I hadn't noticed that the hunger of hadar spell had been dropped - it can be hard to keep track of everything, these little talks are good! (Edit: is this what you meant or is there another spell going on?... we could keep that hallway "plugged" for a while longer with illusions).
I thought that Kalorn had told Lorenn where Macath (sp?) was, but I misunderstood how the message spell worked, so depending on the exact timing Lorenn probably doesn't know.
Sooty is a "vanilla " familiar, range is the standard 100 feet.