Characters
Aria, a paladin struggling with her true nature
Panthalassa, a necromancer with a missing arm
Daytona, a dhampir gunslinger fresh from Hell (again)
Garazi, a beautiful young witch with a bird familiar
Willard Corn and King Beebo, a farmer and his monkey (?)
Events
Daytona arrived back in Hemlock Hollow after his harrowing adventure in Hell. As he walked through the night market, he was hailed by the snow elf Eshrevaal, who was talking to a Graymalk witch he did not recognize. The witch was introduced as Ivara Graymalk, one of the daughters who was present for the rest of the party's dinner with her mother Helena. When Daytona asked where he could find his friends, Ivara offered to take him through the Forest of Loss to where they were. Daytona agreed, and they set off, with Ivara plucking a Halloween mask from a passerby and handing it to Daytona. The townsman balked at the theft at first, but when he realized who he was dealing with he apologized and scurried away.
The pair were quickly enveloped in thick gray mist within the Forest of Loss, but as they emerged from it they found that there were before a farmhouse from which Daytona's friends were now emerging--expect Heck was no longer with them. When Heck's absence was discovered, they ventured back inside the farmhouse and discovered that Kestra had snatched him from the cellar and was keeping him as "collateral" until they got her her womb back.
And so the group returned to the House of the Maiden to attempt to get Sadira to give up the womb. Sadira was not pleased that they had returned empty-handed without her teeth, which Kestra still had in her possession, so attempts to intimidate and persuade her into an exchange fell on deaf ears. Eventually, Sadira became enraged and her monstrous nature became apparent: massive spider legs burst from her sides and an arachnid head emerged from the other side of her head. She attacked the group by enwrapping Garazi in threads of sticky spidersilk. Daytona cut Garazi free, but it was King Beebo who settled the matter decidedly: he fired both of his pistols into Sadira, putting her down like a mad dog before the other prostitutes in the brothel could even think about joining the fray.
The patrons of the House of the Maiden fled and the women of the brothel made themselves scarce, giving the group time to ransack the building in search of Kestra's womb. Daytona found a safe hidden in the wall behind a painting, and Panthalassa was able to crack it. There were gold bars and bags of coins inside the safe, as well as a large stained leather sack. Dumping the sack onto the floor revealed its contents to be an extremely large--and terrifyingly fresh--womb. Pondering its size, Ivara was able to determine that Kestra had been warped by anger and grief into a "gargantuan"--a monstrous, physical ghost of prodigious size. This probably explained why Kestra never left the dark of the cellar; she was too big and too solid to exit the lower floor.
With the womb stuffed back into the sack by the bravest of the adventurers, they returned to the farmhouse to give it back to Kestra. Aria really wanted to force Kestra into trading the womb for the teeth--on the presumption that Sadira would "come back"--but the rest of the party just wanted to be done with the vile task and get their reward. Garazi and Aria got into an argument about it--and Kestra didn't help matters by rattling the tin can she kept Sadira's teeth in to taunt her. Ultimately, Aria said something unkind about witches in Ivara's presence. Ivara used her diabolic magic to force Aria to her knees and whispered in her ear that she didn't want to hear that kind of talk.
The rest of the group decided to venture down the cellar steps and give Kestra the sack. Horrifyingly, they could hear her inserting the organs back into her body. She did, however, keep her end of the bargain--she sent a very dazed and bewildered Heck out of the darkness, a fistful of tickets to ride the last "iron beast of the Vlaak" clutched in his hand.
She also made good on providing "one secret known only to the dead." The group asked her if there was a way to restore a revenant to life--and told them that that occult secret resided in a Grail Tomb within the corrupted bayou known as the Stain.
As Ivara led the group back through the mists to the Forest of Loss, things came to head within the party and Aria stalked off on her own after arguing again with Garazi and threatening to kill to Ivara. The party is now hunkering down to figure out their next move, but a plan is in the works to lure their foe Patchwork Jack into an ambush to deal with him once and for all. But...there's a wrinkle or two there they don't anticipate so we'll see what happens when the campaign resumes.
