Most of the normal group shows up, though not necessarily on time: Dan (Koa so K'terr), Nick (Brother Xavier), Paul (Korzhun), Chris (Peter Sangaree), and Tim (Sir Brindal Karth de Hazat). The session starts of with a certain amount of unintended excitement, as Tim calls in a distraught tone to report that he has run out of gas and has been forced to walk a mile and a half in the noonday sun. In a moment of pity and understanding, Dan volunteers to go and take gas out to him.
The second morning after Red Billy's escape, Sir Brindal Karth manages an almost superhuman Tracking roll (at -8) to determine that Red Billy headed towards Urban Sector 3 of the old city ruins.
The trail leads to a large ceramcrete plaza surrounded by barely-visible building ruins. Brindal Karth notes that as Red Billy's trail reaches the plaza, it becomes much easier to follow as he ceased his ten-steps-in-one travel. He appears to have walked first to a spherical indentation in the mud at the edge of the plaza, then a similar hollow in a patch of bushes, and finally a third in the rubble in front of the one moderately-intact building in the area, the Giulen Public Library (at least according to the plaque upon the lintel piece).
Brindal Karth waits for the rest of the characters to catch up to him, then leads them all into the library building. The entire building is very dark inside and is encrusted with years' weight of vines, both alive and dead. Beams of bright sunlight from the rents in the roof pierce the gloom. Sir Brindal Karth waits not a moment in bringing his fantastic Engineer's Eye into play.
The characters pick their way into the area of the stacks, finding it clogged with decaying books piled unsteadily upon high shelves. Soon after entering the area, Brother Xavier hears a mysterious low-frequency hum. He is unable to place it, but Koa so K'terr can: it is the sound of a contragrav lifter in operation. The characters immediately become even more careful, as both Brindal Karth and Brother Xavier sneak into the depths of the stacks searching out the sources of the sounds.
They find the answer to the riddle soon enough, as a pair of Insurgent Golems float into action and open fire upon the characters. With fragments of shattered shelving and puffs of decayed books fluttering to all sides, both Brother Xavier and Brindal Karth return fire, spreading chaos and destruction. Brindal Karth quickly gets the worst of this exchange, losing his shield to a withering burst of automatic gunfire.
Koa so K'terr looks about at the chaos, then invokes his psychic powers to lift both himself and Korzhun up to the roof of the building, straight into the presence of Red Billy and a third Insurgent Golem. Red Billy has psychic duel with Koa, inflicts the outer Qlippoth on him for a second, then drops down the side of the building after Koa hurls eight rocks at him (using autofire burst fire rules). Meanwhile, Korzhun rushes across the rooftop, intent upon tearing Red Billy limb from limb. Seeing Red Billy take a trip down the side of the building, Korzhun breaths a word of prayer to the Pancreator and leaps after him headlong. His acrobatic skills keep the damage he suffers from his fall to a minimum.
Back among the stacks, Brother Xavier learns from his comlink that Red Billy has been seen running down the north side of the building. He quickly ignores the Insurgent Golem that continues to shoot at him, unlimbers his Vuldrok assault rifle and heads for a window. Trusting in his shield to keep him safe against the continuing fire of the Golem, he starts firing upon Red Billy, a task made more difficult by the space-warping way Red Billy retreats into the jungle. By the time Red Billy disappears for good, Brother Xavier suspects that he has managed to hit him at least once.
With Red Billy no longer on the immediate scene, the characters manage to drive off one of the Insurgent Golems and incapacitate another. About this time, Peter Sangaree shows up, eager at the prospect of capturing a golem intact for study. Brindal Karth proudly tells him, "We captured one of the robots! It can be used as an ashtray now!", holding up the shattered shell of the thing. Peter is less than pleased.
Korzhun, Koa so K'terr and Brother Xavier follow one golem into Jungle Sector 2. Korzhun finds it in another of the old city maintenance shacks, tears a hole in the door, and loses his shield to a burst of automatic fire. He has a painful and brief encounter with the golem that leaves him terribly wounded but the golem destroyed. The other characters arrive on the scene to see Korzhun toss the shattered golem out the hole in the door. They are disappointed to see that Korzhun had ruined the thing.
Brother Xavier performs First Aid upon Korzhun, then shoots him up with Elixir. There ensues a certain debate over exactly how much damage elixir heals, a debate that is finally resolved by fiat: ELIXIR HEALS 2D DAMAGE.
Having finished with Korzhun, Brother Xavier searches for Red Billy in the maintenance shack, finally concluding that he must be somewhere else.
