ZEITGEIST The affirmative action racial recruitment team of the RHC

[Andrew Moreton]

After what seemed like a very long day waiting for a warrant for the constables finally get their warrant and move to arrest Mayor Macbennin.
Arriving at the mansion they are greeted by the mayor and spot that two of the gardeners are clearly guards not gardeners. The mayor makes his speech threatening them with getting into trouble with their superiors they politely point out they do have a warrent and if he wants to cooperate he can come with them and everything will be kept low key. His refusal is interrupted by an earthquake and the first sinkhole just missing the constables.
Combat ensues after the first attack on the mayor , shot while casting a spell kills a servant the pc's realise he is using the same ritual they used when the protected the skyseer. Manuel attempt to use incapacitating attacks to entangle the mayor so he can be restrained without killing the servants, Nevla tries to stab him particularly after a curse surrounds her with agonised screaming, El Kevin blinded by he mayor starts throwing grenades at the servants. Padme and Ulvaar fight it out with the Kell guild thugs. It turns out the mayor has cat like reflexes (he rolled 14 or more 3 times) and cannot be entangled. However he hits Manuel with the doppleganger curse just as Roger swoops down to grapple him, in return he hits Roger with the final curse however before Roger has to release him Manuel runs forward and cuffs him with mage cuffs. With only 3 servants left alive and half the garden filled with witch oil spewing geysers Macbennin surrenders and tells the team he needs to go and fix things. Sending the Blinded El Kevin on Roger to fetch reinfocements and warn of the witch oil disaster the rest of the team heads into the cellars , they don't entirely trust Macbenin but believe him enough to think they need his help.
In the basement the Flayed Jaguars vanish from an uncaring universe as the GM forgets they exist. The constables and the mayor reach the control room and Macbennin explains what is needed, Manuel goes to fix the engine which he is good at except for pulling the starter cord he decides to invent a steam powered strength enhancing suit to deal with this problem of Humans assuming everyone is at least 5 feet tall and has some muscles. Meanwhile Padme is sent over the reservoir to switch the lever and Ulvaar and Nevla Guard Macbennin when Creed and his thugs attempt to rescue him, Ulvaar spends his time hitting thugs and keeps them both busy while Nevla fights Creed, Creed manages to free Macbennin but is losing the duel after a good crit hurts him. In the end he is killed trying to escape over the catwalk and falls into the witch oil never to be seen again........(tm) the players already expect him back. Manuel was ecstatic when it was revealed he was Macbennins butler pointing out that he was right in the first place and that the butler did do it and they should all have listened to him.
The Flood stopped the machine was turned off and the mayor taken into custody.

This leads to a question what will the players be able to tell from investigating the laboratory , I think they will be able to tell that the machinery was refining witch oil from the bleack gate and then pumping it back into the bleak gate but not where. Also any idea where the relief tube sent the oil?

The characters are annoyed by the death of the mayor but Nevla rapidly links the smoking courier to the death of Macbennin they are unsure if it was a hostile possession or a frendly one, they also suspect powerful magic to explain the missing spirit of the mayor.

Overall they think that their is a serious conspiracy some think it leads up into the government (mainly El Kevin) while Nevla is fairly certain the government leadership is uninvolved but could well be being manipulated. El Kevin and Manuel are spending a lot of time at the university trying to research Witch Oil and the bleak gate

Next session
-- a Fey party featuring Nevla, Gale and any other constables who want to go
-- El Kevin is mugged by Cult of Steel Gnolls
-- Manuel is brought into train the top RHC Spies the Green Lady in Firearms
Not decided on a Side quest for Ulvaar yet

Then onto part 3 where El Kevin and Manuel will be like kids in a candy factory in the arms fair. Manuels player has already heard of the badger gun and wants to improve on the concept with a dire badger cannon

 

[Andrew Moreton]

This session was largely the gap between episode 2 and 3 .
Manuel and El Kevin spent a lot of time at the university , Manuel is an alchemist who makes regular use of their laboratories and libraries and is also largely responsible for their Firing and Explosives range to try out new and dangerous things. El Kevin is trying to find out as much as possible about Witch Oil and Cauldron Hill he is dissapointed that there are only two survivors from the assault on the witches (Harkover Lee and Stansfield) who are both too busy to discuss the events with a junior constable. He and El Kevin have removed key components from Macbennins machinery so it cannot be operated but he is concerned that the Hill is some sort of Witch Oil volcano. While travelling through the University they are assaulted by a pair of Gnoll berserkers from the cult of Steel who attack El Kevin for no apparent reason he is unconcious but both Gnolls are killed , they die due to the loss of Con when they drop out of rage. Interrogation of their spirits shows that they were sent by their clan chief to kill El Kevin they try to investigate why but can come to no conclusion. They were sent by Pemberton indirectly to find out if El Kevin was an undercover El Extrano. After the attack El Extrano puts in an appearence to confuse the players even having the same blue gaze over his red scales as El Kevin.

