To the left, to the left....

With darkness impending and the child, whose name still escapes me, soon to fall prey to the evil infesting town, the heroes inexplicably split up.  Alic, Alfed and Bertold, unwilling to spend another night in the wretched town of Treva, decided to head west and establish a toll at the river crossing.  Alfred's cookies proved especially popular even if Bertold and Alice's menacing wasn't and the trio earned a decent living at the task. 

All of this, naturally, occured after Alice's discovery of a hair cutting bowl in the village.  Knowing that the dwarf Anika was training to be a barber-surgeon, she offered her the bowl and the use of Bertold's head to experiment with.  Bertold had taken a little too much of the sour drink passing itself as mead in the town inn.  Unconscious and looking somewhat shaggy, he seemed the perfect subject for the experiment.  besides which, the hair cutting bowl was sized to human heads.  After giving Bertold his new haircut Anika came to the conclusion that the path of the barber-surgeon was not one to which she showed any aptitude.  the path of the interrogator and torturer however....

Meanwhile, the remaining halfling, dwarves and elf decided to take the demon by the horns.  Grim refused to surrender the child to whatever dark forces possessed the town and tasked Anika with securing the child.  Apparently the party briefly forgot who the heroes were as the child was trussed up and gagged even as the count's sinister carriage came don the hill to collect his child bride.  The idea was to protect the child despite appearances to the contrary.

Knowing that no god could possibly come of this union, Lorenot the elf, learning a lesson from last time, opted to use his bow on the count's men.  Oh, if only they had been men.  The arrows slashed through armor and withered flesh only to reveal the horror of the truth behind these grim guardsmen.  The knowledge briefly incapacitated Axel even as Anika and grim prepared to defend the upper floor of the smithy.  Fortunately the guards were slow footed and Lorenot was able to down several of the creatures before they gained access to the smithy.

Even as Axel regained his wits and he and the elf continued to pelt the advancing guards, Grim and Anika became aware of a sinister undead captain forming in the room from foul mists.  Anika gamely charged the creature only to smack into the wall.  The mighty warrior raised his sword to smite the impertinent Grim but, through a combination of skill and good fortune, the dwarven rune bearer managed to escape certain death even as he smote the creature.

Meanwhile, the elf and hagfling toppled an armoire down the stairs, smashing one of the guards and badly damaging another leaving only a few of the things left standing.  The battle to dispatch the creatures was swift and bloody with Axel sustaining a near fatal wound in defense of the house.  An odd aspect of the battle, and of those that followed, was an almost supernatural tendency to hit enemies in the left arm.

Knowing that whatever evil magic the count controlled would only grow stronger with time Grim encouraged the others to strike at the count sooner rather than later.  Though Lorenot and Axel were still weary from battle and blood loss, they conceded the wisdom of his words.  gathering up their weapons and some hastily assembled equipment, they boldly marched on the ruins of the fortified mansion the count claimed as his own.

Through uncanny good luck and skill at arms, the band finally gained access to the inner sanctum.  In true heroic fashion, the band smashed and laid waste to everything even remotely evil looking (not to mention some perfectly innocuous and harmless trinkets and decorations).  Having bulled through a series of traps and dispatched even more undead minions, Grim at last confronted the evil necromancer Troy in his lair.  Grim managed to survive all manner of perils before finding a chance to smite the foul wizard.  Having suffered some grievous injuries en route, the others were somewhat slower in arriving.  As Anika dodged and weaved her way forward, Lorenot loosed a last arrow that severed a major artery in the wizard's causing him to fall dead at Grim's feet.

With the evil cleaned from the town, the weird, unwholesome mist that shrouded the valley dissipated as goodness was again able to infuse the region.  Over the next month the dwarves completed their restoration of the forge turning out and endless tide of crappy hammers and exceptional armor.  meanwhile Lorenot and Axel traveled to a nearby town whereupon Axel found religion and Lorenot discovered the rudiments of magic.  Armed with their new found powers, the band returned to Treva to plot their revenge against the wicked folk of Malcano and their ratmen allies.