We are incomplete, because Mike (Grod Sangaree) has not appeared. Everyone mourns. Chris (Tonk Sangaree) is beside himself with sorrow. Bruce (Longfellow Yost) is beside himself with grief. Tim (Anpago Yost) is beside himself with rage. Chuck (Morgan Sangaree) is simply beside himself. Paul thinks that everyone else has gone completely flipping insane. Then Mike appears and everything goes back to normal.
The characters are attempting to break into the D'Tarascon townhouse when a scream shatters the quiet evening air. Tonk Sangaree follows the sound and finds a black-cloaked madman leaning over the girl he's just stabbed. He challenges, and the madman runs off. He runs after him, but loses the fellow in the darkness.
Some other details follow, but they have been lost to the sands of time and Bruce's eagerness to answer various Cypress-related problems.
The characters decide that the D'Tarascon manor house would be a good place to investigate, given that members of the family seem to take up careers as raving lunatics and plague victims with disturbing regularity. An old crone answers the door to the place. She says that her name is Nana, and that she is one of the servants. The characters ask almost in unison, "Can we look around?" She agrees and lets them in to the place.
Nana takes the characters to the ballroom, where the other three servants are sitting down for a meal. All of them look suspiciously cadaverous. There are four places set for dinner, all covered with steel domes. Tonk Sangaree picks up one cover and finds that there is a human hand on the plate. Violence ensues.
Grod Sangaree rushes to attack Nana. She bares her fangs and long nails, screams "Nerull take you!" and rushes to the (ineffectual) attack. Tonk comments, "Hey! Zombies don't have claws! Or fangs!" Morgan Sangaree leaps up on top of the table with the intent of looking graceful and artistic. Anpago Yost lumbers up after him, then swings at the servant with his staff. He boasts, "I'm the ass-kickinest wizard ever!" Tonk moves in and gives Nana a wicked slash.
And then the other ghouls move in. The ass-kickinest wizard ever gets paralyzed. Longfellow Yost takes a bite (and is proud to indicate that he is not paralyzed), then strikes back with a vicious shortsword stab to the ghoul servant's shoulder. Grod chops the head off one female ghoul. Her headless body flails about for a moment before sagging to the ground. In retribution, the other female ghoul bites Morgan and paralyzes him. Grod, confident from his earlier victory, moves in to attack the ghoul, heedless of the fact that she has already paralyzed two of his compatriots. His confidence is vindicated by a strike almost hard enough to kill her in one blow. Tonk comments, "Nice job, Spine-Chopper Grod!" The ghoul also compliments him by chewing on his kneepads. He comments, "Just stay down, woman!" as he finishes the job. Longfellow mourns, "With battle cries like that, we're all certainly going to Hell." This distracts him long enough to allow a ghoul to tear his throat open. On the plus side, he did manage to make his saving throws against paralysis, so he's only at death's door. Grod quickly applies a tourniquet to the wound, saving the rogue for later. Then Tonk gets paralyzed. And Grod finishes off the last ghoul.
The paralyzed characters eventually come around, but Longfellow is down for the count. Tonk supervises the process of taking every piece of available silverware in sight and packing it up in a tablecloth. Then the characters cart Longfellow's nearly lifeless body back to the priest, who asks, "Weren't you just here earlier today? I have no healing magic left! Can you wait until tomorrow?" Tonk comments, "We can wait, but I don't think Longfellow can." The priest takes a look at Longfellow and comments, "You put a tourniquet on his neck? And you stuffed a bird's nest down the wound?" Grod offers, "I did it myself! Isn't it great?" The priest rolls his eyes and pulls out a healing scroll. A moment later, Longfellow is completely healed.
The characters go back to their rooms for a night's rest. Grod and Longfellow head off to find the Constable and let him know what happened. Longfellow starts off by explaining, "We went to visit the manor house, and you'll never believe what we found there…" Working very hard against type, the Constable accepts the characters' story instantly. He crows out, "This explains everything! The whole manor house was a nest of ghouls, and there's probably a follower of Nerull somewhere around that is leading them on!" The characters are stupefied by the fact that they've managed to find the one lawman in the entire five-county region who is willing to take threats to the public health seriously.
