“Come one, come all and watch the Race to End All Races! See the longest race ever seen in the history of the world, as our competitors race from one side of the continent and back! Place your bets as to who will win the longest race ever seen in the history of the World!”

The poster above has been seen across Acryn, as well as another, smaller one found in areas frequented by the Adventurer community:

“Trustworthy Adventurers needed to assist with Acryn’s premier sporting event. Contact Johanna Wulf at the Rabid Badger inn for more details. Payment of 45 Riel”

• Otton Strang
• Ruby
• Prim
• Henrietta Sawyer
• Darius
• Silvio

The party meet their employer, and then the teams. Some bribery happens, and then the race starts. After dealing with some “random” zombie wolves which slow down everyone but Hrothgar and an attempt to blow up a bridge on the route, the party reach an inn where they discover that Yugo Hasbeen is in jail and Hrothgar is searching for replacement corpses. In the end the party do not arrange for the release of Yugo, and Hrothgar's corpse search turns into a bit of a disaster.

Next up, the party help out the Collegiates, who have become lost in the desert. Then watch over the participants as they come through one of the checkpoints. Help ease the participants through the Serradic border. Arrange a pause in the race for a lunch, timing participants in and out of the break. Preventing Serradic soldiers arresting the Postman. Surviving a desert storm and clearing out mercenaries hired to stop some of the participants. Saving the Collegiates from a Miscreant started Tyrant lizard attack. And finally fending off the Miscreants themselves, who are fed up of the party consistantly interfering with their schemes.

Otto and Prim take the Miscreants to an Acryn watch house, explaining their various crimes (destruction of a major trade route and attempted murder). They also explain Ruby’s murder of the Miscreants leader. Provide the details of the Collegiate team as witnesses to much of this. Each party member comes to explain what happened individually. Evidence is not great for Ruby, although Ruby makes a competent attempt at implicating Silvio.

The Postman wins the race.

here is discussion held under Cease your Deceptions about the races. Postman didn’t do anything wrong. Collegiate didn’t break any rules, but arguable risked discrediting Acryn. The party explain Hrothgar as best they can. Also explain Yugo’s arrest, in a very positive way. As no attempt was made to get Yugo’s off the charges, a fair bit of disrepute has been caused by the race. Discussion of Miscreants is poor. Conversation moves round to Ruby’s murder, which she does her best to avoid answering while Silvio is happy to state he did not murder the Miscreants leader.

The party are paid an additional 15r for their partial success.

Prim reports to the Civil Service, they are generally fairly happy with the service of the party. The party are paid an additional 21r from the Civil Service.

Darius follows a Tender priest home, waits for them to sleep and then slips into their home. Feeds the sleeping priest a Sleep of Death and places a knife near them, and uses his vines to make them murder everyone in the house and drag the bodies into the garden, before retracting the vines and leaving. Everyone hears about the Tender priest who went mad and killed their own family, before taking their own life.

The watch cannot pin anything on Ruby, but does add her to a watch list.

Party discuss whether or not they should go see Darius, and eventually decide to go speak with him. Otto is very concerned about the tower, everyone else seems to be vaguely convinced by his “elopement”. Otto reports about the evil Wizard tower to his Superiors. Prim reports to the Civil Service, especially regarding the rite of manipulation glyphs.

Silvio learns of the Shepherd’s murder at the hands of an Acryn Automaton during treatment for a “condition” they were “suffering”. Prim reports the death of The Shepherd at the hands of “3” in Strossborg.