Previously:
We start the session off with Fisherman Chuck - identifying himself as Old Man Rather - guiding the party into the St. Fiachra's Finest Ale brewery's parking lot. His player returned, Billy respawns in the back seat of their stolen police cruiser.
After some tense back-and-forth, the Private EyeNTJs exit their vehicle and follow Chuck into the back of the brewery, where they see a small crowd of St. Fiachran townies bearing improvised weapons & open tall boys, along with two rows of chairs facing each other - seated on one row are some sick-looking elderly St. Fiarchrans, including Mr. Crabatt, whispering to some townies tied to chairs and being force-fed beer across from them.
Panthera LeSharp - who previously had identified himself as Crabatt - crosses the room to talk to the party. The party tries to figure out what exactly is going on, and Panthera/Crabatt tries to convince them to undertake a mission for him, offering information and money. When they inquire about Panthera's wife a tear rolls down his cheek, but Crabatt's able to regain control by drinking more beer. Billy especially is interested in the implications for P/C's new existence for his identity, continuity of consciousness, etc., but P/C seems unconcerned about such philosophical things, saying that evolution is always necessary to survive.
Panthera/Crabatt wants the party to bring the elderly bodies to something beneath the church, that he says should be able to renew them. He says that to him the party's expendable - not in the sense that he wants to kill or betray them, but that he won't mind nearly as much if they fail and die compared to himself or his compatriots. He alludes to the danger of the ferals in the caverns, and that they'll be able to figure out what happened to Johnson Bronson if they go down beneath the church. When pressed on why he needs the old body renewed, he says that his bodies have different capabilities, showing the difference in their warmth and blood.
The party agrees to help, and they load the bodies of the elderly folks into their stolen police cruiser. Then they bring the bodies to the police station's jail and lock them up inside.
They speculate on Bronson's fate, suggesting that he's probably now a "moss-man". Shorty picks up a Maglite in the police station, and discuss how they will break the news to Bronson's mistress if her man has become a man of moss. They drive to the church.
At the church they roll their trusty 1993 Ford Aspire off the stairwell, and Shorty shines his new Maglite down the hole. Much brighter & more focused than their insect-repellent candle, he's able to see the size of the cavern below the church, and spies the iridescent tines of something like outstretched fingers, antlers, or bare branches poking out of the darkness deeper down.
Shorty's flashlight attracts the attention of a horde of the monsters below, which begin making their way up the stairs spiraling up around the wall of the cavern to the stairwell. The party throws a molotov to block off the stairs with its fire, then rains down the rest of their abundant supply of molotov cocktails to burn the horde in a carnival game out of hell.
The hellish conflagration of the molotovs illuminates a depression in the middle of the cavern filled with seawater flowing in from a grotto, as well as the thing growing in the center of the grotto - an iridescent, alien-looking "tree" like a spindly Rorschach blot.
They wait for the flames to burn down, then with their newly-acquired shotgun and pistol blast the few monsters of the horde that survived the flames. They find themselves on the floor of the cavern in a forest of the humanoid vegetable growths, posed like they're crucified all facing the "tree" in the cavern's center. The Private EyeNTJs find a stone bridge across the sea water-filled divot leading to a platform around the base of the "tree".
The "tree" appears sickly and withered - veins of black like in the bodies of St. Fiachra's elderly thread through it. At its base it bears two cysts, on opposite sides - sticking out of one is a man's lower body wearing a smart pair of slacks, and sticking out the other is a man's naked upper body covered in a webbing of black growths. They pull out the lower body, which separates from the "tree" with a gross sucking sound, revealing it to be dissolved or digested or somesuch from the pelvis-up.
The party goes around to the other cyst and pulls the webbing from the upper body's face, revealing it to be Johnson Bronson - their quarry, their payday.
Johnson says he can't feel his legs, that he's been stuck down there for so long he can't even remember how long it's been, and begs them for help. Walter electrocutes the crotch of his detached lower body with their taser to confirm there's no sensation.
In conversing with Johnson they learn that he chased rumours in wealthy circles that there was something in St. Fiachra's that could cure any sickness and grant longevity. He paid the town an enormous sum to allow the "tree" to consume he so he could be reborn, but something made the process fail halfway.
The party attempts to pull Johnson out of the "tree", giving him the barrel of their shotgun to hold on to, but as Billy predicted this ended poorly - with Johnson missing his lower body, his viscera spilled out onto the ground when they yanked him out. Shorty freaks out and blows Johnson's head off with the shotgun.
They debate how they're going to prove they found Johnson to his mistress, but luckily find his wallet with his ID in his pocket. Walter sketches the scene, then they exit to the sun rising up over the sea onto the ruins of the church.
At the police station they call the hospital of a nearby city to send an ambulance for the sick elderly that they left locked in jail, then they went back to the brewery to talk to and maybe murder Panthera/Crabatt.
They ecounter P/C and a gaggle of other fellows armed with improvised weapon on the street outside the brewery. Panthera/Crabatt transfers $1,500 to their business account as payment - saying that since they didn't bring back their renewed bodies, he couldn't give them much in return. He threatens them never to talk about what happened in St. Fiachra's to outsiders, saying that Panthera isn't his only body now, and they won't recognize him if he comes to them. He claims to want to be the oldest, richest man in the world - but with the sickness of the "tree" and the loss of his 'original' body it's unclear how he'd manage that. The party schemes several methods to kill off P/C and the others in a way that won't let the people still in the brewery building escape, and eventually resolve to make some more molotovs and return.
The party spends $485 on gasoline, and $15 on assorted slurpies and mixed-soda drinks. When they return to the brewery it is deserted. They drive around town looting whatever hasn't been looted, and then leave. The town's fall to anarchy is blamed on it being cashless, and a 15-minute city.
They meet with Johnson's mistress, who is pleased to hear he's dead as that means she gets all his money. She pays them $50,000. Their financial woes solved, the Private EyeNTJs remain financially-solvent for another quarter.
The end.
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