Ashen Cabaret settles down for a good night’s rest inside their house as the fog from the border ethereal rolls in. They wake to an intimidating shadowy presence that is able to put most of the gang to sleep with a single spell. Juno and Henry stay awake, struggling to fend off the creature alone, but managing to prevent it from stealing their artifacts for Argos. It finally disappears back into the fog as more begin to wake, but they continue towards Argosia knowing that the monster is still out there.
They reach Olemnar but find that the town is entirely asleep and suffering terrible nightmares. It still seems as though the bodies are preserved, but the constant screams serve as a grim reminder for what they’re fighting against. Juno and Slender work together to open the mayor’s vault, finding riches beyond most of the group’s wildest dreams. They also find some unfinished amulets that may have been made to ward off the nightmares.
After a few in the group line their pockets with stolen gold, they depart the city and find Mayor Mike Hunt in the border ethereal. They are unable to stop him (because they didnt try) before he sniffs a strange yellow flower and is turned into a spore infested zombie. Shade hears the voice of his grandma and bolts into the mist, Jadeth warns everyone to stick together and tries to reach him. Unfortunately it’s not in time.
Shade gets possessed by a ghost impersonating his grandmother and the party is forced to fight him after he critically attacks Juno. Jadeth chases him deeper into the fog as more spore zombies begin to file out of the mist, but her attacks don’t seem to harm the ghost at all. Olaf is able to smack the ghost out of Shade, and it quickly jumps inside of Henry instead.
While the others fend off Henry, Jadeth polymorphs into a trex and tries to scare off any other monsters from closing in on her injured friends. She spots the ghost of her wife that tried to trick her last time they were in the mist and huffs indignantly as she ignores it to pursue her massive zombie prey. The group travels carefully alongside her towards their destination after slaying the remaining ghosts.
In the next region, they dodge another spell circle (stupid of us) and look for a safe place to put the house door and get some rest. They are chased by a bat that Henry gets a bad feeling about, and Talon identifies it as a deceased child– implying it’s draconic. Juno reads its thoughts to find that it’s hungry, so they try to find a location hidden from its view to set the house up.
When Jadeth goes out into the mist with her devil sight as they wake up, she spots the ghostly bat chowing down on a giant zombie corpse. She distracts it from her friends leaving the area by offering it her own flesh, but they are interrupted by a banshee. They kill the banshee, and the ghost bat seems to ignore them after Jadeth gives it a satisfying 60 hit points of meal.
After another uneventful few days of journey through the mist, they finally arrive in Argosia. Slender tries to get another house issued to him immediately, but the young Argos clone states that it’s not possible since Slender was already issued a house. Juno asks Jadeth if they can continue staying together, and Shade also acknowledges that he also likes the frat house sleeping arrangement.
They head up into the tower to deliver the “save the world cake” ingredients to Argos, who seems to be in a much better mood than last time they saw him. The OG trio of Slender, Jadeth, and Juno adjust their wishes, and Shade gets offered his own deal. As they discuss their adventures, both Shade and Slender manage to piss off Argos, and Jadeth gets threatened ™. After leaving the tower, Jadeth borrows Juno’s cap of water breathing and dives down into the lake that they were told so many times not to go in. When she reaches the depths, she sees a huge crystal powersource that Henry and Juno are able to identify as a mythal – something used in very high level spells.