ‘with me’ in any sense of the word, young one. I am a researcher, a scientist, and I find the isolation that this blighted village affords me to be quite stimulating as I carry out my work!” He indicated the lab equipment on the table behind him. Erwen frowned. He thought the elder druid was protesting a bit too much, and wasn’t telling him the whole story. “Well, then you won’t mind helping my friends out of their trouble, and then we can talk further about the secrets of this village,” Erwen said. Reidoth shrugged. “Well, I guess I have no reason to deny your request.” “So,” Erwen said. “Do you have a favourite wildshape? I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.” “All right,” Reidoth took the mug from the halfling’s hands. “I think you’ve had quite enough of that tonic.” He turned to Petunia. “Petunia dear, show our new friend Erwen out.” Petunia picked up the Halfling and pushed him up through the glass panel in the ceiling. Reidoth wildshaped into his squirrel form and darted through a small, neat hole in the floorboard. “All right,” Bud said to Stemly, placing him in a bed of leafy, herbaceous flowers. “Let ol’ Bud hook you up with the good stuff.”   Varien waded into the horde of remaining zombies and ghasts as Alec tried in vain to keep the creatures off him. He slashed through one creature’s torse, severing it from the rest of its body. “You see that?” Siegfried said to Bob. “That’s exactly the sort of thing you need to be doing.” Bob ground his teeth. Varien moved to another creature, stabbing it through and following up with a shield bash that sent the ghoul sprawling, its brains splattering on the ground. A ghast clawed its way out of the knee-deep pile of undead corpses, smoke pouring from mortal wounds, and savaged Varien with his claws and teeth. “The hell with this,” Bob said, hefting Lightbringer. “Time to tenderize this barbecue.” He grasped the mace with both hands and swung it overhead, connecting with the immolating ghast and shattering its skull. “Excellent work, Bob!” Siegfried said, clapping politely. “We shall make you a man of martial standing yet!” The moans of more approaching undead caught their attention. The weary warriors turned to face the new threat. The uneven line of zombies exploded into a fine pink mist as a pair of Giant Elks rampaged out of the ash cloud, trampling, goring, and stomping the life from the living dead to stand proudly before them. One of the elks was coloured a mottled grey, its snout noticeably red, while the other’s fur was patterned after Erwen’s bearskin cloak. “That’s a bit much, really,” Siegfried sniffed. Erwen-Elk nodded at the adventurers and with a jerk of his antlered head, bade them follow. The Giant Elks turned majestically and stalked back into the gloom. The adventurers walked over a trail of trampled corpses all the way back to the Druid’s Watch.