Good Lord, my weekly game/playtest has melted down into some misshapen slag heap that pretty nearly demands a complete new beginning. The summary:
The game has been on a break for about 8 months; one of my players ran a d20 Modern campaign so I can recharge and actually play a character again. We restart my campaign, and it was my understanding that the PCs will continue on the main thread. Instead, PCs storm what is clearly the final encounter of a good-sized side trek which they were going to leave unfinished. I had warned them repeatedly for months that this encounter was a potential party-wipe situation. Fools rush in and all that. What transpired wasn't a party-wipe. It was much worse.