Three of our heroes,Chance, Kraygin, and Sredni Vashtar, arrive in Winterhaven around dusk and, after showing their Warden badges, are allowed to pass through the guarded gates. They stable their horses and cart and take their kobold prisoner to the Warriors' Guild, where they meet up with Captain Rodn Kelfem, an ex-soldier responsible for training and commanding the Winterhaven Regulars, the town's only line of defenceagainstthe current plague of banditry. Kelfem is guarded at first but warms up quickly, and agrees to store their prisoner for them while they investigate the bandits and meet up with Ragash.
Once their prisoner is stored, the three Wardens head toward Wrafton's Inn, where Douven Staul and Ragash are staying and where they are supposed to meet Ragash. They speak to the owner, SalvanaWrafton, as well as an old man by the name of Eilian, and find out that Ragash is upstairs in his room. Kraygin decides to go up and see his cousin, while Sredni and Chance stay in the common room in order to question Salvana further and find out more about the bandits and about Douven.
Kraygin knocks on Ragash's door and finds no answer. He knocks again, and again there is no answer. Cautiously, he tries the doorknob and finds the door unlocked. He then checks Douven's door, thinking Ragash might be in there, but finds it locked and apparently empty when he knocks there. Steeling himself, he enters Ragash's room to find it darkened. He grabs a candle from the wall and proceeds further into the darkened room and finds disarray and signs of a struggle. As he proceeds further, he spots a heap in the corner; when he investigates it he sees that it is the lifeless form of his cousin, Ragash, apparently murdered. He quickly searches the body for the room key, finds it,leaves and locks the door behind him. Then he goes back downstairs and tells Sredni and Chance what he has learned.
The three decide that Sredni and Kraygin will go upstairs and conduct an investigation while Chance stays down in the common room and prevents any of the inn's occupants (Eilian, Salvana, a man reading a book, and two female elves with longbows, sitting at separate tables) from leaving. As they proceed to the stairs, one of the elves stands and approaches them,introducing herself as Shava, a Warden assigned to help them with their assignment in Winterhaven. After determining that she is, in fact, a Warden, Sredni and Kraygin bring Shava with them upstairs where they check all of the rooms on the second floor (using a master key given to them by Salvana), leaving Douven's and Ragash's for last. All of the rooms are empty. Douven's room has a few personal effects in it, but does not show any other signs of recent occupancy.
Ragash's room,now lit, is a scene of carnage. There is blood all over the floor,with two sets of footprints trailing through the pool. One is clearly Ragash's, but the other is strange; they start out as dragonborn footprints, but gradually become more like human footprints as they proceed toward the window. Clearly, whoever killed Ragash has the ability to change shape. Further, the wounds on Ragash's body indicate that the killer is an experienced assassin; the wounds are placed inexactly the right places to cause the most bleeding in the shortest amount of time. More troubling still is the murder weapon, a curved dagger found under Ragash's body. The dagger has runes etched into its blade; Sredni recognises them as runes consecrating the blade to Orcus,demon prince of the undead.
The heroes went downstairs to the common room to find the other female elf arguing with Chance, clearly wanting to leave. They approach her and find out that her name is Ninaran, and that she is a hunter who lives outside the town and comes in only to sell pelts and meat and to get a drink from time to time. She is unfriendly and combative, but the heroes eventually let her go, deciding that she is probably not the murderer. Sredni talks to the man reading the book, who turns out to be Valthrun the Prescient, a sage and minor wizard who lives in a tower within the town. Sredni asks Valthrun about the dagger, and Valthrun confirms that it is a sacrificial dagger consecrated to Orcus, typically used to carve out the heart as an offering to the demon prince. He also says that he may have more information in his books; Sredni allows Valthrun to borrow the dagger in order to research it. The heroes also find out from Valthrun that, if someone were to try to buy a dagger like it within the town, the place to find such a thing would be Bairwin's Grand Shoppe.
The heroes decide to split up; Chance and Kraygin go to Bairwin's Grand Shoppe to question the shopkeeper about the dagger, while Sredni and Shava go to the Warriors' Guild to gather some assistance. They theorise that the murderer is probably still in the town, because the sole exit to the town has been locked for the past several hours, so they ask the Winterhaven Regulars to assist them in going door to door, looking for anyone out of place.
While Sredni and Shava are gathering help, Chance and Kraygin awake a very grumpy shopkeeper who grudgingly lets them into his shop. They insist upon searching the place (for his protection), which he agrees to. They find nothing, with the exception of a locked door that leads to the back room. Bairwin gets the key to the back room and opens in; inside they see various goods, as well as a padlocked trapdoor. When asked about it, Bairwin says that it is an old cellar that he never uses, and that it's infested with rats. The heroes, undeterred, insist upon checking it out. Bairwin cautions them to stand back a bit (no telling what could be in there), and unlocks the door. As he does so, both heroes are assaulted by a wave of necrotic energy, which pushes them back and blinds them. When their sight returns, they find the back room door closed and barred from the other side, and Bairwin nowhere in sight. Kraygin runs out to call for help while Chance uses his warhammer to batter the door down; Sredni and Shava come running (Shava's exceptional hearing allowing her to hear Kraygin's calls easily), along with RondKelfem, and when the four reenter the shop, the back room door is nothing but tinders.
The four heroes and their ally open the trapdoor to find a set of spiral stairs leading down to a torch-lit area; they descend the stairs and discover what appears to be an underground shrine, complete with pews, an alter, and five angry cultists brandishing sacrificial blades. Behind the alter is Bairwin, clad in full cult regalia, and in front of a burning brazier is a female doppelganger with a short sword. A battle ensues and the heroes fight well as a cohesive team. Kraygin kills off all of the cultists quickly with a combination of his fiery breath and his flashing halberd, while Chance charges Bairwin. Sredni and RondKelfem attack the doppelganger, while Shava fires an arrow at her. A few moments later a door to Chance's left opens, and a shambling corpse bursts through, attacking him.
Bairwin proves to be the least troublesome, blinding a few of the heroes but causing very little damage. The zombie gives Chance quite a lot of trouble, saddling him with ongoing necrotic damage more than once and turning out to be able to sustain quite a bit of damage, itself. The doppelganger dances between Sredni, Shava, and Kraygin, dealing painful blows to each, and also kills RondKelfem outright. Chance eventually batters the zombie to death (with some assistance and healing from Sredni), while Kraygin pins Bairwin down and makes short work of him. The battle is over quickly, and as the dust settles the party realises that there seems to be more going on in Winterhaven than some simple banditry.