Paul announces that because Bruce (Grenville d'Tharashk) had a character with a twelve-syllable name in his last game, he's going to make sure that every NPC has a twenty-syllable name today. Tim (Silharath) threatens that if this happens he's going to give them all nicknames like "Bob" and "Sam". Chris (Thaiphong) reads about how Little Debbie just returned from the Horse Show with her friend Oatmeal Cream. Chuck (Xim) asks, "Was this show held in Tijuana?" Ernest (Kurgash) squeals with glee, "I want to read about Oatmeal Cream!" Billy (Secheck) rather desperately looks around for someone with a sense of propriety. He is terribly, terribly disappointed.
It is still winter, but Grenville d'Tharashk doesn't care one little bit. He has just gotten permission from House Tharashk to use the Jovial Jackal as a residence and base of operations. Thaiphong for one is relieved. He tells the others, "I'm glad I can give up making ghost noises to keep people away!"
Kurgash suggests that the characters should hire the half-orc kid Milcomb as manager, then heads back to the storeroom to teach Thaiphong about what "ghost noises" actually sound like. His lesson starts out, "Where you come from, ghosts might all sound like roosters being run through a blender, but it isn't like that around here."
The remaining characters indulge in a short discussion on just how much a business the new Jovial Jackal should be. They decide that having the place continue to operate on a low level with just a few regulars is about what the characters are comfortable with. If the place actually loses money, then House Tharashk might ask for it back or (Heaven forfend!) demand rent. But if it makes too much money there will be a lot of people around, people who might interfere with the characters' ability to perform atrocities upon demand.
Milcomb is swiftly brought in to instill a sense of order and service. He quickly informs the characters that their dreams of a quiet bar with minimal numbers of customers aren't going to happen right away. The Festival of Plenty is due to start in a few days, and all the bars and taverns in Zarash'ak will be crowded with celebrating locals. The Festival, for all that it had a religious origin, has pretty much turned into a celebration of alcohol and excess, and isn't going anywhere soon.
Milcomb also introduces the characters to a charming local drinking game called, "I'll Kill You!" The premise is very simple: each participant makes as inventive a threat as they can, starting with the words "I'll Kill you..." After every word of the sentence, the player must take a drink. Once everyone has made their threat, an impartial judge decides who had the best threat and wins the round. Then the process repeats until someone is unconscious.
Kurgash roars out, "I only drink from my own tankard!"
Grenville points out, "I don't have a problem with that: that thing is the size of an elephant skull."
Thaiphong examines the inside of the cracked yak skull Kurgash calls a "tankard" and sniffs in distaste. He tells the orc, "You should wash that. It smells like potatoes, and not the good kind."
Kurgash boisterously reassures the bugbear, "We call them 'swamp tubers'! They go well with 'swamp crawlies', or maggots as Grenville's people call them!"
The characters decide that the Jovial Jackal will be open for the three-night Festival of Plenty. Within days, traveling merchants arrive and open up booths to sell their goods. A lot of local taverns will temporarily expand by opening up beer tents and open-air beergardens (beermarshes?), but the characters decide to not be greedy. After all, they're right next to a brothel so they have location on their side. Grenville, with lots of encouragement from Xim and Kurgash, works out all sorts of special deals with the brothel madam.
The characters notice that the festival organizers hire a lot of additional guards from the swamps. Festival guards get to wear a special red sash to designate their status. Secheck wants to be a guard, but the organizers gently explain that they don't really want to hire three-foot kobolds: they're really looking for people who are threatening enough to ensure that fights don't start in the first place, rather than people vicious enough to ensure that other folks don't walk away from the fights that do start. Kurgash has plenty of reputation as a tough guy to trade on, so he's easily able to get a festival guard job for four gold per night. Secheck grouses, "Gad. If they're paid that way, I should be robbing the guards."
Silharath decides to go out and catch a huge alligator for the characters to grill. Thaiphong sets up to sell nutria sandwiches. Grenville suggests hunting alligators with rotten mutton bait marked with a unique rock, then using Locate Object.
Kurgash tells Silharath, "That's why I hang out with Grenville. He's full of good plans."
Thaiphong asks the orc, "Who did you hang out with before you met him?"
Kurgash replies, "Mostly barbarians. They were very dedicated, but they only got two skill points per level, so their plans were always pretty simple."
Silharath, who actually knows some useful alligator-hunting techniques, is unimpressed by Grenville's novel ideas. He suggests that Grenville should head out one night alone and try his ideas out. Silharath promises to provide him with a special meat-flavored reed boat. Grenville politely declines Silharath's offer, but does agree to stop providing ideas.
