Part 1
Went and talked to the friend-of-Siarrah's-parents. File this guy under "k" for "flaky"... we're talking major muscovite here. Does seem to have a lot of odds and ends of information though. Sounds like Siarrah's parents went off to fight some bad dragons and never came back [1]. Maybe knows stuff about the Illendi, too; said some new old carvings could be found in the Telperest caves. Caves!
Excitement over caves was short-lived as got nabbed and blinded by druids with an attitude problem and marched down to their little challenge course. "Fun" little pentathlon of nasties. Edged past a shrieker into an old dwarven crypt - dunno what clan built it, but they were just a *bit* sloppy, leaving undead giant skeletons around with just warnings on the doors. Yeesh. So took down two of those (people picked up weapons out of an old armory... looked like decent make) - bit fun to actually try out that dodging they made us learn as little chips. Found a way out past a grating but was marked as out of bounds. Dicked around over some magic word on the armory wall for a bit, then went the other way.