Crossroads

While looking through the SW gateway the party discussed what to do next.  Try and attract the ghouls to move through the gateway and pick them off as they came through.  Charge through and try for surprise, go back and try and find another route through gateways yet unexplored.  Finally the group decided to move through the gateway two or so at a time, spreading out on the far side to try and surprise the ghouls.  As usual Demin moved in first followed by Gofin, Pretis, Mara and Lythandar.  Bringing up the rear were Alhellara and Melisana.  The party got a first attack on a couple of the ghouls but one noticed them right away and moved forward to attack.

Twisted

The group took a short rest and did some checking of the area.  They found bodies with skeletal hand and eye tattoos and also bodies with grinning skull paraphernalia.  They recalled that Iuz used the grinning skull symbol.  Looking around Lythandar found three items that indicated arcane magic.  The items turned out to be a Stormwalkers Cloak +3, a Reliable Staff +3 and Defender's Scale Mail +3.  Discussion ensued and Melisana took the Staff, Pretis the Scale Mail and the Battle Standard from the previous encounters, and Demin took the Cloak while giving his Cloak of Protection +3 to Gofin.  Just as the party started to examine the arches in this realm a group of Centaurs came out of the tents and approached the group.

Checkpoint

The hearty adventurers looked around the circle of arches.  Inside the arches more bodies, with the skeletal hand with eyeball tattoo, were found.  The inner circle was about 90' across surrounded by 16 archways standing 40' high.  Melisana decided to circle the outside of the archways looking through each to determine if there was a pattern.  Alhellara stood in the center of the inner circle monitoring the archways to see if anything moved, came through an arch, etc.