Manuel has also spent time training the famed Risuran spies the 'Green Lady' this trio of Goblin agents are identical triplets and they need to understand firearms which are becoming the in thing in Beran High society. Manuel trains them and maintains a correspondance with them, he asks them about he cult of Steel but has no answer yet.

The whole group attend a fey party in the Cloudwood , Gale and Nevla have a long conversation with Bethasla(The arch fey of the sea I may have the name wrong) Gale is her ally but she has problems with Nevla as she is one of those who arrested the duchess but is also and ally of Gale. The Fey has trouble with human politics and motivations, also at the party Neval witnesses the Old Stag joking about having Rock killed, the players immediatly start looking around for someone doing a rid me of this troublesome priest moment.
Manuel gets dragged off to the dreaming to see the damage caused by technology and resolves to see what can be done to reduce this , his immediate ideas involve using the magics which block dimensional travel, El Kevin get totally wasted and is seen leading a conga line of talking rats , raccoons and gremlins.

Finally I brought forward the investigation of the golem crime scene. The players were fascinated with the scene and want to get the golem working again. They concluded the steel shaper was the killer and have conjectured that the personality of the dead man may have been moved to the Golem. From the dress fragment and an amulet (One seen in one of the flashbacks from episode 8 worn by Kasavarina's daughter) they conclude a pre malice Eladrin matriarch was present possibly Kasavarina who they think is linked to the danoran element of the conspiracy however if here was one she seems to have been passive and they think that any such matriarch would be powerful and strong willed so they can't work out why she did nothing.

Finally they are assigned to the arms fair. El Kevin and Manuel gleafully plan shopping the Steam suit, Badger gun and Nock gun all have them drooling as to revolvers, shotguns and Rifles

 

[Andrew Moreton]

We started Episode three and began with the other news.
Immediatly on hearing about the brain eating serial Killer my players gave me suspicous looks as they had encountered this in another campaign I assured them that this was unrelated and at this point one of them remembered the pictures list which included an image of Sijhen and concluded the 'Illithid-Seal' must be the killer. The news of the ongoing industrial disharmony made them conclude the factory owners were stupid and they are half expecting a socialist revolution unless things improve.

They enjoyed touring the expo and were very impressed by Pemberton's new toys Manuel did not know wether to to be happy or sad that the B.E.A.R was not some sort of Cyborged bear hybrid. He was very keen on steam suits, Nock Guns (probably on a Steam Suit) and Badger guns although they discussed Weasel Pistols and Hedgehog derringers as future developments.

They also went looking for Rock and talked to him learning most of his history and how he got the magic scrolls they even came across the name of Caius Bergeron the tiefling as the guy who bought his stuff , they are interested in talking to him just to see what her knows about these scrolls and general magical archaeology they got more interested later. They concluded Rock was a fine guy to chat with but a total A-Hole and that they needed to warn Grimley that anyone counting on Rock as a figure head was going to be deeply disappointed. Manuel liked him, Manuel has no sense motive and is an appalling judge of character he was busy setting up extra fireworks for Rock's concert.

When Rock had to return to his preperations they returned to looking around the expo when they heard screaming and rushed to investigate seeing the worm maw and flying things they realized they had a problem , as early gunfire revealed they were incorporeal Ghost bane blanch was applied to bullets. After the 5th Flying thing appeared Nevla stopped the wizard using the staff realizing the connection. They won the fight fairly easily although Nevla spent a lot of time healing the dwarf who had been swallowed by the worm maw and managed to keep him alive until he made his will save.

After the fight Rock was politely arrested after it was discovered he had shot a bystander the constables expect he will end up not facing charges as he was trying to assist in saving lives and it was an accident , they also arranged for the dwarf to get free medical care at the RHC in case of weird consequences and were content with the confiscation of all the gear until they could investigate it all.

