Our Glorious Leader Paul presides as Acolyte Tim (Anpago Yost), Preceptor Billy (Andrinor), Sanctificatus Chris (Tonk Sangaree), Archpater Chuck (Marcus Sangaree), and Deacon Bruce (Longfellow Yost) wordlessly file into the room. "Sanctificatus? What the heck does that mean?" objects Chris. Tim offers, "It means you've been purified so your presence is not offensive to the Glorious Leader. You know, cleaned." Billy offers, "End to end!" Chuck pipes up, "Inside and out!" Chris looks ill. Glorious Leader Paul contributes, "Hey, at least you're not covered with open weeping sores like Deacons are. They show their holiness through their degradation." Bruce says nothing as he removes a maggot from his elbow.
Chuck looks at the upset expressions all around the room, then skillfully improves the spirit of the day by telling entertaining stories about cooking off cheap ammo from Mexico at the rifle range.
The characters start the session enjoying some find autumn weather in their new-completed mansion. They decide that in honor of the pleasant breezes and the bright sunlight, they will perform various acts of home improvement. Tonk Sangaree announces, "I'm making shelves in the house for our huge book collection!" Marcus Sangaree proclaims, "To keep our Family Circus reputation intact, I'm going to go have a conversation with Marrique!" Tonk looks over at Marcus and offers, "I think you may have something confused there. We look like carny folk; Family Circus is a mass of saccharine spew that good-hearted people ignore every Sunday." Marcus Sangaree looks hurt, but heads out to look up the half-dragon lass anyway. He mutters, "Yeah, fine. Let's see you act so smug when your girlfriend is covered in scaly evil," as he walks out the door.
Anpago Yost is sitting off in the corner, looking through catalogs from magical mail-order supply houses. He tells the others, "Dudes! If I spent all my money I could buy a scroll of Bigby's Crushing Hand!" He is disappointed to see that the others simply ignore him.
Tonk is wakened in the night when Sister Chiron gets up. He drifts back to sleep. But then when he rises in the morning he finds that she never returned to bed. He looks around for her. He does not succeed, but does find that the Bag of Holding that contains about half of the party's money is also missing. Andrinor notices the trouble and offers, "So all this time she was just a gold-digger after your cash?" Tonk reflects, "Yeah, but I did get some sex out of it." Andrinor is incredulous, "So you're okay with this? And we're just going to go on with our day?"
Then Tonk walks out of the common area and sees the Bag of Holding, neatly folded with a note on it. The note says:
I am very sorry, but I have been waiting three hundred years and I cannot wait any longer.
Sir Melkin.
Anpago flutters up and exclaims, "Oh! That's right! That'd be the intelligent dagger we took out of a box and put into a bag!" Tonk heads out to wake up some cousins.
Anpago suddenly stops dead in the air. He asks, "By the way, what is my wife's name?" Longfellow Yost flaps up to ask, "Is it important?" Anpago continues on, "And what's her cup size?" Marcus points out, "Her name is Marie. Why don't you know that?" Anpago replies, "How is it that you know that?" Marcus blushes and refuses to answer.
Tonk refocuses everyone's attention by screaming out, "Sister Chiron's been kidnapped by the dagger!" Marcus comments, "You lost your woman to a weapon?" Anpago replies on his cousin's behalf, "Yeah. This sounds like the sort of problem that Jayne would have." Tonk grouses, "I completely forgot about that talking dagger. I wish it'd mentioned something before stealing my girlfriend. So, could you two pixie guys check out the docks and see if Sister Chiron has shown up there? I'm going to get dressed, hitch up on my goat and head to the Temple. You want to come along, Marcus?" Marcus, his hopes of spending the afternoon chatting up Marrique dashed, disconsolately answers, "Okay."
Anpago, Andrinor and Longfellow fly off to the docks. Andrinor is riding his griffon. Marcus watches them as they fly away from the house. He muses, "Two pixies, a griffon and an eagle. This looks like the beginning of a bad joke." Tonk replies, "Our entire party looks like a bad joke."
The Highthrone docks still show the aftereffects of the Flame King's attack. Debris is still scattered all about, despite the efforts of teams of laborers to clean it up and repair the destroyed docks.
The characters flap around the docks and ask after Sister Chiron. Longfellow learns she was around, but he doesn't find her name on the passenger manifests of any recently departed skyships. Anpago and Andrinor find that she was around at dawn, and that two skyships departed around that time. One went to Serene and one went to Oakwood. Neither place would take her towards the Spider Woods. Also, two ferry-ships have departed to the villages at the base of the mountains.
