Campaign background so far

I admit that the impetus for the whole campaign has largely been mine. Thinking back on many of the modules I had played (and run) in the past, I was thinking of how much I enjoyed them but could and would run them differently now. That got me thinking I'd like to run a Classic Modules campaign. Unfortunately, other priorities in gaming came up and it had to sit on the back burner for years.
Shift to 2000 and 3E comes out. Well, now I have even more reason to try running the Classic Module campaign, trying out the new system. Finally, after a year or so, I got the time and players together to give it a whirl. Getting the players together actually wasn't hard because we were already meeting on Thursday nights. It was finding the time to get into the game schedule that was hard. But into the schedule I got and the game started.
We started out with Return to Keep on the Borderlands, a very nice update of the original, even if there are some encounters that are fairly brutal to 2nd edition characters in it (which is what the module was written for). Converting to 3E ended up being pretty easy, and there were few cases in which I actually had to change the number of creatures encountered.
I set the Keep along the Lortmil Mountains in western Veluna and the year is about 580 CY but with a few modifications to the timeline. I like the 580 time period, but the adventures listed in the timeline (ToEE, Slavers, Giants, etc) have not been played out yet. The characters did pretty well for themselves. The initial party breakdown went like this:

Gorin - elven barbarian from deep within the Vesve forest
Jie-An - half-elven bard from Celene
Kendrick - human monk from Greyhawk
Ilsa - human cleric of Boccob from Greyhawk
Bob Arby - human sorcerer from Greyhawk
Sargen - halfling ranger from Geoff
Alton - human rogue from Greyhawk

They added the fighter Raven, an ex-slave from Amedio jungle, soon after. Unfortunately, both Gorin and Raven fell in the Caves of Chaos. Gorin was killed by a scythe wielding priestess, and Raven was slain by a minotaur's axe. Soon after that, they were joined by two new characters:
Larren - human wizard from Greyhawk
Pale - human druid from the local area around Kendall Keep (and his companion mountain lion).

After doing their best to clear out the caves, they started tracking the slaver Mendel back to the east. Larren also wanted to track down his daughter who had been fostered (after a major family problem involving the death of his wife and estrangement of his in-laws) with one Dame Gold who lived in Safeton.
On the way, they encountered a few raiders, a few other miscellaneous encounters (including a reasonably friendly kobold sorcerer), and eventually arrived in Verbobonc. While in Verbobonc, they had a couple of adventures fighting a slaad spawn that made a dramatic appearance on a local stage (thanks to an adventure in Dungeon Magazine) and helped a merchant from Dyvers get back some stolen contracts for Baklunish spices from the west (also thanks to an adventure in Dungeon... good source that).
While in Verbobonc, they learned that Jie-An's father was to be married very soon. They hastened to the wedding in Celene and found that there was trouble brewing in the town. One love-struck halfling has disappeared, causing to little consternation. An investigation found that the halfing had been nabbed by a harpy. He was rescued and the wedding went off, delayed by only a day. (thanks to the adventure "Wedding Bells" in, you guessed it, Dungeon).
Wanting to get back on the trail of Mendel the slaver and see Dame Gold, the party continued to the east where they, fortuitously, picked up Mendel's trail in Safeton (where he said he had been from originally anyway).
While Larren met with his daughter's foster, the party found that Mendel actually headed south from here to the town of Elredd. As luck would have it, Dame Gold's midsummer feast of Sotillion was interrupted by raiders (while the party was back in town) and much of the household was carried off by slavers. Larren's daughter had managed to flee to safety (a surprise for the player, I think, who expected me to extened the plot hook of his daughter by having her be a captive). But the party embarked on an investigation anyway to find the Dame. This led them to sail with a local Safeton patrol vessel to Elredd and then on to just outside Highport.
They fought pirates on the way and tried to keep a relatively low profile in Highport, except for Larren who posed as a wizard from Greyhawk willing to help the Slavelords gain a foothold into the city. By this time, the party composition had changed a little. Tesrae the fighter (human) had joined them and Ilsa and Alton had moved on (bagpipe classes conflicted with game time, believe it or not).
As one group tried to bluff their way into the graces of the Slavelords in Highport, another tried to infiltrate the sewer/dungeon. In the end, it was the dungeon infiltrators, after blowing their secrecy, who managed to successfully bluff their way in as assassins by the skin of their teeth. Both groups were sent, separately as the Slavers didn't know they were connected, on to the interior and the Slaver Stockade.
Unfortunately for the players, secrecy on the road turned out to be difficult as they travelled with none other than Mendel, the man some of them had been pursuing, himself. They tried hard, but Mendel eventually pieced together enough information to rat them out to Icar and Markessa once they arrived at the stockade. On the way, however, they managed to befriend a Moondog who now owes them 1 favor and that isn't bad.
After a meeting with Markessa that went bad, a brief capture of Bob Arby, and an ambush in the hills, the party embarked on a major campaign to take down the stockade.
Larren, realizing that his plans to infiltrate the slavelords has failed and with increasing friction with members of the party a bit less morally flexible than he, decided to lead the first group of slaves they had freed back to civilization. In his place, the party recruited Ricket, an escaped slave, and a friend of his who had been scouring the area looking for him and trying to put down the slavers, Gil, an untrained 'cleric'. Both hail originally from Geoff.
The party has now made a few different forays against the stockade, concentrating mostly on the underground entrance from which Ricket escaped. Since this location was strongly fortified against them with their last attack, they are contemplating a more frontal assault against the weakening defenses. They have so far captured Markessa, killed her bodyguard, slain Icar, slain Executioner, fought a goblin shaman to an inconclusive end, chased off a wizard or something whose main attack was to blast them with a cone of cold, captured a lower-level officer of the hobgoblins, freed a larger bunch of slaves, and dealt a bloody nose to the goblin-worg cavalry.
The slaves they have freed are currently in the custody of a local hill tribe in the process of dying out. While the tribe wanted to assimilate all of the slaves into their tribe (particularly the children), the heroes offered to help find the tribe a new and safer home as a counter offer. The hill men seem to be accepting this offer, at least on a provisional basis, as a way out of their current predicament.