We stopped the previous session with the Favorites of Selune having stormed a keep to kill an orc chieftain, but then afraid to actually charge into the room with the orcs. So this session started with them on the landing of the stairs between the floors of the keep, considering what to do. The wizardess heard the chieftain upstairs giving commands and planning an attack, and wanted to run away. The sorceress wanted to lure the orcs into an ambush. Without really having decided on a plan the group thus went back downstairs to the floor below, where they had fought the previous combat. And found that the orc shaman had wind-walked back down through the hole in the ceiling, accompanied by two orcs rappelling down a rope. Clearly the plan of the orcs was to attack the group from all sides.

The heroes thus started combat in earnest, concentrating fire on the orc shaman. The orc shaman tried to flee towards the main door, removing the bar the players had put there earlier, and starting to move away the barricade they had erected to block that door. He also shouted out to "Bruse" and "Spike" on the other side of the door to help him open the door. But with the adventurers being strong on ranged combat, the shaman died before he got the door open.

Meanwhile the dwarven warrior heroically defended the door against the orcs coming down from above, while the rogue was less successful trying to stop the two orcs that had rappelled into the room from charging the others. As an additional complication it turned out that in this fight it wasn't the group who benefited from the magical effects of the cards of the Deck of Many Things. The orc chieftain Bakrosh, who had two cards for a while, apparently had better control over the cards than the adventurers did, and used one of those cards to create an aura that made moving around him difficult for his enemies.

But as it turned out, the orcs weren't actually all that strong. One after the other they died quickly, including Khavra, the chieftain's female companion. When the main door finally was battered down from the outside, Bruse and Spike turned out to be an ettin, a two-headed giant. But seeing how the orcs were already losing the fight at that point, the two heads discussed whether to join the fight and then decided not to, and the ettin left. Before any reinforcements could arrive, the heroes had killed the orc chieftain, and put his head on a spike outside the gate.

They did find some interesting treasure: Gold, two cards of the Deck of Many Things, and two stones the size of a hand with the dwarven rune for "speak" on it. They didn't try those out yet, but they guessed that they could be used to talk at a distance. So they grabbed the loot and went back to the camp of the eladrin, because the sorceress hadn't met Berrian the eladrin leader yet.

The background story of the sorceress was that she had sensed something from the Far Realm entering this world, but the other characters in the group hadn't told her that it had been them who had let that beholder loose onto this plane. So the sorceress asked Berrian if he had seen anything, and as Berrian had his scouts watch the watchtower while the players had explored it, he was in fact aware of the beholder having left the tower and having headed north. Berrian was worried about this contact between the planes, and suggested the group check out the wizard's tower in the village of Gardmore Abbey, where they might find documents to tell them more. The group then rested with Lord Padraig's mercenaries at the watchtower, and observed from there that the orcs were leaving Gardmore Abbey. This not only was what Lord Padraig wanted, but also cleared the way into the village to the wizard's tower. With that as a possible next destination, we ended the session.