The Danger Gang Auxiliary "Save" Some Children
After a quiet night's rest in a nameless burg, the Danger Gang Auxiliary press on towards the serpentine byway known as the Serpent Road.
They soon enter the dreaded Kelalalt mists. In the distance, they hear the woeful cries of children, accompanied by the clank of chains and the crack of whips. They can't just pass this by; they investigate. They find several hooded figures whipping a chain-gang of children; no surprises there. The hooded figures turn out to be skeletal. Wirshin holds aloft a cross and says a few mea culpas or whatever and the hooded creatures flee into the mists, presumably lost forever in their whirling mysteries. The gang gathers up the children (who are a sickly looking lot) and lead them back to town.
The townsfolk don't want to get involved, however, typical suburbanites they. They insist that the children belong to "him". As if to underline their point, one the children then promptly explodes. The children detect as magical, having an eerie greenish-yellow, mucus-like aura, as do the ashes of the exploded one. Arben attempts to collect these ashes, at first as a weapon, then, thinking it over, for a proper burial. However, he promptly pays for his initial malice, becoming infected with whatever afflicts these children.
Arben quickly sets up a Secure Shelter playground/hospice for the kiddies outside of town so the gang can figure out their next move.
They try a Remove Curse, a Dispel Magic, and a Cure Disease on these kids, and it seems like the Cure Disease is the only one that has a chance at being effective. Luckily, the infection has yet to truly take hold in Arben, so Wirshin is able to patch him up fairly quickly. The kids tell them that they were given sips of some kind of briny potion every couple of hours, and this seemed to make them feel less explody on the inside. They try to squeeze in rest cycles, while Cyril kindly leads interested children in prayer. They are able to cure a few kids (Fatty, who they set up with a gig as a blacksmith's apprentice, and Fishlips, who becomes a ward of the church) but the others seem resistant to treatment. Some are so resistant that they explode. Wirshin, after meditation, asks St. Jude for a Divination on how to deal with all this now. While feverishly mouthing the Saint's reply, Patricius scribbles the following notes:
Cure Disease won't work
Something below baroness' house
Not worth it?
Lady you're looking for not in Arthropodia but a clue there
"Look to your master, is it I?"
There was also something in there about what obscures the moon and can't be found at noon, which they interpreted to mean shadows, so they decided to head to the newly minted realm of Luanna, the Agathersi death knight what controls shadows. They head out of the secure shelter, but there's a damn Owlbear right there in their face. Luckily, those guys are known chumps, so they take him down without too much trouble. They lead the remaining infected children out of town, hoping maybe to encounter another gang of slavers with their disease tempering potions. They set up camp at nightfall and they're soon attacked by a group of ghouls. Some get turned, but a few remain to fight. They keep paralyzing more people, causing the Auxiliary to have to wake more and more people out of their rest cycles, only to be attacked while armor-less, getting them paralyzed. It's quite a thing. Soon the ghouls are defeated, however. It is then that good old Costicu comes out of the mists. "It's me," he says.
He tells them that he might have a lead on some of the treasure types they were looking for, specifically the magic carpet. He says his sources tell him that an old elf, the same one that hacked the prior dungeon finding a false-bl**dst*ne hacked another dungeon nearby where he might have buried a magic carpet. Why anyone would do this, they have no idea. Wirshin suspects that this old elf might be the famed Bath House Bandit. Arben has heard a little about this guy. He apparently once fought a pope and was at one point hooked up with those jerks, the Karmathians. He hangs out with a guy named Hakim, who also might have been around lately.
In any case, they explain that they're not really interested in the flying carpet anymore, as they're probably not going to Arthropodia anymore. Frankly, they're kind of sick of talking to Kosticu, and decide to press him to just get in touch with his mysterious "sources" that he keeps alluding to. Kosticu keeps hemming and hawing, until it finally comes out that he's a Were-Rat, and his sources are rats. This seems like a bit of a coincidence, two meddlesome were-rat thieves, but they take him at his word. They tell him that they're not really traveling with a bunch of cash on them right now, but that when they're finished with the big score around here, if keeps good info flowing, he can write his own check. What they really need is info on Luanna, Al-Wathiq, the Bath House Bandit, Hakim, Phillip IV, and probably some other stuff. He says he'll keep an eye out, or an ear to the ground, whatever were-rats do, then skulks back into the mists.
The try to finish their night's rest, when some more ghouls come out of the mists. There is more fighting. Then a Gypsy caravan comes out of the mists. These mists. The gypsies, luckily, are alright. Arben and Mirella shoot the shit with them. They heartily advise the gang to stay out of Luanna's realm, as it is not a great place for the living. They also mention that Dr. Stupiferous has made some sort of alliance with Zmura to try to get revenge on the Danger Gang. Ah well. They wish each other safe journeys and go their separate ways.
