Kheldell

Kheldell is a small farming village located South of Phandalin. It is the hometown of Donnus Atesso and is where our campaign begins

Description
Kheldell is a very small hamlet with only a few houses situated in a circle around the center of the town surrounded by scattered fields. It has one small blacksmith shop for fixing and making farming gear such as hoes, plows, horseshoes and the like. Their is a small tavern as well where the village folk would gather at the end of a hard day's work. Other than these two buildings, there are no other shops. The farmers grew their own food, made their own clothes and would buy other necessary supplies by travelling to a larger village or when the traveling merchant visited their city every couple months.

Post-attack
After the undead attack, Kheldell is much different than it was previously. When the adventurers first approach the city, it appears to look normal except for a complete lack of any activity and the deathly silence. Their are no kids playing on the streets, farmers in the field are smoke rising lazily from chimneys in the city. Rather, it is completely quiet with only the sound of a raven cawing in the distance. As they approach the city, describe the buildings in the city and the scene before them.

As the adventurers walk into the city, they see only dead bodies lying in the street.

Inside the city their is an Otyugh feeding on the dead bodies. If the PCs enter with stealth, check stealth against passive perception of Otyugh. If they enter stealthy and roll succeed on perception check with DC17 they here the Otyugh and can surprise it. Otherwise Otyugh (who is feeding on some of the bodies inside a house), attacks the PCs surprising them.

After the PCs defeat the Otyugh, they can inspect the bodies. Upon closer inspection they can notice a number of things
 * 1) The bodies are of both children and adults - everyone in the town appears to be dead
 * 2) The bodies appear to be a number of days old based on how much they have decayed thus far
 * 3) Oddly, despite the age of the bodies, nothing appears to be eating away at them. There are no scavengers of any kind nearby or even bugs eating at the bodies. In fact, their is no life whatsoever in the town except our adventurers.
 * 4) On a successful arcana check, their is a strong undead magical presence around each of the bodies.
 * 5) If they roll a natural 20, they will notice that the tavern keeper, Jeremiah has no bite marks on his body. If they are told about Jeremiah from Donnus before leaving for Kheldell and they decide to investigate his body specifically, this roll only had a DC10.

Nighttime
The PCs will arrive in Kheldell at dusk. This forces them to make a decision of whether or not they will stay the night or leave the village and head home. If they stay the night, some other interesting things happen.

Any PCs who succeed on a DC15 perception check wake up in the middle of the night and here a quiet hissing sound outside a little bit like the wind. As soon as they stand up they are overwhelmed by negative energy and it feels like all the happiness inside of them has been sucked out a replaced by sadness and depression. You look out the window and see 3 black forms (3 Wraiths) that are shifting and swirling like a thick, black smoke. You almost mistake it for a dark shadow. You can still make out thin wispy arms and long fingers as well as sinister looking face with green flickering eyes, kind of like a green flame where its eyes should be. They are all walking along touching each of the dead bodies with a scepter and whispering quietly which was the sound that you heard earlier. A couple second after one of these creatures touches a dead body, a burst of purple energy shoots out from the bodies and a ghost-like humanoid thing appears (a specter). Each of these figures are following behind the black, shadowy figure who appears to be summoning or creating them.

If any of the specters sees one of the living creatures, it will shriek alerting all the others and they will fly towards the living creatures and attack as a unit. If the wraiths are unfinished summoning specters from all the dead bodies, they will continue to do so until they are finished at which point they will leave the city. They do not engage in combat with the PCs. If the PCs choose not to attack the specters, the will follow the wraiths out of the city to the Wraith lair.

What is going on
At this point, PCs may attempt history or arcana checks to figure out what is going on. On successful checks you can tell them that the black creature is a wraith and that it is summoning undead servants from the dead bodies in the form of specters. They also know, however, that a wraith can normally only summon a specter from a body that has just recently died (within a few minutes) and so this should not be possible.

Defeating the Specters
After defeating the specters, the PCs can search for clues as to where the Wraiths have gone. As long as they do search, they will be able to find a very clear path of withered, dead plant-life with no animals in sight. The path will lead directly south towards Westwood and eventually end up at the Wraith Lair.