Tim decides that passing his classes is more important than hanging around with his layabout friends, so he gives us the miss. Chris (Gruul), Chuck (Arnoux Urag), Paul (Marik) and Bruce comprise the body of the layabouts.
Starting with this session, Bruce imposes several changes to a variety of spells, including Apportation, Levitation, Slow Fall and Enchant.
At the start of the game, Arnoux Urag is far more injured than he (or anyone else) believes, owing to the effects of a fumbled healing spell in the previous session.
The characters start out in Ulgutulgun's shop, examining the objects they found in the pottery shop. The total includes two porcelain objects and a sealed clay pot. Marik uses his Analyze Magic skills to determine that the contents of the pot are magical, and in fact consist of three doses of the Sepulchral Draught (described below).
Marik and Arnoux Urag examine the porcelain items closely. Marik thinks the first is worth 600 clavars, and the second 1000 clavars. Arnoux has no idea what the first one is worth, and comes up with a value of 800 clavars for the second. The characters decide to believe Marik's estimates. They then spend some time debating whether or not to try and sell them now. They decide (on Ulgutulgun's advice) to head to the Market Plaza to find a buyer. Antok of the Storm Tribe is suffering some serious side effects of his earlier meal of algae-infected monster heart and stays behind with Ulgutulgun. The bausker weaponsmith claims that Yachircuchek has a good remedy for Antok's troubles. Antok only moans and clutches his swollen stomach.
This potion is made from the distillates of zombie organs. It looks and tastes like embalmed death. It gives the drinker +10 Hit Points and the Injury Tolerance advantage (no impaling bonus, no brain and no vitals). The effects last for 1d hours. It has no effect upon the undead. If the drinker is killed while under the effects of the draught, he rises as a berserk zombie 1d days later unless appropriate precautions are taken.
The characters head to the Market Plaza. They look around for a place to sell expensive porcelain. Before they find a good buyer, they spot a rather disheveled-looking Sangorn with poorly-kept waxed sideburns standing among a collection of large crates. They watch as he makes rather desperate efforts to sell several pottery pieces of artwork quality for prices more appropriate to crap. When the characters talk to him, he attempts to sell Gruul a shaving mirror and washbowl that he claims were originally given to his great-great-great grandfather by the Chungon of the Kupri.
The characters become interested in his problems, and continue the conversation. They learn that he is Chunwith of Sayoch Bounty, and that he has suffered great loss from the current war. He tells them that most of his family has fled from Sayoch Bounty out to Aeldrine, taking everything they could carry with them. Most of the family's servants went along, and those that were left either vanished or tried to betray him to Prince Gufteng's men. He managed to get a half-dozen crates of old Sangorn pottery out of Sayoch Bounty, and is now trying to sell it so he can flee into the Garden. He is obviously having little success, and hasn't eaten in two days. His crates are too heavy for him to move, so he is stuck.
The characters, Gruul in particular, feel some sympathy for Chunwith. They also see an opportunity to profit from someone else's misfortune, which instantly whets their appetites. Gruul goes out shopping for food. He notices that prices have recently become much higher, almost five clavars for a passable meal. He buys a pot of stew from a Clockwork for 20 clavars, and on a whim purchases a large sausage from an oorthoi for two clavars. Before he puts down money on the sausage, he asks the vendor, "Do non-oorthoi eat these and come back for more?" The vendor admits, "Hasn't happened yet." This doesn't trouble him too much, so he buys the sausage. He puts it into a sack with his food-handlin' tongs, making sure to not touch it. Later, Marik checks it with Test Food, concluding that the characters probably shouldn't try eating it.
The characters give Chunwith a large bowl of soup, and then discuss buying his entire collection from him for one lump sum. He has six crates of goods, each of them containing fifty carefully-wrapped pieces. "Normal" retail price for each piece is 2d*10 clavars, with the entire crate worth about (1d+3)*500 clavars. Current prices are about one-tenth of the normal values. The characters (primarily Marik and Arnoux Urag) spend about an hour evaluating the goods (the actual rolls for crate value were 2000, 2500, 2500, 3500, 3500 and 4500 clavars). Gruul makes Chunwith an offer of 2000 clavars for the lot. Chunwith sobs and asks for an extra 150 so he can buy a good blade. Gruul agrees. Gruul, Marik and Arnoux each count out 751 clavars to cover the cost.
Each crate is quite heavy (about 70 kilograms), so the characters hire twenty-four bauskers for a clavar each (24 clavars total) to carry the crates over to Ulgutulgun's shop. Arnoux suggests giving them the oorthoi sausage as a "reward" after they're done. Marik vetoes the suggestion, shivering at the thought of twenty-four sick bauskers all piled in a slimy, furry, writhing mass.
