The Pogues

October 14th, Albanus 1

The rest of the night passed uneventfully, and the odd mist dissipated without incident about an hour later.  So the party tried to get a few more hours' sleep.  Before dawn they awoke and sent Pelasgus' men to rouse the towns-people for the morning's executions.

By the time the sun rose above the eastern ocean, a surly crowd milled about the town square.  Severus and the others sat on impromptu thrones;  Pelasgus accepted the executioner's duties for the day.  The first to be tried were the four burghers whom Titus found nefas.  Severus gave them an option to confess and repent, but none took it.  One insisted their were no Gods -- he did not fear punishment after death.  The others insisted they were devout (initiates of Legis' Mysteries, no less!).  Each was beheaded, and their body thrown in a charnal pit.  Pelasgus performed the gruesome duty with a rather disturbing expertise, hacking each man's head off with one strong blow.  The new regent's skill clearly impressed the gathered townsfolk, though they remained as rebellious as ever.

The guards were next, and most of them confessed to a variety of sexual crimes (perversions, infidelity, raping slaves, etc.).  Severus instructed Marius to pray that the Gods have mercy on them.  And while the men were still executed, he treated their bodies honorably and returned them to their families, for proper burial -- assuring them of a much better afterlife than the men thrown into the pit.

The last to die was Count Ossarius himself.  Severus gave him no opportunity to repent.  Instead, he gave an impassioned speech about the man's crimes, and condemned him.  Pelasgus relinquished the executioner's axe to Count Largitas, in recognition of the evils Ossarius had done to his daughter.  Though as he did, Titus noticed dark flickers in the young man's aura.  The paladin murmured a quiet warning, that Pelasgus should be wary not to give in too much to his hatred;  it could be addictive.  The regent acknowledged this, but, he said, "I pray you'll forgive me if I get drunk on my vengeance today."

Furious yet fearful, Count Largitas took the axe gingerly from Pelasgus.  And Count Ossarius suffered for his hesitancy.  Largitas' first blow merely slashed Ossarius' neck.  As the vile count began to scream and writhe, Largitas hacked at him with feeble, distracted blows.  It took a half dozen chops before Ossarius finally stopped twitching.  Like his burghers, Ossarius was thrown into a charnal pit, and Marius prayed over all the corpses, to ensure that their souls passed into the Gods' judgement.

As the crowd dissipated, the band turned their attention to the next step:  finding and destroying the Mollitan hulk (the Black Ship).  They shifted into wind-walk form and searched the coast.  Soon, they located the hulk -- sailing north, not south.  Towards southern Pelasgus...

Most of the family held back while Gaius flew up to the ship to do reconaissence.  Covered by Marius' "hide from undead" prayers, the ranger surveyed the hulk and found no sign of a necromancer -- a spell caster powerful enough to summon the odd mist they'd seen earlier.  However as he stuck his head into the last cabin, Gaius found himself face to face with the ship's wraithly captain.  The ranger snapped his head back just as the creature reached for him.  Not even his ephemeral form protected him from the captain's ghostly hands.  Gaius felt a chill as one claw scraped his cheek -- and a terrible tug at his soul.  But the wraith could not hold what it touched and Gaius was able to flee back to the rest of the family.

Figuring the jig was up, the troupe launced a frontal assault.  They sailed to the front of the ship and slipped into material form on the boat's bow (with the exception of Gaius, who settled into the crow's nest).  Scores of skeletons and ghouls turned towards them... just in time to see Marius raise his holy symbol and call down Legis' wrath.  Every undead minion within sixty feet was immediately vaporized, and tiny piles of bone clattered to the decks all around them.  The more distant skeletons began firing shortbows, but most of the arrows bounced harmlessly off the party's armor.

There was no sign of Captain Wraith.  His first mate, however, was a stitched abomination:  a towering mass of body parts sewn together and filled with unholy strength.  Stitches howled with glee, like an imbecile child, and lumbered towards the paladins.  Leyna was his first target.  The abomination attempted to grab the young paladin by both arms and pull her apart.  Fortunately, it appeared that the necromancer who created Stitches forgot to add an opposable thumb to his creation.  Stitches couldn't get a grip on Leyna -- and, in fact, he never successfully grabbed anything, all night long.  <grumble, grumble, grumble>   On the other hand, there was nothing wrong with Stitches' teeth.  As they found out when he bit Leyna's shoulder hard enough to dent the plate mail.

As Leyna and Titus battled this monstrosity, most of the others held their actions, waiting for the wraith to appear.  They figured that the captain had to be the mist-summoning mage, and they wanted to interrupt whatever necromantic spell he assaulted them with.  "You watch," Marius muttered.  "That thing's going to pop up under my feet any moment now..."

Sure enough, like a prophecy coming true before their very eyes, Captain Wraith rose up out of the hold behind Marius and put his hand into the cleric's chest.  Marius felt a chill spread through his soul, and the wraith grewer slightly darker.  Oddly,  the captain did not appear to use magic, so after another round's hesitation, Gaius and the spell-casters attacked.  Titus charged the wraith too, leaving Leyna to be Stitches' teething ring.  Gaius' first three arrows -- blessed by Marius -- tore holes through the creature, and it screamed in pain.  Severus then managed to blind it, though it continued to sniff and seemed capable of guessing where people (particularly good people) were.  The twins were not as lucky as Severus and Gaius.  Corvina's shadowy chain spell was resisted.  Titus' blade passed through the incorporeal creature without harm, unfortunately, and as Marius stepped back, the wraith sank its claws deep into the paladin's flesh.  Titus paled as the thing tore out a chunk of his soul, and several of the arrow-gashes in its chest closed.  

Marius evoked the sun's rays, sending a searing beam of light through the wraith.  Once more it wailed in anguish -- and the party suspected that only the life-force it had stolen from Titus kept it in this world.  But a few more arrows from Gaius remedied that, and the dread wraith dissipated, leaving behind several strips of black cloth that fluttered to the deck.

Taking Stitches down was a long, grueling process.  Each blow knocked another chunk of meat off his frame... yet nothing seemed to slow him.  And while he couldn't grab anything to save his life, he did bite the hell out of both paladins.  Eventually, though, the party beat him till he was falling apart.  Titus gave the death blow to the creature, which was still warbling cheerfully to himself even as he died.

A few more turnings from the clerics dispatched the last of the skeletal minions.  As the band began to search the ship, Marius cast "sense undead" -- and spotted eight more monsters, hiding in a chest in the captain's quarters.  The Surrexi dragged the chest on deck, tied a rope around its lid, and opened it from a distance.  When they did, eight globs of bloody phlegm exploded out:  more blood cysts, like the one the dirge singer had carried.  Marius called upon the Gods and the cysts were seared into bloody crust.  Inside the chest were 12,000 gp:  the money that had been sent to purchase slaves.  Once this was dumped into their bag of holding, Marius went down below deck, to the unclean altar that kept the hulk afloat.  Prayers and consecrations cleansed the altar.  And as they did, the souls bound to it were released into the Afterworld.  The hulk's magical protection faded and it sank as the Surrexi resumed ephemeral shape and headed back to shore.