Dust and Devils Session 2

The party defeats The Dread Conductor and destroys The Ghost Train, leaving a new curse of souls upon the lands of the Howling Badlands. Then they return to town to meet a new crew of misfits.

Summary

The party comes face to face with Wyatt Rhodes, The Dread Conductor in the final train cart. The devil offers to grant them freedom upon winning at a game of poker, losing their souls if they don't win. Trash Compactor agrees to the game, betting the souls of the entire party in the process. Unfortunately he loses with a hand of four Aces and a Jack to the devil's five Kings, clearly cheating in the process.

Before the end of the game could be declared, Arno goes in to back stab Wyatt in a sneak attack. A battle breaks out with the devil turning into his true fiendish form. The Dread Conductor dies to the relentless radiant damage from Brisk Barrie. In defeat the devil's last words were "as promised the souls are released and won't be able to reaped again...". The Ghost Train dematerializes into a green mist and releases the souls trapped within it to the skies above haunting the entirety of The Howling Badlands.

In the disappearance of train, 2 Soul Coins and a Hellfire Shotgun were left in place of where Wyatt was. The party also notices a crashed War Machine of some sort in front of them, seemingly crashed by the impact of the train itself. It housed a dead goblin corpse in which the party also looted.

Making their way back to Boom Town, they confront Sheriff Westwood about his fiendish contract to Wyatt Rhodes. The sheriff details his magical compulsion to the Devil and assures the team that he had no choice in the matter and regrets every soul he delivered to the train. Before finishing the conversation the group hears a gunshot and rushes to The Half Moon Saloon to see a standoff of Biff the Giff, Texxus and Wylie Willingham by the bar.

Biff explains that he is only there to take Texxus as a bounty back to The City of Tyr for his reward of 1000gp. Kazuki manages to calm down the situation with Biff to discuss this bounty as the Sheriff takes Texxus to the jail cell because the Church was no longer open in the evening to heal his wounds. Biff offers to split the bounty if the party accompanies him and his party to Tyr. Kazuki and Khimari Stormgrove argue about whether or not to take or steal the offer, or just kill Texxus. They decide to murder Texxus as revenge for giving Brisk Barrie the cursed dagger.

Khimari using his newly found Hellfire Shotgun murders a sleeping Texxus in his cell within a Silence bubble casted by Brisk. Arno and Kazuki quickly clear the crime scene of any evidence and the party believes that they have gotten away with murder. And the next day it seems as much no member of town has a clue of any suspicious activities, all of which believing that the centaur was able to make a getaway somehow.

After some downtime activities, the group went to the nearby church to question the priest on how to fully kill and defeat The Dread Conductor and lift the land of the remaining Ghost Train curse. Finding out that before fighting the devil in his home dominion, they must first find the true name of the devil to ensure a guaranteed success. Also there, both the Cleric and Paladin prayed to their gods to receive cryptic messages of success and hopefully safe passage towards hell.