The Festival begins and the streets are clogged with festival-goers. Grenville runs the bar. Silharath helps with his jungle survival skill, mostly by keeping patrons from being dragged off by the swamp apes and sneaking down from the rafters to pick up dirty glasses. Zzzzzip! Thaiphong makes sandwiches. Mmmm... nutria!
Grenville hands out lots of copper pieces to local urchins to get them to talk up the Jovial Jackal and their great nutria sandwiches and grilled gator.
Secheck decides that he'd like to see the rest of the festival. He heads over to Council Islands to check out the beer tents. He's more than rewarded: he gets a front-row view of one of the huge beer tents burn down. It looks like it was placed a bit too close to a bonfire. The guards are trying to organize a bucket brigade, but everyone around is a bit too drunk. Secheck is pretty drunk too, so he decides to go inside the tent to see if anyone is still inside. He finds a couple of drunk orcs. He does his best to pull them out, but it is a lot to expect that a drunk three-foot kobold should be able to haul an unconscious orc weighing almost twenty stone out of a burning tent. One orc notices Secheck tugging on him and yells, "I love you, little beer fairy!" Secheck thinks about cutting the tent down to burn them all alive so he can loot their bodies afterwards, but his nascent sense of morality intervenes. He ends up kicking the orcs in their heads to get them to move. One orc dies in the fire, but he manages to get the other one out. Later on, Thaiphong asks, "Did you manage to lift the dead orc's wallet?"
Grenville is at the bar serving drinks when a drunk half-orc walks up and demands, "You lookin' at me?"
Grenville rather lamely offers, "I am now..." Grenville signals for Silharath, who starts lowering a noose from the rafters.
The half-orc growls, "You stupid humans think you're smarter than everyone!"
Grenville smiles and tells the fellow, "Nope, just think I have better beer!" while pushing a tankard into the fellow's hands.
The half-orc is completely disarmed by this response. Shocked, he staggers a bit and announces, "You know, you're all right."
Grenville continues smiling and says, "I'm going to make sure that every copper you've got ends up in my till, and that you have to be dragged out of here on your face by your friends. Oh, maybe I shouldn't have said that out loud." The half-orc appears not to notice.
Kurgash and Thaiphong are on patrol when they run into four guys beating up a festival guard in a dark alley. None of the ruffians are armed. Kurgash announces himself from one end of the alley with a throaty grumble of, "Aright, which one of you wants this axe stuck up his ass."
Nobody volunteers. One ruffian sizes up Kurgash and yells, "Run!"
The four of them turn and flee straight into Thaiphong, who makes the ghost-noise ("Whooo!") and attacks. Thaiphong clotheslines two of them with the flat of his greatsword, sending one down and one into the water. Thaiphong observes that the guy in the water is drowning and decides that he should head in to pull him out. The smell of wet bugbear pervades the night. Kurgash stomps after the other two. He smashes one down, but the other dodges into a crowd and gets away.
Kurgash swears in frustration, then stomps back to see what Thaiphong is up to. He finds the bugbear wading out of the canal, dragging the insensible body of a ruffian behind him. Kurgash asks, "You finished screwing around here?"
Thaiphong replies, "Yeah, but this guy owes me a gold for the shampoo and the pink bows I'm going to need now."
Kurgash suggests, "Let's take the guard to the House Jorasco hospital, and these three to the piss-cages. I got three gold off them. I say one goes to the hurt guard and the other two get split between us." Thaiphong agrees.
Later that evening, Thaiphong is sitting in his beautician's chair getting his hair combed out. The beautician enthuses, "You monsters lead such interesting lives!" Thaiphong grumbles happily about a gold piece well-spent.
Later that night Kurgash, Thaiphong and Secheck head back to the Jovial Jackal to play drinking games. They sit down at a table with the orc Ghoulash and the human Derrick to play "I'll Kill You!" Grenville and Xim are still working at the bar, while Silharath stays up in the rafters, working as bouncer.
Kurgash leads off with, "I kill you by making you drown in a pool of your own blood!"
Thaiphong responds, "I'll kill you while you sleep, with a rock!"
Secheck tells the others, "I've got something to prove, I need more words than Kurgash! After all, I need a high chair to sit at the table! Hmm... I'll kill you by putting you in a vat of lye, ripping out your intestines and feeding them back to you through your mouth. Hah! That's twenty words! Suck it up, orc boy!"
