Paul (Marik) sleeps in, so we get to a rather late start. Nobody really objects, as they get the chance to play a lot of multiplayer Diablo in the meantime. Bruce watches and kibitzes as Chris (Gruul) gets killed a lot, Mike (Kid Icarus, who becomes Kellin rather suddenly) grabs every weapon he can find until he finds a falchion and concludes his life is complete, Tim (Antok Six-Hearted) has a lot of fun "accidentally" shooting at his allies' backs, and Chuck (Galen) demonstrates that he is the only one of us who has actually played this fool game.
Bruce makes some comments about how the last game really sucked. Everyone else makes polite noises to make him feel better.
Everyone had more or less gotten acclimated to Kid Icarus the flelling archer last session, so it is with some surprise that he reveals some rather dramatic personal secrets. In particular, he is actually a Faian human named Kellin. The whole flelling thing was actually just a tremendously good disguise he wore to ingratiate himself with the rest of the characters. Fearful of learning any other of Kellin's secrets, nobody asks too many questions.
The 19th day of the 3088th Voyage finds the characters back in Nircharstal, planning their foray into the Old City. From a vantage point high up on the tower, Gruul looks over the dugun fishing boats heading out into the Yierdogiven sea and comments, "If the Tooth-Coil visits, I'm going to kill myself a mystic." Antok Six-Hearted licks his lips and replies, "Not if I get to him first - that's a heart that looks tasty."
Antok decides that the standards of housekeeping Big Eddie was accustomed to are simply not acceptable. In particular, he objects to the relatively high density of bugs and fleas that Big Eddie simply considered to be members of the family. As Marik eats grapes and watches, he casts a Frost spell over the entire tower, hoping to freeze out the entire population of local arthropods. He spends 10 fatigue on the project, so the end result is really quite impressive. Marik comments, "You're really trying to get some value out of that spell, aren't you?" Up on the top of the tower, Gruul notices that his feet have suddenly become quite cold. He marches down to Antok and tells him, "You better not do that anywhere close to the granary."
Antok continues his efforts, transforming himself into a regular magical Molly Maid. He uses a clever combination of Frost, Create Water and Shape Water spells to polish up the tower and the nearby walls. The other characters aren't quite sure what to make of this behaviour. Gruul tells them that Antok can do this as long as he bloody well wants as far as he cares, just as long as Antok doesn't freeze or wash away any of the food.
The characters decide to enter the Old City from the north edge. They locate a gap in the wall next to one of the towers and make their way towards the Urtef palace. In the hopes of creating a diversion, Antok tries creating illusionary copies of the characters to attract demon attacks. Sadly, he actually creates a critical failure that destroys all his illusions. He gives up in disgust.
The city is mired in a chill, forbidding mist. Gruul feels the chill of the mist. It crawls into his armor and lingers along his torso before settling firmly in the bones of his limbs. He decides to take off his armor, throw his sword over a nearby building, and lie down to sleep. Then he decides that this is only a reaction to the classic horror movie setting the characters are surrounded by. Antok offers to create an illusion of a female demek for him so he can go off into a dark, ruined building to have sex. Gruul thinks about this plan for a moment, then reconsiders as the characters start hearing the howling cries of the city's demons.
The characters approach the Urtef. It looks remarkably intact. Antok yells out, "The book is warm!" Everyone closes into a circle to protect Antok and Marik. Marik apports the Chel Auxur-Dau and prepares to fry some demons.
Three slime hounds spring from a half-collapsed building and rush at the group. Marik burns one of them with the Chel Auxur-Dau, but Gruul whacks its head off and kills it before the book can send it away forever. Kellin takes a shot at the second and cripples it. Antok engages the third with his spear, stabbing it through a leg. Kellin smoothly draws out another arrow and shoots Antok's slime hound through. The creature splashes apart into a wave of foul-smelling demonslime. Antok glares at Kellin as he wipes the remains of the demon away from himself.
The characters think about the effects they've seen and realize that they need to let the book do the last damage to a demon if they expect to not see it again in the future.
Three more slime hounds join the first group, apparently in a misguided attempt to overwhelm the characters with numbers. The characters deal with them swiftly, their confidence enhances by their discovery that slime hound bites are only occasionally able to pierce their armor. Marik watches two of them make successive futile attempts to chew Galen apart, then Glues them to the ground. One of them manages to free itself long enough to be crippled by Galen's blade. All three of them end as clouds of brimstone mist as Marik reads off pages from the book.
Gruul sees that the other characters are savaging the slime hounds without any particular difficulty, so he looks around to see if anything else is visible. He sees shambling motion down the street, obscured by the cursed mists. He yells out to the others, "New thing coming! Look alive!"
Antok jumps up on a nearby roof, spear at the ready. The others form up around Marik and Galen, who work on finding the creature's page in the book.
The thing shambles closer. It looks like a dead man with necrotic blue lips and long, rubbery arms. Marik concludes that it must be a corpse-toucher. He reads the correct page in the Chel Auxur-Dau. And nothing happens. The characters become concerned.
