June 10th 216B Party returns to the Hungry Dragon (inn). Within Mididore, bard extraordinaire,is telling tales of a group of heroes that sounds suspiciously like the party.Korvath trades insults with the bard. Eventually the party turns in for thenight. June 11th 216B The party is contacted by a mysterious middleman. They spend the day trying toschedule a meeting with their contact. June 12th 216B The contact turns out to be a heavily robed nobleman who wishes the party to offsome villain. Tracking the nobleman after the meeting the party reveals ties totwo merchant families. Researching the "villain" they find that he is anenforcer for a local mafia family, who has been threatening the children oflocal merchant families. Further research reveals that the enforcer has two petdevil dogs that never leave his side. After careful observation the party notethat the dogs are shadow mastiffs. June 13th 216B The enforcer Perikumi challenges Payton, the scion of the Robinson merchantfamily, to a duel outside town at dusk, conveniently outside police jurisdiction. That evening the party convinces Payton to stay home, while Alex, disguised asPayton, goes to meet Perikumi. The rest of the party follow invisible. Thereis a sizeable crowd gathered at the town wall to watch the fight. No dogs inevidence, Perikumi greets his opponent: "Prepare to die" etc. As Alex brings out his morning star, Perikumi notes: "That is not your familyweapon!" Alex retorts "Why, this isn't even my family form!" as he shapeshiftsinto a troll. As the battle begins the hounds appear out of nowhere. Mel and Moge engage thedogs, and Alex takes on Perikumi. Suddenly as the hounds bay, half the crowdson the wall and the party on the field flee in panic. Only Essandri, Alex, andMel remain. Soon Essandri is taken down, but Alex and Mel prove sufficient tocarry the day. The party is victorious. Afraid that Perikumi will rise again as undead,Korvath heads into town to ensure proper burial. In town Korvath encounters therest of the mafia. They are willing to overlook the party's transgression inexchange for the recovery of the mafia don's daughter-in- law. The lady inquestion had been turned over to some mysterious blue merchants (ogre magi) outon the plains to have her "fixed up". The blue men had not kept their end ofthe bargain, therefore the party is to recover the daughter. "Convinced",Korvath goes back and tell the party of their new partnership with the mob. June 14-15th 216B Party identifies and sells items pillaged from Perikumi's body. June 16th 216B The party tracks down the encampment of the blue merchants, only to find thatthe "merchants" and their guards had been assaulted by undead. The merchantsappear to have successfully driven off the undead, but there are six new gravesnear the site. The graves are arranged around a tribal totem that prevented theparty from investigating closer. While investigating the area around the totem,Essandri noticed a small red dragon nearby. The dragon, Xuemin ("zoomin'"),turned out to be a friend of Julia's. Essandri welcomed Xuemin to stay with theparty for a while, and everyone was entertained while Mel in giant cat form gavethe dragon rides on his back. A bit of tracking by Mel revealed that the rest of the merchants' forces hadretreated to a longhouse to the south. The longhouse showed signs of recent battle and appeared to be occupied by somekind of giant monkeys. Deciding on a direct approach, the party threw open thedoor and stormed the longhouse. A moment later they were surrounded by giantguerrilons and pounded mercilessly. By virtue of having superior magic, theparty pulled through, only to face the guerrilon leader, a towering 5-ton ape.Korvath quickly fell before the onslaught of the many- limbed monster. But thehasted Mel and Moge proved to be fully capable of spanking the monkey. A closer examination of the longhouse revealed that the monkeys also recentlysuffered undead attacks. The fact that the guerrilons had been mostly drainedof blood and crudely smeared with wild garlic suggested to the party the likelyculprits - vampires. There was also evidence that the merchants had left twodays before the party's arrival. The party dragged the bodies outside and prepared to make camp for the night. SESSION END Night of June 16th 216 years after the Breaking NEXT TIME : So what qualifies as returning her unharmed? REWARDS ------- 1305 Experience for all players