Longfellow and Anpago fly to intercept the two ships, while Andrinor heads to the base of the mountains. Longfellow and Anpago return to report that Sister Chiron was not on either ship.
Tonk finds one of the priests, one of those whom he rescued from the basement of the Academy of Arcane Arts some time ago. He asks, "Have you seen Sister Chiron around recently? We think that one of the weapons we had in our house took her mind over and set her off on a quest somewhere." The priest takes him to the Sister's room. They find that the place has been ransacked: her possessions and her armor are gone. The priest exclaims, "She's no longer allowed to wear that armor, now that her rank has been reduced!" He seems more upset at the notion that Sister Chiron might be breaking temple rules than by the thought that she was abducted by an over-talkative trumped-up razor blade.
Another priestess shows up and asks after Sister Chiron. Apparently she left a terrible mess in the library. Tonk is relieved to find that the priestess just means that Sister Chiron didn't put any of the books back on the shelves. He explains once again that she has been possessed by a dagger. The priestess rather skeptically replies, "Don't you mean a demon?" Tonk reassures her, "No, a dagger. Can you help us find out what she was researching?" Marcus steps up to announce, "I'll read to you, Tonk!" Tonk indignantly protests, "I can read!"
The characters, escorted by the two temple residents, head to the library and look over the books Sister Chiron left out. They find that she was researching the last Goblin War. She has several books open to pages describing the Battle of Southport, when the Goblin King was killed and the goblins were driven back into the Spider Woods. The goblins attacked in force, but Lord High Marshal Tomman used brilliant tactics to cut off a third of their host and defeat it in detail, evening the odds. The human forces were pushed back to a prepared position at the ancestral crypt of the Tomman family, but drew the goblins into a trap and defeated them. Both the Goblin King and the Lord High Marshal were killed, and the surviving goblins fled into the forest where nobody sensible would follow. Marcus comments, "I bet we go into the forest. After all, we're not sensible at all."
Tonk asks the priestess if she'd let him borrow the book. Tonk tries to convince her by saying, "Look, bitch, give me the book! I'd give you a taste of what I've been slipping Sister Chiron if it'd help, but I'm not into fat chicks." Marcus desperately whispers to him, "Ix-nay on the at-fay icks-chay omments-cay!" Marcus then realizes that the librarian and Tonk are completely ignoring him in favor of their own screaming match. He simply slips the book into his cloak. Nobody notices.
Recognizing that his chances of patching anything up with the librarian are shot, Tonk does his best to reassure the priest he originally talked to that Sister Chiron really has been taken away against her will, and that her actions shouldn't reflect badly upon her standing in the church. The priest assures him that he will talk to the High Priestess. And that he will try to do so before the librarian talks to her.
The characters eventually decide that it is fairly likely that Sister Chiron headed to Southport. There is a ship bound there leaving in the afternoon.
Marcus finally makes it up to the Palace so he can look up Marrique. He finds her in the Dragon Kingdoms' Embassy chambers. She is actually not too unhappy to see him, and is more than willing to answer some of his questions. He leads off with, "Do you know Lord Rosh?" Marrique answers, "Yes. He was an exiled Dragon Lord." Tonk (who decided to tag along so he could offer his cousin dating tips) exclaims, "Wow. We've been speculating on that for months. Never occurred to us to just show up at the Embassy and ask." Marrique rolls her eyes and answers him, "Imagine that. Yes, he was exiled for crimes against the other Dragon Lords. I cannot discuss specifics."
Tonk tells her, "We might be in a position to kill him in the next couple of months. Any information you can provide would be helpful..." Marrique suggests that there might be some kind of reward if the characters could come up with information that would strengthen the relationship between the Dragon Kingdoms and the mainland.
Skyship passage to Southport turns out to cost 30 gold pieces per person, plus 45 gold per large animal. Longfellow finds that everyone already knows who he is, so he can't get free passage. The characters pay their money and board the skyship Silver Trout, commanded by Captain Raines. The journey is expected to take about ten hours.
