Roll call:

Trevor – Memnoch the Shibboleth (featuring Brunhilde the Shield Maiden)
Jon – Knut the Warrior + Lenora the Cleric
Clint – Zobol the Halfling + Bizo the Yeti + Jordek the Thief
Matt F – Thyll the Dwarf + Hekador the Wizard

Following the events of “Holiday in the Slaughterlands”, the party has arrived in Spear City and is reunited with Zobol, Bizo and Jordek, fresh from their assitance to the Yeti God on very msyterious matters.

The party charms the owners of the Tiki bar in order to get the lay of the land and is ably assisted by Tim the redcap Gnome. Journeying to the Temple of Song, they hesitate to interrupt the hundred-plus performance underway and instead go to the palace of Fractious Kumber, lord of Spear City and to the Temple of Sleep to crash. Memnoch attempts to sell his dreams, but learns that the people who control the market are the ones who can actually transfer said dreams…

Finally finding the Meister Singer Glimrung, an ancient elf with seven mouths all over his body, he agrees to sing the Seven Songs if they party will aid him in acquiring the three things he needs: 1) the singer Andrys, currently flirting with service at the Temple of Jest— to be his successor. 2) the narcotic Esk, a perfect stimulant which controls all pain and physical discomfort but keeps the user perfectly aware and clear-thinking. 3) a treatise on the shaping of realities which is a subscript hidden in a book called “the Planting of Hrykanian Elderberry Orchards”, which the Singer believes to be available in the Treasury of the Vermis Libris, a repository of ancient and priceless texts.

The party secures Andrys and the Esk with little trouble and Glimrung is happy to give the party some old song-texts to gain them entrance to the Treasury. Rather than try to steal the books, the party decides to take Glimrung into the treasury, trading the books for the privilege.

This scheme works and the party gains access to the inner vault of the Treasury, triggering a gas trap and “metallic microbe” trap and also the attack of the Vermis Libris. A short pitched battle later, the party has destroyed the Worm with some lucky criticals and blocked the door by means of a Runic inscription. They find the hidden texts (the lost Homeric poem “Helenika”, the “Planting” and “the Atlas of the Hells”. They steal various books and exit without incident since the Worm’s henchmen seem to have no interest in a tussle once the Worm itself is dead.

(While investigating the room at the end, Memnoch picked up bristly hairs all over his skin as a result of a Spider-Climb corruption check.)

In relative security, Glimrung is now able to perform his songs— and he reshapes reality, taking Memnoch’s direction to install Sezrekan (his patron) over Armand Pitzkin as a Master of Reality in the Right Hand World. Nothing seems to have immediately changed in Spear City; the party has a few things to do in the city before they leave (set up a revenue stream within the Tiki bar?) but is relatively set to return to Loch Nwar and enjoy the fruits of their labor…