When last we left our party, Gridley's armor had just launched a wave of 
negative energy at a group of clerics from Seaspray, draining life from 
three of them.  The clerics broke and retreated into their village; 
feeling they would be unwelcome, the party decided to circle around the 
village rather than travel through.

------------- Subduing the Cowbeasts

Travel near the village was more peaceful than usual: the cowbeast herds 
near the village were quite aggressive in attacking and killing any undead 
that drew near.  This served to keep the random-wandering-skeleton 
population down, but it also caused the party some grief: as far as the 
cowbeasts could tell, the party was composed entirely of undead.

A nearby herd of ten cowbeasts stampeded and attacked the party; a
flustered cowherd tailed behind, trying to calm the beasts before somebody
got killed.  The party drew up a line of battle and met the charge.  This
was a tough battle, as several members of the party took considerable
damage from the angry creatures.  Elan and Gridley both went down, and 
Selket left the front line to heal them, leaving Enajien, Nailo, and 
Tidefell to take up the slack.  Nailo's amazing armor class proved an 
asset, and the three remaining warriors were able to survive until the 
cowherd calmed down the creatures that had not been stunned.

The party tended their wounds and spoke briefly with the cowherd whose
herd they had just stunned.  ("Um, yeah, thanks for only beating my herd
senseless instead of killing them, I guess.")  They then continued on 
their way to Blueport.

------------- Edward's Revenge

Night was drawing near, so the party opted to spend the night in the 
bunker between Seaspray and Blueport.  They chopped some firewood without 
incident (a zombie squirrel attacked Elan but was swiftly decapitated), 
then settled down for the night.  They quickly noticed a chill: their 
armor was reacting to the Hallowed environment of the bunker, and the 
Hallow magic was losing its power.  The Hallow faded, the armor returned 
to normal, and the party continued its watch.

Halfway through the third watch, the characters heard a strange noise
behind them: Edward, the merchant whose corpse they had been carrying for
the past two days, had returned to life!  Apparently Gridley's Gentle
Repose spell had worn off.  Edward snatched up an unholy longsword the
party had been given by Lord Morgan, then attacked the party
singlehandedly.  At six-on-one odds, he was dispatched without too much
trouble.

This was the second time Edward had attacked the party as an undead.  
Feeling that enough was enough, they cremated his body and buried the 
ashes in several separate locations.

------------- Reception at Blueport

From far away the party noticed the strength of Blueport's positive energy
barrier: it seemed the city was expecting them.  This was confirmed when
they saw the walls of Blueport bristling with archers.  Gridley approached
and talked with them.  

As they talked, the party noticed somebody climbing out over the walls of
the city.  A strange exchange occurred.  "Hey, what's that guy doing?"  
asked Gridley.  The climber reversed direction and returned to the city
walls.  (The priest said nothing.)  Noises of spellcasting were heard,
then the climber appeared again.  "Please, sir, what are the intentions of
your minion?"  The high priest sighed, and the climber went back inside
the walls.  "Look," snapped an exasperated Gridley.  "The spell
"Invisibility to Undead" doesn't affect us, because, for the fifth time,
we're NOT UNDEAD!"

At this point the High Priest of Obad-Hai seemed ready to concede that the
party might not be undead, despite their overwhelming negative energy
aura.  However, he insisted that the party's curse was unstable and too
dangerous to allow into the city.  The party traded their diamonds by
throwing them through the city's energy barrier, and received payment (in
orihalcon bars, used for magic items) in the same manner.  The Blueport
mages refused to cast any Identify spells, since this would require the
party to wait outside the city overnight, something neither side favored.  
The party sighed and continued on its way.

------------- Dakkon, Deathbringer

Some minutes after the party left Blueport they noticed that someone was
following them.  The creature was much taller than a human, carried a
sword, and refused to approach the party closer than seven hundred feet.
Before making camp for the night, Enajien and Nailo decided to run out and
confront the creature.  (With their boots of striding they were confident
they could outrun it.)  With a closer look, the creature was revealed as a 
skeletal warrior, standing nine feet tall and wielding a huge greatsword.