As if from nothing, the characters start to hear heavy, thudding music. Anpago warns, "We're about to have an action sequence!" Then a huge, ten-foot tall blue-skinned humanoid appears on the aft deck. Its chain armor shines brightly in the sun. Its hands appear to be made from iron. Everyone stares in wonder and dismay as the creature proclaims, "It is I, Chaiya! Scourge of the airways! Land this ship immediately so I can take your cargo or my men and I will scourge your flesh!"
At this, four more huge creatures (not blue-skinned) appear. They look like ogres, but seem blockier and stronger than normal ogres. Also, their clubs are engraved with glowing crimson runes.
Tonk enthuses, "All my life I've dreamed of fighting someone with magic weapons! So I could kill them and sell the magic weapons!" He draws his greatsword in an almost dreamy gesture.
Marcus Sangaree steps past his cousin, approaches Chaiya and proclaims, "Let's see what you're made of!" He strikes true with his blade, but his attacks are deflected by a magical defense. Chaiya grumbles a bit, then cuts deep into Marcus with his greatsword. Tonk observes the situation and grouses, "Crap-tacular. Maybe we should have just given him the money." He steps up to one of the minion ogres and inflicts a dire wound upon its gizzard.
Down below, Anpago casts Haste and lets Watches-Birds out of his cage. Longfellow calls out, "Watches-Birds! Come kill the ogre mage!" Anpago covers his eyes and squeaks as Watches-Birds goes into Kill-Bot mode and charges up to the deck and straight into Chaiya. Chaiya seems upset. He gestures and two ogres come up behind Watches-Birds and slam into him with their great clubs. Watches-Birds howls as he loses internal organs.
Almost unnoticed in the background, Longfellow summons up a giant eagle that delivers a nasty scratching to one ogre's back. The ogre turns and almost kills the giant eagle in a single strike.
Andrinor hits Chaiya and one of his ogres with Ice Bolts. Both take damage, though Chaiya takes not so much. Andrinor is very pleased until he notices that the ogre mage is regenerating. Chaiya turns to Andrinor and boasts, "Hah! You like cold?" then hurls a Cone of Cold back at the pixie. Andrinor laughs at him: he is totally immune to cold.
Anpago throws Hold Monster at Chaiya. Chaiya laughs it off.
All across the deck, ogres are going into berserk rages. Tonk barely notices: he is too busy chopping great bloody chunks out of an ogre. The creature looks very bad, but is still up. Tonk howls, "Why... won't... you... die?"
Longfellow, in a desperate attempt to save Watches-Birds, summons up an ape behind one ogre, allowing Watches-Birds to rip it to shreds. Unfortunately, the other ogre and Chaiya chop Watches-Birds into three pieces. Longfellow howls, "Watches-Birds! Watches-Birds! Noooo!" Marcus mourns, "We can't even make a good rug out of him now." The other ogre, annoyed by the little stinging wounds Longfellow's giant eagle is delivering, swings its club. The giant eagle explodes into a burst of feathers.
Andrinor carefully arranges himself and preps up another Ice Bolt. An ogre dies. And then he throws Haste on Tonk.
Marcus finds himself beneficiary of Improved Invisibility thanks to Anpago. He takes careful assessment of the situation, then sends three arrows out at a wounded ogre. He is pretty sure he got an arrow into the creature's heart. He knows this from the way the sprays of blood emerge from the ogre's chest. As before, the creature is sustained only by its rage.
Andrinor proceeds to mock Chaiya, who roars and charges. His blade hits nothing. Tonk moves in to attack. Chaiya goes from looking in quite good shape to looking very, very hurt, slashed across the belly and thigh. Tonk yells, "Die! But don't drop your sword overboard!" An ogre charges Tonk. Tonk loses some teeth.
Anpago nails one ogre with a spray of Magic Missiles. Longfellow's ape kills an ogre. Longfellow brings up a Flame Blade. The crew starts to pay attention to the carnage around them.
Andrinor flings some Magic Missiles at Chaiya. Half of them get through. Only to be stopped by Chaiya's Shield spell.
Marcus skewers the one surviving ogre from one ear right through to the other with an arrow. The ogre flops down, his brain pierced through.
Anpago throws two Tasha's Hideous Laughter spells at Chaiya. He gains even more appreciation for the value of Spell Resistance as Chaiya shrugs off the spells without even raising a sweat.
Chaiya notices that he is running out of minions. He hurls a Cone of Cold at Tonk and two luckless crewmembers who got in the way. The two crewmembers just die. Tonk emerges covered with icicles, but still alive. He notices with some dismay that Chaiya is Levitating some distance away from the ship.
