"Cleansing" the Village

Sunday 16th March
As the others were healing after combat I flew up to see if anything was happening, only to see someone running away from the village. I caught him up after a while and told him to halt, but he just hid behind a rock. I shot him in the leg, which made him run again, so I shot him in the head, unfortunately killing him - he turned out to be the headman.

Cyrillian then went to see "his" widow to see if he could get any information, but all she could tell him was who was in charge once the headman was dead - it turns out to be the Shadow Warrior that I shot :)

On "talking" to the prisoners, we find that the headman was on his way to an altar to call "The Master". In the morning Arturo and I go to find the altar, which is about a mile away. We find it in a cave. Arturo goes in while I stay outside, as I don't like caves. There is a fire on the altar, which Arturo throws the scroll onto. A voice says "I am coming", so we high-tail it back to the village to wait...

We check the hut that we were not allowed into. It is a room draped in black, with an altar in it. There are also sketches of all of us, but with Diego instead of Amhat. In addition there are several bowls of blood and some ritual paraphernalia - robes, candles, masks. We decide that we will disguise ourselves in the robes, to allow ourselves to get close to the master.

After nightfall, a Malanthrope appears, possibly the mate to the one we killed. We attack it by surprise, and after we hit it a couple of times it turns into a huge winged demon! It then makes a comment about getting revenge. After a hard fight we manage to kill it, with Amhat administering the killing blow.

It turns out that we have to use summoning to get rid of it, but we can't do that, so we have to put its heart into a silver box and bury it under an altar. We haven't got one of those either, so Amhat carries it in a bag for now. What this means is that it was probably the same animal that attacked us before.

The villagers all recover from being under the influence. We rest a bit, then head off on our way towards the Great Library.

While riding we are confronted by a group of 6 Kang who ask for papers :( We try to pretend that we are on a secret mission, but they do not believe us, so swords are drawn and we start combat. After a long and bloody fight, during which Amhat went down heavily bleeding, and characterised by many groin hits, we managed to beat them. As we cannot afford to have Kang witnesses to our movements, will ensure that all are dead before we leave.

Village in Trouble

Sunday 9th March
After the loss of Diego, a new person joins the party (Paul's new character), a Djaffir named Amhat al Hazar, who seems a pleasant chap.

After some time travelling with the Djaffiri caravan, we need to go a different way from them, North to the Great Library. We accept Amhat into the party on the grounds that he can heal :)

Instead of a strider, he is riding a one-humped Aht-Ra (a camel).

We travel through the savannah, and one night Amhat wakes us when he has a nightmare - he says that it was a message from his god telling him about a village 3 days away that is under the influence of evil magic. The rest of us decide that we will help out. The detour is not too far away from our direction of travel.

We arrive at a Mandellan farming village, who allow us to stay in a store room. They seem fine, saying that the Kang only come by twice a year to collect taxes.

While snooping around the first afternoon, we get the impression that something is wrong, but nothing obvious springs to view.

The headman invites us to a feast that evening. We are a little suspicious, so Arturo examines the food, to find that one dish is poisoned with a sleeping draught. He laces it with his poison antidote, so that we are not affected, but we pretend to fall asleep. The Mandellans then strip us of our clothes and carry us outside and put us into a suspended cage! Not quite what we had in mind.

Arturo manages to unlock the cage while Cyrilian keeps the two guards in conversation to distract them. He finds out that the village is controlled by "the Master", who has told them to capture people of our description.

We head for the hut where we were allowed to stay, where Arturo and R'Keet find all of our kit. Cyrilian and Amhat stay behind to deal with the two guards. Once we have got our kit, Arturo and I go back to help the others. One of the guards runs away, and the other is quickly defeated.

We return to the hut to barricade ourselves in, while we armour up. Two groups of villagers approach the hut, so Arturo drops a Staff of Death bolt into one group, injuring 6 of them. Arturo then casts "See in the Dark" on me (R'Keet) :) so I fly out of the hut so that I can attack from outside.

At one point Arturo uses the Staff of Death on his own location to take a large number of attackers down. This makes most of them run away leaving only two of those identified as "Shadow Warriors" behind.

We quickly take these two down, and there is a break in the combat as all of the enemy has retreated. We call for the headman to come out...