Pompous Maximus, terror of goblins, caught up to his friends in the undercity of Nightside to tell them there was a complication on the raids he had been conducting against Silverside. Willem, one of their rivals, showed up with his entire army to convince Silverside that it’s best chance of survival was to come under his protection and pay tribute. Considering what the Kompanions of Kalador generally do to their vanquished foes (sacrifice them to the dark gods of Chaos) the ruling families of Silverside agreed.

The Kompanions quickly returned to the abandoned wizard school to finish off the grell, and clear out the treasure it was guarding. They packed up their haul and returned to the surface. Having traveled back to Vanessa’s Lament within their burgeoning realm of Kaladonia, they learned that Akbar’s tower of wizardry had been burglarized a two of his apprentices murdered by the burglars. The Kompanions determined that the previously assassinated wizard Pim the Exploder had been cloned and Zoran the Vivimancer had revived him. The revivified clone had broken into the tower, recovered his stolen spell books and escaped only two days ago. The Kompanions quickly took to the sky on their roc and began the search for Pim.

It took four days but the party caught up with him. Pim had hired a speedy merchant vessel to take him down the river Silver and to the lake side town of Whitemist. The Kompanions launched a clever plan which was partly successful. Rexor and Stilgar would fly with the sun behind them to board the vessel while the roc flew overhead dropping a boulder in an attempt to damage the ship. Hopefully the sailors and Pim would be so focused on the roc and its rock, they would not notice the large four armed flying bug man carrying a vagrant monk. This was partly true. Unaware of the impending danger from Rexor and Stilgar, Pim cast invisibility and fly on himself to engage the roc with a lightening bolt. Stilgar quickly took control over the ship and Rexor flew up to assist Pompous and the roc in defeating Pim. Pim took some damage but managed to get off a fireball, forcing Pompous to retreat. Rexor arrived and damaged Pim enough that the wizard decided a teleport spell was his last hope and managed to get away. The party was able to recapture Pim’s spell book left on the ship. Taking no chances, they destroyed it. Though Pim lives, he will be handicapped until he can reacquire the materials to memorize spells once again.

A few days after returning to their keep, the Kompanions received a messenger from Lord Willem. Willem is starting to be a real problem for the party. They had beat him to killing the dragon Williglim and looting her lair but he’s been growing and consolidating his power over the last year or so. He managed to take over Hogwater last campaign season, killing one of the Kompanions patrons in the process. Willem had also negotiated the take over of the trading village of Smudge from the dwarves. The dwarves didn’t really want to manage it anyway. They only had it because the previous ruler had become a problem for them. It was a good deal for both the dwarves and Willem. Willem also managed to replace Pim with a wizard from Hablok, a powerful sorceress named Lavinia. The Kompanions had done some business with her during their brief sojourne in Hablok and so her ability is somewhat known to them. Willem’s move on Silverside puts him in direct economic competition for the Kompanions as it bypasses the bridge they had built over the Silver River.

The messenger invited the Kompanions to have a sit down meeting with Willem at Woodhurst, a somewhat neutral village controlled by the local Great Druid. The party responded, “Sure… We’ll have a nice talk with Willem,” and then immediately started plotting to kill him. We’ll see what happens next time. It’ll probably involve a lot of fire.