The session began with everyone deciding, in spite of demands to the contrary, to leave town and head out to the Silver Death Mine to investigate the bandit "problem".

The first obstacle in this path was simply leaving town. Only Que and Dr. Fever (now that he'd returned to his natural form) could openly leave town, as they were not identified as being part of the orc fiasco. They did so by the gnome posing as an inventor who was heading out to the next town to gather some more supplies for his "magical creation". Although rather frightening to the residents of the backwater Prime world, Dr. Fever did also manage to prove that he was also an "unperfected prototype". So convinced, Que and the rogue modron were able to walk out of town and past the guards without any problems. Everybody else either climbed over the wall or waded around it harborside before trekking through the woods to hook up with the rest of the party.

From there, it was a matter of locating the mine. Given that it'd been abandoned for the past 50 years, and the fact that the bandits were probably using it as a base, finding the road to the site would prove to be a bit difficult. However, the party's woodsman (Rusteen) was able to find the old path - at about the same time as the finely tuned senses of Dr. Fever did. The party decided to camp for the night and see if the bandits would be using the road to try and find a caravan to attack. All the party's stakeout accomplished was allowing Twig to introduce Dr. Fever to a raccoon.

The next day, the group resumed its trip and soon left the forest for the foothills of the local mountain range. It was late afternoon when the party finally came within sight of the abandoned mine. As they suspected, the mine wasn't that abandoned. The stockade around the surface buildings was intact, and showing signs of recent repair. The other giveaways were the smoke pouring out of the smelting building and the presence of a pair of elven sentries in a watchtower. While the rest of the party remained concealed, an invisible Que snuck into the complex and took a look around.

There seemed to be two separate groups inside. One was a tribe of kobolds that was responsible for the actual mining and refining of the silver. The other group was the infamous bandits - nearly two score of disreputable looking humans, half-orcs, and elves. Wisely deciding against a frontal assault, the party crept up into a "blind spot" of the watchtower, and then sent Rusteen inside to pick a kobold for "questioning". (This smart plan nearly failed when it was discovered that the kobold only spoke kobold. However, Que was forced to reluctantly reveal that he could understand that language, as distasteful as it was.) The interrogration really only revealed two pieces of useful information. The first is that the leader of the bandits and thus the tyrant of the kobolds was a thin, possibly undead, person the pathetic creature referred to as "The Head Wielder". The other is that the leader has conferred at least once with a mysterious, black-cloaked figure.

During the course of the investigation, the party's presence was discovered. The bandits rounded up all the kobolds - nearly 200 - and forced to charge out of the stockade and attack the party. The party decided to hide in one of Jack's rope trick spells as Twig tossed her last bottle of stolen beauty into the middle of the horde. As expected, this pretty much nullified the attack as the kobolds attempted to possess whatever it was that the bottle had struck. However, an unexpected magical(?) affect was observed during the resuling chaos. Anytime a kobold fell down dead, it immediately rose again as an undead zombie and shuffled back into the mine.

Also during the chaos, the party chanced to see the leader of the bandits creeping around the edges of the battle. It was the same cloaked figure that had been seen committing the latest robbery in Brandolyn. When Rusteen ambushed the figure, it was discovered that Zin's initial guess had been right - the leader was a githyanki. However, it was also quickly discovered why the kobold called him "the Head Wielder". The gith wore on his belt the severed - and apparently still living - head of a mind flayer. This head tried to mind blast Rusteen's brain into mush, but the thug was able to resist the effects. (Apparently because his brain was mostly mush already.) Despite several punishing blows from Rusteen (with the orc's Baatorian Green Steel dagger) and some well-timed lightning bolt and hold person spells from Que and Dr. Fever, the githyanki was able to teleport(?) away before Zin and Ginaea could begin to counteract his psionic abilities.

With the kobolds and the leader taken care of, the party finally charged into the stockade to try and confront the bandits once and for all. They arrived in time to see the brigands retreating into the mines under the direction of a black-cloaked figure (with a rather feminine sounding voice). Rather than blindly charging after the fleeing foes, the party decided to investigate the compound.

Or rather, they all began to convince Rusteen that they should just cut their losses, and leave - while carting away as many of the huge number of silver ingots as they could. In a compromise, Rusteen decided to burn down the smelting works and the bunkhouse while trying to convince the rest of the party to continue into the mine. Fortunately, Que had decided to investigate the bunkhouse before Rusteen set it aflame. Inside, the gnome discovered a series of letters that shed light on the entire situation that had been going on in Brandolyn. Rather disturbingly, the letters were written in the Infernal tongue - the language of Baator.

It seems that the githyanki (a psychic warrior called "Berix") was under orders from a Baatezu ("Simishnor, in service to the Dark Eight") to keep the local authorities distracted while the silver was extracted from the mine and shipped to Baator via the local portal. Berix was told to recruit some local bandits to keep the landscape relatively untraveled, while Simishnor would "release a certain soul back into earthly service" to help keep the townsfolk even more distracted. (As the robberies were not mentioned, it would seem that the githyanki decided to do that aspect on his own.) So, while the party was correct in that the crime wave was just a cover for some nefarious purpose, that purpose was nothing more than simply strip mining a Prime world of its untapped resources.

Although the power of the criminals has been broken, Rusteen still isn't happy. He wants the party to accompany him into the dark and undead-infested mine to locate and destroy the "local portal" which has to be inside. Otherwise, the devil will just wait for a time and then rebuild the mining operation. The rest of the party isn't quite convinved and would rather just take the money and run. Next session will decide which way the story goes...

Authored by: Ken Lipka E-mail me: krlipka@yahoo.com

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