In contrast to the others' actions, Anpago spends the evening in the common room of the inn being clucked over by his barmaid "friend". The other characters can only imagine how the conversation goes:
The other characters presume that this touching little story will go straight down the road Evil Dead followed.
There is a brief orgy of healing magic. Then the characters go back to the manor along with the Constable and his two deputies. The manor is decorated in incredibly lavish style, but has a notable lack of ready cash. There are some books (which are worth money) and some weapons displayed decoratively on the walls, but the presence of the Constable discourages looting. There are a lot of the missing villagers around, some assembly required. Some are in the larder, some are in the ballroom, and so on. There is a fairly recent altar to Nerull upstairs in the rumpus room. And a lot of less-than-careful housekeeping.
The characters have Grod dismantle and completely defile the shrine to Nerull. Then they set to searching the entire house. The characters form one search party, while the Constable and his deputies form the other. On the first floor, a madman with a knife jumps out from behind a tapestry to attack Anpago. And looks very surprised that Anpago is still standing. Anpago looks over at Longfellow and responds, "I've got 9 hit points! I'm tougher than you!" Longfellow pointedly does not mention the gouts of blood pouring down Anpago's side.
Meanwhile, the madman still stands before the characters, knife in hand. His face is twisted with madness and insanity. His body is hidden behind a cloak of blackness. He boasts, "You should not have come to D'Tarascon!" The characters are happy to realize that the madman really is John D'Tarascon. Except Anpago, who got cut to ribbons by his initial attack.
Longfellow charges into John D'Tarascon, delivering a mighty slash. Grod steps up to flank him and delivers an even more mighty slash. And then the kicking starts. By this time, John D'Tarascon is on the ground and whimpering for mercy. Morgan rushes over to help Anpago while the characters move to bind him. Then as they move in, John D'Tarascon surges up and executes a sneak attack on Grod. Tonk finishes the job of pulverizing D'Tarascon. And then the body is completely defiled.
The characters finish securing the body while Tonk goes skipping up the stairs to find the other search party, calling out, "Constable! Constable! We found John! He leapt out at us and attacked five of us with a dagger."
When located, the Constable is a touch skeptical of Tonk's breathless story. He muses, "Five of you? With a dagger?" Tonk nods wildly, a weirdly gleeful smile on his face, "And then he pretended to surrender, but then attacked us again!" The Constable become more skeptical, "He pretended to attack you? And then you cut off his head?" Tonk continues nodding, "Exactly!"
The Constable seems remarkably willing to believe all this as long as the characters help bring out the bodies and pile them on a cart. He completely ignores the characters as they take an inventory of John D'Tarascon's stuff for looting purposes:
Morgan determines that the potions, the dagger and the rings are all magical. The ring has a nifty-looking sigil on it. The dagger is clearly very finely crafted. Longfellow takes claim on the dagger and determines that it is keener and more accurate than any dagger he has ever held before.
Once the excitement has died down a bit, the Constable talks to the characters in his office. He tells them, "I think we need to dispel all the panic that's been affecting the town." Tonk is ready with a suggestion, "Then we clean up the graveyard!" The Constable asks, "What do you mean?" Tonk explains, "You people have been burying zombies out there! We need to burn the bodies!" The Constable takes some objection, "We don't defile the dead around here! And we put chains on them!" But Tonk perseveres, pointing out, "But those things don't die! The chains will rust off sooner or later, and then your grandchildren will curse your names!"
The Constable eventually decides to send off a deputy to fetch the Bailiff three days away. Meanwhile, the characters will stick around and call the villagers in for a council.
