Maverick starts rounding up wagons and horses to transport people from Spar City. Thaddeus stays up late and works up a new potion to deal with the strange new creatures we have been finding.
The next morning we find a bunch of people (5) sitting outside of the Long Draught. Magnus approaches them and asks what they want. They have covered themselves with symbols that match what Lucille was drawing on buildings. They immediately bow down to her. She asks what they want and they say they are following her holy writings. Some of them claimed that she protected them and helped them find food and good fortune. They ask her to tell them the path. She tells them to help Maverick load the wagon.
Robert quits his job and says F@(k this I’m moving to Montana.
We jump in the wagons and start to Spar City. We have horses tied to the back of the wagons. Jimmy is out in front as our scout. We raise a huge cloud of dust as we ride, moving at super speed. Thaddeus is snoring in the back of one of the wagons, but Jimmy senses the spirit of Grey Owl speeding us along. We don’t stop, and soon we the outskirts of Spar City. We see smashed buildings and fire scars. We see someone in the road in front of us.
Jimmy rides up to the person. He sees that it is a kid. We stop behind Jimmy rides around in front of the kid. It is the kid, and he is drawing on his sketch pad. He says this is a bad time. Jimmy looks at his sketch pad. The town on the pad shows huge tentacles crushing the buildings. We feel a sense of unease that is extremely strong. There is something very wrong with this town. Maverick asks if there are people in the church. Lucille detects arcana on the kid. She can tell that he is slightly magical. He says that he is not going into the town and starts to walk away. Thaddeus mounts his own horse and we start moving into the town with Jimmy, followed by the wagons. We notice that there is no vegetation around the town, and all of the field around it are dead and cracked. The church is the only thing standing. We see bones all over the ground. Some have meat on them but others are bare. There is no sound but the carrion birds.
Lucille says not to touch the bones, but we can’t stop the horses from stepping on them. Thaddeus’ horse rears and starts running out of town. Lucille talks to it and suddenly it turns around and heads back into town. We get to the church. Lucille sees the energy coalesce around us and warns us to watch the bones. Jimmy starts riding around to crunch up more of the bones. We see recent signs of activity, such as freshly dug graves with crosses on them.
We move up to the church. Lucille does not detect anything from the graves, but there is a lot of magical energy coalescing in the area. Jimmy tracks around the graves, and sees the tracks go straight back to the church. Charlotte jumps down and looks at the graves.
Maverick shoots one shot to let anyone on the church know we are here. There is a sound like a large exhale and we see skeletons pop up around us. They seem to be made out of many different people and are screaming in pain and rage. They pick up stick and attack us. Charlotte shoots one with a shotgun and it disintegrates. We see an orange energy as the skeleton disintegrates. Jimmy lets out a war cry, WHICH WE HEAR. He is surprised, but still jumps off his horse and still tomahawks another skeleton. There is still blood coming out of the skeletons, which is weird. The skeletons move in. One swings at Jimmy and misses. One swings at Charlotte and his arm falls off. One swings and Thaddeus and connects, and another hits Maverick. Maverick returns the favor and blows three away. Thaddeus shoots another in the face. Lucille is obviously casting a big spell, and 4 zombies pop up out of the graves of the townspeople.
Joker for Maverick. He mows another three down. Charlotte blows way one of Lucille’s zombies. Jimmy cuts down two in front of him. Magnus blows away the third, and the ground rumbles as the last zombie sinks into the ground. Lucilles shouts not to kill the last zombies, which are hers. We ride up to the church and announce ourselves. After some convincing the doors open and we see a women and man. They see Lucille’s zombies and shut the door immediately.
Maverick flies up to the steeple (this is new). The group in the church shoots up at Maverick and misses. Charlotte talks to them and tries to persuade them, but fails miserably. Thaddeus also tries to persuade them to come out. The woman opens the door and tells everyone inside that we are friends. Magnus pulls out a bowler hat and convinces them to come out of the church.
They open the doors and 40 people come out. We load up all of the people on the wagons, plus putting the rest on the extra horses and the backs of ours. The person we talked to initially is Madame Lorelei, and the guy is Fred Lawson, former proprietor of the General Store in Paradise Falls. We ask about the town papers, but Lorelei says she hid them under the floorboards of the church and they heard noises under there so they haven’t gone back. Once they arrived at Spar City there were 80 people here and things were OK, but this spring the vegetation started dying off and supplies ran out. A few weeks ago, there was a large fight in the center of town over who was hogging the remaining resources and the townspeople massacred each other, even the women and children. The survivors from Paradise Falls barricaded themselves into the church and were spared, but the town was destroyed, and soon after the corpses rose up and attacked them. They have been hiding in the church ever since.
We load up everyone and escort them out to the edge of town where the weirdness ends. Then we go back and go into the church. It smells from all the people living here for weeks, and is extremely dark.
We find the loose floor boards and climb down to a small crawl space. Maverick and Jimmy crawl down. Both notice that there are racks of old moldering books, and notice that there are a lot of foot prints around an area where there was obviously a box. The tracks lead up to a wall behind the box. The Indian sees nothing, but Maverick finds a secret door. Two passages lead off, and we follow the right into a large room. There are catacombs under the church.
As we walk into the room we feel the same rumbling as above. The lights go out, and a voice says it has heard of us. It says ‘I have heard of you, and I thought that you would come. ‘ We see a vision of ourselves in our idealized selves. We are captivated for a few seconds, and then we see the same orange tentacles rise up and the visions turn to evil.
Corpses start piling out of the walls. Jimmy runs up to two of them and drops one. Charlotte blasts another one. Maverick drops another three. They attack and miss us all. Magnus shoots one, and Lucille controls another. Thaddeus blasts another.
Thaddeus moves quickly and blows away another. Jimmy drops the last two. We see the energy drift out of their bodies and go under the wall. A door is visible. Charlotte opens the door and sees a hallway. She charges in……
We see another large room where the light is sucked out of the room and we hear the voice again, but instead of ourselves we see of others being pulled apart by the evil orange tentacles. They all are affected and then start behaving strangely. They are all possessed. One is another woman from town, and Lawrence is also affected. Off in the distance we see the kid furiously writing and drawing a huge mosaic, which shows each of the people being affected by the tentacles. The voice says “My brother told me about you, but I will be the one to destroy you… “ As Charlotte turns to look at us, her eyes are orange.