The Saviours of Salvation return victorious from their latest mission, along with the surviving Grey Dogs, eager to unwind and relax in an actual civilization for once. They have about a half day off before needing to turn in for the night. Glayder spends her time getting to better know Arishtava, a kalashtar researcher she'd met a while back as a vague acquaintance, and quickly relaxes more than any of the others have ever seen her. Isabelle gets to work reparing Argan the fire-dog, Elloven and Khetari attempt to adjust to their aberrant marks, and Jinx works late at the clinic as usual.
The next morning, they're woken up by a sudden crash and a mechanised roar. Gathering outside the tavern, the party notices an enormous iron behemoth lumbering in from the scrapyard: someone had awakened Big Moe and turned it against Salvation. A small contingent of undead soldiers in Cyran garb shambles towards the tavern, and the Oracle of War suddenly shudders, belches purple smoke, and begins speaking more prophetic nonsense again: "All true heroes feel the breath of their enemies".
The group struggles more with these zombies than the previous hordes, made worse by the fact that they seem resistant to Jinx's attempt at turning them. Over the course of the battle, Isabelle introduces the squad to the second of her strange animal companions: an air elemental pig hybrid named Riar, who's able to provide a wind shield to buffer everyone against damage, but this only serves to draw out the fight. Still, they hold off the horde for long enough to allow a relief force -- consisting of Ari, the Grey Dogs, and a few other scavengers -- to step in and finish them off with a few radiant fireballs. Elloven recovers a faded battle standard from one of them.
Meanwhile, Big Moe continues to ominously lumber towards Salvation. The brokers call the surviving scavengers together, and Belaluur and Zodor Tarev help split everyone off into groups to launch a coordinated attack on the colossus. Notably, Irullan Karnach is nowhere to be seen. The party first decides to infiltrate Big Moe's chest, and with the help of a few goblins, gets onto an iron platform to launch themselves up to a hatch in the machine. Everyone lands safely, somehow, and Isabelle is able to unlock the way into the colossus.
Inside the chest, gravity seems to work differently, and the side the party entered through appears to function as the floor. A fire elemental is bound at the room's centre, held in place by ropes of pure shadow with eerie patches of darkness all along the corners. As they approach the elemental, a few darklings flit out of the dimly lit patches to attack. The group attempts to dodge attacks from the fey while working to cut the ropes, and thanks to Riar's shield, doesn't get too hurt. Khetari seems to absorb some of the shadow energy into her mark, but the elemental is set free, and zooms on out of the colossus, shutting down its main power source. As they try to escape, Jinx almost falls out of the hatch, but Elloven's mark creates draconic wings to slow everybody's descent.
After a small break to heal up, the group makes their way to the colossus's right leg for the next part of their attack. They time their entrances to coincide with Big Moe's foot stomping onto the body of a dead scavenger to suck it upwards and animate. Inside, the leg is brightly lit by a sickly green orb in the ceiling, and a group of hobgoblins stands around a conveyor wheel, mounting the sucked-up dead bodies onto it to be animated as zombies. Elloven gets up close to them, to the point where he can feel their breath on his face. This appears to fulfill some kind of prophecy, as the Oracle speaks again, telling the group about a way to jam the conveyor wheel.
Once again, with Riar's help the group is able to defend themselves against attacks easily. One hobgoblin, however, proves more resilient and stronger than his companions, to the point where Elloven finds himself genuinely impressed. He goes out of his way to spare the mercenary, and implores the group to do the same. After following the Oracle's advice and jamming the wheel, no more zombies are created, and they hop out of the leg to take a short rest and recover.
Their final task is to disable Big Moe's regenerating, undead brain. The colossus has been spotted opening its mouth for brief moments, so the group is loaded onto a catapult, which Isabelle times precisely to allow everyone to enter. Jinx and Glayder nearly fumble the landing, but are ultimately fine. Inside, they are met with a gruesome sight: a writhing, pulsating orb of greyish flesh embedded into the ceiling, with wires running from it and into the head of a tall woman in bone plate armour with the Emerald Claw insignia. A group of soldiers -- both alive and undead -- emerges from the shadows at her command.
The smaller reinforcements prove to barely be a challenge, but the champion is unusually difficult to take out thanks to her armour, and her attacks severely wound Glayder, who is unable to retaliate. To the confusion of all parties present, she shoots the literal terrorist a wink and calls her hot after a particularly brutal attack. Thankfully, said terrorist is too busy murdering her to hear this. Still, she goes out of her way to keep the champion alive for long enough to allow Jinx to get the implant out of her head. Meanwhile, the rest of the group figures out how to destroy the brain, which seems to adapt to the various kinds of damage they use against it, until the wires are removed from the champion's head.
Once the brain is destroyed, the group decides they are having none of this, and escape the remaining zombies by diving out of the hatch and allowing Elloven't mark to save them. Their efforts seem to have been successful, as the colossus shudders to a halt and stops in its tracks, collapsing into a pile of flaming wreckage and eliciting sighs and cheers of relief from the surviving townsfolk. Amidst the wreck, though, two figures begin to stir: a hobgoblin and a human, both spared by the party.
The hobgoblin has a friendly chat with Elloven, and introduces himself as Tarric. He voices his complaints about the Emerald Claw, saying he'd only signed on because the pay was good, and decides to break from the organisation as a salvage broker instead -- though he seems very confused as to why Elloven spared him of all people, insisting he's just some nobody. The human, Alexis Vordenberg, is helped to the hospital by Glayder and Isabelle. She is far more fearful of the others, and appears convinced that she should be dead for her crimes, but Glayder essentially forces her into a redemption arc. Thankfully, she doesn't recognise this as the same Lieutenant Vordenberg who saved her from the Mourning way back when, and the Karrn's memories are too fragmented to recall the Cyran she almost killed.
Everyone heads over to the field hospital, where the new cleric prodigy on duty, Whist, immediately gets to fixing up their wounds. Thanks to the medics' hard work, everyone -- including Tarric and Alexis -- is in walking condition by the next morning.