Before the council meeting, Tonk asks the priest how many undeads have been buried up in the graveyard. The priest tells him that there are seven. He explains that they aren't very strong, and that after the first couple of people died and came back the villagers took to chaining them up quickly, while they were still dead.
The townsfolk assemble. The Constable announces that after the death of his beloved brother Marcus, John D'Tarascon was stricken with madness and formed a cult of Nerull. He forced his servants to eat human flesh to turn them into ghouls. And now, thanks to the efforts of these strangers who arrived in town three days ago the ghouls have been killed and the cult destroyed.
In the course of the subsequent discussion, an interesting detail comes to light: Marcus' body is missing - John took it from the temple the night he died and nothing has been seen of it since then.
And then the storm breaks. Water is coming down in buckets. The characters tell the Constable, "You better not send out your deputies right now, this is when the really bad stuff is supposed to go down." The dwarf shopkeeper chirps up, "You can use my stuff!" He is willing to lend the characters:
Anpago puts on the Bracers. Longfellow takes four +1 Arrows. Tonk takes two +1 Arrows. Morgan takes the +1 Longsword.
Anpago tries out John D'Tarascon's ring. It turns out that it is a +1 Ring of Protection. D'Tarascon's potions look the same as the dwarf's potions. Everyone assumes that they're potions of Healing too and distributes one to each character. And it develops that John D'Tarascon's dagger is also a +1 weapon.
The characters take Marcus D'Tarascon's portrait as a souvenir.
Just before the characters march out to set things right, the priest confesses that he was responsible for everything that has gone wrong. When Marcus D'Tarascon died, he tried to Raise him with a scroll. Something went terribly, terribly wrong. John D'Tarascon cried out in anguish when the scroll was read, and Marcus stayed dead. The priest comments that John and Marcus were twins, and wonders if that might have had something to do with it.
There is a commotion in the common room. Someone has just fallen over dead. Anpago starts lashing up the body. He is about halfway done when it starts to move around. He head-butts the body as Longfellow rushes up yelling, "Let me help! I have Use Rope!" The zombie is restrained in due course.
Tonk yells out, "Was he eating or drinking anything?" A local peasant scratches his head and offers, "Well, he had some of the soup..." The characters call out in unison: "Stay away from the soup!"
Lucas mumbles something about six stars. The characters assume this is a good reason to start kicking ass, until a townsfolk shows up and reports that an army of undead is approaching the town. Tonk gets the townsfolk at work on barring the windows and doors. The Constable is eager to commit suicide by checking out the undead army, but the characters persuade him to wait until they are ready to go with him.
With the meeting-house moderately secure, the characters plow their way out into the rain. Walking is difficult through the slick mud, and visibility is miserable. A crack of lightning reveals at least a dozen zombies shambling up the street. The characters sneak to the sides of the horde and examine their progress. The undeads are ransacking houses and throwing furniture into the streets.
The characters evade the zombies and head to the cemetery, where all is quiet. The characters go straight to the old graveyard and start picking through tombs. The second one they try is full of water and undead skeletons. The characters deal with them with great prejudice.
Several empty tombs later, the characters find a crypt overrun with giant rats. At least a dozen giant rats. The characters resolve to hunt down the joker who has been importing livestock from Sumatra and beat him silly. Not that this stops them from killing a lot of giant rats. Longfellow expends his potion of Healing to patch up a rat bite, but gets the plague in return. And then the rats run.
Yet another crypt is home to a couple of mindless, shambling dead things. Tonk takes a really substantial hit and gets badly hurt, but bounces back after a quick pull on a healing potion.
Further down the line, the characters find a crypt with giant bats hanging from the ceiling. Longfellow blows an attempt to sneak into the crypt and wakes up four bats. Anpago puts all but one of them to sleep. Grod chops the remaining bat in two. Then the characters surround and slaughter the sleeping bats. Anpago ribs Longfellow, "You want to be a Druid? Are you sure?" Longfellow adopts a pained but reflective expression and offers, "Circle of life, man."
