We take stock of the battle aftermath. Fossar gets to work burying the bodies of which there are 7. The blacksmith’s kids start to wake up. The messenger takes off, shaken but seemingly unharmed. Robert Ford comes stumbling out of the sheriff office and says “What the hell is going on here?” At first he seems to blame the posse for what went on, but Magnus and Lucille remind him that they deserve his trust and he shouldn’t be so quick to judgement. He agrees but seems frustrated. Rusty comes out of city hall and joins the posse, also trying to figure out what is going on. Robert says that he is not sure that he wants to be sheriff any longer because there are so many strange things going on, all of which seem connected to the posse. Rusty tries to bring him around and seems successful. We invite them all back to the Triple Tap to discuss what’s been going on and give them the full story.
In order to get some more help to protect the town, Fossar and Jimmy go and talk to the Dust Brothers in their camp west of town. They explain to them what has been going on and Glenn agrees to send some men to help. He remarks that it’s strange that Jimmy is talking and that all of this has happened in the past couple of weeks. Glenn and eight men come back to town with Fossar and Jimmy and meet up with the rest of the group at the Triple Tap.
Meanwhile, Magnus has been helping the town doctor fix up the people who were hurt in the melee at the center of town. They are able to stabilize all eight of them. The ones that wake up, including the blacksmith’s kids, seem to have no memory of their violent actions just a couple of hours before. They don’t seem to be affected any longer. Magnus leaves after making sure everyone is tended to and heads back to the bar.
Once everyone is gathered including Rusty, Robert Ford, two of his deputies, Glenn and the rest of the posse, Thaddeus starts to tell them what has really been going on. He goes through the whole story from Jenkins’ spirit being captured to the zombie miners and all of the creatures they’ve encountered the past couple of weeks. Everyone seems to agree that weird things are happening except Rusty, who seems confused and very much a Doubting Thomas. Lucille decides to demonstrate by turning him into the puppet. She makes him stand on one leg and almost dump his beer. He goes white and now believes us. Rusty asks how his father is wrapped up in all of this, and Magnus says that he doesn’t know but he is working on figuring it out. It may have something to do with the town’s founding papers which Rusty has in his care. Rusty reminds us that Otto Stauss was on the first set of papers that founded the town, but then Otto did not like sharing the wealth and left town, after which the town papers were redrawn with just Jenkins name. Otto has disappeared, over 20 years ago. The real problems started 9 months ago.
After agreeing to help guard the town from supernatural threats while the posse goes into the mine to face the Dragon, the visitors all leave and agree to keep the town under guard. The posse goes back to looking at the book for several hours and working on the translation. It is slow going but they are making progress.
Magnus goes to the hotel and pokes Poker Alice. Ok they just go for a walk, but I am a fan of alliteration. Magnus questions her more. <long pause while they talk>. Then he comes back to the bar. We go to bed and plan to start on the book again in the morning.
Magnus takes watch and at around four in the morning he notices someone prowling in the alley next to the bar. He goes down to confront the stranger. <long pause while they talk>. After coming back in, Magnus wakes up the rest of the posse and says that they need to pack up and leave the Triple Tap right away. The same group of lawmen that raided Salida including a county marshal and judge are on their way to Paradise Falls tomorrow. Likely they will take over the town and will not think kindly of the posse when they do. It’s decided that they will relocate to the Kid’s shack which is near the back entrance of the mine but is far enough out of town that no one will disturb them there. When there, they can finish translating the book and hopefully get an advantage to defeating the Dragon.
Jimmy and Fossor travel quickly back to the Dust Brothers’ camp and asks Glenn for some supplies. He is able to spare several bedrolls and two tents. It’s about 5am now. They head back to the Triple Tap where the rest of the posse is loading up more supplies in a cart. Thaddeus and Maverick take the wagon of supplies on a roundabout route east of town and then north, and the rest of the party leaves VERY Obvious tracks that lead into the mine. Then Magnus teleports them away several hundred feet so there are no connecting tracks and they start walking to the shack. They are just out of town when we notice some creatures heading toward the town. They are a group of zombies and skeletons looking for food.
Magnus casts silence to protect the wagon from drawing their attention. Thaddeus hits two of them with an entangle potion. Fossar shovels the motherfucker. Maverick kills one and they wound Magnus and Fossar. Jimmy tomahawks another. After a long combat they die. Since the cone of silence kept Maverick’s pistols quiet, the town is not disturbed. We continue to the hack and set up camp, finishing up by mid-morning.
