As the group approached the Jaded Lilly, Fango lagged behind the rest of the group with a far-off look in his eyes, like he was listening to something the rest of us couldn't hear. He informed us that he had something he had to take care of, and that he would meet us in town. He then rode off into the prairie alone, leaving the rest of us to surmise that some under-cooked Dungavenhooter meat had given him a case of the skittles and he was off to take a buffalo-sized shirt.

The Jaded Lilly itself was well outside town, about a 45 minute ride south of Twist City, and it was built like an old Spanish fort. The building was all stone, with no outlying stables, and so we had to ride through a gate into an enclosed courtyard to access stables that were built into the main structure. There were no stable hands, so we saw to our own horses before heading inside. We were met by a woman named Alma O'Neal, who appeared to be a waitress at the bar. Inside the bar itself there were a number of townsfolk, and some men in strange uniforms that Margaret identified as an exhibition baseball team from back East. On questioning them, she found out they had been hired to head out to Corndell (sp?) City to show off their fancy new game there.

In one corner of the bar was a very large aquarium tank containing a mermaid. Gon seemed immediately sympathetic to the plight of the mermaid. He asked Alma about her, learned that her name was Clarabelle and she had been brought to town as a sideshow attraction by a traveling circus. After the other members of the circus ran afoul of the law and took op residency in the local cemetery, the local justice had been at a loss for what to do with her. Gon decided on the spot that he would do everything he could to pay for passage of the mermaid back to the ocean, and started inquiring around on how to do that.

Over near the mermaid tank was a piano, and given that is was not in use, Lorek took a seat and started to play. This attracted an appreciative audience of one very drunk man By the name of Lloyd Jarson.

The group asked Alma where they could find the local Judge that Marshal Heck Morgan asked them to find, and she directed them to a table at the back of the bar where a large, older man was seated. Bud explained the group's mission to the judge and told the tale of the Mitchell Gang's attack on the Marshals and the theft of the Talisman of Ultimate Evil. During this discussion, the Judge showed himself to be a bit of a dramatic showman, but once we said we had heard that Caleb Mitchel had a girlfriend in town, he provided us with some useful, if somewhat disturbing information.

There had been a preacher in Twist City who had been exposed as a follower of dark gods, and for that he had been run out of town. He had not gone too far, however, because he had apparently attracted some followers and set up a new chapel of evil outside town, over near Fort Wyatt. This preacher's daughter was a woman named Verna, and she was Caleb Mitchell's sweetheart. The Judge informed us that anytime Caleb had a scheme that his father wouldn't approve of, he took it to Verna and her father. Given this information, it looks like we will be facing not only tCaleb and his gang, but also evil cultists. Joy.

Further discussion on this topic was delayed because the Judge said he had to try a case, and the waitress Alma took a seat at his table to serve as a stenographer, and the bartender Garson took his place as bailiff. From a family resemblance, Margaret noticed that Garson was also likely the Judge's son. The Judge called for "the guilty party" to be brought forth, signifying that a totally impartial trial was about to start, so the man Lloyd who had been drinking and enjoying Lorek's music headed over to the Judges table. He was apparently accused of cattle theft by a rancher named Carson.

The trial dragged on for a while, with the Judge showing a pontificating style that only infrequently seemed to touch upon the specifics of the case. During this trial, a native Opowee man came in the front door, looking a little uncomfortable. Shortly after that, a crash was heard from the hallway off to one side of the barroom, over where the guest rooms were. Several of the group headed over that way, and found a window that had been smashed in by a rock thrown by stick people outside, who retreated off behind some trees when we spied them. The stick people were kind of like goblins, with hair that looked like twigs, and they seemed to speak in a language that sounded like birdsong.

We returned to the barroom, and Bud was a bit suspicious of the timing of the stick men's act of vandalism occurring right after the native man entered the bar, so he questioned the man in his native language, which Bud had learned from his Opowee fishing buddy back in Threshold. Bud asked if maybe the stickmen had chased him here. The man, whose name was Asakis, seemed nervous, and said that he didn't know anything about the stick men and hadn't had any run-in with them prior to coming to the bar, but said they had seemed to be riled up the last few days. Bud was able to tell that the man was lying about not knowing why the stick men were here, but didn't have a good sense of how to get the truth out of him, so he asked our fast-talking cleric Margaret to take a crack at him.