Tonk draws out his bow and shoots him three times. Chaiya falls, stone dead. Anpago swiftly Levitates the corpse, then Fireballs it. It appears that ogre magi are unable to regenerate damage inflicted by fire. Nor does it appear that they can survive having acid poured down their throats.
The characters drag all the corpses into a pile, Anpago casts Detect Magic, and then everyone looks for swag. They come up with:
Tonk brandishes the letter opener and announces, "Unless we find out that this is worth some staggering sum of money, we're keeping it for the house." Neither Marcus nor Anpago can tell just how much it might be worth, but they think it's probably worth at least 100 gold.
Chaiya's +1Huge Greatsword of Speed is made of shining steel and carved with hundreds of delicate runes. Marcus announces that they are in the language of the giants. The translates them, then explains to the others that they speak the praises of Chaiya, and announce the curses that will befall any who steal the sword from him.
Tonk announces that he is uninterested in curses. He picks up the blade to test its balance. When Tonk grasps the hilt, his hands assume a metallic hue. The speed property of the blade allows him to swing it with incredible agility, allowing an extra attack per round. Tonk is terribly taken with it. He is deeply hopeful that he will be able to use it, but finds that it is far too large for him to use. Likewise, the +1 Huge Great Clubs are waaay to big. Things are looking grim until Andrinor realizes that he can permanently Reduce the blade once he gets back to the city for only 500 experience points.
The characters find that casualties among the crew were very moderate: only the two frozen crewmen were killed. Longfellow promises to bring them back to life. As something.
The rest of the journey to Southport is uneventful.
Marcus Sangaree looks around Southport, hoping to find some indication that Sister Chiron has come through here. As far as he can tell, she hasn't come through the area. But he does find someone who found an unattended warhorse. Looking at the creature, it has a crest on it, but not hers.
The whole town has been turned into a military garrison. There are dozens of knights camped around the commons; the Village People are servicing them. Much of the normal town life has come to a halt. There are several outlying areas that have been burned and are now empty of people.
The locals who found the warhorse found it wandering northeast of the town. Tonk mourns, "If only we had someone who could talk to animals..." Longfellow rolls his eyes, takes the shape of a horse and talks to it. He tells the warhorse, "Hey, I'm Longfellow. How are you?" The horse responds, "Straight." Longfellow prompts it, "Uhh... okay. So, how'd you end up out in the field?" The horse tells its story...
The warhorse describes how it was riding with its master in a battle. After the battle, its humans gave it to a female who rode it for hours. And then the female let it go and it started grazing. Horse can lead characters back to where that happened. The battle was up at the north.
Longfellow becomes an eagle again to tell the others to get the peasants to let the characters borrow the horse for a while. Anpago uses Charm Person to persuade the peasants to let the characters borrow the horse for a bit. The characters thank them. Then Anpago comments, "If only one of us could track Sister Chiron's heavily-armored footsteps..."
Longfellow and the horse travel through the rolling fields of ripening grain and the small hilltop orchards. The trees are fruit trees, but they have been stripped of their fruit. The entire area is dotted with low mounds and shallow ditches covered with brambles. Andrinor mentions, "Those are some not-well-concealed pit traps. Apparently people around here don't take care of their defenses very well." Someone reminds him that he is looking at defenses left over from a battle that happened three hundred years ago.
A small round tower stands on a higher mound rising from the center of these works. A banner showing a fist clutching a lightning bolt flies above its crenellated top. Marcus points out, "That's the mark of Hieroneous!" Longfellow sees some tracks that might belong to Sister Chiron. Everyone heads towards the tower. On the way, Andrinor looks into the old pit traps to see if Sister Chiron fell into one. He just finds brambles.
The characters knock on the door. A priest opens it up. He says, "Hello. Are you tourists, come to see the battlefield?" Andrinor (in his role as the invisible voice in the air) replies, "We're actually looking for a friend of ours." The priest asks, "Who is it that speaks? Do your voices not incarnate into your bodies?" Andrinor becomes visible, then forces Anpago to become visible as well.
It takes some time for the characters to convince the priest that they are serious, and that they are not Sister Chiron's enemies. It is really Tonk and Marcus who carry the day here, particularly because Tonk has been sleeping with her and knows all sorts of personal details.
