- The three enjoyed something of a reunion at a casual card game with Miss Lily Mason and a couple of other saloon patrons until the others had left - at which point, father Delworth produced the flyer he'd found about a "revival" in Flagstaff - a revival that claimed Father Mandrake (whom he believed dead) and the ominous words "LEST YE BURN" at the bottom.  He'd been in conversation with a local stage operator by the name of Jesse Carlson who was making preparations to head north in a few days.  Believing Lily Mason was somehow also connected with these events - after all, she had been in Grayfalls three years earlier - Father Delworth attempted to pressure her into joining them.

- In the midst of their conversation, escalating tensions between a couple groups of miners present errupted into a brawl.  Some punches were thrown and some attempted to talk the belligerents down - ultimately succeeding.

- The following day, Montana made his way to the address he was paid to deliver the envelope to.  The man at the address, a Li Jun Zhoa, did not seem at all happy to see him.  He gave Montana the promised payment, and requested that he wait until evening for further conversation.  When Montana indicated he was just paid to deliver the message and didn't know anything else, Zhao's mood seemed to improve - he told Montana not to worry about returning, and bid him good day.

- The two engaged the Harpies with spells and clubs, killing one just before their pet ankheg arrived.  They immediately focused on the large monster and managed to take it out in only a couple of rounds.  The last harpy was beat down considerably and decided to flee. 

- Ithaca had realized that they had no real way of knowing how many harpies might remain to come after Mulner's cattle, and they needed to track them down to where they came from.  She hit the fleeing harpy with a Faerie Fire spell and the two tracked it through the night...

- The two pursued the harpy through the night, into the southeastern badlands area.  They could still hear the creature screeching in teh canyons when the made camp in a shallow cave for the night.

- The following morning, they unexpectedly encountered a pair of armed skeletons patrolling the canyons, and managed to destroy the undead without too much diffiuculty.  From there, they moved further into the canyons until they came to a large, pillar-like structure with holes throughout near where they thought the harpy had gone.  The lowest holes were about 20 feet up, and the two climbed up the rock and into them.  The small cavern they found themselves in had a number of tunnels, all of them with varying amounts of webbing inside.

- The two crawled into one of the lower tunnels and eventually fell into a larger cavern, which was home to a monstrous spider and numerous smaller ones.  After killing the biggest spider and a few of the smaller ones, the others retreated and the two found some discarded treasures among the bones in the webs below.

- The group spent the rest of the afternoon around town until the log-roll contest that evening, when they headed to the docks along with most of the rest of the town.  Carmela joined a local fisherwoman called Satwi in challenging captain Walthon for possession of the coveted river ship.  Dockmaster Holluk explained the rules: there was a very large, round log suspended and floating between two of the docks.  All three contestants would step onto it, and the last one to fall would be declared winner.

- The contest began.  While captain Walthon was doing quite well at the start and Satwi almost immediately faltered, the tables soon turned as the challenger recovered.  The crowd gathered around the docks cheered and called throughout the competition.  All three did very well overall, and captain Walthon was the first to fall, followed almost immediately by Carmela, leaving Satwi the victor.  The crowd cheered and then headed to Gallen's pub for their "reward" - drinks bought by the losers.

- While the PC's representative wasn't able to win the contest, they hadn't given up on using the river ship to sail north to Erelan rather than walking through the potentially-dangerous Nembrill Wood.  Mido and Jaydah both spoke with Satwi about making the trip and letting them buy their way along, and she eventually decided it was a reasonable idea.

- The group set sail a couple days later up-river.  They hadn't made it an hour north of Onara when they began seeing disturbances along the far shore, eventually catching sight of a kobold astride a worg.  Shortly after the river entered the forest, it began to narrow and ahead they could see a large rock protruding from the center of the channel, and rough water on either side - indicating shallows.  It was at this point that arrows began flying at them from the kobolds along the shore...

GM's note: The 'log roll' and possession of the ship was meant to be an interesting bit of setting detail for the tiny Onara riverside village - an event that they could maybe watch and talk to the locals about and would give some life and color to the place.  I had in no way intended or expected them to try to join the contest.  Because of this, I was just going to narrate the outcome with whatever seemed most interesting at the time.  Once they said they wanted to be part of it however, I knew I'd have to make up some rules mechanics to make it fair - and I wanted it to be more than just a single roll-off, because they all seemed excited about this.  I came up with a set of rules that broke the contest into combat-like rounds where the primary actions related to maintaining their own stability or trying to weaken others'.  I think it worked well, and it was quite the nail-biting competition.  They came close but didn't end up winning - though through some other rp and actions, still managed to get themselves on the ship sailing north.

- While Kevin and Montana struggled to assist the town with the growing inferno, Percy found himself among the hail of now bullets frozen in time and making a deal with a man he suspected of being "the devil".  Luck was seemingly on his side, and his two-pair beat his opponent's pair of 7s.  The man made good on his promise to get Percy "out of this little scrap", and he found the bullets that had been streaking toward him deflecting with bright flashes of light - much to the horror of his assailants, who soon fled.

- Montana saw a final figure walk out of the smoke of the saloon.  The man's clothing and even some of his skin was clearly burning, but he didn't seem bothered by it. "Oh, children." Montana heard him say "the time has come at last..."  Mandrake's bellowing voice could now be heard above the howling wind as well, pronouncing condemnation on the doomed town.  More buildings caught fire, and those that had been burning began to collapsed.  Humanoid figures, covered in flames and with gaping mouths, began slowly walking out of the blazing structures - extending burning arms toward any who wandered too close.

