Willy's Birthday Bonanza

An adventure starring Willy, Jade, and Simmond.
Teaser: Simmond, Jade, and Willy embark on a mysterious train ride to a more mysterious town. Join us as we discuss the morality of death and undeath on Willy‘s special day.
=== Setting ===
Nowhere: an abandoned wild west-style town in the middle of the Guaso desert, at the end of the train line.
=== NPCs ===
The Shopkeeper (Dietrich von Urden): human-looking, elderly. Memory problems. Revealed to be a former magical researcher-turned-lich (along with his brothers) and ancestor (thought father) of Willy. All now dust.
Maliocus: a sentient sword housing the soul of the former jester of Hell, now wielded (with a certain amount of confusion) by Jade.
=== Plot Summary (Potential Spoilers Ahead) ===
Willy got tickets for the Guaso train system for his birthday. He waited until the last minute to use them, so the day they would expire, he grabbed Simmond the Kind and Jade from the guild hall and rode a train line to as far as it would go. They stepped off the train in an abandoned Wild West style town. One building had a light on. Jade knocked on the door in her typical town guard fashion. The person inside responded by, it sounded like, hammering boards to keep the door closed. Simmond the Kind and Willy figured maybe they were reacting to the town guard, so Jade held back and the other two negotiated that they could come inside. Because the front door had boards hammered to it, they entered the back. Inside was a shopkeeper of a curiosity shop with many curious items. The shopkeeper asks them if they're the help he had sent for at the post office, the first the party had heard of any letters. Ghost riders on spectral horses arrived. Willy asked them what they wanted and they said the shopkeeper. Willy asked them what claim they had to the shopkeeper and they said, "The oldest and the only." Eventually they left. 
Simmond the Kind and Jade slept in a dusty old bunk room, and discussed plans to buy and manage land for Jade's daughter who will soon be graduating agrarian college. Willy and the shopkeeper don't sleep, so they stared at a spider together for hours in the quiet. The shopkeeper can only remember two days in the past.
The next day, they all set off to pull a sword from a stone. After making everyone cry, Maliocus the bastard sword joined the party. He told them that although he'd been facing the wrong way to see much of anything, he was here when this town got annihilated. Something bad happened here. The post office, they find, is full of letters the shopkeeper sent every day. He forgot he sent a letter, sent another, repeat. 
They take the shopkeeper to an old abandoned laboratory that is labeled with Willy's last name. Willy doesn't know who his parents were, and seeing the last name cringes and hesitates to learn the truth. Simmond the Kind reads a lab notebook in the basement and learns that Willy's family members sacrificed themselves to keep the invading Ekenblim trapped in this town. A sacrifice that now no longer matters because, although they delayed it for a hundred years, the Ekenblim are everywhere now. Willy reminds the shopkeeper who he is, and says goodbye to his father and uncles as they ride into the eternal night.
Category:Episodes