The priest explains that Sister Chiron came here, and that he let her into the crypts below the shrine. He knows of no way out of the crypts beyond his temple. She said she was seeking after the Shield of Hieroneous' Blessing, the shield wielded by Lord High Marshal Tomman. She entered the crypt some time ago, but she might not return: there are horrible things down in the crypt.
The characters get permission to enter the crypt to bring her back. The priest warns them of Kurge the Executioner. He lived over 400 years ago, and was the most feared assassin of his time. He charged very little, because he loved killing more than he loved money. The priest obviously loves this story. Kurge was buried in unsanctified ground, but the Duke responsible, and his wife, children, and distant relatives were all killed. The kingdom was in chaos, but nobody could stop the murders. One year and a day later, Kurge reappeared as an undead horror and announced he was again available for hire. He was hired to kill the Lord Marshal, and succeeded. But he was discovered, and fled into the catacombs. The general put the Lord Marshal into the crypt, then sealed it so Kurge could not escape.
Marcus asks, "And none of this was in the book we got from the Temple of Pelor? This is really important information!"
The priest explains, "The only way to keep the spell that traps Kurge in place is to pray for at least ten minutes every four hours at the Shrine of Hieroneous. We have been doing this for the last three hundred years." Marcus has visions of these priests being like burned-out Vietnam vets.
The characters delay their entrance into the crypts for a while so they can memorize new spells, with an heavy emphasis on magic that does bad things to undeads. Tonk goes off to the town to buy various groceries including alchemist's fire, holy water, and extra-heavy gorgets. The characters head underground just after sunrise the following day.
The crypts are dark, dank and full of rats. Longfellow asks, "How many rats?" Tonk groans, "Three feet deep." The characters advance down a hall, taking in the customary alcoves with dead bodies on either side. Then Anpago throws Light to deal with the darkness problem. Longfellow and Marcus lead. Longfellow tracks while Marcus looks for traps.
Longfellow notices that Sister Chiron jumped over one section of hallway. Marcus comments, "Yeah, that's because there's a trap door there." The whole tracking-Sister-Chiron plan also helps the characters avoid various dead ends and side passageways. Tonk notices that it isn't hard to keep up with the others, so he busies himself by glancing down these passages in hopes of seeing random swag lying about. He sees a couple of zombies wandering around. He stops looking down corridors.
The characters head down some stairs, moving ever deeper into the crypt. They cross a bridge across an underground river in a big room with bone-filled alcoves. Tonk looks around and comments, "I bet that strangling Executioner guy is really bored down here." The characters see some dire rats, which are typically aggressive, and are surprised to see that the creatures run away upon seeing the characters. Apparently there are enough undead around that they've learned to be cautious around things with two legs.
The characters enter a circular chamber. Tonk yells out as something stabs him. Then Marcus yells. And Longfellow. Longfellow casts Faerie Fire. He ends up illuminating the front halves of some kind of pinching scorpion-like insect. The creatures look like they are made out of shadow. Tonk runs at one of them; along the way, he runs into another one.
Tonk ends up grappled, and near torn apart. Longfellow gets grappled as well, and the shadow scorpion pretty much rips all his feathers off. Marcus tumbles off to one side, hoping to avoid the worst of the damage. Anpago throws a Fireball at three of the creatures, crisping the things. Andrinor finishes them with a Lightning Bolt.
Longfellow rather desperately heals himself so he won't die. Tonk breaks free, then goes hunting for shadow scorpion blood. Anpago and Andrinor start peeling shadow scorpions away from the others with Magic Missiles, allowing Longfellow to throw another Cure Moderate Wounds on Tonk and for Tonk to chop the two survivors apart. Andrinor helps out with flaming crossbow bolts. Longfellow does his best to help with a Flaming Sphere, but the creatures appear to be evasive enough to ignore it. Tonk cuts one up with a whirlwind attack. Then Marcus takes out the one still standing with arrows, enchanted by Anpago's Greater Magic Weapon trick.
Andrinor starts working on taking out the creatures' poison sacs while Marcus drains down his healing wands taking care of Longfellow and Tonk. Tonk comments, "Sister Chiron had better be mind-controlled. If this is just some sort of plea for attention, she's in so much trouble."
The characters continue on until they reach the door to the Lord High Marshal's tomb. Marcus notices a trap trigger on the door. Actually, he sees several of them. He marks them with chalk. Everyone makes an effort to avoid them as they file into the chamber. On the other side of the room, Sister Chiron's body lies motionless upon the floor. Tonk rushes over to her.
