Deadheads

Our adventures continue after a short hiatus.
The party makes for Green Meadow for the first short leg of the journey to the Norwest. There is a moment of decision right as they leave. A weak blue moon bodes ill, they show some trepidition about the journey, if they travel during a moonless night, they could face greater dangers. But they press on, their journey is uneventful, they encounter only the oddity of a dying diseased elk as well as a dying bird. The reflect that they haven't seen much in the way of life, except for those dying creatures and many murders of crows apparantly waiting for more death. bael resuces the bird and they proceed as far as they can before making camp. They are disappointed to see that the night is moonless and inky black. That night a constant succession of injured creature moving purposively past them adds to the eeriness of the situation. During Melkior's watch a strange bear-like creature appears with a feline face, but rotting and diseased. He summons a mighty ice ape which is destroyed in an instant by the massive attack of the bearcat. He succeeds in slowing the beast with his magics in time for the party to be rousted from their slumbers.
They arise and prepare to fight the creature. Now hampered by the slow spell, the party is able to make fairly quick work of the creature. During the fight they sumise that the creature was infact the dreaded undead.
The next night held an equally eerie and unwelcome surprise. There was no fight that night, only the fleeting glance at a humanoid figure. That morning they awoke to the horror of a circle of dead animals surrounding them. This worried them, but they had little they could do about it. So, grimly, they moved on to Green Meadow.
Given the night's events they were not surprised to see Green Meadow abandoned. They searched the area and did find, barracaded in the root cellar of one house, a bound, sick, injured and incoherent young man. After extensive spell casting the party was able to cure the young man of his ills, but much to their chagrin were more informative to him, than he was to them. They also found signs that the townsfolk had attempted to gird themselves with a ruin against the undead.
They spent the night with no trouble, but they found that their mules had contracted some sort of odd disease. They used up much of their magic healing the mules and made for Erdina, the likely source of this ill wind. They also discovered for the first time that an enchantmest was responsible for some of this effect.
The journey to Erdina was without a problem, and an initial scouting of the ancient city showed no sign of life, or unlife. They did find a number of dead animals at the shore of the Alkali lake being feasted upon by gulls, unafraid of whatever diseases or illnesses led them there.
They left the porters and mules a safe distance behind and entered the city as a group. They walked down the main boulevard and approached the great castle. There, they stopped by the iron gates. They retired to a nearby building and Khord donned a strange feathered mask and sat down in meditation. To those gathered there it appeared he went into a trance, but from his perspective he took to the air as an astral falcon flying high above the keep, and deep inside it. He saw an empty but clearly active keep, including lit braziers. Fearig spending too long in that form he returned to his body to tell the others of his discover.
They began to debate the best approach.