Interrogating the wizard they discovered the magical item sales by Kaja and decided they needed to move on it, at about the same time they got a tip from Morgan Cippriano about the same thing, which meant that they pulled in extra police for a perimeter coincidentally making his smuggling easier. There was a fight with Kaja in which several of them wished to get her ability to summon guns but she lost and was taken prisoner.
She was very confident when they talked to her in the belief she had done little wrong and that she had valuable information so wanted a deal avoiding prisoner time in return working on a crown research project or something . The players remembered Harlock the wizard who had taken the dead creatures away and though they could set up something with him. El Kevin insisted that they interrogate her on the spot not taking time to get back to HQ or even out of the rain before the 'Suicide Demon ' possessed her and killed her. In the end she agreed trusting them to keep their end of the deal. She told them about working with Macbennin and they had questions about her witch oil extraction method and El Kevin persisted in trying to uncover the secret creature buried under the mountain (he has not yet concluded it must be in the bleak gate) , she also told them about Lorcan Kell working with the conspiracy and they added this to their list of reasons to arrest him. finally she told them were the items came from and mentioned the tiefling they think it likely it is the same Caius Bergeron Rock mentioned they want to talk to him they also want to find out more about the ancients and why this staff can break the barrier blocking calling spells.

As we were wrapping up they commented on the word building of the AP and how it was working well and keeping them interested in working out what was going on.

 

[RangerWickett]

I'm glad the group's enjoying it.

 

[Andrew Moreton]

We start with the players getting a letter back about the cult of steel from Ber, they cannot work out why these guys came after them but they do think it likely that the new leader of the cult of steel is a dragon come back to take over the Gnolls. They are amused by the idea of a minister of rebellion. They are convinced that secret dragons are out there. Still not worked out who though.

They then get pulled in for an interview by the viscount. They are not particularly worried by the audit although they think they will have to explain their relationship to Gale carefully , they admit it to Delft and he is unsuprised. Manuel is shocked that Nevlar had not actually filed the paperwork on their conversations, they have not thought much about their deals with Cippriano , Manuel claims to believe he is a simple coffee shop owner as he has no sense motive at all. They also get a death threat from Lorcan Kell and laugh, if he comes after them they expect to kill his goons and if he does win they expect the RHC to bring in enough heavy hitters to kill him. They do report to dreflt and he shows them the chalkboard they use to track the number of death threats each constable has received, the players feel they are underachieving.
Then to the university were the talk to professor Weber and dicuss the ancients with him extensively , they do hand over the artefacts for eventual display. They also talk to some astronomers and identify the planar energies on the staff as being from Apet. Next they talk to Xambria and decide that overall they believe her but she is a bit spaced out. She discusses the ancients with them and they show her the wand of Egil the shimmerring , they think that her theory about the ancients getting the gold from other cultures sounds good and theorise that the staff could have been the first sign that their trade allies on Apet were backstabbing them , but also consider that the staff may have originally summoned a shopkeeper and that things could have changed on Apet. She also theorises the ancients were Orcs and Goblins , Manuel likes this idea. They decide they need to go to the dig and also talk to Caius Bergeron.

Two days of effort tracks down Caius and they interview him over a lunch he pays for. He gives his version of his dealings with Xambria and the players spot discrepancies however they cannot work out if he is lieing . He seems helpful and suggests that as he has been in and out of town some of the discepancies such as the specialists Xambria claims he sent may have been arranged by his secretary in Danor and offers to write to him to get a full account of any activities the players accept this offer. They do not ask if he was the tiefling seem in Macbennins lab as they think that will get no answer and prevent further conversations in the future. They have two theories one is that Caius is lying through his teeth and is actually involved in a conspiracy or the one they seem to favor is that his secretary or someone else is intercepting his mail and the specialists Xambria thought he sent may have been fakes sent by the conspiracy.

They spend a lot of time after they learn about the seal wondering if their is a doomsday plot involving the seal and decide to so research to find out if any other ziggurats have been dug up by archeolgists and if they had seals. They also decide to start searching through old cold cases to look for evidence of the conspiracy in action as this will keep them off Saxby's radar and let them investigate. However first they attend the viscounts party.

Ulvaar the veteran dwarf comes over as solid and reliable and the viscount approves of him as as a solid man who needs to run herd on more exciable agents. Nevlar also attends to help Ulvaar with social issues and her wit and skill as a dancer (she actually has skill ranks in dance and rolls well)impresses many younger nobles, officers and business people she gets invitations to more parties.