Asakis headed to the bar and put down 5 gold coins ($100), which seemed a little odd because he appeared like something of a vagabond with tattered clothing, and Alma brought him out a big crate of bottles. The man went to leave with the bottles, but Margaret confronted him and in his own language said she knew what he was up to. This drew a bit of a crowd. The Judge said that Asakis came in pretty routinely to buy alcohol, and he provided the local lawkeepers with info on the natives in the area. Asakis tried to play dumb. really hamming up an ignorant native routine to try to deflect suspicion, but when Margaret asked if previous Stickman attacks coincided with Asakis' visits to the bar, Alma and Garson came to the realization that was in fact the case.

This discussion was interrupted by another crashing sound from the stables. Several of us went to investigate and check on our horses, and found another rock thrown in through a stable window. At the same time, something started shaking the front gate of the courtyard. Using this distraction, Asakis jumped over a table and started sprinting for the wing of the bar where the guest rooms were located. Gon drew a bad on the man with his pistol and warned him to stop or be shot, and when Asakis didn't stop Gon shot him through the head and killed him.

At this point we were a little puzzled, because while there was a back door to the bar over in the wing with the guest rooms, the people who worked there said that door was study and very securely locked, so Asakas wouldn't have been able to get out that way, and all the windows were too small for someone to fit through. Still, Bud and Margaret went to investigate, while the others kept watch on the front door where the gate had been rattling.

As Bud and Margaret approached the back door, they watched in horror as the bar on the door lifted on its own and the lock just fell off. As the door opened, a stick man threw a sack into the hallway, and stickmen started running into the hall and darting into bedrooms for cover. Out of the sack emerged an animated undead head, that started rolling down the hallway toward Bud. What followed was a shootout in the hallway, with our group taking cover in the bedroom doors and firing at the head and at the stickmen, The head seemed determined to attack Bud, but he was luckily able to dodge it while Margaret doused it with holy fire potions and then Gon finished it off with a well placed pistol shot. The Stickmen for their part threw rocks at us with surprising force and accuracy, and one among them was a spellcaster that kept launching ghostly skeletal hands at Bud. Gon was wounded pretty heavily with rocks, but Margaret was able to heal him with one of her tinctures, and she also blessed the rest of us with a mist from another of her potions. Luckily most of the stickmen seemed content to stay in some of the bedrooms ransacking them, so after we cleared most of the rock throwers in the hall, Bud was able to run to the back door and bar it shut with the spellcaster outside.

As we were fighting in the hallway, Lloyd, the "guilty party", seemed to see his chance to escape, so he drunkenly headed out the front gate, where he was cut down by a second group of stickmen coming in the front. This second group charged into the bar and killed a couple baseball players and some townspeople with rocks to the head. At the time of their initial assault, however, most of the stickmen in the bedroom hallway had already been dealt with, so Lorek, Gon, the Baliff Garson, and the rancher Carson were able to head back into the bar to do battle with them. After some feverish firing that left the bar shrouded in gunsmoke, all but one of the stickmen in the bar were shot down. At around the same time, Gon and Bud finished off the last of the stickmen in the bedrooms, and then Bud opened the back door and shot the spellcaster dead just as he was casting a spell to unlock the door.

The last of the stickmen in the bar made a run for it. Margaret started to chase him, but when she realized she couldn't catch him she turned back to the bar and said, "It looks like he decided not to... stick around."

Then she put on her sunglasses and Lorek screamed YEEEEEAAAAH and played the opening riff of Won't Get Fooled Again.
 

Quick summary of what we did last session based on my own notes and memory:.

We spoke to Sweetwater Nat and tried to convince him to join us in fighting the Mitchell Gang, with Lorek singing songs of his exploits in an attempt to flatter him, but he didn't seem interested. He did say if we ever need to get out of town in a hurry we should just ask for him down by the river.

After planning all week to ambush the Mitchell gang in town, we changed our minds at the last minute and decided instead to do an end run around the group they would be sending into town and hitting them where they lived over at the satanic church. While getting our horses from the stable, we were approached by the Chinese half-orc, Luing. He didn't speak common so well, but he indicated through improvised sign language where he abused a patch of grass that the evil artifact we were after would destroy the land, and so he joined us, casting a druid spell on himself that allowed him to run faster and keep up with our horses. We headed north out of town and came to a bridge that was trapped to fell, with a group of stickmen waiting ambush. We saw the trap before falling into it, but reasoned that time was of the essence so we did not have time to stay and fight, so Gon cast Beast Bond on his horse and had him lead the rest of our horses back to the Carson Ranch to wait for us, and we set off overland toward the evil church.

