Well the best answer are always the simplest ones:

1. Revenge: Somebody dissed my bitch, and now it's pay back time!
2. Money: You took my money, you owe me money. I want your money.
3. Jealousy: Your dick is how big? Oh niggah you must pay!
4. Hatred: I hate goblins, and anyone who fucks with them. What? Your third cousin is a goblin? Mormon?
5. Love: Yeah I imagined our whole relationship, but now that you've shot me down if I can't have no one will. (Power Reassurance Rapists fit this mold.)

Those are just the simplest emotions. Complicating them is pretty easy. Just mix and match.

Andrew and Steven showed. We tried to get some more guys for a while... I think everybody in town knows about our game now.

After that, I rant the party through a quick mystery-type game.

Marianne Fairweather sent the players to steal some book a rival merchant, Elden Milwitch, had recently obtained. Players went to steal the book, couldn't find it, Andrew got caught in the library (Andrew: I tell him I'm taking donations for the church. :rolleyes: "Donations." Right.) Etc. They find out the book has already been stolen, more or less, and Elden seems pretty upset about it.

After that, the players go to meet with Marianne Fairweather. They find out from the local sheriff/constable/whatever, Alan Hawkeye Smith, that she's been killed. At first he questions them, but he figures they aren't the guys that did it. He drops them a few hints and tells them to be on the lookout. One of the hints is that the murderer leaves bruises and copper wire.

Suspects interviewed include Elden Milwitch (the guy they tried to steal the book from), Hank Farmer (from the Farmer family, not farming anymore, and deep in debt to Fairweather), and Merton Blaggart (aristocrat fallen on hard times, proposed numerous times to Fairweather). In any case, they are eventually lead to believe that Hank Farmer was the murderer, but he turns up dead himself before they can get to him. Yep. More copper wire. They instead investigate the Barber Isenbecker, the Milwitch family doctor, with whom Farmer was said to have met recently. They find Isenbecker hanging from the ceiling in his office, which is trashed... copper wire and the book (from the previous failed attempt to steal the thing) are on the scene.

The guys figured out the connection (the book was pretty much an instruction manual for the creation of a flesh golem) and figured that his next victim may be Elden. They had an appointment with him anyway (Steven's character had set one up earlier when he went to investigate Isenbecker's lab) at one of the local taverns. When they got there, the golem was already making a mess. On went the dramatic fight scene. The backwards-advanced golem worked beautifully; it gave them a hard time, but it was kind of supposed to. I have the sneaking suspicion it wasn't quite CR4, though. Anyway, at the end of the adventure they figured out that if Elden put two and two together he'd be able to pin the theft of the book on them (the barber would have used the book to create the golem, but it wasn't found in the office, and the PCs had the opportunity to take it) so they planted the book on the golem's body and pinned it on him.

Next Adventure
Plot heavy shit has been the mainstay for the past two sessions (out of four). I'm thinking we should cut loose and go kill some shit. Also, I think it was Steven that asked for something with class levels.

So I want to bring back Isenbecker as an artificer 4/ barbarian 2 with the gravetouched ghoul and winged creature templates. Also monkey grip and EWP Jovar. It's an intentionally gimped build, mind you. Flying goes better with ranged than melee combat, and no one of his capabilities is higher than level 4 (and his highest level abilities are less combat useful). So he's really more like CR 6 or 7 than CR 8. Still it will be one hell of a boss fight after... I have no idea what kind of adventure.

Priorities:

1)Get players who missed stuff up to speed. Reintroduce some of the NPCs and stuff. Isenbecker's new undead badassery might be cool. An excuse to bust the changeling out of jail would also be nice. Steven (I think it was steven) expressed interest in working for Elden this next adventure, 'cause that's where the money's at.

2)Action! For real. I'm craving it myself. A trip to a larger bit of the undercity would be nice. And maybe I could work in some info about the old empire. Creepy info that would kind of remind the players where all these undead are coming from. Even then, an excuse to use other monsters than just undead would be nice too. Maybe some carrion crawlers, fungi, vermin, and oozes. Oh, the joy of oozes.

I may need to put off some of these things. Actually, it would be cool to just have the players visit the changeling in this adventure, kill someone in the dungeon in such a way that only the PCs would know, and then have the changeling break out and pose as that person. Of course when a changeling breaks out of jail he leaves behind a bewildered guard shouting "I AM NOT A SHAPESHIFTER!" while the others smile and laugh and say "Of course you're not." I don't know... just a thought.

And the new villain Isenbecker is of course meant to escape (hence the high CR and the wings).

Ack, my thoughts are all over the place and it's this late already.

So I ran a dungeon crawl and it was pretty awesome.
The actual dungeon was part of a manor (or something), part of the street it was on (there were one or two other "houses" in the dungeon), and a carved tunnel leading to a more naturally formed set of caverns in the back.