Ulgutulgun notices the characters' miniature caravan entering his shop and inquires, "You folks went shopping? You found some good bargains?" The characters notice that one of Yachircuchek's apprentices is feeding something foul-smelling to Antok, who looks very sick.
Marik tells Ulgutulgun: "We need to store this stuff. You need iron? We can pay in iron." Ulgutulgun explains that he has more orders than he can fill, and he can provide storage space in one of his three hidey-holes. Gruul tells Ulgutulgun that he will bring back some iron. Or steel. Or something - he's not sure, it could even be copper. Ulgutulgun agrees to let the characters place their crates into the cache underneath his shop while they go fetch the iron they promised. He comments that he's not worried that they'll run. After all, he's got their stuff. The characters take a quick trip to Maratelle's townhouse to collect their barrel of Grayfeather Stork feathers. Gruul lugs the barrel back. Along the way, Marik and Arnoux explain to Gruul that when bargaining, one never, ever admits to not knowing the value of your goods. Gruul grunts and offers to let Marik carry the barrel of feathers instead. Marik demurs.
Ulgutulgun is quite pleased with the quality of the iron feathers. After a touch of bargaining, the characters agree to give him the feathers in exchange for six crates' worth of storage space for up to 10 Voyages. Marik grumbles that he thinks Ulgutulgun is ripping the characters off.
By the time the characters finish their business with Ulgutulgun it is getting near the end of the Gallery "day", so Ulgutulgun allows the characters to sleep in the tent to the side of the shop. Marik thanks Ulgutulgun for allowing the characters to sleep somewhere other than with the rest of his relatives, mentioning to the other characters, "I believe we have already established that bauskers sleep in big, writhing piles."
Morning arrives, and Marik asks how the characters will find Igway Rufo. Gruul points out that the characters are rather conspicuous, and that maybe they could try to hire some other less unique group to locate Igway Rufo for them. Marik thinks that Rufo is hiding out with the flelling, but Gruul points out that the guards said he wasn't there, and didn't exactly seem smart enough to lie, suggesting that he might not stay there all the time.
At this point, Ulgutulgun asks the characters to discuss murder and mayhem somewhere else, so they don't scare him and his other customers. The characters fantasize about storing six growling boxes in his hidey-hole.
Gruul proposes going back to the Zatulph ghetto and hiring some urchins to look for Rufo. The characters can hide out in the pottery shop in the meantime, especially as nobody seemed to go there (probably because the place was infested with a huge monster). The characters spend 50 clavars obtaining food and water for the four of them for three days. Arnoux Urag spends another twelve clavars recruiting his urchin army. He promises to give a Yellow clavar to the child who finds Rufo. Even better, Gruul promises a Green clavar if the characters are able to kill Rufo. Arnoux tells the children to wait for him at a soup-seller's stand only one level below the pottery shop.
One of the kids asks Arnoux if he has anything that belonged to Rufo. It is at this point that Arnoux realizes that the Zatulph can track by smell. A second later he realizes that Rufo is also Zatulph. And that he can track by smell. The characters immediately start worrying about concealing their own scents. Both Arnoux and Marik own Perfume Amulets, and start using them regularly. Arnoux is also able to find an herbary shop on the outside first level of the stack (oddly enough run by a paurkend even though it's in the Zatulph ghetto). He buys some strong-smelling bulbs and gives them to Gruul as a necklace.
It doesn't take more than a day before Arnoux Urag becomes unmanageably bored with sitting around in a dark, dingy abandoned pottery shop. He looks through the ghetto, finding a dark, dingy Zatulph bar to hang around in instead. The place is narrow, smoky and crowded, though the locals seem to spend more time playing a domino-like game than they do drinking the rather miserable local ale. The bartender Gulgetch is not too impressed with Arnoux at the start, but warms up to him after only a day or so. Arnoux absolutely haunts the place.
The other characters eventually break down and join Arnoux at the bar. They are all sitting inside, nursing watery ale, when they hear a clattering sound out in the corridor. Gulgetch picks up a broom and walks out. The characters hear a few whacking sounds, then Gulgetch returns, sweeping a puff of bone bits along with the broom. He explains that the noise was, "just another of them bone flying things. They've been flapping around here for days. You want the skull?" Arnoux accepts the thing, then passes it to Marik, who verifies that it isn't magical. Anymore.
The characters swiftly conclude that public places might not be a good place for them to stay for a while, given that magical bone flying creatures sound like they're right up Mournful Sara's alley.