The characters finally make their way to the D'Tarascon family crypt. Unlike the others, it is brightly lighted, and features a very nice throne done up in Early Rustic Necromantic style. A cadaverous fellow sits up on the throne, flanked by two flaming braziers. He sees the characters and announces rather grandly, "I am Marcus D'Tarascon, Lord of the Undead! Give me the scroll!" He has three zombie friends.
Anpago answers his demand with a quick Disrupt Undead spell. Marcus laughs the spell off, boasting, "It is useless for you to use your pathetic powers against me, for I cannot die!" Longfellow shoots him multiply with magic arrows. Marcus has this big "I am invincible!" act that gets rather harder to pull off with each additional arrow. Grod, Morgan and Tonk chop the zombies up while Anpago and Longfellow snipe at Marcus D'Tarascon. Marcus D'Tarascon becomes momentarily disoriented and does magic things at Morgan when he had really meant to shoot at Longfellow.
Marcus D'Tarascon rushes Tonk and cripples him. Anpago moves up and pours a healing potion down his throat. Tonk's throat, that is. Tonk congratulates him, "Dude, you're my bestest friend!" Invigorated, Tonk steps up and slaughters Marcus. Marcus gasps, "But... I was promised... I can't die..." Then something appears on the altar. Red light from the blood red moon shines in through the door. A skeletal figure in a black cloak appears on the throne. It walks down towards Marcus' body as the characters back off. The apparition collects the soul of its servant and vanishes.
Outside, the rain slows.
The characters search the crypt for portable wealth and nifty magical souvenirs. Among a large collection of hard-to-sell crypt hardware, they find:
Anpago thinks that the symbol on the medallion is related to evocation magic. Morgan offers, "Maybe it's one of those that strangles the wearer!" Anpago puts it on. He sees it change to a golden medallion with three golden spheres, one large and two small. The other characters don't see any difference at all.
On the way back to the village, the characters see a couple of zombies wandering randomly around. They are confused and easy to slaughter. The town hall and the townsfolk inside are still around: the characters killed D'Tarascon before most of the zombies were able to get inside. The townsfolk are quite happy to have been saved, though they're still not that happy at the idea that the characters might stick around. The priest only has two Cure Disease scrolls, but three characters (Anpago, Longfellow and Tonk) have the plague. They draw lots, and Anpago loses. He whines, "But I have a girlfriend..." Everyone agrees that Anpago will get a cure out of the proceeds from the gem in the next significant city.
The characters return the dwarf's equipment. This includes the one remaining healing potion, the arrows, the bracers of armor and the longsword. Each character gains 1460 experience points from their encounter with Marcus D'Tarascon. There is great excitement, especially as Longfellow now has enough points to become a real live Druid, though he doesn't get the magic tricks until such time as he actually finds a Druid to learn from.
Morgan tries to sing for spare change. He gets really drunk. Tonk, Anpago and Longfellow sneak out to liberate furniture from the D'Tarascon townhouse. They take one wagon-load of furniture out. Plus eight or so books from the manor house. Base value of furniture is 400 gp. Each of them gets a 150 gp cut, split three ways among Tonk, Anpago and Longfellow. The books stay in the wagon.
In the morning, the characters eat a really big breakfast on the town's ticket and set out for Port Delour. They walk for most of the day. Towards the end of the afternoon the group comes to The River. Fortunately, there is a bridge. It is built of wooden planking in two spans, with a small tower in the center. Guards lounge on top of the tower and on the ends of the bridge. A one-time pass across is 4sp per person, 8sp per animal and 8sp per vehicle. A six-month pass is three times that. The three characters who got furniture money cough up 4gp and 1sp each for a six-month pass. In return, the guard hands out tokens with little Fahrlangn symbols carved into them. There are different types of tokens for people, animals and vehicles. The guard mentions that there is also a Fahrlangn shrine in the tower, in case the characters are interested.
