Phylund Hunting Lodge

The Phylund Hunting Lodge is an abandoned structure along the western edges of the Ardeep Forest.

History
Only a noble would describe Phylund Lodge as a hunting lodge. For generations, members of the Phylund noble family of Waterdeep came to the Ardeep Forest to hunt and trap beasts of the woods, using a small hunting lodge as their base. They’d invite noble friends or those with whom they would make alliances, treating them to a tenday or more of leisure. As the family’s fortunes improved and the popularity of their hunts increased, the lodge was replaced with ever more elaborate structures. It became the primary residence of the heads of the Phylund family, who used it as a center for their beast-training trade and hunt guide businesses. Thus the lodge was equipped with stables, gardens, guest rooms, wine cellars, and even underground cells for the more dangerous creatures the Phylunds captured. The fortunes of the family eventually fell after a series of deadly “accidents” at the lodge, culminating in the bloody revelation that Lord Urtos Phylund II was afflicted with lycanthropy. To help put that period behind the family, the Phylunds departed the lodge to live in Waterdeep. They left servants to protect the lodge from looting, fully intending to return to their family seat when fortunes improved. They did not. When salary payments became delayed and finally ceased, the servants departed, leaving nature to take over their watch.

Interactions
When Daardendrien Brightscale, Greger Hausmeister, Llelmar Nightstar, Psylocke, Rogan McDonnel and Shadow Knot went to Phylund Lodge, they saw a score of gnolls guarding the area. After wiping them out, the team decided to investigate further into the lodge, eventually encountering a a smallish, young woman of delicate features, with a shaved head that is tattooed with the Thayan symbol for the school of necromancy whom the party identified as a Red Wizard. The Red Wizard warned the adventurers away from the area to which the party complied for the day.

The next day, Daardendrien Brightscale, Llelmar Nightstar, Psylocke, Rogan McDonnel and Shadow Knot returned to Phylund Lodge to take on the Red Wizard, to possibly learn about their missing party member Ailyn Gardenia as well as stop whatever plans this Red Wizard had.

They plunged into the catacombs again, this time through a cave that Shadow found that the party swam through to emerge in, where they met a gnoll accompanied by two hell hyenas, which exhibited an equally fiendish nature as the Pale Chief in Harpshield Castle. After slaying that fiendish group, the party then delved deeper, uncovering opened tombs and sarcophagi containing the bones of the Phylund family. (The sarcophagus containing the bones of Lord Urtos Phylund II was shattered apart from within.) As they went further into the catacombs, the party eventually found themselves facing the Red Wizard again, this time accompanied by four others like her with a depressed pit filled with bones of various shapes, sizes and types between them.

An epic battle ensued as the Red Wizard commanded her four compatriots further into the room to "start the ritual now," as she tried to hold the adventurers back. After slashing herself with a dagger, she raised a huge monster of made out of bones and writhing skeletons that resembled the shape of a drake but with three pairs of legs instead.

With Llelmar, Shadow and Psylocke working together to defeat the Red Wizard while Rogan and Brightscale fought the bone monstrosity among the sea of bones, the party ultimately prevailed in those efforts, but found themselves too late to stop the ritual that the four other Red Wizards were able to succeed.

A man in heavily spiked ebony armor and a Greataxe that were spiked along both haft and blade who when removed his own helmet, revealed a pale human face with a slicked back shoulder length hair of dark crimson and promptly slew one of the very ritualist. When Psylocke decided to test the foe, she was met with two swift strikes that knocked her unconscious before throwing her out of the ritual chamber into the sea of bones with her friends and yelling: "Tell Darrondar, I'm back."

A few seconds and shrieks from the chamber later, the whole area started to shake and crumble with bones and dust starting to come loose. Brightscale parted the bone sea with both Psylocke and Shadow determining the shortest path out as Llelmar helped Rogan struggle out of the area due to injuries sustained from the bone monstrosity; but as they saw light coming from the top of the spiraling stairwell, chunks of the stone foundation above shattered and fell, causing darkness to encroach upon everyone.