Over at the bar, Xim yells, "Hey! Shorty! You better watch it! I can't cure alcohol poisoning yet!"
Derrick's initial offer is, "I'll kill you by ripping out your innards on the horns of a live goat!"
Ghoulash yells, "I'll kill you with sword!" He's obviously not so bright. He notices how unimpressed the others are and reconsiders. His actual entry is, "I'll kill you so bad no-one will be able to recognize your corpse."
And then the judging comes. In the judgment of the impartial judge Grenville found, Derrick wins the round. Kurgash vows, "I kick the impartial judge's ass!"
Thanks to all the alcohol they have consumed, Kurgash is at –5 and Secheck is at –11. Thaiphong isn't showing any ill effects at all.
Kurgash announces, "I'll kill you by impaling you on my armor spikes and letting you rot there like a little girlie man!"
Thaiphong responds, "My god, I have to top that? I'll kill you later... No, wait! I'll kill you by chopping your head off and then hiring vagrants to dig up your corpse six months later to skull-fuck you."
Secheck is still reeling a bit from his last round, and rather lamely says, "I'll kill you with fire."
Derrick proudly proclaims, "I'll kill you by beating you with my manhood!"
And finally Ghoulash tells the others, "I'll kill you with my sister's blood rag and a handful of maggots!".
Kurgash wins the round handily. Secheck, Ghoulash and Derrick are all a bit dizzy, but Kurgash and Thaiphong are positively hammered. But nobody has passed out yet.
Kurgash leads by bellowing, "I'll kill you by baking you in a pie!"
Thaiphong decides to go all out. He grunts, "I'll kill you by pretending to be a magician, luring you into a box and sawing you in half."
Secheck screeches, "I'll kill you by cutting off your father's penis and choking you with it!"
Derrick announces, "I'll kill you with nothing but my ear!" Thaiphong finds that he is afraid to look at Derrick's ear.
Ghoulash rumbles, "I'll kill you by stuffing your innards full of rats which gnaw their way out!" He's looking pretty blitzed.
Secheck wins the round. By now, Thaiphong is looking quite unsteady, but Ghoulash and Kurgash aren't far behind him. Derrick is looking positively sober, so Grenville decides to agitate the situation a bit. He casts Friendly Face and uses Bluff to persuade Derrick that he needs to up the ante a bit.
Kurgash starts the round with, "I'll kill you by dressing you up like a little girl and hanging you up in the square like a human piñata!"
Thaiphong decides that he is definitely going to win this round. He slurs, "Il' kill you by cutting off your hands, dipping them in pitch, lighting them on fire, putting pork chops around your neck and letting wild dogs chase you until you die."
Secheck sounds more and more like a drugged gecko with every passing round. He hisses, "I'll kill you by tying you to a snake and leaving you in the swamp to be raped by chuuls until you die." He explains that chuuls will mate with anything tied to a stake.
Derrick, goaded on by Grenville's honeyed words, tells the others, "I'll kill you by ripping off your skin, salting your entire body from head to toe, putting ground glass into your eyes, and coating you with lemon juice twice a day for a week." Xim counts a total of thirty-four words, and almost a tankard and a half of beer. He is impressed by Derrick's ability to continue standing.
Ghoulash offers, "I'll kill you by drinking all of your blood, not just some of it, squeezing and massaging your corpse to make sure I get all of it!" Nobody really understands where that came from.
Derrick's relative sobriety and large insult helps him win the round handily, but leaves him almost as drunk as Thaiphong. Kurgash and Secheck are leaning against each other for support, an arrangement that the little kobold thinks is terribly unfair. Ghoulash remains steadily seated, but cannot keep himself from giggling at the sight of an orc flopped all across a haplessly-drunk kobold.
Grenville continues needling Derrick, "That's pretty good, but you need to win the next round too!"
Kurgash notices that Ghoulash has been drinking little, and hasn't won a round yet. He demands, "Ghoulash need go first this time!"
Ghoulash agrees, and tells Kurgash, "I'll kill you by smothering you by cramming centipedes down your throat and then cut off your head!"
Kurgash responds, "I'll kill you by giving you atomic wedgie with your own nut-sack until you scream like a little girl and expire."
Thaiphong continues offering expansive insults. He tells the others, "I'll kill you by forcing you to consume large amounts of water and wooden chips and then jumping up and down on your abdomen until you drown or die from internal hemorrhaging."
Secheck lets loose a heroic belch, "You and your three friends can't take me! I'll kill you by turning your bones to magma and letting you slowly burn from the inside out and cramming your mouth full of Kurgash's nut-sack so you choke on your own vomit and then you die!"