- By this time, the streets were crowded with people fleeing the burning town.  The three did their best to help townsfolk escape to a nearby hillside where survivors were gathering.  They all knew it was too late for Grayfalls, however - fear was saturating the landscape and the town would never recover.

- Three years later, these three would happen to meet each other again in a saloon in Phoenix - along with a Miss Lily Mason, an acquaintance of Percy's from Grayfalls and whom he thought he'd seen fleeing the town the night of the fire...

- The twins continued their fight against the giant constrictor snake and trying to keep Bellin out of harms way.  Just as they killed the monstrocity, the goblins that had given chase arrived and began their attack.

- As they fought off the goblins, they heard Averen - Bellin's brother - call out from somewhere above "Bellin! Grab the rope!".

- Once the goblin threat had been addressed, the group exited the cave and returned to the farm.  Rik Mulner was glad his boy was ok and offered the two the 50gp promised for solving the harpy problem as thanks for rescuing Bellin.  He told them that he'd still pay out another 50gp if they could eliminate the harpies as well.

- The two spent another couple of nights in the rancher's fields, patrolling for signs of the harpies.  On the third night, they heard the haunting singing again and found the flying devils had returned...

- The group headed toward the river village of Onara along the road now muddy with water from melted snow.  As they made their way into a flooded lowland marsh, they could hear some commotion some distance ahead.  As they approached, they found themselves attacked by a swarm of stirges.

- The group fought off the flying pests as best they could, becoming aware of a small group of kenku fighting them as well.  When the last of the stirges were killed, they spoke with the kenku, who invited them back to their camp.

- The group spent the rest of the evening with at the camp, talking to some of the kenku about their nomadic tribe and the party's plans to go to Onara and then north to Erelan.  The kenku cautioned them on some dangers of travelling through the Nembrill wood.

- The next day, the group finished their journey into Onara.  The small village sat on the edge of a bay-like protrusion of the Dobec river along a slow-moving section.  They made arrangements for accomodation at the simply-named Riverrest Inn, and proceeded to the one tavern in the tiny village for an afternoon meal - which they found to be so crowded as to be overflowing with locals.

- The group caught word of a "log roll" contest of sorts to be held that night at the docks and went to inquire further.  Speaking to the dockmaster, they learned that this was a something of a local ritual that would determine the captain of "The Jovossa" - a large fishing boat owned by the town and that most regarded as something special.  Noting the comment that it was the only vessel in town capable of making reasonable headway up-river to Erelan, the group asked if they might participate in the contest - and if they won, could they use it for a trip up-river.  The dockmaster, who seemed to regard the whole thing as tiresome, was amused by this plan and told them that that seemed reasonable - but cautioned them that a losing challenger had to buy a round at the pub for every fisherman in town...

- The two tell the goblin chief they came for the boy - threatening to continue fighting the goblins if they didn't release him.  They managed to intimidate the chief who gave the order to release the boy.

- One of the chief's guards, however, apparently didn't approve of the decision, and challenged her authority.  This resulted in a fight between the two, during which time Ithica and Varant managed to sneak over and release Bellin.

- The duel between the goblin leaders was still going on as they made their way out of the cavern, but they were spotted by some of the spectators and pursued. 

- Running back up the tunnels into the cavern, they were confronted by the giant snake whose skin they'd seen eariler.  They began battle with the snake while they could still hear the goblins approaching from behind - and the snake wrapped itself around Varant...

- The group met up at the Cup & Hearth in the village of Bhurk and enjoyed a bit of a reunion over a meal.  As they discussed their common purpose, Mido informed his friends that there was an issue with the way north toward their destination of Erelan: namely, that the gnoll tribes had become particularly aggressive and were explicitly watching the roadways for targets to waylay.

- Due to the situation, no other traffic was heading north, and while the local Borderguard had sent word for support to address the situation, it was likely a couple of weeks from resolution.  As they wished to reach their destination as soon as possible, they decided to take another's advice to head west to the river village of Onara, and then follow the river north through the Nembrill Wood toward the regional capital of Erelan.

I've been wanting to run Deadlands for a long time, so when Tim made an offhand comment about wanting play, we decided to put a game together.

Characters:

- Percy Walker [Tim] :: huckster

- Kevin Delworth [Patrick] :: priest

- Montana Grim [Stephen] :: gunslinger

Highlights:

- We started the campaign with a flashback to the events of 3 years ago - before Percy made his "deal" and Kevin's "conversion".  It was one particular night in the tiny town of Grayfalls in Arizona Territory they were awakened in the night by the town burning down.

- Each of them attempted to help however they could.  Stephen ran into a burning building to rescue a distraught woman's husband, Patrick ran to the small catholic church to rescue Sister Blowers (the nun who'd recently saved his life), and Percy escaped his burning hotel room, stopped a fight between folks arguing over which building the water pump should be used on and pulled a clerk away from some outlaws taking the opporunity to rob the assay office.

- As events unfolded, a number of the townsfolk began displaying signs of insanity and/or fanaticism - they began interfering with efforts to fight or contain the fires, shouting proclamations of divine fury being levied against the town - and that to prevent the burning would be going against "the almighty".  Back at the church, Kevin could hear the bellowing voice of Father Mandrake above the howling wind and roaring fire - claiming gods judgement had justly come upon the town.

- Percy was making his way back up the street when he was suddenly ambushed by a group of men.  As they all fired their guns at him. time seemed to slow to a stop and he was confronted by a dark man in a suit, standing next to a card table and offering a "deal"...