It is at this point that the characters hear the sound of cheering from out on the boulevard. Gulgetch tells them that the locals are excited because the news just came down that Prince Gufteng's Seven Stones Brigade has broken the walls at Sayoch Bounty. The characters make their way to a vantage point with a view over the boulevard. They are able to see about sixty Zatulph celebrating outside. They can also see that the celebration outside is getting a bit out of hand, as some looting starts and a scattering of local bauskers start offering objection to the Zatulphs' actions or politics (it's not clear which).
Back in the bar, Gulgetch makes a few comments about how a lot of the locals think that Prince Gufteng is the greatest leader the Forward Gallery has ever had, but he's not entirely sure about the guy. Gruul manages to terrify Gulgetch by loudly proclaiming his loyalty to (and confidence in) Prince Gufteng, almost to the point of claiming that he'd be willing to bear Gufteng's children. Noticing that Gulgetch (and several of the other patrons) seem a touch paralyzed by the sight of a huge demek yelling out political slogans, Gruul decides to calm the situation by buying a round of drinks for the house.
It is at this point that one of Arnoux Urag's local urchins comes back with some news of Igway Rufo. The urchin claims that he saw Rufo give something to an "oorthoi slime-guy" a few minutes ago. The urchin goes on to say that he didn't get too close to the exchange because Rufo had a lot of tough-looking guys with him. Two of them were heavily cloaked and moved very strangely.
Arnoux immediately heads back to the bar to fetch the others, then tells the urchin to take them all to where the exchange took place. The urchin leads the characters to a dark and dusty part of the first level Stacks. Marik looks for tracks, and concludes that there were actually three or four oorthoi, plus ten or so folks wearing boots or sandals, plus some strange clawlike tracks in groups of four. The urchin tries smelling them, and reports that they smell bad. The characters perk up, "As in evil?" "No, just bad - I can't smell evil."
The characters have the urchin lead them along the path Rufo took out of the Stacks and into the nearby Boulevard. The trail skirts around the edge of the rioting and heads across towards the opposite stacks, finally ending at a substantial, fortress-like building along a quiet street. Arnoux thanks the urchin (with money), then gives him an additional Green clavar to keep a watch on the building and follow Rufo if he emerges.
The characters scout around until they find a convenient alleyway out of direct sight of the building. As the stealthiest member of the group, Arnoux Urag is immediately nominated as the lead scout. Marik casts Levitate and +2 Haste upon him, then sits back in the alleyway to recover fatigue.
Arnoux slips towards the building, doing his best to not look like a zebra-skinned albino. Rufo's building is two stone-walled stories high, and is obviously built for trouble: the windows on the first floor are narrow slits, ideal for archery. The windows on the second floor are larger, but feature metal bars to block access. The two visible doors (one sized for a cart and one sized for people) are both constructed of wood with metal bindings. There is a small courtyard in back that might once have been used for gardening, but which is now nothing more than a miniature wasteland. The entire complex is surrounded on three sides by two-story buildings, separated from each other by narrow (1 meter) alleyways. A quick flight upwards reveals a roof hatch on the top of the flat second story. Arnoux decides that this is the most promising entry route.
Arnoux plots out a good path to reach the back wall of the building, then returns to the alleyway to collect Gruul and Marik. In his absence, he finds that Marik has cast Haste and Levitate upon Gruul and Levitate upon himself. Rounding out the magical preparations, Arnoux drinks down an Ares potion, gaining +6 DX for the next hour (his Fencing goes to 21, leading to a parry of 14 + 3 PD). Gruul senses his comrade's almost superhuman prowess and urges him, "Go for eye shots! Remember - eye shots!"
The characters float up to the second story roof without event. Arnoux leads off by attempting to pick the lock on the roof access, and immediately falls victim to a magical trap: he is attacked by a 2d Deathtouch and immediately falls unconscious, his earlier wounds becoming lethally obvious.
Sensing that dramatic action must be taken, Gruul drops down to the first floor roof and breaks in the second-floor door with a mighty crash. He plows into a room half used for storage, half used for magical rituals, and completely occupied by four less-than-surprised Zatulph goons, their shortswords at the ready. He wades into them, axe swinging hither and thither.
Meanwhile, Marik drains his own reserves of strength dry healing Arnoux Urag. Once Arnoux is back in operation, the two of them follow Gruul's lead. The violence goes quite well for a while, until reinforcements start rushing up from the first floor. These include Shulbo Zubo, a fairly substantial Zatulph warrior armed with a magical shortsword, and the two cloaked warriors the urchin saw: Ghilgilk and Tuthgulk. Both of the creatures are chitinous undead monsters, scuttling about upon four legs. Gruul and Arnoux quickly learn that they wield their oddly-curved sabers with terrible skill.
