Ninjas attack New Towne.  T'Karish and Lieke beat them up nonlethaly,
and Irresistibly Question them.  They come from a village to the south
of the Dragon's Swamp, and say they have been told to sacrifice
children to their lake dragon-god, and need children from elsewhere
since they don't want to use their own.  T & L head off to give this
dragon-god a stern talking to, taking the sheepish ninjae in tow.
Remember, ninja are more scared of you than you are of them.

On the way down to the lake, the party comes across a nymph weeping by
the side of the road.  She is Reflection of Still Pools, the ex of
Zarathor, the god of the swamp.  She somehow offended him, but can't
really figure out how or why.  The party quickly deduces that she's a
total ditz, but nice.  Offering to intercede for her with Zarathor,
they continue.

Reaching the village, the party sees some impressive cormorant
fishing, then interviews the local shaman, who tells them some history
and truthfully confirms that the lake spirit demanded the sacrifice of
twin children.  They borrow a fishing boat and head out into the
lake, meet Zarathor and his girlfriend, who's apparently made up with
him, and some of his court --- mostly a tribe of Huraka, 14 foot
grizzly bear shaped wind spirits.  They try to intervene on behalf of
the village, and drop the girlfriend issue since she's here and all
and clearly fine.

Zarathor offers to accept the party's service as an alternate
sacrifice, which the PCs refuse.  Despite his insistence that the
real problem hereabouts is humans wanting the benefits of a good
spiritual relationship without having it cost anything, they'd kind
of like him to do what they say without it costing anything.  A few
days of negotiations produce not much interesting.

Lieke gets disgusted and tells Zarathor he's leaving the island, and
good luck in finding a good solution to this while T'Karish sulks.
Zarathor says some of the Huraka are going hunting, and Lieke's
welcome to join them.  The hunt starts out with herons, but quickly
upgrades to "kill all the males of that village".  This is no good.
Lieke shouts at the huraka to stop, decks the one who disagrees, and
sends the rest back to Zarathor in shame.  They, being wind spirits,
woosh off.

Meanwhile, T'Karish has stopped sulking and wandered by the throne
room, where the Huraka are reporting that Lieke attacked them without
provocation, they were just out there to do what Zarathor sent them
to do.  Zarathor flips out, raging around the room and demonstrating
general badassitude.  Lieke shows up about now, just in time for
Zarathor to curdle his fur with a swampy methane breath weapon.

At this point, Lieke and the Dragon-God fight.  The Dragon-God is a
snake-style martial artist with Essence 6 and the obvious
counterattack combos.  He hands Lieke a -12 die penalty to all actions
and a bunch of unsoakable aggravated damage, while five Huraka beat
on him a bunch.  The Huraka aren't really doing more than ping
damage, but that still amounts to 40L per turn, after armor.

After a hard fight, T'Karish is beaten to a pump, Lieke briefly passes
out, wakes up while being carried off, and carves Zarathor up.
T'Karish is awakened and tells Lieke how to desecrate the swamp,
ensuring the permanent death of Zarathor.  Lieke goes off to
contaminate the waters.  This will ruin the villagers' fishing waters
as well, but Tough Choices Must Be Made.

They leave, set up the village shaman with an idol as a new god for
the fishermen, make him promise no worthwhile sacrifices, and head
off back for Camish.  On the way, they meet Reflection of Still
Pools, who asks if they got to see her ex, because she misses him so.

Oh shit.

If this is Reflection of Still Pools, who was that chick on the
island, who looks just like her?  To make a long story short, it was
a Deceiver, a sort of Horror-corrupted shredded wreck of a Vestrial
cultist, who could disguise herself perfectly as long as the person
she's cloning isn't physically present as a comparison, and had some
other minor illusion and beguilement powers.

"Undetectable Lie" is an awfully neat toy.  "It's your Daiklave!
That's the bad guy, shapeshifted!"  (T'karish tosses the daiklave on
the ground.)

The party does figure out what's going on, with a bit of help from a
Deceiver who's not actually as clever as she thinks she is.  She gets
killed, and the swamp is un-desecrated, so Zarathor will eventually
reform.

Now there is much time for healing, since they're both nearly dead.
Also, Snake Style martial arts are pumped, especially if the GM
accidentally lets reflexive counterattacks trigger simples within the
same combo.  This character could have done that another way, but it's
something I should remember for the future.  The Players' Guide combat
revisions continue to impress me.  Piercing clinches are neat.

Flame wars among the PCs about what Heroism really means and
what it means to be a good guy, and what risks are necessary to be a
hero whoo my hoo.  Verrrry nice.

Have 14 XP for a story line started and finished.