Derrick slams his tankard down rather unsteadily and shouts, "I'll kill you by tearing out all of your veins and knitting them into a sticky afghan to keep your widow warm."
Secheck wins the round by a mile. Thaiphong is no longer able to speak in a language anyone at the table can understand. Kurgash suggests, "Maybe he's speaking in goblin."
Over at the bar, Xim mentions, "We all speak goblin and that wasn't goblin." Then he turns to Grenville to ask, "They know they're not getting these one the house, right?"
Grenville responds, "Not by now."
Ghoulash's words are unclear as he says, "I'll kill you with a cheese grater, one tiny inch at a time."
Kurgash replies, "I'll will you by chasing you with an orcish horde across the five kingdoms, burning down every village in which you stay, killing everyone you meet, until you finally die exhausted, friendless and homeless."
Thaiphong rediscovers language long enough to roar, "I'll kill you by chaining you to a wall and giving you the choice of hacking off your own ankle and bleeding to death slowly or listening to orcs singing."
Secheck decides that this is the time to go for broke. He struggles to his feet and proclaims, "I'll kill you by filleting your skin into small strips, tying one end into a tree forcing you to run around until it makes a spiderweb and then a demon spider will move across the web of your flesh licking the blood from your body until you are completely dehydrated, covering your body in salt, packing you into a barrel and sending you into the nether realms..." Grenville counts sixty-five words. Secheck doesn't even manage to finish his insult: he falls unconscious forty words into it.
Thaiphong comments, "I think there's beer coming out of his ears! Grenville, make sure he falls unconscious on his belly – we don't want him choking on his own vomit." Silharath takes Secheck out back and hangs him so he's facing out into the canal.
Derrick, unaware that one of the contestants has just gone unconscious, challenges the others, "I'll kill you by strangling you but not until I've made sure you have had children to carry on your line so my children can strangle your children down the generations for the rest of time."
Kurgash wins the round, but doesn't look like he can still stand. Thaiphong definitely can no longer stand, but he is still moving. Derrick is also moving, but not in a way to inspire confidence. Only Ghoulash is still looking pretty good.
The judge notes that none of the contestants are likely to make it through more than one more round, so he suggests that Kurgash and Derrick should face each other in a final matchup. The loser will pay the winner's bar tab.
Derrick levels his gaze at the orc, screws up his eyes, and slurs, "I'll kill you by establishing an entire religion dedicated to your death, and each follower of my religion will come up with the best way to kill you, and I'll judge which one has the worst idea and I'll let them have their way so you'll die by the worst possible way conceived by anyone ever."
Kurgash responds by standing unsteadily and howling, "I rage! I'll kill you dead! Dead! Dead! Dead! Dead! Dead! Dead! Dead! Dead! Dead! Dead! Dead! Dead! Dead! Dead! Dead! Dead! Dead! Dead! Dead! Dead! Dead! Dead! Dead! Dead! Dead! Dead! Dead! Dead! Dead! Dead! Dead! Dead! Dead! Dead! Dead! Dead! Dead!" He keeps on going through two tankards and up to seventy words. He gets the whole bar chanting, and just barely manages to stay conscious long enough to finish his insult. Kurgash wins the round, but collapses the instant his rage wears off.
Silharath takes a look at the unconscious orc and yells, "Hey Grenville! You know where the whore makeup is?"
Grenville, "Oh yeah. I know."
Thaiphong doesn't even manage to crawl his way back to the rice sacks before collapsing. Grenville inspires as many bar denizens as he can to lift Kurgash up and carry him around the bar chanting his name.
Thus ends the first night of the festival. Silharath looks around and comments, "Let's role-play the next morning!"
Thaiphong wakes and moans, "I will never drink ever again. Please, great bugbear god, make the pounding go away!"
Silharath tells him, "See, that's the way I felt in the last adventure!"
It is at this point that the other characters realize that Grenville has been popping pep pills to stay awake. He has been cleaning the bar and talking non-stop all night and all day. The section of bar immediately in front of him has been polished to an eerie shine. Thaiphong groans, "Grenville's been using his bard powers for evil. Please somebody shut him up."
And then a hooded man walks into the bar. He looks around and tells the characters, "You're pretty rough bounty hunters. I have some friends who want some rough work done. You want to meet with them? The meeting is tonight at the old Church of the Silver Flame temple. It'll be worth some silver if you agree to go."