When we reached the church we stayed hidden and scouted it out, and discovered it was still very heavily manned. 3-4 men were milling around the yard on watch, and there seemed to be a lot of Caleb's mean and cultists coming and going between the church and a little tent city in a valley north of it. From an occasional flash of light we saw they were keeping watch with spyglasses or binoculars, and at one point Caleb's girlfriend came outside. We figured it would be suicide to attack or try to sneak in during daylight, so we just observed for a while. At one point 3 Opowee painted all red, like those Fango had encountered on his solo mission, rode up to the church from the south, spoke to the reverend's daughter, and then rode off overland to the SE. Later 6 men rode up the road to the south, and among them were Caleb and the reverend, carrying the artifact, and also our liberated prisoner David Tasslehat. So apparently we missed our opportunity to take them out in town and recover the box. fork.

Figuring the church was too much for us, we headed back to town, stopping on the way to scrawl a note in the dirt of the road to war other travelers of the stickman trap. When we got to the edge of town Luing left the group, presumably heading back to his own home. The main street in the town was deserted, the door to the post office/sherriff's office was hanging open, and we saw a pile of bodies over by the gallows. Around the corner of a building by the gallows we also spotted a ghost heading for us, and that is where we left off.
 

So you know that last session we got Judge Serrano onboard to host the location of the revival at the Jaded Lilly, and he even volunteered to provide big tents and a couple wagons (Mossy Hemmet, who worked locally in textiles, apparently had a large bar tab that the judge could leverage to get a tent). The Judge also sent his son Garson into town to buy some dynamite so we wouldn't be seen doing it. We also found out the townspeople were turning the event into a huge potluck, so food would be provided for. For our part, Gon and Fango went off to visit the local native tribe to see if they would help us, and in Twist city Bud went to go invite the local preacher to the revival, while Lorek and Margaret went to the Merland Theater to enlist some musicians for the event.

Bud found the church empty, but with a root cellar that smelled of rot, so he went to get Margaret and Lorek to help him investigate it. The root cellar looked empty, but Bud's divine sense revealed a source of evil behind one wall, and Lorek was able to spot a secret door. Margaret used a special ability that granted her temporary access to a previously unknown skill and learned how to use the thieves tools she bought from the general store a few sessions ago, and with those was able to determine the door was un-trapped. Through the door we discovered a hidden chapel, with an upside-down gold cross on the altar, infernal writing on the walls related to demon worship, and a trough in front of the altar filled with what looked like the ashes and bones from burnt offerings. on the altar there was also a fine wooden box. Margaret checked it for traps and found a concealed fuse extending from the box into the trough, and buried in the ashes was a shitload of dynamite.

We picked up this session with Fango and Gon out in the prairie searching for the local Opowee tribes to try to recruit them to our side. They came across the tracks of two unshod horses headed in the direction of the Jaded Lilly, and so they followed them and came across two older Opowee men. They were friendly, but only one of them spoke common, and to Fango's surprise he also spoke the language of Fango's own people. The man who spoke common was the older of the two, and Gon recognized him as a shaman. His name was Here's the Fire. The other man seemed to be dressed like royalty, and he was introduced as Chief Por Elk. Por Elk was not just a sub-chief, but apparently an important leader among the Opowee people as a whole

The men revealed that they had learned about the trouble in the region and the revival, and were headed to the Jaded Lily to get more information on what was going on. Gon told them we had set up the revival as a way to trap the Mitchell Gang, and at that Here's the Fire got a sour look and handed some coins to Por Elk, so apparently they had a bet on what we were doing. Here's the Fire also pressed for more information on what the Talisman of Ultimate Evil was and where it came from, but unfortunately Fango wasn't able to recall What Heck Morgan had told the group about the artifact when he recruited us into a posse, and Gon was temporarily asleep in his saddle so he wasn't able to help.

Here's the Fire did clear up some things for us. Apparently the Opowee cultists who Fango saw painted red were sort of a secret organization called the Red Face Society who followed demons and false faces. The members of this society live hidden among the opowee, and previously they had been very secretive, but he appearance of the Talisman of Ultimate Evil had apparently emboldened them to come out in the open recently. That group was working with the Mitchells, and HtF revealed that news of our revival had offended them even more then the settler cultists, so when the attack comes on the revival we will likely be facing both the Mitchell Gang, their settler devil preacher, and also this Red Face Society.