The Players
James and Casey: A duskblade and orc barbarian respectively. One solves his problems by lighting them on fire (remember the ghouls' assault on the farm?) and the other solves his by tearing down walls and things (strange results as I'll detail later).

Josh: Our beguiler. Didn't get to use his spells or trapfinding as much as usual this time, but had his moments for sure, and was the one who would even approach Isenbecker when we met him.

Katie: Needs to get the turn/rebuke undead rules tattooed on the backs of her eyelids. Seems to be having fun overall, though.

Linnea: Has been quiet for most of the games so far, but seems to have loosened up. There was a bit of a scare when she got a skin-kite all stuck on her face and stuff, but Casey handled that IIRC.

Steven: Joined us recently. He's playing a straight warlock so far, going to damage spam with superior unarmed strike and hideous blow as soon as he hits level four. We were joking about his build's "fisting" "hideous blowing" and "great cleavage" at the session's end.

Andrew: So far the only guy at all the sessions. Cleric/warlock.

The Game
Anyway, I did more or less the same thing I did in the first session, starting the group at the dungeon and explaining a thing or two about why they were there (the book had been stolen again, and an orphanage had been attacked and not all bodies had been accounted for).

The dungeon started with kind of a "courtyard" where the ceiling had collapsed in the middle of a two story building (you know how big buildings will have the one room in the middle of the house with a high roof? it was that sort of thing). There were four walls on the lower floor, there was a staircase leading to a sort of platform one story up, and there were two doors on that little platform.

Players took the top stories first, starting by looting a bedroom (lots of rotted drapes, some phat lewt, a music box) and then fighting the spider therein. Andrew had gone in alone. The spider got the drop on him and somehow whiffed (how does that work?). The players spent a turn running upstairs, then Andrew jumped downstairs and failed his jump check. The spider was going to jump after Andrew and catch him prone, but Casey the barbarian aoo'd and exploded the spider with a critical hit. Two halves of a giant spider landed on either side of Andrew.

Players then searched the first room together, albeit with Andrew still up front (they were happy to let him act as bait). It was a tiled room with a hole in the floor, some rusted copper taps, and decorations depicting food. I told them that it was a vomitorium. Andrew got a kick out of looting the crusty smelly feather by the hole.

Players went back downstairs and the first thing they did was check out the section of city street. Much of it had collapsed but there were still two walls with doors in them for the players to check out. One had a larger hollowed area with a gelatinous cube. The players were insanely freaked out by it. There's something daunting about figuring out what to *do* with one of these things. Players fought it however they could, or shrank back if they felt there was nothing they could do. Casey knocked part of the wall of the house on top of it. It went after the nearest ones to it to engulf them, but also got finished off by an aoo from Casey. Not unlike the spider. We were joking that things that run in Casey's direction tend to go splat. The second house was mostly collapsed, and a swarm of centipedes fell on the barbarian as he knocked the door open. His solution was to pull the house down on himself. X_X. So he was pinned beneath the debris and covered in a swarm he couldn't really fight. It took the party a while to get Casey out of that mess.

After the other rooms were cleared out, the party went back the way they came to the courtyard and took the door into the dining room. There was a dining room with some of the same old same old rotted finery (some of the tableware was salvageable) and an ape on the table eating part of a corpse. Josh the beguiler took him out with a sleep spell and the party looted the room, careful not to wake it.

Next places they checked were the kitchen and the servant's quarters. They found the orphans all in the pantry or whatever you call it, and tried to take a cot out of the servant's quarters. Then they took a hall in the back, leading into a more recently dug tunnel.

The tunnel went downward on a slight slope for a long way, and passed a gaping chasm on the left (in that it was more like the players were on a ledge, and there was a big open space below them on the left). Players with darkvision could see neither the bottom nor the other side, and people could hear groaning down there. They thew down a torch and saw just a massive quantity of undead standing shoulder-to-shoulder as far as they could see. Players moved past that as quickly as possible, until there was again a wall on either side of them.

Eventually we all got down to the final natural cavern with Isenbecker. Pretty much it's a big natural cavern with a guy facing away from the characters and reading a book. The book the players were after, which had induced fort saves vs vomiting for anyone that read it, and which apparently taught people to make flesh golems. Steven's character recognized him as Isenbecker (the guy that hanged himself last session).  Josh's character, the beguiler, walked up to the guy to talk to him. Josh even mentioned putting his hand on this guy's shoulder (convenient for me, considering what happened next). A big metal wing pops out of Isenbecker's jacket where Josh's guy touched it. Isenbecker turns around, and now that they can see his face, they can see he's got this long tongue with a claw at the end and some chitinous mandibles (some embellishing on a morgh tongue). He says hello to them. Everybody is mui freaked out at this point. This is some dude who died yesterday casually hanging out in a freaky dungeon like this reading a really fucked up book. He's got metal wings and some kind of monster face, and he's all casual about it. Anyway, the beguiler makes some small talk...