The Church of the Silver Flame is not actually operating in Zarash'ak. They set up a local operation a few years ago, but House Tharashk found they were a bit too zealous and... changed the zoning laws on them.
The characters question their visitor just enough to learn that his name is Durangus, and that he claims in all sincerity to just be a go-between. Kurgash asks him, "Hrgmgh. Errand-boy. You find that good work?"
Durangus agrees, "It's steady. You just be at the meet. It's set at two this morning." Durangus steps out of the Jovial Jackal and vanishes down the way.
The old Church of the Silver Flame temple has long been thoroughly looted out. Transients have used it as a toilet. Some of the support beams have been taken away, so the roof is collapsing. The walls are defaced with graffiti. Xim looks at the place and tells the others, "My work here is done."
Durangus meets the characters at the door and leads them inside. There are ten men inside, each wearing colorful animal masks purchased from the festival.
Thaiphong looks around and comments, "Oh, so this is that kind of party."
All of the men are wearing swords at their belts. They appear to be exchanging small talk. Their greeting to the characters carries a light and pleasant air of unexpected joviality. Thaiphong shuffles his feet uncomfortably and tells them, "Your man Dingus told us to be here."
One of the men throws Thaiphong a pouch of coins. Another produces a bottle and offers the characters wine. Kurgash throws himself to the floor, screaming, "Oh god no!" Secheck reflexively mumbles out, "I kill you!"
The leader of the masked men ignores the characters' histrionics and gets right to the point. "Well, let's get to the point," he says. He continues, "There's a bandit lord named Lucien operating down South, preying on boats traveling along the river. He's made an alliance to increase his power. They're meeting in a secret villa. I need you to scout it out, break up the meeting, and bring Lucien back dead or alive."
Kurgash comments, "House Tharashk does this sort of thing. Why you come to us?"
"Don't you have the right to take your own jobs?"
Grenville, ever mindful of his familial position, comments, "You really should go through Sobob Sobacheck for this kind of work. Or whatever our boss' name was."
The leader responds, "Those guys won't usually take anonymous jobs. They ask too many questions. Besides, this guy Lucien is a really bad guy! He hates Freedom! Don't you hate people who hate Freedom?"
Grenville tries to see if he recognizes any of the guys. He can see that they're probably all trained fighter-types, but that's it. He decides to worry about practical things instead, and asks, "How much does it pay?"
The leader tells him, "100 gold to each if you just bust up the meeting. Double if you kill or bring back Lucien. And we'll give you some items to help. And we'll cover some of your equipment costs."
Thaiphong tells the other characters, "I don't think these guys can be evil. Only good people are this generous with their money!"
Kurgash agrees, "So far, good people who want us to do things have always snuck up on us wearing masks. These guys must be angels!"
The leader continues, "We'll give you a letter of deposit at the Kundarak Bank that can only be redeemed after a week. If you're not done after a week, we'll cancel the letter. The meeting is in two days."
The characters agree to the job. One of the masked men brings out a small case with an array of equipment to help the characters in their task. It includes:
The Orb of Sight is a black glass orb the size of a billiard ball. Look into it and squeeze and it provides low-light vision. Rotate it and it acts like a telescope. Plus it has a leather sling so it can be strapped permanently against the eye. Xim examines it and proclaims, "It looks dorky. Grenville gets it."
Secheck only has eyes for the Flare pebbles. He tells the other characters, "We can't use those. We can't ever use those ever. Give them over here." When Xim and Grenville question his judgment, the little kobold points out that half of the group gets overcome by a rush of desperate panic under bright lights.
The leader of the masked men tells the characters, "We'll have our man Durangus meet you at the inn tomorrow morning. He can accompany you when you make your purchases. Half the cost will come from your final payment, and no more than a third of your final payment for equipment total (200 gold)." The characters take this opportunity to buy two rowboats for 100 gold (total) and four man-days of rations for 100 sp.
Grenville puts on a Friendly Face and tries to find out what he can about Lucien. He learns that the "human bandit lord" part is true: Lucien is one of the biggest guys in the area. There are actually several different bandit gangs that control parts of the river from Zarash'ak. They are usually low-key, as they get shut down by House Tharashk if they get too ambitious. Lucien and Modus are the two most prosperous right now; each of them got their start several years ago and have managed to avoid offending House Tharashk.
Secheck talks to his various Hidden Door contacts. He learns that Lucien starts with an "L". It's not a good day for him. But he does learn that there is a rumor that Modus and Lucien have made a pact: one of them takes boats on the West side of the river, and the other takes boats on the East side. Just on his own, Secheck knows that each of these guys has about two dozen guys in their gangs. They're a lot more forward-thinking than most bandit lords, and are often more interested in cooperating than competing.
