The Danger Gang Get Their Comeuppance.
The Danger Gang takes their leave of Ani and begins a remarkably easy week of travel across the plateau of Armenia. Their only surprise is locating a mutilated Tibetan monk corpse under a tree (his name was Gephel, he was killed by a silver spider, speak with dead reveals). We pass over all this. Soon they are on the shores of Lake Sevan (or "Black Van"), hitching rides with fishermen, hobnobbing with the friendly abbot Kevork of Sevanavank Abbey, etc. They learn that some say Zolvija is no longer on Tomkland Island, but in a roughhewn castle on the mainland. Blah blah.
Following up that bogus rumor, they strike out for the castle, actually just a door and some windows carved in a cliff face, which they locate with no problems. It is guarded by three comical cyclopes, who are forever behaving in an addlepated fashion, ha ha. Our droll, dunderheaded friends confirm that they guard Zolvija's castle; the DG has an appointment? why go right in! Down a dark corridor, into a filthy, dark room proceed our heroes. Here, just at the radius of their torches, ghouls skitter, flinching from the light. The keen ears of Karl Shinyhands detect a blown move silently roll, and he spins around before he can be backstabbed by...a coneheaded, bateared, horned, winged, sinewy devil thing. As he and Karl go toe to toe, claws vs clord, the ghouls charge in and a host of shadows spring to unlife and attack. Gershom insouciantly readies his yad for the turn -- but he loses initiative and is paralyzed in round one, along with Baris, followed by Kolya a round later! Worse yet, the demon seems to be making his magic resistance checks. Desperate times, mutters Zombres, and fires a lightning bolt directly into melee. Perhaps he assumed Baris and Kolya would be able to endure the damage; perhaps he yelled for then to duck and forgot they were both paralyzed and couldn't; in any event, several undead are blown to smithereens, but so is Baris! (Hardy Kolya is just wounded.) Zombres can only stare dumbstruck at the carnage he’s caused; surely, his Jewish guilt tells him, he will pay a terrible price for what he’s done to his friend; but there is no time to grieve, the undead are still swarming all over, munching on the paralyzed and assaulting the hale. The demon, meanwhile, is not doing as well against Karl ("We want to see the mistress!" the DG shouts; "You will...at dinner," is the ominous reply) as he'd hoped, and tries some horrible gaze attack, which fails; then he rigs it so Karl's attack on him just wounds the poor gnome instead. What a great power! Still, Karl's holding his own until a stray ghoul attack paralyzes him. Freed of his toughest antagonist, the demon, and a host of undead, face off against Agathon, Cormac, and Zombres. "Laddies," Comrac keeps broguing, "sure and I think it's time for the better part of valor." But then the demon's eyes blaze again, and Zombres falls into a swoon. Before you can say wraithfrom, Cormac gets paralyzed despite his mirror images (an elf paralyzed by a ghoul? how can that be?) and Agathon in rendered, or rather rent, unconscious. Is this the end of the Danger Gang?
Unable to move, they feel themselves dragged up some stairs through the dark. Strange voices quarrel in Armenian. They find themselves, stripped to their skivvies, chained to a wall in a dusty room with one small window. Baris and Zombres are nowhere to be found. Gershom, after failing to stone shape himself free, raises a stink until the demon shows up, and when the rabbi tries to talk his way out of things, the demon's eyes blaze again. Gershom feels an icy hand grip his heart, but he struggles it off, and with a blasphemous oath at his failure the demon turns tail and leaves the helpless captives. Karl, realizing that he has lost all his gemeralds, puts forth a superhuman effort and bursts his bonds. Calming somewhat, he picks the lock on Cormac's chains, and Cormac similarly frees Gershom. But Kolya and Agathon are locked up too tight, and no one is able to free them. Karl goes exploring a little, to see where they are, or whatever, and is immediately spotted by the demon and a cyclops/chef. On stumpy gnome legs he goes running back to his friends, raising holy terror, and Gershom quickly pulps Kolya's hands to free him from the chains. Sorry, Agathon, no time for dwarves. One by one they leap out the window (ben Judah is a skinny scholar, and Kolya, usually so burly, has been reduced to a withered husk of 8 strength by shadows, so they manage to fit) while Karl holds the villains off. The demon's last hurrah is a mass-paralysis attack, but he only catches the cyclops; Karl leaps from the window (it's like a door to a gnome) and Cormac wraithforms down as the demon shakes his fist impotently.
The DG run to take shelter in a nearby cave. Two cyclopes soon track them down, but a color spray saves the bacon. our heroes race away all the day, then find themselves come nightfall in a town, where they shovel dung in exchange for lodgings in the barn. Their worldly possessions come to two sets of lock picks, one ioun stone, and one stick; they are covered in dung and Kolya is at negative; at this the ebb of their fortunes, luck smiles on them. It's a one in a million shot (actually, one in twenty -ed.), but Arben spies on the Gang. "Oh for the love of -- Eorl, come look at this," he says, and Eorl, peeking over his shoulder, can only say, "Yeah, I've been there." A subsidiary scry on Zombres reveals that he has been turned into a ghoul, and is actually feasting on Baris's delicious carcass. Fitting. In two cities, a thousand miles apart, our heroes begin to plan.