While Brother Xavier searches on the ground, Koa so K'terr flies up into the air to get a better look at the region. He spots a native village only a small distance away, and heads over to have a visit.
While the other characters are off hunting down the other escaping golem, Sir Brindal Karth hunts down the third golem in the library, and shoots it to death, taking a series of devastating wireblade cuts in the process. It takes him a total of five rifle shots to get it, almost running himself out of ammunition in the process. After the golem stops moving, he doses himself with enough Elixir to choke a brute to keep himself from bleeding to death. He then radios over to the others, "I got the third one!" Brother Xavier queries: "You captured it?" Brindal responds: "I tied it down." He then ties down the metal carcass.
Koa lands some distance out of the village, then walks into the encampment, hoping that he will only scare the natives with his outlandish appearance, and not with his unnatural powers. The settlement consists of a half-dozen tents clustered around a central firepit. A skin kettle bubbles on a frame above the fire. Koa innocently peers into one tent and is greeted with a spear point. He retreats very slowly.
Having established some contact with the locals, Koa does his best to communicate the danger Red Billy poses to them. He strongly suspects that they already know that bad things are around based upon their hostile nature. Having done his duty, he retreats back to the other characters.
The characters decide that they need to reprovision, and that they should get the Assault Carrier out of the area in case Red Billy makes an attempt upon it. They also decide that this is a fine opportunity to rid themselves of those convicts they consider to be "unreliable" (principally the two former kidnappers and the one man prone to black rages).
Back at the Assault Carrier, Brother Xavier and Koa so K'terr interrogate the prisoners to determine just how unreliable the "unreliable" convicts are. Their chosen technique is to have Brother Xavier perform the actual interrogation while Koa so K'terr uses his psychic gifts to read the subject's thoughts. Alarm bells go off when Koa picks up a second, very different voice within the head of the first kidnapper.
Between them, Brother Xavier and Koa so K'terr determine that the kidnapper has been possessed by an entity that calls itself Vinjogogulazj. Brother Xavier barely even waits to drag the luckless kidnapper out of the direct sight of the other convicts before slaughtering the man. It isn't a sure guarantee that the other convicts could hear the gruesome gurgling sound of their comrade's lifeblood spurting onto the ground, but it is certain that every single one of them could see the blood darkening Brother Xavier's pants as he returned to the group.
The characters immediately fear that the other two "unreliable" convicts may also be possessed. This suspicion is confirmed when they first identify the same voice in the head of the second kidnapper, and then when the bull-like brawler tries to make a break for it using the same one-step-is-ten rite Red Billy knows. This is the first time the characters have actually seen the rite in use at close range. They note that every time the big guy takes a step, his body twists out in a blind-spot effect, twisting back into existence at the other end of the step. Both Brindal Karth and Brother Xavier are Johnny-on-the-spot with their rifles, and make sure that he doesn't get far.
At this point, Brother Xavier starts to lose it. He argues with the other characters that it would be far better to kill all of the convicts (including the remaining dozen "reliable" convicts) than to allow for the possibility of leaving a live Antinomist in their midst. He assumes without even speaking that the lives of the two kidnappers are forfeit, despite the fact that neither of them appear to consciously know that they have been possessed.
From Brother Xavier's point of view, the only other option is to have Koa so K'terr psychically interrogate every convict to verify that they are safe. Koa states flat out that he doesn't have enough Wyrd remaining to do this if he wants to be able to stand against Red Billy in another psychic combat. Koa then states that if he can rest for an hour, he will regain enough Wyrd to let him interrogate one convict. Brother Xavier is unwilling to accept this, and nettles Koa beyond any rationality.
By the end of the argument, Brother Xavier relents and agrees that with some reasonable proof that all of the convicts have not been possessed, it would be okay to just send all the survivors back to Fennen Marsh. Koa rests for an hour, then interrogates the onetime fruit-seller, who proves to be clean.
Peter suggests that this is a good time to display some leadership, considering that the secretive way the characters are deciding who to kill and who to spare is certainly not going to be inspiring any confidence or loyalty among either the convicts or the guards. He suggests that some of the other characters, preferably Sir Brindal Karth (who should be representing secular authority) and Brother Xavier (in his oft-ignored role as spiritual leader), offer some public explanation of their acts.
Brother Xavier writes a proclamation describing what the problem is (a demon possessing some convicts) and how large it has become (four of the convicts are possessed; three have been found and the fourth is loose in the ruins). It is intended for Patera Fen, who will read it to the rest of the colony population. Peter Sangaree adds a side note for the Patera's eyes only suggesting that interrogation has been a useful technique so far. He also writes a letter to Bob Lungflook providing more in-depth information (including the powers displayed by the Antinomists) and urging him to take some precautions.
