The curtain rises on a dark but hopeful scene: Thwak and Kenisha are still trapped in the tower, but Gilad is flesh again, and so far we are safe. Suddenly, a in a flash of pink and swirling magical energy, it was not Gilad but Thwak standing there, and Donk, too was gone.

And there we were, at the base of a Horror's tower, just me, a wizard, and a Trollish archer and a Trollish weaponsmith, with nothing between us but a keg of gunpowder, Tristain's deep pockets, and a handful of dutch-apple mana. Tristain and Steven made the gunpowder into little bombs, and I summoned a camoflaged olliphant to go up into the tower. It, being a sensible creature, refused. I tried to talk it into saving Kenisha, but it was having none of it, so I let it go and summoned another. It went up and grabbed Kenisha as we threw the bombs for a distraction and ran. The near wall of the tower exploded, opening it up like a floor-to-ceiling window, and something landed with a "thump" on the ground. Footsteps. Closer. And Closer... I shut my eyes, hoping it would not see me, as darkness washed over me... Eight hours later, the darkness faded and I was left with a raging headache and a matrix skewed all to hell. I dismissed the olliphant, now a tenticled and terrifying apparition, and Steven had released Kenisha. Apparently, the others carried me outside after they recovered from the Horror's effect. After a nap to rest and recuperate, we went back to investigate the tower. The horror appears to be gone now, but its throne and stuff remained, as if we'd scared it off or annoyed it enough to leave, or something. Perhaps it just went after it's dragon egg... The throne appears to be made of (human?) blood and sandcrawler guts, with soul-jar gems. Thwak burnt off his boot discovering that it was jelled and acidic, and then threw the gilded birdcage out the window. An invisible thing that sounded like a full flock of birds taking off escaped. As we were looking around the room, I noticed a slate of notes in some language I didn't know. Unfortunately, they noticed me too. The runes burrowed into my mind, crawling under some childhood memories and pulling the covers over their heads, and then informed me that my next meditation needs to be on Read/Write language. Uh oh. Once we'd explored/looted the room, Steven and Tristain spread gunpowder across the room, collected the gems, and blew up the tower. We put the remaining gems into a bag to take back to Newtowne (Steven says they are screaming for release.) and left a sign in as many languages as we could think of saying "Go Away. Horror Here" As we passed, Thwak took a couple quick shots at the cultist village--the altar apparently noticed him and scared him away. (We will have to come back to deal with that later). As we were walking towards NewTown, some Orks on horseback stopped us. They called us trespassers, and were going to take us into the city to prosecute until Thwak told them his name. They seemed to remember him, and insisted that we come talk to "The Boss". This didn't sound like fun, so I knocked them out with KO Ephemeral Bolts. In a first for us, it was an entirely nonlethal conflict, except for a horse that T'karish lamed, which had to be put down. We left the guards with a message to take to Mank, and set off towards New Town.