They become rather more curious when they see why the book has no effect on the creature. Both of its ears have been messily hacked off. A piece of paper marked "READ ME" in a clumsy hand is stapled to its chest with a metal spike. The corpse-toucher gets fairly close to the characters then simply stands motionless.
Kellin dashes out and grabs the paper, then hands it to Galen to read. Galen unfolds it to see a message written in Old Namgen, still in the same clumsy hand. It is from Gizzard-Eater, who offers the characters "The things that you seek" if they send an emissary through the main gate of the Urtef. The note explicitly instructs that the emissary must not be bearing the Great Book.
The characters debate the importance of this message for a few minutes. They speculate on whether Gizzard-Eater might actually have the Circlet and Saber of Nircha, or if he even knows what the characters want. It might be that he simply assumes that they want the Circlet and the Saber because every band of treasure-seekers wants it, or he may just be making general promises in the hopes of catching a few of them without the protection of the Chel Auxur-Dau.
Whatever the truth, the characters decide that they don't want to start dealing with the likes of someone named Gizzard-Eater. Even Antok, who normally can't resist an opportunity to treat with explicitly evil forces, shows some reservations. Galen throws a Minor Healing upon the corpse-toucher and Marik uses the Chel Auxur-Dau to burn it where it stands. The creature moves not even a finger as the flames curl around it. Everyone agrees that this should send an unmistakable message back to Gizzard-Eater.
Galen flips through the Chel Auxur-Dau. After the permanent deaths of the corpse-toucher and four of the slime hounds he counts sixty-five pages remaining.
The characters retreat back out of the city and make camp at a site close to where the gaurmen "demon-hunters" had pitched their tents. They sit down to a nourishing meal of porridge-and-pandith stew and debate their tactics. Kellin hits the central question when he asks, "Do we really feel like dealing with smart demons? Why don't we go around and deal with all the stupid ones first?" Galen and Antok answer in unison, "Because he'll be even better prepared if we give him some time." Gruul adds, "And he's close to the edge of town, so we can run away if things go badly."
These two latter points convince everyone that rapid action against Gizzard-Eater is absolutely necessary. They break camp and head back in.
The characters return to the northern edge of the Old City. They enter the Urtef through a side gate. Antok reports that the entire Chel Auxur-Dau is warm. He estimates that at least thirty pages are becoming warm. Nobody wants to fight thirty demons in an open courtyard, so the group sneaks into a scullery room in a side building. They hope to use the chamber as a semi-fortified location from which to pick off nearby demons with the book.
The characters gather in the first floor of their refuge. Gruul and Kellin peer out the windows for any sign of motion. Behind them, Antok notices something smoking. He yells out, "It's on fire! Kill it!" Galen stops him with a shout of, "Stop! That's the book!" The characters are fascinated to see that there are enough demons nearby that the Chel Auxur-Dau is hot enough to emit smoke.
The characters' sense of security is shattered by a cry from Marik. The Chel Auxur-Dau skids to the floor as a corpse-toucher lunges down the stairs. The creature grabs hold of the paurkend magician, paralyzing him with the chill of the dead.
The other characters are horrified, but react swiftly to the situation. They draw blades and attack while Galen grabs up the Chel Auxur-Dau and reads out the corpse-toucher's name. The first corpse-toucher falls quickly, but the characters' victory is short-lived as two more corpse-touchers enter the chamber, rubbery hands flailing about. On their heels comes the burning man Falling-Ember, who attempts to fight Gruul in single combat until Galen makes the misstep of reading out his name from the Chel Auxur-Dau. Falling-Ember falls to ashes in a desperate attempt to strike Galen down.
The final combatant to enter the field is Gizzard-Eater himself. He is a massive corpse-toucher with three-meter long arms and the strength of two men. Gizzard-Eater reaches out and fells first Antok, and then Gruul. Kellin stands as the last line of defense between the terrible Gizzard-Eater and Galen, who reads out the creature's name in a desperate hope to burn it before it slaughters the entire group. The two of them breathe a sigh of relief as the book finishes Gizzard-Eater in the very nick of time.
Galen and Kellin fall to their normal habits and loot the area while they wait for the characters to recover from their paralysis. They find several interesting items. Falling-Ember wore a golden torc worth 500 clavars. Gizzard-Eater was carrying a Prometheus potion and a gold ring worth 350 clavars. Galen places a Watchdog outside the door and settles down to rest.
From his frozen position Marik wonders, "Am I paralyzed, or just sleeping?" The uncaring world responds, "You're paralyzed." Marik groans, "Shit. I'd rather be asleep."
The session ends with the characters barricaded up in the second floor of a scullery building in the Urtef palace. Everyone except Kellin and Galen are paralyzed by corpse-touchers. For their part, Kellin and Galen are watching the windows and doorways with nervous expressions on their faces.
Each character gains four experience points.