The party tried talking to the skeleton.  "PUNY MORTALS," it boomed in a 
hollow, echoing voice, "WHERE DID YOU GET THAT POWER?"  The party gave no 
useful answer; a few questions later, the skeleton decided that "I WOULD 
BE ABLE TO USE THAT POWER BETTER THAN YOU, MORTALS", and charged at them.

The party formed a defensive line, six strong and bristling with pointy
objects.  Its nerve apparently failing, the skeleton turned and fled the
other way.  The party gave chase - Enajien and Nailo in front, Elan on
Tidefell next, and the rest of the party struggling to catch up.  The
skeleton ran for several rounds, giving Enajien and Nailo a chance to
outdistance their allies; it then turned and attacked them.  The skeleton
used its Whirlwind Attack ability in combat, attacking both Enajien and
Nailo at once.  After two rounds of combat, Nailo was mortally wounded but
refused to retreat: "Never again!", she gasped, immediately before being 
chopped in two by a third swing of the skeleton's weapon.  Shortly 
afterward, the rest of the party caught up to Enajien and the skeleton, 
and the skeleton was slain.

------------- A Fallen Ally

The party removed Nailo's weapons and began discussing what to do with the
body.  They were divided between casting Gentle Repose to try to keep it
from reviving, or cremating it then and there.  The point was rendered
moot when the corpse rose from the ground and attacked them.  It grappled
Selket by the throat; this proved to be a bad idea, as this left the rest
of the party free to attack it.  Selket, however, refused to release
Nailo's reanimated corpse.  The corpse wounded Selket but could not kill
her before being destroyed.

As Nailo's corpse was defeated, the curse on her armor vanished; the rest 
of the party felt their armor's curse growing stronger.

Given this demonstration of the dangers of carrying corpses around, the 
party elected to carry Nailo's head back to The Citadel, but cremate and 
bury the body.

------------- A Day of Rest

The party stayed for a full day at the bunker where Nailo died, waiting
for Etale to identify some of the newly acquired magic items.  Gridley and
Etale gained three nice wands, Elan gained a pair of gloves of strength,
Selket found a quiver that enchanted her arrows, and Enajien gained a
magic weapon.  Elan gave Enajien some money to make up for his missed
share of magic items.

------------- Arator the Paladin

On the road the next day the party encountered a figure in a shining suit 
of armor: a paladin, bearing the holy symbol of Hieroneous.  The paladin's 
mission was to investigate a huge source of negative energy that had been 
detected in the region, and see if Blueport required assistance in dealing 
with it.  

The paladin quickly determined that the party was the source of that
negative energy (as he blacked out and fell off his horse from the party's
evil aura).  He became confused, however, when he noticed that Gridley was
able to turn undead.

The cleric spent some time arguing with the paladin over whether or not he
was undead.  ("Am not!"  "Are too!")  The impending conflict was averted
when Elan, a knight himself, offered to resolve the argument the
old-fashioned way, with a duel - "And the loser will admit that the winner
is not undead."  This sounded perfectly reasonable to the paladin (who had
not been chosen for his intelligence), and the combatants agreed to duel.

Arator the paladin insisted that the duel not be fought with magical aid 
(since he did not have a cleric to back him up), and that it not be fought 
mounted (since his horse had run away).  (Selket volunteered to go 
retrieve the horse.)  He did allow Elan to drink a potion of Haste before 
the battle, though, and he did channel positive energy to activate his own 
Divine Might ability.

Elan and Arator charged at each other and spent several rounds flailing at
each other's suits of armor.  They quickly discovered that each of them
was far better at absorbing hits than at dealing them.  The impasse was 
ended when Elan scored a critical strike, striking Arator's head with the 
flat of his blade and knocking him unconscious.

Arator woke to find the cleric healing his wounds.  He apologized,
conceded that the party must not be undead after all, and agreed to escort
the party to the Shining City to ensure that others did not make the same
mistake.