Bruce is only barely aware that he has returned to Texas, but he finds himself in charge nonetheless. "Where am I, and what are you people all doing here?" he says. Nobody else offers any helpful suggestions, though both Mike (Skeeter) and Tim (Antok) offer various glorious reflections upon how wonderful it is to be in school. Chris (Gruul) makes small, pained twitching motions. Chuck (Galen) simply exults in the varied joys of being alive and having Hellsing episodes to watch.
The session opens on the 34th and last day of the 3087th Stay. The characters stand in the midst of what used to be Grunvey Jhegg's caravan. They are surrounded by six hundred and fifty panicking dugun. That they are covered with blood does nothing to calm the situation. That Antok Six-Hearted has just rejoined the head of the caravan, a bloody spear in one hand and the sorcerer Jelf's heart in the other, helps even less.
Antok calmly takes a bite out of Jelf's heart as if it were an apple and asks a nearby dugun why he is pale like bleached paper. The dugun faints and sags to the ground. Antok congratulates himself on having successfully calmed down one dugun. Only six hundred and forty-nine to go. Six hundred and forty-four if you only count the ones that survived the attack of Long-Waiting Hatred.
Galen, Gruul and Marik are nearest to the original source of the disturbance and make efforts to help the situation. Galen's approach is reasonable and measured, and spreads calm and reassurance among the dugun. Marik relies upon his superior powers of reason and intellect, appealing to the rational nature of the dugun. Gruul simply bellows at them until they stop panicking. Antok realizes that there is no way his natural personality will calm anyone down, so he chugs an Orpheus potion and lets the drugs speak for him (which actually works surprisingly well).
Meanwhile, Skeeter is busy panicking in one of the wagons, as the very nervous clockwork Inverse Fitted Gimbal holds him at bay with a long pole.
With the immediate panic averted, the characters turn the situation over to the dugun healer vul-Gelten Isek ("Isaac"). They explain to him that the caravan is too far into the Boat to be able to get anybody back to Eafa before the Boarding Ramps close, and that he needs to do what he can to get the less-willing migrants accept their situation. They also mention that he should emphasize that running away from the caravan right now would be a spectacularly bad idea. He agrees to do what he can.
While Isaac talks to the captive dugun in a low, calming voice the characters turn to the problem of getting them free from their chains. The dugun are chained together in bands of 10 to 12 members. The chain is fairly light. It is welded only to the ankle-braces at either end, leaving the remaining 8-10 ankle-braces to run freely along the length of the chain. Each ankle-brace is locked with a fairly simple-looking lock.
Gruul checks Gaffad's body and determines that the living weapon did not have a set of keys. Antok had already determined that the keys were not on Grunvey Jhegg's body, though there was an empty coffle near where he fell. The obvious conclusion is that some number of dugun freed themselves and then ran off with the keys and whatever Jhegg had been carrying (probably including quite a large pile of clavars).
Gruul decides that all his strength had better be worth something. He decides to start snapping the chains with his bare hands. The first chain goes well, even though the effort costs him 4 fatigue. Antok watches Gruul, then realizes that he is still under the effects of a Might spell and is nearly as strong. He breaks a second chain, leaving himself gasping for breath. Undeterred, Gruul moves on to the third chain. He grasps hold of it and gives a mighty heave, then howls out in pain as he pulls a muscle in his groin. He moans and limps off to nurse his injury for a while. Marik shivers as he walks by, reflecting, "Brrr... that's one disturbing image." Galen cracks, "I hope there's a range on healing spells, 'cause there's no way I'm reaching in there..."
The remaining characters rather glumly conclude that brute force is not going to be the beautiful solution that they might have hoped for. They muse, "There must be a better way to deal with this problem. How else can we open three hundred and fifty ankle-braces?" They look at each other with glum faces. Then Galen mentions, "I think that crazy bausker mentioned being able to pick locks. Does anyone know where he ran off to?"
After a brief search, Skeeter is pried away from the deeply upset Inverse-Fitted Gimbal and informed of the situation. He is terribly chirpy about the whole thing, and demonstrates a remarkable ability to open locks without keys. In a little less than two hours, he has unlocked every one of Jhegg's dugun.
Unlocking the dugun turns into something of a mixed blessing, as chained dugun are not nearly as mobile as free dugun. Letting them loose gives them a lot more leeway to engage in unhelpful panic. Gruul hobbles over to explain this to Skeeter, and to urge him to slow down a bit. Skeeter makes a big show of not understanding the concept of "slow", but cooperates in spite of himself.
A terrible understanding dawns upon the characters: the guide has fled, leaving Antok as the only one who can lead the caravan out of the Warrens. After a bit of debate, the characters agree to move forward into a large chamber to let the rest of the group reorganize the caravan while Antok searches for a good route out into the Garden.
