The game session began with the party taking a well-deserved coma after becoming exhausted and then being forced to fight for their lives. After regaining some semblance of consciousness, Zin decided to see if he could scry the gray spy that had apparently been observing them for some time. If the seer could determine his location, the party would then decide what to do about him.

As it turned out, the decision was pretty easy. The spy was on the roof across the street, observing the party through the front window of the house of ill-repute they were currently squatting in. Deciding to try and get some firm info on who had hired the spy and the assassains, the party set out to capture their shadow. Unfortunately, they let Rusteen come along. The thug got excited during the quick chase, forgot that they were trying to capture the spy, and charged like a madman - impaling the tiefling upon the nearest wall. Given the fatal outcome of the encounter, the party decided to stash the body in one of Jack's rope tricks, and then returned to Sigil.

In Sigil, they quickly made their way back to Augustus. Apparently a bit too quickly. Their arrival in his offices appeared to have caught the Sensate by surprise, as he was more flustered than usual and in the middle of reviewing a raft of papers. After regaining his composure, the party's sponsor proceeded to explain what was bothering him.

It seems that the Sensate has become aware of someone asking uncomfortable questions into his activities. Admitting to be a selfish man, Augustus did not want the fruits of the party's labors revealed just now. (He preferred to wait until the experiment was complete before sharing any of their gathered experiences.) The man had a rival in mind; someone named Ozmandius. Augustus wished the party to travel to his rival's home base and do some snooping of their own. The party's sponsor indicated that this plan was merely a means to convince Ozmandius to direct his spies elsewhere as a form of defense and thus distract him from looking into Augustus' activities.

Once the party accepted, the mission rapidly got worse. It seems that Ozmandius controls a village known as Coracco Amargo, on Orthrys, the First of the Six-Fold Realms. (a.k.a. Carceri) In addition to having to visit Carceri - this being one of the planes where visits have a nasty tendency to be less than temporary - Augustus demanded that this be a peaceful mission since Ozmandius was not (yet) a bitter rival. The party's sponsor demanded that no one was to die while the party was carrying out this experience.

And not just in the simple terms of the party not killing anyone, or anyone killing the party. But also in terms of no one could die while they were in the party's awareness. So, the party could not stand by and watch a pair of strangers kill each other. Nor could they leave someone to certain death, once they had learned when such certain death was to occur. (Ginaea sensed an ulterior motive at this point in the conversation. She suspects that there is someone in particular in Coracco Amargo that Augustus doesn't wish to die.) And, to top everything off, the party's entrance portal was in the Hive Ward, and it wouldn't be placing them directly into the target village. They would have to secure passage from their arrival point to their eventual destination.

Declaring that they had better get significantly paid for this mission, the party reluctantly accepted Augustus' spare mimir and headed into the Hive Ward. (After first stopping off so that Rusteen could ditch most of his lethal weapons and pick up a Large-sized sap. A Great Sap, if you will.) The portal into Carceri and the trading post of Zunge was located in the upper floor of the Weary Spirit Infirmary. Although supposedly a bastion of non-magical healing within the Hive Ward, the Weary Spirit is only a refuge of last resort for the well and truly desperate. (It is run by a member of the Bleak Cabal, after all.)

The party forced Zin to pretend to be sick (which wasn't much of a stretch given that the gith wasn't fully recovered from the previous mission and wasn't all that hardy to begin with). This ruse allowed them in the door, and eventual access to the morgue, whose window contained the portal. Sending Jack first, the party jumped through the window to land face first in the bogs of Carceri's first layer. Moving quickly to avoid the quicksand and the swarms of mosquitoes, the party made it to Zunge.

The trading post was really nothing more than two buildings, three lean-tos, and a dock on the River Styx. After reviewing their travel options (floating iron slabs, hot air balloons, and silk parachutes), the party decided to play it safe and summon a yugoloth ferryman to take them the next orb and Coracco Amargo. After a few hours' journey - most of which was spent on a river that flowed through a void between spheres - the party was dropped off at the base of a cliff. They ascended the cliff and followed a path which lead to rope bridge across the river they had just sailed down.

At the far end was an orc with a large axe. He demanded a toll or else he would cut the ropes. While Zin went across the bridge to pretend to pay the toll, Jack animated the ropes of the bridge to prevent both cuts as well as to stabilize it. As soon as Zin was across the bridge, the party attacked the lone orc. Despite an ineffective mental attack from Zin, Greymankle was able to sprint across the bridge and knock out the orc in a single attack. Now across the bridge, the party headed back into the swamps and towards Ozmandius' village.

On the journey there, the party was waylaid by a single troll. But one was nearly all it took, especially since the party was under strict orders not to kill anything. However, once Greymankle convinced everyone to not hide in Jack's rope trick, the party was able to beat it into submission, dismember it, and leave it to slowly regenerate while they fled.

So, tired and injured, the party finally arrived at Coracco Amargo.

Next session will deal with the party exploring the stilt village and trying to figure out what's what before they can use the portal in the center of town to escape.

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

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