The battle rages on for quite some time. Gruul makes an early impression, carving his way through Zatulph goons and effortlessly disabling Shulbo Zubo's weapon arm. Things start to turn against the characters when Tuthgulk scores a hit upon Gruul and drives him into a berserk frenzy. Ghilgilk follows with a quick strike at Arnoux that fells him once again. Things turn even worse when more Zatulph fighters start emerging from the first floor, protected by powerful Blur spells. The final straw is Shulbo Zubo's ferocious reappearance: he literally runs up the outside wall, flames and smoke pouring from his mouth. Marik, who had exhausted himself with Glue spells to immobilize the undead spider warriors, is at a loss for a response.
The tide turns when Gruul finally manages to dispatch the last of the Zatulph warriors. Marik pours his own health into a heal spell to bring Arnoux back into the fight, then Glues Shulbo Zubo in place with the last of his energy. Arnoux ensures that the Zatulph warrior won't be going anywhere by shooting him in the kneecap with his crossbow. Gruul chops Ghilgilk and Tuthgulk into chitinous segments, then drops out of his frenzy covered in near-fatal wounds. Robbed of his rage-induced vitality, he promptly slumps to the floor.
By the end of the battle, the characters have defeated Shulbo Zubo, both Ghilgilk and Tuthgulk, and eight lesser Zatulph warriors. They have actually managed to capture Shulbo Zubo: once his own magic-induced berserk fades, the fight just goes right out of him.
The characters spend quite a bit of time resting on the second floor before anyone feels brave (or healthy) enough to venture down to the first. Marik pastes as much magical healing as he can muster onto Arnoux, who creeps downstairs with blade in hand. He is not entirely unhappy to find the Igway Rufo has already left the area, apparently through a clavar barrier in the floor.
Searching through the downstairs, Arnoux finds a nice looking tapestry in the bedroom, an unruly pile of papers in the office, a blank ledger book in the desk, and 20 barrels of cooking oil in the cart-house. Marik is able to read the papers, and determines that they contain the accounts from a cooking oil business run by someone named Chasgul. Marik also notices that the remains of a burned ledger book in the fireplace. He recognizes it as the same ledger book the characters briefly possessed some time ago. He relates this knowledge to everyone else. The other characters express various levels of confusion about the possible importance of the ledger book.
While Arnoux and Marik wander around the downstairs, Gruul gathers up all of the available loot upstairs, including the weapons and armor of the defeated fighters. The final list of loot (after Marik has performed appropriate Detect Magic and Analyze Magic efforts and Arnoux has once again tried his hand at appraisal) is:
Arnoux keeps Tuthgulk's saber. The characters pack the rest of the haul into the cart-house until they can arrange to have it hauled away.
The characters take a short and strange journey down through the clavar barrier. They find that it leads to a damp, rough-walled corridor that terminates in a surprisingly large lake and a dock. They attempt to talk to the long-limbed, lambent-eyed fisherman they find on the end of the dock, and determine that some Bilge-dwellers have very unusual languages.
Peering out into the darkness, Arnoux Urag is able to spot two boats. Marik whisks up a quick Flying Carpet, and the characters zip out to take a look. They find that one of them is a small cargo vessel crewed by five of Usshugin's Boys, and that the other is a fishing boat carrying one oorthoi and another of the long-limbed creatures. The latter group is able to provide them with enough information to convince them that Igway Rufo and at least one companion sailed by in the company of two oorthoi watermen.
The characters follow Rufo's likely path straight into another dock leading up to Prince Gufteng's territory. Two serious-looking gaurman guards attempt to ask the characters for their travel documents (only Gruul has any, and he left them back at Ulgutulgun's shop). Gruul's efforts to deal rationally with the guards are stymied by Marik, who casts one Daze after another at the guards until the characters are simply able to walk past them. Arnoux lifts the guards' travel documents on his way by, but is forced to return them on the trip back by Gruul (who is basically sympathetic to the guards, given their position as servants of the greatest political leader the Forward Gallery has ever known). The characters make some effort to figure out where Rufo might have gone, but eventually decide that they have lost the trail and retrace their steps back to his erstwhile headquarters.
The characters return to Ulgutulgun's shop after hiring yet another gaggle of bauskers to carry all the goods from Rufo's building back. They manage to sell all 20 barrels of cooking oil to one of Ulgutulgun's distant relatives for 50 clavars a barrel (1000 clavars total). Ulgutulgun buys all the other mundane equipment for another 1500 clavars (including the welded zombie armor leftover from last session). The characters decide to hold on to the magical hardware (even the stuff they can't use) for later disposition. After expenses for various bribes and clavar barriers are removed, each character collects 800 clavars as their share.
Each character gains four experience points.