Warning: This post contains spoilers from the adventure! As we were playing in the middle of the week and were able to start closer to 9pm, we weren't able to get very far this time; This was the first session with no combats, we started right after a combat against captain Nekerios and finished when a group of crystal spirits pulled themselves out of spears they were impaled to and rushed towards Tereis and Doris. I'll post the next session in this post too as I run it before being able to post this... But let's start from the beginning.
The heroes were riding to the northeast, planning to stop at Katu's place on an oasis in the middle of the desert. They saw no signs of pursuit and were able to get to the oasis safely. While the place wasn't serving anything very tasty, it provided shade, beer and mouton that felt like forechamber of heaven at the moment. The group got in the shackle, changed a few words with Katu and then watched towards the door as a large group of horses rode to the oasis. Katu told that it's Tul, the sun prophet and his men, a bit mad but peaceful. But they weren't that peaceful, and soon the group was pointed at by the sunburnt young prophet babbling about visions and surrounded by his fanatic followers. Everyone here seemed to know that killing the Tyrant would trigger a powerful curse, and while the fanatics felt furious towards the group, everyone else present were cowering in fear.
But the group, Tereis shining most brightly despite the lack of very social nature, was able to persuade Tul the sun prohphet that they just wanted to rid the world of the evil of the tyrant. He had a lunch with the heroes, gave them his blessing and told them to remember true name of the sun god, Golar Ammon; it is a name Ulasha fears. Katu didn't want to host the group anymore and sent them away, although with a bit of extra rations. But after a few days of riding, the group was lost - they just fell into some kind of slumber, suddenly realizing the sun is in completely wrong direction. They were hit by a sandstorm (but saved by 'Out of frying pan' -adventure card that I had told is lost if used trying to get out of the desert), Tereis was struck by another curse for meddling with a virgin saving herself for her god and lost her water and food, they found water from some moldy cacti which gave Doris pain-removing numbness and caused Godzul to fall asleep. Then the heroes scouted strange light behind a nearby dune, saw red crystals shining in moonlight and impaled men next to them - after which the men pulled themselves out of the spears, become disformed and ghostly and attacked scouting Tereis and Doris. And this ended the first session.
Second session
Würful woke up, hearing screams from somewhere near. He saw that Kylis was starting to move towards the apparent source of the voices, red shine behind a nearby dune, and joined him. They soon saw Doris running towards them and Tereis being overrun by spectres. The heroes engaged, but realized they couldn't harm the creatures. They tried to break some crystals and realized it dissolved some of the spectres, so the heroes started to bash the crystals instead of spectres - including the raging barbarian, but only after making it sure that his maul really doesn't harm the shining creatures. The heroes got a few bad hits but were able to eliminate all the opponents. After the fight, they realized that their wounds weren't real, they found some more desert tears (gems) and Doris found a dagger-shaped shard that made her skin go on goose bumps.
The group continued at the morning, Doris realizing that they are now bing pushed by a stronger force, which they can't fight at the moment. Because of shortage of water, Godzul ate some cactus they had collected and started to choke; The others tried to help him and did surprisingly well considering Godzul was the group's leader; The last checks of the dramatic task was a fumble; I allow rerolls on fumbles but that just turns the fumble from the task-related one to something else, causing Würful to to suck a piece of cactus to his throat while giving mouth-to-mouth. Another roll indicated that it's Würful's time to start choking, but the mighty barbarian shook off the effect with his impressive barbarian's stamina.
The journey continued, and horses started to drop one by one, and Godzul decided to drain the horses from their blood when ending their misery. This helped the group to continue until they saw a figure on another dune; The figure collapsed and was revealed to be the same man that got the heroes involved in the first place. He had received a fatal poisonous bite, but died only after fevered words about winning the fight but then something happening, and needing to save the queen... And the heroes saw Quollaba in front of them.
Back to a very different city
Silence. Damaged buildings. An inspection of a nearby empty house revealed spots of dried blood and signs of dragging. The group carefully moved towards the Snake Inn, where they knew to find a fountain of water. But when they started to rush toward the fountain in front of them, they saw a corpse in the water. Doris went to inspect the body while the others rushed towards streams of water, but suddenly the corpse rose up and was revealed to be a monstrous hybrid between a man and a snake! Doris screamed as she realized this is a monster from her dreams, and Kylis was quite shocked too, and developed some kind of fobia (to be determined later). But the creature was quickly slain and everyone just wanted to drink, and were all soaking wet after showering in the streams of the fountain when a large group of snake men rushed from the inn. This combat was over fast, mainly because of Würful's heavy mace downing two creatures each turn, but he also managed to smash fragil Tereis badly - it's not always good to be next to a berserker, as his friends have realized.
But before the last lizards went down, the lizards were starting to get hits from arrows. A bare-chested bald man was standing on a roof, using a heavy bow confidently. After the creatures were slain, the man jumped down and speaked, his voice revealing him as an eunuch; and seeing him closer also revealed him to be a man that carried the Tyrant's concubine's chair more than a week ago. He told the heroes to follow, as an even larger amount of creatures is approaching... Würful made a few more strikes at a body at his feet, relized that the others are already running, saw a number of monsters lead by a very large snake creature, and decided that this time it might be better to run.
Here ends the session, and the story continues as the heroes are lead by (apparently) queen's servant through the city.