Finally they set off to the Ziggurat and make a sacrifice to the voice of Rot to make passage through the Bayou easier. They do discover other groups have been to the ziggurate and probably looted the seal.
On arrival they find the bodies and quickly work out someone was here before them and the journals are gone, entering the Ziggurat they find the mummies and quickly conclude that Xambria was right about Orc and Goblin ancients but do little exploration before the end of the session

 

[Andrew Moreton]

We start with a revelation about the past of Manuel

Deep in the heart of the brooding draconic architecture of Seobrigga a Goblin family departs one of the first magic lantern shows to make it to the capital of the newly civilized nation of Ber the parents are among the new class of industrialist setting up in newly stable Ber with help from optimistic financiers from Risur or Danor. This family accidentally take a wrong turn into a street claimed by the territorial Gnolls and are attacked , the parents killed and their money stolen , leaving only their son Manuel to be raised by an aged family retainer who uses the last of the family fortune to move to Ber, taking only Roger the young Manuels pet Dire Bat to remind him of home.....

Then we move on to the Ziggurat. The team began by attacking the thoughforms in the pit trap room they mostly dispatched them with ranged combat although Ulvaar and Manuel did enter the room they rapidly saw through the illusion however in the course of this combat Ulvaar, El Kevin and Manuel all managed to go mad from the effects of Distance disease.
Ulvaar started to misjudge distances in stressful situation effectively moving at half pace in all combats , this would be problematical later.
El Kevin started to think his well earned draconic apotheosis was at hand and began to loudly discuss how he would develop new draconic powers and start to use them.
Manuel began to think of himself even more as Bat Manuel and start to act the part of the brooding hero, he may also write or commision penny dreadfuls about Bat Manuel, it is not certain even curing the insanity will entirely reverse this as the player finds it so amusing.

Moving forward they found the seal room and managed to prevent Bat Manuel from rushing in although he did shoot one of the rainbow serpent statues to see what it did. The rest decided all the dead bodies meant this room should be investigated last. Moving through the Ziggurat they found and investigated all the other rooms including locating the Mavisha Zigurat. During this time they all have visions.
Ulvaar saw himself standing atop a floating island in a storm with another Ziggurat behind him with which he felt a strange kinship
El Kevin saw himself standing on top a mountain feeling the wind on his vast wings (this one is entirely down to his insanity)
Manuel I believe saw himself skulking through the shadows of Seobrigga looking for someone
Nevla saw a dark metal room inside a building with a strange eladrin woman whom she felt she knew but did not recognise (Kasavarina)

They avoided the rainbow room working out that the archeologists had gone to a lot of trouble to go around it and I am not so keen on puzzles that I felt the need to push them into visiting it. Although I did give Manuel the vision of the ancients although is his version one of the Ancients was a goblin.

Finally they entered the seal room , and rapidly saw that the seal here was false , they had been wondering what the second team of specialists had taken , and now they knew they had taken the real seal. At this point the flood started and the dead arose, they fled retreating the way they knew fortunatly they had advanced grenades which did slashing damage allowing them to take down most of the Mummies although they took a fair amount of damage particularly as their tank Ulvaar was moving very slowly and his lightning axe did nothing to the mummies. El Kevin triggerred a fire trap as his draconic powers made him immune (they did not) and the rest of the party was not happy either. Finally the wizard mummy gave them a nasty shock using magic missile to badly injure the ranged combatants of the party before they all broke out of the Ziggurat .

They retreated up the Zigguarate when the Voice of Rot emerged and rapidly agreed to track down the escapee for it, they only asked one question while El Kevin maintained a rigid posture of saluting. This clarified they were looking for a spirit which had escaped and they immediately leaped to the conclusion that Xambria was possessed although they think she may be in control some of the time. Next session they return to Flint to try and track her down

 

[Andrew Moreton]

And the player of El Kevin has just shared a summary of his report on event to the RHC
El Kevin makes his report…it sounds more like paranoid ranting, with excepts below, featuring many exclamation marks and capital letters:



The End of the World is rapidly approaching.

Not only is there a weakening of the barrier between our world and the Bleak Gate, and a contamination from our industry into the Dreaming, but some sort of undead monstrosity caused the disaster at the Ziggurat of Apet . Xambria released it from where it was imprisoned and it possessed her and killed her group. This has also disturbed the Voice of Rot and it is very annoyed!



Someone, probably the possessed Xambria, hired some adventurers to return and take a mighty seal from the ziggurat and they will be looking for more of these from the other ziggurats. We must stop them before the Conjunction of Worlds occurs (which I think will be on Axis Island, where the barriers are already weak and the Danorans are building naughty stuff using Witch Oil and golems).