Knowing what we were up against, Fango asked the Opowee men if they would be willing to get some trusted warriors wheo they were sure were not affiliated with the evil Opowee cult and join us in the fight. After conferring the two men agreed, and said they would also recruit some allies of theirs, the Nenahee, a tribe of native elves. Before heading off, the men gave Fango the location of their village (about 2.5 hours ride east) in case he needed to get word to them, and they said if they needed to contact us they would send word to the Jaded Lilly.

Since the sun was setting and they were about the same distance from the Jaded Lily and Twist City, Fango and an newly awakened Gon decided to just head for the Lilly to turn in for the night.

MEANWHILE, BACK AT THE CHURCH...
Just for reference, it was Poor Elk and Hears the Fire
 

We set up the Jaded Lilly for the revival, with a grandstand and tents for the settlers on the north side of the building, and strategically placed barrels, wagons and hay bales to provide cover along the front of the building to the east. The Opowee came and set up their own camp to the southwest.

During the setup, a group of about 15 Mitchell gang members and cultists rode in from he northeast. They stayed out of gun range, and sent Verna Abelson forward with a white flag to parley. She said she knew we were setting a trap and that our claimed talisman of ultimate good was a ruse, but said her boyfriend and father had fallen for it, and that they would be attacking tomorrow. She claimed to care nothing for Caleb Mitchell or her father, and just wanted to secure her own safety no matter which side won, so she offered to trade us information in exchange for a guarantee of her own safety if we should triumph in the coming battle. We agreed, and so she told us the following:

-The attack would come at noon, involving a mixed group of Mitchell gang members, satanists, red face society Opowee, and Yaya stick men.

-The settler force of gang members and satanists numbers about 40 men. The would bring the Talisman of Ultimate Evil with them, and after riding up they plan to open the box to unleash its power

-Up to 30 Red Face Society and possibly false-faces would be attacking from the south.

-The false-faces also have stick men helping them, but she did not have the number of them that would be attacking.

-When asked how many false-faces there would be, she claimed not to know and said she never had dealings directly with the false-faces, however this was detected to be a lie.

-There are 3 spies in our camp, including one (a bank clerk) who we had already identified, as well as a laborer working on the grandstand and one of our guards. She pointed out the exact men to us.

Using this info on which men were spies, we put on a show of bringing in a "Gatling gun" in a covered wagon, but then having the wagon break an axle out in front of the Jaded Lilly. We loaded the wagon with our dynamite, with the plan that the attacking force would make for this gun to turn it on us, and once they were around the wagon Fango would blow it up with a flaming arrow.

The spies eventually left camp, presumably to report back to the Satanists.

After dark during Fango's watch, he detected a gang member trying to sneak to the Gatling gun wagon. Fango dispatched him, and we confiscated his horse, gun, and some cash he had on him. Even though his body would be worth some money on a bounty, we eventually decided to burn the corpse so that he could not rise from the dead if the box was opened during the attack.
The morning of the revival, we noticed two of the men who had been pointed out by Verna as spies, the guard and the laborer, returned to the Jaded Lily. Since they didn't know we were onto them it was easy for Bud and Lorek to lure them into separate rooms, get the drop on them, and disarm them. After that we tied them up and locked them in a cellar below the kitchen to await trial later.

The group also noticed that there was a nervous-looking man who seemed to be keeping an eye on Margaret, and looking like he wanted to talk to her. Margaret confronted him, and he revealed that he was a carpenter from town who Bud had approached a few days earlier inquiring about buying a box for the "Talisman of Ultimate Good". He claimed to have some information on boxes that Margaret would be very interested in, and asked to be paid off before he would reveal it. Even though he seemed kind of sketchy, Margaret figured it was best to find out what he knew, so after talking him down to a lower price ($4.50) she paid him off. The man revealed that after Bud had come in looking to buy a box, Verna had come in and paid him to construct a remarkably similar box. From this, the party deduced that Verna was planning to double cross Caleb and her father, swapping boxes on them so she could steal the evil talisman.

We didn't have much time until the revival was due to start, so we met with our Opowee allies. We first filled them in on the plan of attack that Verna had revealed to us. They seemed very surprised and concerned when we told them of the number of Red Face Society members that Verna told us to expect. We also filled them in on what we knew of the Evil Talisman, and Hears the Fire seemed like he had already guessed the artifact's Coyachi origin. We also told them of the new information we discovered on Verna's likely double-cross, and since none of us could afford to leave the revival with the impending attack, the Opowee agreed to send some of their braves to scout out the evil temple and prevent Verna from escaping if possible, or trailing her if that seemed too dangerous.

With that, we prepared for the attack. Bud staked out the front gate, Fango concealed himself on the roof, and the rest of the group worked the revival in the camp north of the Jaded Lily.

