Game time, fairly short session. It got delayed by Mary oversleeping, but there was sufficient activity that everyone leveled. Adam, as usual, slaughtered like no other. Pat showed off the unholy terror he is capable of unleashing when in melee. Mary showed off her usual heavy amounts of psychotically violent tendencies with overt greed. Jon, not sure what to do with him. His rolling is amazing, on a level more severe than Adam's in the opposite direction. On top of the fact he chose a specific build (Illusion-based arcanist) with exceedingly low combat quality unless you have solid tactics, which he doesn't have and barely acknowledges his non-combat strengths.
Either way, on with the summary!
Nightfall was on the horizon, and the party climbed down to begin reconnaisance of the logging camp. Analee and the innocence demon disappeared, and the refugees were given some food and told which way to go. Once they reached the camp, they split up and stayed at the fringes until nightfall so they could get a good estimate of the numbers they were facing. Jon almost got spotted by one of archers, but Adam gave him the suggestion of creating the illusion of a deer to convince them it was a harmless sound. As it turned out, there were roughly fifty guards and well over 200 refugees enslaved.
There was a 30' wide pit circled by a 50' sequioa tower, a private log cabin, four barracks, and a storage building. There were constantly three archer guards on the door to the tower at all times, and at least one patrol of five guards even during the evening. Analee, wearing her innocent dress, and the innocence demon came up to the camp openly and were admitted into the captain's private cabin.
With Adam's direction, they snuck in under the cover of illusion as simple guards, hammered pitons into the doors of the barracks, and threw makeshift molotovs (lamp oil, roughly as alchemist's fire). The archers were more or less taken care of, while the party high-tailed it to where alot of the large stumps were for cover. A patrol headed for them, did some damage, but got killed somewhat quickly. Enough chaos was caused so that the party was uninterrupted doing this, and then Adam followed suit with stunts and the like to shoot some of the burning guards back into other guards, actually getting them set on fire.
After a few rounds of shooting fish in a burning barrel, the captain of the gaurd appeared and commanded the land sharks to attack the party. He was wearing the cape that signified him as a guard for the Black Lotus Eaters, which verified the information from the refugees.
After a bit of arguing, I let the sharks stay above ground when they did their jumps to try and bite them. Pat was taken under right off the bat, and the other two kept missing sufficiently and failing to maintain their hold on Adam when they bit him (really damn high Escape Artist rolls). They unleashed a terribly high amount of damage, enough to actually kill the remaining two within three rounds.
The captain of the guard showed himself, holding a waraxe over a barely conscious party member still being held in the mouth of a shark, threatening to end him there if the party didn't show themselves within two minutes. Meanwhile, the innocence demon was on the roof of the private cabin preparing the materials for smores (setting's equivalent).
The party snuck from the back to try and get into the private cabin through a window, only to be stopped by a nervous Analee, who revealed that the man was like an ox after all the poison he took and he was very nervous about the demon. Mary tried to convince her to let them in so they could just stab in surprise, but Analee said that he was the only thing keeping the shark from going into a blood frenzy and eating their friend right then and there. Thinking quickly, Adam gave her a black lotus blossum and gave her a message to relay to meet them in 10 minutes personally.
He met them, threatened to kill him anyway, and the guards were sufficient to take them out if he alerted them. The captain seemed unfazed at the threats that the party was good enough to kill him before the guards could react fast enough, and offered them a chance to go away scott free if one of them agrees to a one-on-one duel with him in an hour. Reluctantly, the pary agreed, with the very heavy plan that Mary would duel and Adam would suddenly unleash a flurry of arrows into the captain so that he will die.
Before they began this plan, the demon appeared again in full-grown woman form, begging and pleading with the party to stop the killing and violence. She had a streak of gray hair that wasn't there before, and showed a massive bite mark on her torso that was still bleeding. As the party wasn't swayed by this (trying to argue on the state of slavery), she reluctantly offered to end the situation if they agreed to stop killing.
With a flurry, she became a large hag-like nightmare whose touch disintegrated the ground like eggshells and flew through the ground. Holding the shark like a rag doll, she forcefully pulls Pat's character out of its jaws and throws him to the ground (hurt, but still alive). She begins to slowly grab random guards and rend them limb-from-limb, causing even more havoc.
Suddenly, the door to the tower flies open and a true Melnibonean arcanist steps out and imprisons the demon in a wall even it cannot readily burn through. The party gets into a defensive stance, only to discover that the arcanist to be understanding and cordial. He tames the demon into the form of a little girl with treats and new clothes, treating her as a loving father, commenting that she was under the effects of scapegoat magicks (tied to something and taking all pain/suffering in its stead).
Initially, he applauded the binding talent on Jon's part, who soon revealed that he barely knew anything of the demon or even why she was bound to them. Regardless, he encouraged them to care for her and to contact him if they found any further information that could lead to breaking the scapegoat spell on her. He seemed genuinely concerned about the suffering she was going through because of the spell, which had given SO much pain that even an innocence demon couldn't shrug it off and was storing it as a defense mechanism. Handing them a feather that can somehow relay a message to him, he then agrees to release the refugees, claiming that he got enough wood for his needs.
The party then leaves quickly, grabbing a few of the sequoia-wood bows and mauls wielded by the fallen (quite a penny on the open market, for the wood alone). The captain of the guard is obviously disgruntled, and vows to hunt them down as soon as the demon isn't around to protect them.
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