While Antok is out exploring, the characters take stock of their various assets. Each of their three wagons masses 300 kilograms empty, and 2 tons loaded. They have a total of seven days' worth of food for everyone. They also have the 200 cattle Grunvey Jhegg brought from Eafa. Skeeter suggests that food is not a problem because you can eat cattle. Gruul points out that eating cattle is exactly like eating money, and suggests that this will be a desperation measure at best. The other characters muse that they'd never known that Gruul was Masai.
Gruul makes sure that all of the chains and ankle-braces are gathered up and stored in one of the wagons. All of them come out to about 2000 kg of metal. He reasons that even if the characters have no use for chain or locks (both of which are moderately expensive items), they can feed the metal to the Maker-Thing up at Parcyclus' castle and get it made into spearheads. The characters also take a head count of both their dugun and Grunvey Jhegg's dugun. They find that fifteen of Jhegg's group are missing, and hear stories about one coffle stealing the keys from Jhegg's body and running off.
The characters debate what to do about the missing dugun. The discussion wanders all over the map until First Pike Durell Trellman speaks up, saying, "You should just let them go. By now, they're going to be hopelessly lost in the Warrens. And even if they do have a bag full of clavars, they don't know the relative values of the things, so they will have a lot of trouble getting past clavar barriers without sealing themselves in somewhere." Antok suggests, "I think we should trust him because he's speaking with the voice of the GM." Marik responds, "That was the voice of the GM? I thought it was the voice of Bill Murray from Caddyshack."
In addition to a headcount, the characters take notice of the sort of folks Grunvey Jhegg abducted. The captives are predominantly male, in a fairly narrow age range. Most of them are working people of one sort or another. Most are simple laborers, but their number includes cooks, craftsmen, and one luckless banker (money-changer). Many of them miss their various relatives, wives and loved ones and would like to see them again. The characters try to be as politic as they can about the odds of that actually ever happening.
Antok ventures out into the Warrens in search of a safe passage to the Garden, one that is large enough for wagons. His initial effort is moderately successful, in that he manages to find a route to the Garden. Unfortunately, it includes a four-meter vertical climb.
It takes him three days to find an alternate path, one that a wagon can traverse. During this time, the other characters become more than a little bit impatient with him.
While Antok is off spelunking, the other characters talk to some of the dugun who survived the initial appearance of Long-Waiting Hatred. They learn that the creature came out of a clavar barrier that the scout had opened in passing. All of them had seen that he was fond of opening up clavar barriers to side passages, either because he was interested in finding alternate routes or because he was hoping to find long-forgotten valuables. The characters resolve to go find the creature's chamber and investigate it.
It doesn't take much of an effort to find the place: the bloodstained corridor outside gives it away. Gruul tells the group, "Let's see what kind of housekeeper Scythe-finger Who Waits was." They are quickly able to determine that the answer is, "Not much of one." The chamber is fairly large and dank, with small bits of trash scattered along the walls. A substantial pile of debris dominates the rear of the chamber, out of sight of the clavar barrier the scout opened. The characters are drawn to it like ants to honey.
The characters' initial, cautious examination of the debris is none too profitable. They discover the ruined carcass of something chitinous, possibly the original owner of the chamber. Nearby, Gruul comes up with two skulls, plus a femur that might or might not be associated with either of the skulls. Galen observes, "Hey, look! A femur! Haven't you always wanted one of those, Marik?" Marik grumps something about people getting themselves killed by sludge monsters.
Convinced that simply poking through the pile with spear-points is not going to find anything worthwhile, the characters dive in to their armpits. They manage to find several substantially more interesting items:
Marik is quickly able to determine that the scimitar is magical and that the black gemstone is a 3 ST powerstone. Skeeter is overwhelmingly proud of his find, for all that it looks like a lump of black grime. He is even more proud of it after Gruul offers the opinion that it might be thrux kryptonite. Of course, Gruul also initially thinks that his dagger hilt might be a highly magical invisible dagger, so his opinions on these matters are a touch suspect.
A day after the characters return from Long-Waiting Hatred's chamber, they have a guest. They catch a single bausker attempting to sneak into the chamber, Mission Impossible-style. The unfortunate creature manages to fall from his rope down into the midst of the characters and a crowd of fifty dugun, totally ruining any pretense at stealth. He surrenders instantly.
The characters learn that the newcomer is Tulgulchef, one of Jaugulchef's kinsmen and formerly an employee of Grunvey Jhegg. He is terribly hungry. He explains to them, "I was the youngest and least-liked of the group, so they sent me to steal food." He looks hopeless. And hungry. The characters urge him to ignore the insane bausker, and ask him to take a message back to his matriarch offering to let her and her kin join them. They get one of the dugun to distract Skeeter with a feather on a string.
Tulgulchef is nearly incredulous, asking, "You won't kill us?" Galen explains, "No, we weren't even planning on killing Grunvey Jhegg until we reached the Garden, but things got a bit out of hand." They Levitate him back up to where he tried to sneak in. They don't give him any food, reasoning that if the bauskers want food they can come back to the caravan to get it.