Josh: So how you doing?
Isenbecker: Pretty good. I've managed every doctors dream. Beat death.
Josh: So... how's that working out for you.
Isenbecker: Great, man! Every now and again I get... hungry. But it's cool; got some food in the kitchen (referring to the orphans).
Josh: (Bluffs like hell to get the guy to believe he should lend them the book, 'cause they were going to give it back later) "...We'll bring it back later!"
Isenbecker: (Gives Josh the book, but drags that horrible tongue over Josh's neck all threateningly) "I'll hold you to it."

...great times. Looks like the PCs may have themselves a recurring villain. I'll probably only use him again once or twice, really.

After all that, the players headed out. Fought a skin kite over the chasm and a carrion crawler that had wandered into the kitchen (it was gonna eat the kids in the pantry). Then they left, getting the kids out of the chasm using their rope and the bedspreads out of the servant's quarter.

And I'm about outa time and gotta head to work. Stuff later.

I have run two games, but have been away from the computer.

First game was a shopping trip for gear. Normally the kind of thing groups I've played in have handled out of character... breaking out the books and poring over gear lists. Thought I'd try something different. Turned out better than I'd expected.

Next was some gladiator match type stuff. The RP took center stage and my combat builds flopped in one or two rounds. Go figure. On the plus side everybody had some fun times and we (hopefully) scratched a bit of that PVP itch. Oh, and we've set up for this part of the campaign's finale.

More later. This Friday we're gonna kill us the ghoul king.

Like four people showed up to the finale 'cause of planning issues (I get internet back on Friday now), so we played M&M instead. More on that later.

So this is the final session. Last session, I tipped the players off that the bread and soup "relief" being handed out by the seemingly benevolent cult was actually tainted and meant to turn people into ghouls. I also tipped them off that Isenbecker was probably working on some other ritual that would allow the undead to walk in daylight. So this session will probably begin with the town being overrun by undead. Also, most of the characters slept in a nearby inn, while Andrew's character was presumably doing stuff with/for his church, treating the mysterious illness (he didn't show last session).

So first part of the game will probably be spent cutting a path throught the ghouls to get to the church of Correllian. Once they're there, I'll give them full access to the armory (these people need torches, bludgeoning weapons, area attacks, and ranged attacks... why does my party lack these things?).

After that, they'll probably head to the undercity again. I tipped them off that the ghoul king is necessary for the ritual that lets undead walk in daylight and also for another ritual that would seal them off altogether. So... yeah. There are a few fights planned there.

The section of the undercity the players will be going through will start with the old mansion lair where they first met Isenbecker. But this time, they're going to have to check out that enormous chasm. It'll have fewer undead now that they've all moved upstairs, but it's still a long stretch of ruined city rubble and waist deep water in a pitch black cavern. And the place they're headed will still be a chapel affixed upside-down to the ceiling of the cavern some 40ft up in the air.

First fight is mean because I'm planning on making one of the ghouls a low-level warlock and giving it the darkness invocation. The party's relied on the bard for that light spell so far, and she only gets two a day. Fighting a bunch of CR1 ghouls can suddenly get a lot worse in the dark. Casey's orc and Andrew's warlock will be thankful for their darkvision.

Second fight starts with one or more of the players noticing a light catapult, then whoever's at the front of the marching order (probably a few of the tanks) making a reflex save. It's a pit trap with an iron portcullis that closes over the top. Let me remind you of the waist deep water that begins rushing in immediately. The problem will probably be compounded by the boneclaw that wanders by, surprised by the loud noise. Thing's got a ridiculous reach (20 or 30 feet) and combat reflexes for four attacks. In the MMIII they gave it improved natural attack and power attack, so the thing did 2d6+7 damage. That'd be a one-hit kill for most of my party so I gimped it by swapping out improved initiative and improved natural attack for improved bull rush and awesome blow. Players still won't be able to get close to it, and they'll have to either kill it from far away or distract it so they can get to the trap and free their friends. Either way the light catapult would be their best bet.

Next fight happens probably in the ceiling chapel with Isenbecker. My party's terrified of this guy, but he's actually kind of gimped. All I did was give him a morgh tongue and the winged creature template. Most of his combat ability is melee (the wings are mostly for running away; he's not going to do that thing where he rains fire from above and the PCs can't do anything about it) and while he's high level, most of his levels are in artificer. Anyway, I'm hoping the players do the sensible thing and gang up on this guy, rather than avoiding him while he picks off characters one at a time.

Final fight would be with the ghoul king, who I built as follows.

human
monk2
warlock1
human paragon3
gravetouched ghoul template
swarmshifter template (parts swarm)
evolved undead template (spell like ability confusion 1/day)
lurking terror3

Not as bad as he looks individually none of his abilities put him over CR3. The confusion spell like ability is the one exception, and serves to prevent him from getting clustered by the party.

Low on time. There's other stuff besides fights, but for now I'm off.