So far, we know the Seal of the Plane of Distance is taken; others are in danger!



Kevin’s version will be about 20 pages long.

 

[Andrew Moreton]

The team returned to Flint.
Along the way they did a search for planar energies and were able to backtrack Fiona's team all the way back to Flint and firmly link her and Bleak Gate energies to Caius. They went to talk to Caius and found him dead, which disappointed them, they remembered the serial killings of people with their brains eaten and started to come to the conclusion that Xambria/the Thing possessing Xambria/Xambria's pet eats brains. They did look for links between the other dead people with eaten brains and Xambria/Caius but found nothing. They then went looking for Xambria and discovered the struggle in her room , they think she may have fought herself. They then tracked everyone to the docks and discovered the ships they had hired and decided this needed pursuing once they had dealt with all their other leads.
Aerial recon by Gale and Bat Manuel (now somewhat calmed down by a remove disease) discovered all the other trails in order

When looking at Caius's body they noticed the ring and linked it with the ring Macbennin was wearing( I made Int checks for the characters as I had not mentioned Macbennins ring as on its own it did not seem suspicious and unless I described a dozen red herrings to them it would have been too obvious) given the text of the two rings they concluded the similarities showed it was some sort of identifier for a freemason like group. They checked no one else they arrested wore a similar ring and curse the fact that many people wear decorative rings.

The Badger. The idea of an Improved Badger gun firing a Badger with tentacles appealed to El Kevin and Manuel and appalled Nevla. This lead to much discussion about wether they could arrest them and or confiscate the badger and the conclusion that it was probably not illegal to own a badger with tentacles. However Nevla was very unhappy about maniac gnomes pursuing uncontrolled magical research into mutated badgers in case they mutated more badgers or all summoned badgers or maybe summoned more weird monsters. This discussion took some time and in the end with confiscation and arrest ruled out and animal handling confirming the Badger was as happy as any other badger in the world (surly and violent) they decided to get the gnomes to register their research with the university and be subject to paperwork and ethics committee's . Manuel and El Kevin want to know the results.

Saxby's mansion. The trail found her produced paranoid and accurate ravings from El Kevin. He decided based purely on this trail that Saxby must be an agent of the bad guys he discussed his theory with Drelft and the other pc's. Who told him that this hypothetical conversation was a bad idea! and that people who acuse their boss of being a traitorous enemy agent with no evidence come to a bad end either being sacked or sent to distant and boring locations and it is even worse if theya re right. The other players are unconvinced and think more evidence is needed.

The Canal warehouse. They think the seal was here and was taken by someone, they got somewhat confused about this. All they know is Caius rented it, a crate which could hold the seal was here and a small person or elf seems to have killed three people. Somehow El Kevin decided that Kasavarina was involved I don't know how, no one seems to have considered Xambria as the killer possibly because no sign of brain eating.

Before sailing they checked with Cippriano to see if he knew anything about the Crissilyan privateer or anyone smuggling the seal out on it. He told them he knew it was a legitimate mercenary privateer ship and not someone normally involved in smuggling. Nevla warned Manuel about associating too much with Cippriano but he said he liked the coffee there which is true.

Nevla managed to secure access to the Impossible and they raced to the scene of the ziggurat hoping to find Caius's team and Xambria and indeed found both. They met with the Beran Goblin archeologist and got on well with him, he was particularly impressed with Manuel and his revelation about ancient Goblins and Orcs which just made him angrier about being forced off his dig. They interviewed Xambria and her answers threw them off a bit as she seemed to have explanation for everything, they cast protection from evil on her which would intefere with mental domination or possession, I concluded it would not work on Gidim possession as that is none magical but instead weird psychic stuff. They still think she is likely possessed based on the Voice of Rots information as they presume it would not be wrong they just wish it had been clearer. They finally got Xambria to agree to be handcuffed while they drove off the Dracon De Mer. They have decided that Paco's description of events and his request for aid justifies them in treating the Dracon De Mer as a pirate ship and dealing with it in the absence of Beran Navy ship.

Next week we deal with the Dracon De Mer

 

[Andrew Moreton]

We start with an extended discussion about how best to deal with the Dracon De Mer and the Archeologists. The consensus that avoiding fighting underwater vs a team with a shark mad druid would be a good idea so they wait until the evening when the Archeologists have returned to the ship before beginning their attack. Xambria is persuaded to cast Invisibility on Roger and Manuel , before being locked up again. Water walking is also cast on everyone, Manuel is dropped off by Roger at the stern of the Dracon and invisibly plants thermite charges on the Rudder and Anchor cables when these trigger the Dracon is immobilized and the Impossible sweeps in and boards it.

