Following the trail of the Emkrah, the party heads west out of the city of Katapesh, shadowing the river Scorpius. The Emkrah makes tracking easy by leaving a wake of destruction. Turning to follow the Pale River, the trail leads into a nearby oasis. In its history, the oasis was named the Deep Well of Paradise and served as a shrine to Sarenrae until it fell to the vampire Rotaimvei. In recent years, a paladin of Sarenrae, Fadiyah Al’Qirym, set out to liberate the oasis and return it to being a shrine of the Dawnflower.
As the party approaches, a lammasu named Assad Ashraf-asim introduces himself and warns the group to leave as the oasis is now called the Hell of Eternal Thirst as it is overrun with undead. The party tells Assad that they are there to cleanse the well and recover the artifact Dawn’s Swift Burning, the sword Fadiyah borrowed to purge the evil in the oasis. Assad reluctantly agrees and warns the party to be especially careful at night.
Entering the oasis, the party is assaulted by eight large apes. Really no match for the deadly adventurers, the beasts fall to the group and the group resumes their trek.
Making their way to the ruined temple, the party spots an undead ettin lurking in the shadows. Further in the temple a burnt corpse with a sword in its clutches. Moving in the adventurers provoke both the skeletal ettin and the spectre dwelling inside. Kushii engages the dangerous specter while Lars breaks out his trusty make-nice-with-the-undead spell. The evil in the temple falls, and Luce is able to consecrate the place to purge the remaining vestiges of the curse.
The party passes through a graveyard, to a large obelisk structure. Crude desecrations cover the base of the pillar, and a small circle of crushed skulls and red wax lies nearby. The party makes camp and begins clearing the site to restore it back to its original purpose. Vampire spawn and lacedons attack the party in the night. Swift shadowy forms and wet stinky ghouls prove to be no match for the group. At dawn the pillar is retouched by the Dawnflower and the party recovers under the rejuvenating effects.
Having spied something under the water from the top of the temple, the group takes a boat and discovers the unholy shrine at the bottom of oasis’s pool. Luce isn’t about to let anyone else do the defiling in his presence, and purges the remnants of the lacedon’s dwelling.
Still haunted, the party searches the graveyard and finds the sarcophagi of the vampire spawn. Luce drops down into the well and smashes the stone sarcophagi with his adamantine falchion.
With the last remnant of evil purged from the oasis, Assad returns and congratulates the party on their success. Lars impatiently reminds the party that the Emkrah, while having visited the oasis, is still traveling further away. With the chase back on, Rayhan sends a message that the Emkrah is being drawn to a site near the Pale Mountain: Hammerfalls.
Quickly resupplying in Kelmarane, the party makes for the mysteriously abandoned dwarven stronghold of Hammerfalls. Arriving there, the party discovers that the main entrance is sealed with an enormous stone slab. Searching around the party discovers a secret entrance. Wandering in the first room is a killing pit. The group climbs up the ladders and moves down a hallway. Suddenly, they are attacked by heavily armed and armored dwarven zombies. Blackish-purple chaotic energy seeps out of the dwarves. Into the constrained space of the hall, the dwarves toss a flash grenade.
Well, the party isn’t too happy at this point. Such rare items as flash grenades being tossed about by undead dwarves, so far from Numeria, can’t be a good sign. The dwarves prove incredibly resistant to damage as the battle drags on. After creating a pit to block the dwarves in their barracks, the over equipped walking dead draw zero (cold-laser) pistols and begin to shoot the party. Luce closes a door to the room with the pit, and the party focuses the fight on the two dwarves in the other room. Slowly they wear them down and it is time to go back to the trapped dwarves. Pulling a replay of the hobgoblin crossbow incident, Lars turns the door invisible while Luce antagonizes the dwarves by smacking and wiggling his bare arse at them.
Predictably, the dwarves shoot at Luce. It is a this point the party discovers an interesting principle of laser pistols, they can shoot through invisible barriers. So, Luce gets bit in the buttocks for a nice chunk of cold damage. That is all Luce is willing to put up with, and he charges into the room and engages the dwarves. After a long, painful battle, the party prevails.
Kushi wonders out loud, “What crazed evil would create such creatures?”
Lars’ statue whispers to him, “It is very close now.”
Moving through a secret door in the end of the hall, Kushii disarms a trap, and the party travels though a banquet all, into a large open room. They party encounters two more dwarves, who toss a bang grenade and a darkness grenade when the fight starts. With more room to maneuver and 50% fewer dwarves, the party gets through the encounter more effectively that the last one.
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Session Characters: Kushii, Lars, Luce, Billy, Scarlett, Nykton
Session XP: 8080 XP each
Session Loot: ring of sustenance, three potions of cure moderate wounds, coins and art worth 3600 GP, three timeworn chaositech zero pistols (0 charges), timeworn chaositech zero pistol (3 charges), two timeworn chaositech zero pistols (4 charges each), six masterwork warhammers , six masterwork chainmail, six masterwork heavy steel shields, two bang grenades
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