Excuse us, Mr. Necromancer...

We traveled for about a week to get back to where we had last seen the Necromancer. Once again, we found several undead pack animals on the way there. Once again, Leon destroyed them where they stood. We continued on into the complex. This time we did not encounter any of the Grave Knights we had seen before, until we got to the room the Necromancer was in. He was still here & willing to talk. However, the conversation broke down due to his apprentice actively ripping apart of a living Iruxi. Most of the party decided this was not cool and the rest went along with the decision to free this person, by force! Of course, the first thing the Necromancer did was to cast a huge spell that hurt most of us & killed the captive Iruxi. His minions were easily dispatched, but he was more elusive, casting powerful wall spells to play keep away. Unfortunately for him our melee were able to get close and keep the pressure on! Once he fell to us, we searched his notes. We found that he was creating Undead to send to BalkVarine. We were not sure if this was a place or an entity. However, we did find notes indicating that the Iruxi we had attempted to save had been sent here from Balkvarine, as an exile. Perhaps someone back at Henzporat would recognize this name? From the notes we confirmed that the Necromancer was named Voshuk. His apprentice was Sahok. Looking around, we did find tracks leading off away from this complex. We were able to follow them for about a week without incident.
We eventually arrived at a fissure leading into the side of a large mountain. Heading inside we soon found a bricked in wall with a doorway in it. Standing guard here were 4 Iruxi, seemingly soldiers. They told us hesitantly that this was the kingdom of Xirean. Their king was named Balkvarine. When Jezra asked to speak with Balkvarine, the guards laughed at the group. The group discussed amongst themselves before Jezra struck upon the idea of asking to see the person who received the undead from Voshuk. The guards considered and then sent one of their number off. Soon a new group of 6, plus the original soldier, returned with an Iruxi dressed in more normal clothes. She was surprised at our appearance, having never seen our like before. She introduced herself as Sasesini, Keeper of Records. She was somewhat fascinated to hear we were from another world. We explained that the necromancer Voshuk was deceased & we had heard that if the tributes of undead stopped that there would be consequences. She made Balkvarine sound invincible, claiming he could destroy entire cities single-handedly. She spoke of a prophecy of 4 other-worldly visitors who would challenge the king. We eventually decided that we would like to challenge this king & told her so. She finally agreed to go see about gaining us an audience with Balkvarine. We waited for 2 days before the king finally deigned to grant us an audience.
We were escorted by a group of 20 guards. The houses were rough hewn stone with cloth tarps for roofs. As we traveled through the mountain the sense was one of decline with the inhabitants somber and serious. There was a sense of order about the place, but not much sense of hope or cheer. All the colors here were muted, including the grey-skinned Iruxi themselves. We were led into the largest stone structure, a sort of small keep that served as a palace apparently. Soon, we were led into the presence of the king. He was not very forthcoming, seemingly refusing to give a straight answer. The closest we got out of him, between the bravado, was that he did not intend to attack Henzporat right away. He did mention that it would be a good source of bodies for a new Necromancer he would get set up to continue feeding him undead. We decided to camp just outside the city for a few days to see if perhaps some rebel faction might make contact with the "prophesied heroes"! Unfortunately, noone made contact. We headed back to Henzporat to explain what we had found out. We met with the mayor to tell her that we believed there was no current threat to Henzporat, if this king Balkvarine was to be believed. We did tell her that the Necromancer was dead as well. When asked what we planned to do, we said we needed time to think on what options were available to us. She offered to set us up in the inn for a week. We felt this was a good idea for various reasons. If Balkvarine attacked soon, we would be here. We took time to ask around among the local followers of Turgenak. They could not help us. However, we learned that the local priests had re-established magical means of contacting Rezvinoka. Through this we were able to learn that The Intruder , as king Balkvarine was known by followers of Turgnak, was rival to Turgenak. He too had wanted to conquer the world. This brought him into conflict with Turgenak. The rumor was that he had come from a plane called the Shadowlands, but not much more about him.