The constables spear head the boarding action and in a nasty fight take down the captain and the archeologists, notably Manuel climbs to the Rigging and snipes down onto the deck, unfortunatly for him he fails a will save against a suggestion from Finona to "Dive into the sea and have a nice relaxing swim" as he dives in the water walking spell causes him to smash into solid ground.

With the fight over they interrogate Finona and actually manage to get on quite well she is upset to learn about the death of Caius and impresses them as a competent professional. She agree's to tell them what they want to do and recover the seal on their behalf in return for her and her team being held in comfort and then released the players agree to release then no more than a week after the end of the Risur/Danor peace conference. She recovers the seal without any planar energy release. Discussion with her and reading the letter results in much discussion
1. They noticed the train journey and think that it will be a good opportunity to pick up information , which is convenient.
2. They notice that the Obscurati are being very careful to prevent further dimensional escapes which makes them more unsure of their objectives as clearly they are trying to mess with the dimensional seals
3 They think that the material of the ring and the first letter of the last word are signifigant despite not being able to spot any sort of pattern but they only have three rings.

They ask about the ziggurats she has explored and what was recovered and discuss bits of the letter before resting . They place a rotating guard on the Seal and lock all the prisoners away . When Nevla is on guard she hears something from the prisoners but she decides her priority is protecting the seal and by the time her alarm brings the rest of the team and they check out the prisoners Sijhen has killed Finona and most of her associates. The players are mildly annoyed they guarded the wrong target but consider it was 50/50 and they did not have enough people to maintain a full guard on the prisoners and the seal. Xambria/Sijhen escape and teleport back to Risur.

The pc's arrive in Risur and immediately head to meet Drelft at the museum they read the letter and agree the artifacts must be guarded and conclude Xambria occasionally breaks free of control. They also immediately link the name Obscurati to the O B part of the rings.
Finally they meet with Saxby who criticises their association with Gale, Cippriano and Grimsby of the dockers. The Viscount is more understanding of their association with Gale and Cippriano but warns them to be careful he has seen constables get into trouble by trusting people too much so far he thinks they are fine but.....
He warns their association with the dockers could get them into political trouble by angering powerful people, Nevla basically tells him that in this case the important people are wrong and she will do what is right. He leaves it at that , he is somewhat concerned that this could be a problem but also respects her principles.

El Kevin having agreed with everything warns Saxby she may be the next target for the brain eating monster Sijhen.

On the way home the player of Nevla suddenly realises were Xambria/Sijhen learnt the term Obscurati and that he learns by eating peoples brains she wants to know who else has had their brains eaten to see if there are any secrets which have been compromised

 

[Andrew Moreton]

A short session this time because it was rather too hot and we reached a point were leaving things for next week made more sense.

We started with the Grand opening of the Ancients Exhibit. The players expected an attack and also expected the dragon skeleton to animate, they just assumed that where there is a dragon skeleton it will animate. They hoped it was in incomplete skeleton with plaster casts of the bones but no such luck. Most of them lurked near the artefacts while Nevla went around the crowd and discussed planar conjunctions with Luc who rather doubted any such thing was happening but that failed to deter El Kevin not a kobold to let lack of evidence deter him. They were unsuprised when Xambria came through the skylight followed by monster and using a scroll to animate the dragon because I can't resist a good dragon skeleton.

The fight was short at least partly because of great dice rolling and El Kevin having upgraded with dex to damage and rapid shot on twin pistols which took his damage output from tiny to great. The dragon skeleton with low initiative took pistol shots and a sneak attack from Padme before moving which hurt it badly then mauled Padme a bit before Being critted in the head by Manuel with a rifle for some huge amount of damage. Graduate students will be spending months trying to glue the dragon skull back together. Xambria faired no better Ulvaar and El Kevin hit her for lots of damage and she surrended in round 3, the various monsters had no luck with the poor worm maw being thought solid and then taking another crit from Manuel who was rolling well and exploding.

The constables rushed Xambria and the artefacts back to HQ and an antimagic cell were they interrogated her and discovered she was still possessed as Slijins's timer counted down. We left it as Xambria/Sijhen escaped and they prepare to deal with Ob assassins, Saxby and monsters next session