Infiltrating the Stockade

On the 2nd day of Goodmonth, during a driving thunderstorm, the adventurers present (Gil, Kendrick, and Tesrae) made their move. Under the cover of invisibility, Gil scouted around the stockade wall, looking for a point reasonably vulnerable to a narrow stone-shaped tunnel. Trying to avoid the hobgoblins on the wall and the roving patrol, Gil selected a location and hit the jackpot. The narrow tunnel led to a storage room filled with tuns of water and with a set of stairs leading to a deep well. The room was otherwise unoccupied.
Gil returned to the rest of the party and they set out, taking advantage of what cover they could and the driving rain to close without being observed. They squeezed through the tunnel, Kendrick briefly getting stuck.
From this point, they began a cautious exploration of the stockade, trying to reach the center of the structure. Their path took them northward first, encountering storerooms and a few other curiosities but no defenders. Of the odd things they found were various defensive structures and pitfalls including a bent hallway with a mirror at the turn, designed to delay attackers as defenders maneuvered around to the rear, and a mounted bear placed on a cart and set up on a ramp. With a thorough search, they managed to find a pendant in the bear's eye socket, behind a poorly placed glass eye.
They also found recently used barracks and other storage, including some jerky that they stowed for later and some element of a payroll as well as a few sundries. But they still found no defenders. Finding the main door of the building, they decided to backtrack rather than force a confrontation with whatever guarded outside (they could still hear, through the wooden roofing, the hobgoblins on the parapet and the roving patrol).
Returning to their original infiltration point, they set out in another direction and found a very odd room. The room was terraced and had numerous slaves, chained to the walls, sitting and staring off into space. They would not react to stimuli tried by the heroes, leaving the party quite unnerved. But there seemed to be no defenders in that room either, so they passed on, wondering what they could do for the poor souls.
Not far from that room, they heard the ringing of metal on metal and could smell burning charcoal. They had found a smith's workshop. Gil entered but was spied by the smith (a human) and one of his orcish assistants working the bellows. The smith seemed to assume that Gil was a hired mercenary but Gil went for a more authoritative bluff, claiming to be a replacement sent to run the stockade after Markessa's death. The smith responded, "Dead? What are you talking about? Markessa's up on the parapets," and figured out that perhaps Gil wasn't supposed to be there at all and weapons were raised in anger.
Gil was swiftly joined by Tesrae and Kendrick and the three made short work of the smith and his two assistants, though not without some blood being spilled on both sides.
The session left off there. The heroes are coming to the conclusion that the defenders of the stockade have been noticeably depleted by their earlier forays but are also now grappling with the riddle of Markessa and whether she is alive... or not.

Note to anybody just jumping in: The heroes had captured Markessa, but when the hillmen brought the slaves into their village, along with the captive slaver (a bit worse for wear due to the slaves kicking at her), they summarily cut off her head. It now hangs on the witchdoctor's hut where it will add to his powers. Or so they thought...