The characters stop by the shrine. Tonk introduces himself and his cousins. He explains the characters' current disease problems, but the priest can't help them. They make a small offering and head on to Port Delour. The priest mentions a shrine a day and a half to the east that could help.
Longfellow asks about local druids. The priest knows only one druid in the area, a half-elf named Crazy Tomas from the Silverleaf family. The Silverleaves are of good reputation and live in Crobin's Crossroads, just on the other side of the bridge. Tomas is a different matter. Most of the family isn't very religious, but Crazy Tomas is rather fanatic about the faith of Obad-Hai. Tonk and Longfellow thank him and give him a gold piece each.
The road away from the bridge forks. The sign says that the left fork goes to Port Delour and the right fork goes to Oakwood. The characters take the left fork.
Crobin's Crossroads is a walled village of about 800 people. The center of the town is a military encampment, with the town proper built up against its walls. Most of the town buildings are wooden, built right up against each other. The place doesn't cover much ground, but it is very, very dense. And a huge fire trap.
The characters ask the guard where to find the Silverleaves. The guard explains that they're on Third Street, in the house with silver paint and little leaves. He also says they are hosting an elven noble, Galway Mossflower. The guard is baffled by why someone so eminent would be staying with a bunch of half-breeds. The characters learn that the lady of the house is an elf, but her husband is the human Captain of the Keep.
Longfellow talks to the lady of the house, inquiring about where he can find her son Tomas. She tells him to go North to the Haunted Forest. She doesn't know where Tomas is specifically, but he is often found with his friend Saravar Cheslik.
Longfellow returns to the others and explains what he has learned. He tells them, "I'll go alone!" The other characters shout back in chorus, "NO YOU WON'T - if you get killed, we'll have to explain why we let you go alone to the Haunted Forest." Morgan tells the others, "He said he wanted to go alone, so he can join a cult..."
On the way out of town, a passer-by asks if the characters have been to Crobin's Place. He says it's got lots of interesting things, and that people often travel out from Port Delour just to go there. He offers to guide them there.
Along the way, the helpful local introduces himself as Paloma; Crobin is his uncle. Some of the characters (notably Longfellow) are suspicious that Paloma might be trying to lead them into an ambush. The other characters are disappointed that he isn't. Tonk asks if he has a Remove Disease scroll or a Wand of Cure Light Wounds. He's pretty sure he's got the scroll in stock, but isn't sure about the Wand. He offers to sell Cure Light Wounds scrolls for only 25gp each.
Crobin's Place is open and airy, and very pleasant. The characters stand around and admire the décor while Paloma goes to search his stock. He returns and tells them that he doesn't have a wand of Cure Light Wounds in stock, but he can get one. It will cost 645gp. He does have a scroll of Remove Disease and will sell it for 400gp. Tonk offers 1000 for the both of them and shows what the characters have to trade: silverware, books, and a gem. Paloma offers to take the gem and the books for the wand and the scroll. Morgan thinks that this is a pretty generous price, and suspects that Paloma may know where he can sell the books for a very good price. Everyone agrees to make the exchange the following day, when the wand arrives.
Paloma comments that the silverware is worth quite a bit. He asks where it came from. Longfellow explains that the characters got it at an estate sale: there was a death in the D'Tarascon family and the younger son needed the cash. Paloma offers 80gp in cash or 120gp in trade for it. The characters take it in trade and proceed to buy all manner of things:
Longfellow tosses in 12gp and Tonk tosses in 13gp to make up the difference. Morgan, Tonk and Longfellow all toss in gold (25/15/10) to buy a healer's kit for Longfellow (+2 circumstance bonus for Heal checks).
The characters find a place to spend the night. 2gp per room for a private room, of 5gp for a suite. Tonk pays for the suite, everyone else sleeps on the floor. The next morning, Morgan takes possession of a Wand of Cure Light Wounds with 43 charges. And Anpago gets cured of the plague.
The session ends with the characters sleeping peacefully in Crobin's Crossroads.