After a few minutes, Jaugulchef comes out and briefly negotiates with the characters. She agrees to their offer, and shortly joins them with her nine kinsmen. All then of them are armed with crossbows.
The characters set off with a slightly modified marching order. They place wagons at the beginning, middle and end of the column, and take care to mix the two groups of dugun together. Everyone is instructed to march to the right as far as possible to keep the left passage open for emergencies. Jaugulchef's bauskers are placed near the middle of the line as a flying squad. First Pike Trellmen stands at the rear, along with the four Faian mercenaries and Gruul. First Pike Trellmen is equipped a crossbow and a bolt enchanted with Continual Light, to use as an alarm beacon. Likewise, Antok casts Continual Light on Ogango's Sparrow and loans it to Gruul for a similar purpose. And just for good measure, the characters distribute lux gems and Continual Light stones among the dugun.
Antok leads the column, with the other characters right behind him.
For all of this preparation, the actual journey is quite uneventful. After a day, the caravan reaches a clavar barrier leading out to the Garden.
Antok emerges from the clavar barrier to find himself faced by two very mean-looking gaurmen. Somewhat behind them he can see several rather ramshackle huts. The gaurmen explain that he must pay a toll to pass. He indicates that there are enough people behind him to completely destroy a couple of measly gaurman sentries, and that he isn't that interested in paying tolls. One of the gaurmen watches him while the other goes to fetch their leader.
By the time the gaurman comes back, Antok has been reinforced by all the other characters, plus Jaugulchef and her bausker snipers. And an illusion of a gatling-crossbow armed War Clockwork. The gaurman is accompanied by a mangy-looking Sangorn who calls himself Uncle Pete, plus a few Paturki with spears and slings and a few mongrel humans. The characters glare at them.
Uncle Pete explains that he has been deputized by the Steadsman of Shochunstal to be the Assessor of Revenue for this gateway, and that he must charge them a fee of one pandith per person to pass by. The characters flatly refuse to pay what they see as an exorbitant toll. He acts uninterested in their counter-offers, though he does show some concern at the way the bauskers aim their crossbows at his midriff.
Gruul eventually breaks the impasse by snarling at the biggest gaurman among Uncle Pete's gang. He leers at the fellow in a manner calculated to enrage. His efforts are quite successful: the gaurman howls out a challenge and rushes forward, shield and axe in hand. Gruul stands to meet him.
Galen watches the demek and the gaurman facing off and yells to Uncle Pete, "If your man wins, we pay the toll. If Gruul wins, we go free!" Uncle Pete considers for a moment, then responds, "Deal!" Everyone sets down to watch as Gruul methodically takes the gaurman apart, first shattering his shield and then piercing his heart.
The characters take their leave of Uncle Pete and his men. They leave a cow behind, as compensation for his dead gaurman. Uncle Pete makes no effort to stop them.
The characters march down the coast of the Yierdogiven Sea to Shochunstal. Along the way, they buy two fishing boats and hand them off to the fishermen among Grunvey's former captives. From that point, the fishermen travel parallel to them, by water.
The characters arrive at Shochunstal with very little food remaining. Their caravan is far too big to allow them to find accommodations within the city, so they make camp in a fallow field outside the city, then negotiate with the Steadsman's Secretary Delgen Talen to purchase grain. They agree to buy at a rate of 1.5 clavars per kilogram, negotiated down from 2 clavars. They purchase enough to feed their entire group for seven days at a cost of 6725 clavars. They also purchase two cooking pots, 80 bowls, five sets of simple blacksmithing tools (at 200 clavars each) and five sets of simple stonecutting equipment (at 200 clavars each). By the end of the day, Secretary Talen is 9000 clavars richer.
The characters debate how they will pay for these goods, and how they will carry them away. They spend some time staring at each other and scratching their heads until Skeeter pipes up, "Don't we have a lot of trade goods in those wagons? Couldn't we sell some of them? And then load the supplies into the empty wagon space?" The other characters stare at him with utter shock. They were completely unprepared for the spectacle of the Mad Bausker making sense.
Once the initial shock has worn off, the characters take a quick inventory. They have three tons (3000 liters) of ethef date wine and 1.5 tons of spiral-woven cloth. Marik manages to negotiate a price of 32 clavars per liter of ethef wine, rather better than the 20 clavars the characters were expecting to get. 282 bottles of the stuff covers the cost of the supplies.
It takes the characters little more than a day of travel to reach Nircharstal. They set up camp some distance from the New City, then take a moment out to provide some quick safety instruction to the dugun. This predominantly takes the form of repeated reminders to never, ever, ever go into the deserted part of the city.
Once the camp is established, the characters discuss strategy for their upcoming efforts to clear out the Old City. Marik spends some time reading through the Chel Auxur-Dau, and learns the names of the more common types of demons in the city, including spitwings, slime hounds, corpse-touchers, twisted mouths, burning men, and fell shadows. He counts eighty-five pages remaining in the book, perhaps half of the original total.
The session ends with the characters camped outside the city of Nircharstal. Each character gains three experience points.