Anpago decides that there must be a trap. He casts Detect Thoughts. He comes up with six thinking beings. He looks around at the party and counts: one, two, three, four, five. Then he starts picking up surface thoughts, surface thoughts of vital organs and lethal strikes.
Then Kurge the Executioner silently rushes up from the shadows to attack Tonk. Tonk feels skeletal fingers slam through his back and into his vital organs. He avoids dying, though he feels Kurge grasping for his heart. Kurge groans, "I must be losing my touch..." Tonk whispers back, "I have fourteen cousins, and most of them are invisible. You might think you're the cheapest source of violence, but we're cheaper!"
Kurge tries to cast Invisibility. Tonk slashes out and hits him. Kurge is very, very surprised. He backs away very, very fast. Tonk rushes after him and hits him again, sending a sword strike through the creature's ribs. Dust puffs out of his cloak. Andrinor hurls a Hold Undead at Kurge, and finds out that he has really good saves. Marcus turns around and casts Searing Light. The dust lights on fire, but Kurge keeps on going. Tonk comments, "We understand why he was such a feared assassin. He wasn't necessarily very skilled, but he was very, very tough." Meanwhile, Anpago lights into Kurge with a flight of Magic Missiles.
Longfellow flutters up and blesses Tonk with Barkskin. Kurge attacks, but his swings are miles away. Tonk laughs at his claws. Then, surprisingly, Kurge lashes out with a long tongue, which Tonk still avoids. Tonk exults, "Go team me!" Tonk strikes back, sending up another cloud of dust and shattered bone. Kurge looks very unhealthy. Aside, of course, from the fact that he's actually dead. Marcus runs up and throws Cure Moderate Wounds on him. Kurge falls into dust.
Andrinor comments, "I bet we can make really keen magical gloves out of his hands!"
The characters make quick business of looting Kurge's remains for swag. After an appropriate interval of Identify spells, they come up with:
The characters also find that Sister Chiron is really dead, beyond even the ability of Reincarnate or Raise Dead to bring her back. Tonk is upset, but understands that the characters waited an entire day before going in to look for her. He reassures himself with the understanding that without that day's worth of preparation Kurge might have slaughtered the entire group, not just Sister Chiron.
Tonk picks up the dagger. Andrinor comments, "I say we leave his ass down here. You wanted the shield? It's here in this crypt. Ka-chunk!" The dagger speaks up says, "From what I know of Kurge the Executioner, his victims were never able to be Raised." Marcus replies, "So you're saying that you'd like to stay down in this crypt forever." Andrinor objects, "Listen! I know another way! We can go to another plane and talk direct to her deity, and persuade him to let her come back! It'll be easy! You up for it, Tonk?" Tonk rather unsteadily offers, "Well, if the rest of the group is up for it..." He puts Sir Melkin (the dagger) in his boot. "And while we're here, let's go get that frickin' shield."
Sir Melkin seems pretty unapologetic about causing Sister Chiron's death. Anpago objects, "The end does not justify the means!" Tonk reminds his cousin, "Actually, in our minds it usually does."
The characters pick up the shield from inside the sarcophagus. Marcus casts Detect Magic just to make sure that they've got the right shield. He notices that the armor and sword in the sarcophagus are also magical. Sir Melkin doesn't see clear towards taking the Lord High Marshal's sword and armor, but the characters aren't that interested in listening to him because he got Tonk's girlfriend killed.
The Lord High Marshal's Shield is a Large Steel +2 Shield, provides Spell Resistance 15, and allows the wielder to use Banishment (DC19) 2/day.
Sir Melkin the Retribution Dagger is a +2 Dagger. He is Neutral Good, with INT 13, WIS 17, CHA 16, and EGO 23. He has the powers of Speech, Telepathy, Read All Languages, and Read Magic. He speaks Common and Goblin. In addition, his wielder gains:
The Lord High Marshal's sword is a +3 Longsword. Anpago takes it to buy a True Resurrection for Sister Chiron. The characters head back up to the temple.
The session ends with the characters back in the Temple of Hieroneous above the Lord High Marshal's crypt. Each character gains 3206 experience points (1406 from the fights against Chaiya and the shadow scorpions, and 1800 more from Kurge). Longfellow is overjoyed, because he has just gained his 9th Druid level and can cast Awaken on all of his crag eagle children.