Near noon, a single Double-face appeared off in the grasslands to the south, facing away from us with its 2nd face and sharp elbows facing the Opowee camp. Shortly after that, a large dust cloud appeared to the north, and a group of about 35 gang members and cultists rode down the main road. With them, we saw Caleb Mitchell and Reverend Ableson, who was carrying an ornate wooden box. That group massed out on the crossroads to the east of the Lily. They seemed to be waiting for something, and kept looking to the south. At this time, all the townspeople at the revival took up defensive positions, and we waited.

And waited.

The gang on the road seemed to be talking animatedly among themselves. and it started to become clear that the Red Face Society allies they were waiting for were not going to appear. The single Doubleface that had been seen to the south retreaded back into the grasslands. At this point Caleb yelled out to us asking if maybe we didn't want to do this the easy way, and when were replied we didn't reckon we did, they attacked. They came in two groups, with a large group of mounted men lead by the Reverend riding directly for the "Gatling gun", while a second group on foot advanced toward the revival tents. As they rode, the reverend opened his box, and got a very confused look on his face when he looked inside.

As the mounted men reached the gatling gun, Fango fired a flaming arrow into the accelerant-soaked canvass covering the dynamite we concealed in the wagon. Both sides started firing, Some townspeople and some attackers fell, but cover protected out group and we avoided serious injury. After a brief pause the wagon exploded, killing Reverend Ableson and most of the men accompanying him. The box the reverend had been carrying shattered, and was revealed to be empty, of course.

Gon, at this point, removed his plague mask for the first time, revealing that he has the head of a crow, and he charged forward alone, out of cover, to confront Caleb's whole group single handed. Margaret splashed him with a protective potion, and while he was shot once he kept his feet and avoided the majority of the hail of lead aimed his way. We all turned our guns and arrows on Caleb's group and opened up, and in short order we gunned down Caleb and most of his men. Some tried to flee, but they were all run down or gunned down, and the day was ours.
 

As we headed back down the trail from the farmhouse where we encountered Verna, Fango spotted us in the distance from where he was riding by in the company of the Opowee. He broke away from that group and rejoined our party. As a group we were a little beat up and low on spells, but there was still plenty of daylight left and we didn't want the main group of cultists to get too far ahead of us, so we pushed on following them at as fast a speed as we dared. As we rode the day turned overcast and a hot wind started blowing in from the East.

The tracks we were following contained a mixture of shod and unshod horses (more unshod than shod) and they continued to follow the trail we were on earlier. Eventually this trail crossed the path of a gigantic herd of buffalo that stretched on for miles, so the only way forward was through the herd. As we approached, we noticed that there was an empty spot in the herd, because there was something on the trail ahead that the buffalo were giving a wide berth as they passed. It was a dead buffalo, and as we got closer it stood up and charged at us. Plainly the cultists had killed a buffalo and then opened the box to bring it back to a state of undeath before moving on. The dread bull charged us, but we all drew our weapons and gunned it down. Unfortunately, the sound of gunfire had the effect of panicking the buffalo and starting a stampede. A couple of us were unhorsed and took some damage, but we managed to get out of the path of the buffalo mostly intact, and after rounding up a couple of horses that attempted to run away to live as buffalo we continued on our way.

At this point the wind picked up even more, and we started seeing heat lightning. Several among the group who were familiar with life on the plains recognized this as tornado weather. We saw the path we were following lead out of the open plain and into a wooded valley ahead, so we pushed on even faster to try to gain the shelter of the trees before a twister showed up.

We made it to the treeline about 7:30, just as it was starting to get dark. At this point we estimated that the group we were tracking was about 2 hours ahead and it looked like they were riding hard, but with night falling we thought it was best to look for somewhere to camp. We located a likely spot in a clearing with a large rock that might provide some shelter. As we entered the clearing Bud spotted something shadowy in one of the trees, and shouted a warning just as a very long arm reached out from behind the tree and grabbed Margaret up. It was a shadow creature with long, gangly arms and legs, known as a Hidebehind. We all opened fire on it, and Margaret took out her shotgun for the first time and blew the creatures head off. Unfortunately, another of the creatures scrambled down the tree after the first. This one slashed Bud with its claws, dealing a wound that would have felled a lesser man and prompting Bud to emit a very manly yell of pain that was totally not at all a girlish scream.

Gunsmoke and arrows filled the air as we all opened fire, felling the beast, and leaving our campground seemingly safe for the night.