The characters head down the river. Xim spots the remains of a small camp with a smoldering fire and some bedrolls on the shore. Secheck comments, "Woops, looks like another chuul attack. Let's see if there were any survivors."
Silharath chirps out, "I track!"
Kurgash demands, "We're on a boat! What the hell are you tracking?"
Thaiphong offers, "He's tracking fish!"
The characters row to the shore and examine the camp. They find the bodies of two young men, killed by sword blows. They are dressed in the robes of Sovereign Host priests, but their ears have been cut off and their valuables taken. Secheck tells the others, "Oh man, I love these guys!" Nobody really knows if he's referring to the priests or the ear-hunters.
Xim comments, "I think there's an orc tribe around here who have a ritual of manhood involving collecting non-orc ears."
Secheck accuses Kurgash, "Your people did this!"
Kurgash replies, "Good job! Nice ears you got there."
Grenville calls upon his Locate Object powers to see if he can locate nearby severed ears. He senses none. Apparently, they have been transported out of range. So now, Silharath turns to tracking. He thinks there were six orcs who came through here and then went off into the swamp again. He makes a point of embellishing his story when he tells the rest of the characters ("And this one was chewing tobacco...").
Kurgash and Thaiphong manage to locate the priest's boat after a bout of extremely inexpert searching. Everyone follows suit, just throwing things around without even looking at them. Then Secheck demonstrates how it's done by finding a small leather pouch some distance from the camp. It contains a glass globe with a yellow slitted eyeball inside. Strangely, the eye always seems to be facing in the same direction, no matter how the globe is positioned. It doesn't take long for the characters to figure out that the eye is looking in the same direction they're traveling anyway.
Lucien's villa is set on one of the rare plateaus overlooking the river. There is a trail leading up from the river to the villa. The structure is accessible through mild underbrush on most sides. There is a decorative three-foot stone wall around the villa. The villa is set back three hundred yards from the river. The place was obviously not built by locals. For one thing, it has lots of glass windows (expensive), a high-peaked roof, and multiple floors. It is well-furnished, but has clearly seen only questionable maintenance in the last few years.
The eye points directly towards the villa. Kurgash assures the others, "That means it's weird."
Thaiphong and Secheck sneak up first, linked back to the rest of the group by a Message spell. Thaiphong gets Mindlinked as well. They scout around without alerting any of the guards. Most of them look like orcs, and not the big Mordor kind either. There are two at the base of the plateau, two at the house, and two behind the house. There is also a gator pen behind the house. Thaiphong comments, "Let's not go into the pen. Well, except maybe for Silharath. He seems to really have a special bond with those alligator things."
Thaiphong and Secheck are able to see about thirteen people moving around inside the Villa. Lucien is pretty obviously around: he's a big guy with red hair. He is in the common room, talking to three folks in very distinctive robes. Secheck describes them to Xim, who thinks that the three guys sound like they're Dragon Below cultists in ceremonial robes. Secheck thinks that the eye talisman is looking in towards the Eastern part of the house.
The characters develop a plan that starts out by neutralizing the two guards on the path, then moving on the house. Silharath makes four magical arrows for himself and Secheck with his freaky psychic powers. The characters sneak up to one hundred feet of the outer guard post, whereupon the guards promptly see Grenville and Xim. The guards let out a yell and the characters answer with a fusillade of arrows. Secheck's Sleep arrow takes out one of the guards. His second arrow does enough damage to cause the second guard to yell out in alarm. Thaiphong's arrow takes the guy down.
The guards up at the house start to move down the hill. Kurgash swiftly runs over to the guard post and tries to act as if he's some kind of orc bandit. Silharath decides that he's going to go against the plan and shoot the guards coming down the hill. No, maybe he'll just hide and go with the plan. Grenville hides.
The orcs close to within forty yards of Kurgash. Kurgash does his best to act like a guard. But one of the keen-eyed guards yells, "Hey! You're not Boggrook!"
Kurgash stammers, "I'm his cousin, he's in the bushes..."
Xim curses, "Crap-tacular." He decides to try and impersonate the one who yelled out, "Ow!" From a hundred feet away. In the dark. He calls out, "I'm over here! I think I got the other ones!" Thaiphong is incredulous that Xim is able to sound exactly like that orc, having only heard the guy speak one syllable. The other orcs don't act like they've been fooled.
