This session was mainly combat. The party had just launched a pre-emptive attack on the Mayor, the Judge, and the Deputy. Zin had opened up with a mind blast which only left the Judge stunned. Not to be deterred, Rusteen and Shazarr charged in to take out out the two main enemies (the Judge and the Deputy), ignoring the Mayor as she was just a Prime elf and probably tricked into helping the other two anyway.

Unfortunately, it turned out that the Mayor was the biggest threat. A single punch by the Mayor damaged Shazarr and bestowed a pair of negative energy levels on him - proving that she was some undead horror. This was proved even more when no one could strike her and she quickly Dominated Twig into attacking Zin.

Rusteen was single-minded in his attack on the relatively defenseless Judge, eventually kililng her, although he did take a rather serious beating from the Deputy. Everyone else tried to keep Rusteen and Zin alive but eventually fled. (Jack did manage to destroy a large number of summoned dire rats with a single Thunderball before he left.) In was finally under the cover of Zin's Astral Constructs that Rusteen and the party escaped - taking the Judge's dead body with them.

The party regrouped in the city's Temple, trying desperately to convince the High Priest that the Judge and Deputy were really demons and that the Mayor was a vampire. Soon, the Mayor, the Sheriff, and the Deputy along with every single constable in town showed up in front of the temple to demand the surrender of the "murderers". The party's initial arguments failed with the Mayor failed to detect as either Evil or Undead. (They quickly concluded that this was the real Mayor, acting under the influence of the vampire's domination effect.)

Eventually, the party managed to convince the posse to spend the night with them in the Temple so that the priests could gain the proper prayers to sort out who was telling the truth and who wasn't. (Partly due to being able to remove the disguise from the dead Judge, and partly due to some tag-team diplomacy from Shazarr and Jack.)

Morning came, along with a few unsuccessful dispel magic spells. Although one did take effect long enough for the party (or rather, Twig, with a mouthful of whiskey) to reveal that the Deputy was in disguise. However, the group soon decided it would just be better to kill the Deputy and convince the town of the truth after the fact. A second battle erupted in the Temple, although it went pretty quickly. Zin mind blasted most of the people into stunedness - including the Deputy. So, she was killed fairly quickly, and the rest of the posse was subdued and bound until such time as they could be made to see the truth.

So, after two sessions of rather intense combat, Rusteen had successfully killed his two sworn enemies and freed his home town of their influence. Unfortunately, a very power vampire was still on the loose and still had Rusteen's brother hostage. After these fights, even Rusteen was considering abandoning his brother to his fate and saving the rest of his family by taking them all to Sigil.

The session went rather late, so we stopped after the combat, but before the final decision of what to do about the vampire could be reached. Depending on the feelings of Rusteen, yet more mess might ensue, or the party will have cut its losses and run.

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

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