To start with, then, a veritable army of the undead was approaching the town from all directions! We tried to get as many people as we could to take shelter in the inn, which we barricaded (of course, we had to tie Dogboy up to get him to enter the place, which explained our subsequent problems). Sadly, however, the innkeeper failed to remember the back door; while the rest of the party was cowering upstairs, Gremin ran down to take care of the door, and I went to help him. We weren't in time, but with the timely assistance of Liss, we were able to take care of the few that had come indoors and to fortify the rest of the inn.

Our relief, however, was shortlived, since the zombies were breaking through despite our best efforts! Brucian suddenly had the flash of inspiration that perhaps Luc's cryptic words about "the stone where six stars shine" meant the old cemetery, so away we went, braving death to help the citizens of this poor town. We were trying to be relatively stealthy, but Liss must have been a little panicky, because he took off running towards it rather than staying with us. I could have told him that, based on my recent experiences, this was a bad idea, but sadly, I didn't have too; the fool ran into a trio of zombies, and before we were able to come to his rescue, they'd already beaten him into a bloody pulp.

Fortunately, we proved to be as capable as ever (which means that Leighla and I took care of the three zombies as the rest of the group stood around ineptly), and the subsequent use of a few doses of my potion got Liss back on his feet and feeling okay. And they said it wouldn't be a useful thing to have!

Well, we made it to the old cemetery, and after a few tense minutes caused by the gargoyles at the entrance (I still think they moved, but no one else believes me!) we broke in. This is when we noticed another problem: the old cemetery is big!

We searched around, and after a few false starts (involving tombs full of zombies, rats, and bats, repectively), I noticed a tomb with six stars on it! We'd found the correct place! Bravely entering, we ran into what Haley informs us was a ju ju zombie, which is a lot more dangerous than regular zombies, and immune to normal weapons, which explains why it was up to me to take care of the rest of the party... And they thought that Jean's dagger wouldn't be very useful either; they better be appreciating me right about now!! Sadly, we didn't find what we were looking for, until we went up the stairs to the crypt itself, and then... Oh gods!

Up we went, and there was Marcel. Something about him, though, made Haley and Liss really sick; actually, it killed Liss! Oh, that poor boy; he died twice in thirty minutes! But what was far worse is that he came BACK -- as a zombie!! That sort of thing shouldn't happen to anyone, and he was so young, and he was our friend! I want to go somewhere that it's safer! I want to go home!!

Anyways, the sight was too much for me, and I decided I would be better off out of the crypt, where I dragged Haley (who wasn't feeling very well) and where we were joined by Leighla. At first, I tried to shoot the other zombies inside the tomb (did I mention them?) while hoping that Liss wouldn't do anything bad to us, but that was a forlorn hope, since he beat up Haley! Enough was enough; he may have been my friend in life, and I will mourn for him always, but Haley's my best friend, and no one does that to my friends and gets away with it!!

Very glad that I still had a dose of my potion, I fed it to Haley before she could slip any further towards death, saving her (yay me!), while Leighla very regretfully shot Liss in order to make this possible.

Meanwhile, Dogboy and Prihelm had their hands full with another one of those nasty ju ju zombies; this won't surprise any of you but in their tremendous competence, they hadn't been able to do much anything to it yet, even though Prihelm had my dagger and Dogboy had his shortsword. So I reluctantly moved back into the fray, helping them beat off the foul creature, while Leighla turned her rather lethal attentions to Marcel.

Unfortunately, since he was already dead. the arrow through the eye that Leighla gave him doesn't seem to have bothered him much... However, it did make him rather upset, so he came down to do some pretty mean things to Leighla. Haley bravely (if, in my opinion, rather foolishly) intervened, and got sent back to the land of the dying again (thus beating Liss' record by almost dying twice in five minutes; I sincerely hope that the party doesn't plan on trying to better that record!). Prihelm fortunately had acquired a few potions from Shaman Brucian, so he was just preparing to save Haley despite Marcel's presence when the moon turned red!

This had the very lucky effect of making all the zombie (Marcel, the ju ju, and the remaining regular zombie, which we were all ignoring because it was fairly puny) stop moving, and we took the opportunity to rid the world of one Marcel Tarascon, Zombie Lord, while Prihelm saved Haley's life (we shall see what comes of this...). The ju ju started to wander away, but before it could escape to wreak further havoc upon the world, one well placed blow from yours truly eliminated the threat, and Leighla blasted the last zombie out of existence; we had saved the town! But the cost was high; Liss was dead! Oh Liss!

We also managed to unwittingly restore Luc's sanity; he subsequently told us the entire story, about how Luc and Marcel had found the scroll of the six signs after Valana told their fortune. Marcel was killed in the finding, and Luc went nuts at seeing his admired elder brother die. Jean tried to get Marcel raised, but it didn't work, and Marcel became a zombie lord even as Jean also went a little nuts. He hid the scroll and put Luc out in the swamp, then went on a killing spree for no adequately explained reason (I believe we have Leighla to thank for this lack of an explanation...). And the rest, you know.

This was all very nice, but we still had yet another dead friend to take care of; we couldn't do anything about Mitsy or Maerlyan, but I wasn't about to let Liss stay dead too! A long visit to Shaman Brucian later (full of some rather contentious debate, I might add -- the ingrate wasn't very excited about the prospect of raising Liss!), and we had our promise that Liss would be better in the morning. Now we're waiting on him, so we can get out of this cursed land and go home! I can't wait to escape; especially as we have just recieved a mysterious note from someone called "M" who wants us out of "his" land; he says there's a ship at Port d'Elhour which will take us in a week or so. All I can say is that there had better be!!

Addendum
Well, we just go back from visiting the Shaman... He says he did all he could, but he's very sorry and Liss is unrecoverable. Needless to say, I'm not particularly pleased with the man or his god, but he did look truly sorry, so perhaps it's not his fault that every time he tries to raise someone from the dead, nothing happens. This only reaffirms my belief that gods aren't worth worshipping, of course; they let my parents die, they let Liss' family die, they let my friends die, and they don't even have the decency to give any of them back to us!! Puh! Who needs them, I say!

It's a little strange, but I might as well mention this, too. Shaman Brucian gave me a pendant, saying that it was something that Liss would have wanted me to have. I wonder why? All I can say is that it's something that I'll always wear from now on. Poor, poor Liss!

Well, I'm breaking into tears again, so before I ruin everything that I just wrote, I better close this entry.