Secheck decides that this situation isn't going well, and that sending two arrows into the chest of the guy on the left, with the rusty helm, will improve the situation. Sadly, he only manages to hit once. He makes the guy look unhappy. Thaiphong opens fire as well, taking the guy down with an arrow through the neck. Kurgash charges. And cuts right through the last guard.
Silharath observes the carnage around Kurgash and comments, "That wasn't just 'kill', that was 'over-kill.'".
By this time, the surprise attack is long gone. The characters simply assault the onrushing guards. Kurgash charges onto the patio. Everyone else is way behind, except Silharath who seems to have gotten a lot faster recently. Silharath runs in really fast as Secheck and Thaiphong pepper the onrushing guards with arrows.
One orc throws a javelin at Kurgash, delivering a solid nine-point hit. The impact sends Kurgash spinning to one side, but doesn't slow him down a bit. Kurgash fells the last guard on the patio with a thrown hand axe and bursts in through the patio door. He sees three orcs and Lucien, but no sign of the cultists.
Lucien observes calmly as his orc flunkies charge. He nocks an arrow and hits Kurgash. Xim groans, "Oh no, we're going to have to go save the barbarian. Again." Kurgash steps forward and starts chopping. Ragefully. He cuts right through one orc without even trying, and the blood sprays out like this... pssssh! In slow motion!
Silharath steps up behind Kurgash and starts shooting arrows at Lucien.
The two orcs charge into Kurgash and hack him to bloody bits. He goes to zeee-ro. Fortunately, Lucien decides to send his arrows at Silharath, rather than ending Kurgash with them. Kurgash chooses to chop down both orcs, then collapse into blissful unconsciousness.
Thaiphong notes, "That seems to happen a lot around here."
Somehow, Kurgash replies, "Yep. That's why I have this potion of Cure Light Wounds mounted prominently on my hip."
Thaiphong asks, "Where'd you get that potion?"
"Oh, I bought it online."
Secheck arrive at the front door to find that the door is trivially-easy to unlock (DC 12). He proceeds to open the door for Thaiphong. Behind him, Grenville decides that now is a good time for music! He moves up to the door and commences playing, reminding everyone that he can give everyone bonuses as long as they can hear him. Secheck complains, "Our bard is stuck on Mexican Hat Dance! Can someone change his station?"
And then something comes down the stairs. A tall, gangly beast standing eight feet high on six stiltlike legs. It has a blank, childlike face atop a humanoid torso. It looks very much like it might be an abomination. Silharath is so terribly eager to think that it might be, as abominations are absolutely his faaaavorite enemy. Unfortunately, it is actually just a "minion of Hell."
Just as the thing comes down into the common room, Secheck finishes working on the door and runs through. He looks at it and whispers to the others, "Oh holy uncle of Hell! It's a demon baby on stilts! Why couldn't you people have told me about this?"
Unconcerned, Thaiphong steps through and starts chopping at it. It seems to suffer damage just fine, though its cries are uncomfortably like those of a human baby.
Silharath lands another couple arrows into Lucien. He drops. So much for the Bandit Mastermind.
The leprous thing spins around to face Secheck and Thaiphong. It spews a cone of acid at them. They dodge out of the way. But then something else comes downstairs. It looks like the hollow shell of a humanoid figure woven from thorny vines and filled with brimstone, carrying a huge scythe made from black rock. Its footsteps are filled with oozy blobs of horrible ichor.
Secheck sends a pair of arrows into the acid-spraying six-legged baby. He hits a whole lot of nothing. Thaiphong screams, "They're coming from upstairs! Somebody get up there and kill the summoner!"
Silharath doesn't really oblige. He simply shoots at the stilt-baby-thing. Grenville steps out and blasts a Color Spray at the thing, stunning it. He gives thanks for his collection of random spell scrolls.
The wicker-man thing moves downstairs very, very slowly. The wicker part seems to be catching fire from the brimstone. Thaiphong hoots, "I love this monster! It's slow and it's hurting itself just by being here!"
Secheck steps back and continues shooting the stilt-baby. He takes it down. Grenville tells him, "I just want to thank you for making my 25 gold expenditure worthwhile!"
Secheck replies, "No, thank you for allowing me to hit something today!"
Thaiphong pulls out some alchemist's fire and sends it spinning at the wicker man. The fire gets higher.
Kurgash sucks up a healing potion and a Cure Light Wounds spell from Xim and surges back to life. He grabs a javelin from the floor and hurls it at the wicker man. It is in pretty bad shape, just about to fall apart. Silharath shoots arrows into it to speed the process along.