In a possibly-optimistic attempt to cleanse the second kidnapper (who has thus far assumed that his life is already forfeit), Brother Xavier performs every old exorcism ritual he can remember. He manages to severely freak the convict out, but generates no visible effects. Koa's subsequent MindSpeech attempt fails to elicit a second voice, indicating either that the attempt at exorcism was successful, or that Vinjogogulazj is clever enough to play possum.
After the "kill him now?" question is raised briefly once again, the characters finally decide that the best thing to do is to ship the kidnapper off to a monastery, so the monks can deal with him. Predicting that the Hawkwoods will soon level the place, they decide to send him to the Surreveil Valley monastery. With that, they bustle everyone else back onto the Assault Lander and send them back to Fennen Marsh, leaving Linus Cossett with instructions to pick them up again in two days.
Peter Sangaree determines that the tallest building in Jungle Sector 2 is a 10-story hulk of a building overgrown with vines and weeds. He proposes putting Brindal Karth up in the top to watch for Red Billy with his eye. The rest of the characters will wait at the base of the tower, ready to act upon Brindal Karth's warning. Peter expects that Red Billy will make his way to the nearby native encampment sooner or later, and suggests that Brindal Karth focus his attention there. There is general agreement among the characters that this is as good a plan as anybody is likely to come up with.
The tower is hardly in good shape: about half of the floor and roof area are gone, along with most of the interior walls and the stairways. Getting up or down involves taking a rather circuitous path, and consumes easily five minutes.
The first night is completely uneventful. During the dead time, the characters take to their various hobbies. Brother Xavier carves Red Billy's name on several bullets. Peter looks at the ruins of the two Insurgent Golems destroyed by the other characters, and despairs at ever getting them to work again. Koa frets over the fact that both Sir Brindal Karth and Korzhun have lost their shields to gunfire, then has the amazing though that the fusion-powered Insurgent Golems might have a compatible power source. He communicates his idea to Peter, who removes one of the Golem's fusion batteries and determines that no, they are not compatible with shield power supplies. Koa goes back to disconsolate moping.
Early in the second evening, Sir Brindal Karth spots something that can only be Red Billy approaching the native encampment. He alerts the other characters, who swiftly steal through the jungle, ready to spring an ambush. Brother Xavier slips around one side of the encampment, finding at least one incapacitated guard along the way, while Peter Sangaree and Korzhun sneak around the other way. They meet at the point where Brindal Karth last saw Red Billy appear. Meanwhile, Koa flies himself towards the other side of the camp, watching for additional trouble.
Trouble starts when the characters notice that the back of the tent nearest Red Billy's last position has been slit open. Korzhun sneaks up to the tent, then rushes inside, crashing headlong into a dead body hanging from the tentpole. The entire thing collapses in a heap of cloth, wood, blood and furious vorox. At that moment, Red Billy launches himself from the shadows at Brother Xavier, who responds by wildly firing his assault rifle at point-blank (-4) range. Simultaneously, Koa sees two additional Insurgent Golems erupt from tents on the other side of the encampment and launch themselves at the characters, guns blazing.
Incredible violence ensues. Brother Xavier distinguishes himself by shooting Red Billy (dressed only in a loincloth) many, many times. Koa manages to psychically disable one of the Insurgent Golems, allowing Peter Sangaree to remove it's power supply and capture it. Brindal Karth severely damages the second golem with his sniper rifle, firing from his perch atop the tower some 400 meters away. Unfortunately, he runs out of ammunition before he is able to destroy it, and is forced to hide in the lower floors of the tower to evade it's wrath until Koa can fly onto the scene and crush it with his psychic might.
By the end of the fight, the characters have managed to decapitate Red Billy, destroy one Insurgent Golem, and capture the second. They consider this to be quite a victory until they discover that during the time they took to approach the encampment, Red Billy managed to do in at least half of the natives.
Each character gains 4 experience points. Koa gets an additional point for his nifty battery suggestion.
After this adventure ends, the characters return to Fennen Marsh, where they have four months worth of dead time, during which the Gwynneth Winter Matrix Game events will take place. Several of the characters already have strong ideas on how they plan to spend their time. Koa wants to spend some time with his Coven, learning new psychic talents. Brindal Karth wishes to visit his cybersurgeon on Leagueheim to get an internal think machine. And Brother Xavier wants to weasel his way into the good graces of a monastery somewhere and learn all the theurgy he can.