And then it explodes. Except that nobody is close enough to be hurt by the blast except for Lucien. He gets covered in a burst of fiery brimstone. His clothes are on fire. Xim realizes that the bounty is in danger. Quick! Time for a Ray of Frost! Who says that zero-level spells are useless?
Thaiphong heads back outside to climb up the walls to look into a second-floor window. He clambers up with alarming speed and verifies that there is nothing dangerous on the stairs. Secheck heads up. Kurgash waits just long enough for Grenville to heal him twice, then stomps up after him. The less-aggressive group members follow along.
Thaiphong storms into a second floor bedroom, verifies that nobody is around, then continues the sweep. Secheck hears chanting in the master bedroom. He warns the others. Xim assures him, "I've got the wand!" The plan is simple: Secheck opens the door, Xim shoots the Fireball inside, and they shut the door again.
Secheck pulls the door open. There are three acolytes in the room, standing around a huge mirror. Another of the stilt-legged baby-things is stepping out of a six-by-four foot mirror showing an image of some sort of horrible hell plane of madness and chaos. There are a couple of unnatural black dogs already in the room. And then the Fireball goes off. The mirror smashes. The leprous thing dies. At least half of it does: the other half ends up severed in some forgotten hell. The dogs get roasted. The acolytes get roasted. When Kurgash charges in a moment later, the whole place smells like roasting cleric. He yells back to the others, "Who wants the ears?"
Secheck notices that the pieces of the mirror are bleeding. He picks one up with tongs. Then he notices that there is demonic corruption coming up the tongs. He drops the fragment. The mirror's blood starts to coat the floor. It expands rapidly. As the blood spreads, the floor starts bulging. Bones, flesh and faces start to appear under the characters' feet as they run.
Xim comments, "Gasp. There are manifest zones where the planes start to leak through... Gasp... I think this is becoming one of them..."
Secheck notices that his eye talisman is wheeling around madly, apparently trying to look at every corner of the house all at once.
Silharath tells the others, "Okay, before we go, let's set the building on fire! What's it made of?"
Xim objects, "It's going to be made of flesh soon! I don't think flesh burns real well."
Only Thaiphong is still thinking of looting anything. Desperate to find anything, he grabs falchions from the dead orcs.
Within five minutes, the whole villa is transformed into an outpost of hell, a mass of swarming twisting bodies. Everyone runs outside. Six tribal orcs are charging up the hill. They want non-orcish ears. They'd like Grenville's ears, but they'd settle for Lucien's. The other characters step in and argue that Grenville and Lucien belong to them, and their ears aren't on the table. Kurgash growls, "You go find some other clerics to kill! Pussies!"
Secheck points out, "That's not helping, guy!"
The orcs go running off.
Secheck is happy to see that the corruption seems to be stopping at the house. He tries looking in through the windows to see if anything is moving inside except the walls. He doesn't see anything he's willing to admit to the others.
Lucien is carrying chainmail, a longsword and a longbow. None of it is magical. There are also some boats pulled up on the shore, three of them.
The characters check out the gator pits. Thus far, they are still unaffected by the house. Grenville comments, "Let's free them! It's the Christian thing to do."
Thaiphong asks, "Are you nuts?"
Kurgash muses, "Yep, I'm looking forward to all those half-fiend gators we're gonna be seeing soon."
Thaiphong sees the light, "Okay, you've convinced me. We free the gators."
The characters free the gators.
The characters put Lucien's head up on a pike outside the Church of the Silver Flame temple. Plus they take the two dead Sovereign Host clerics to the Sovereign Host temple and explain that they got killed by ear-hunting orcs.
Silharath goes to the Gatekeepers to tell them about the house. He is a bit surprised to find that they already know about it. Apparently, one of the Dragon Below leaders already went to the leaders of House Tharashk to explain that they had nothing to do with the new big Hellmouth thing to the South. Even now, the House Tharashk guys are working up a big expedition to bring a dozen barrels of holy water to the house and spray the thing until it dissolves.
The loot includes Lucien's stuff, plus four rowboats and nine falchions. Oh yes, and 200 gold each for a job well done, more or less. Grenville does an incompetent job of negotiating, so the characters only get 40% value for the gear: "I know these touched cursed ground, but I'm pretty sure it didn't stick..." Each character's share from the sale of the items is 58 gold. Grenville spends most of his share of the equipment money buying replacement Color Spray and Magic Weapon scrolls.
The session ends with the characters enjoying a week of downtime. Each character gains 875 experience points.