Oh man.
So, I read the entry into how the Tax Riot was supposed to work. And was immediately confused: the mob doesn't have any way to attack other than to move into someone's space, which I get - it's a swarm. But later on in the text, it talks about how the eight rioters surrounding Skylar take a club to him...
But, there's no listing for rioters, on an individual basis, there's just the riot, a mob of humans. Which doesn't attack that way. Huh? I re-read, and eventually just made up my mind that the mob itself was going to meander around and cause havoc for the PCs, who were trying to help both Maavu (saving him from the Breathdrinker), and Skylar (who I surrounded with low-level thug types), but as it is written in the hardcover, did anyone make sense of how things are supposed to be?
Because if Skylar is surrounded by the rioters, then he'd really be taking 5d6 damage, no avoiding it; or, if they're just all the way around him, without occupying his space, then he's not taking damage at all, because a mob has no reach/ability to damage adjacent squares?
Long story short, my group managed to actually take down the Breathdrinker with little to no trouble, and the rather astute players decided that the place to be in a demonstration was the roofs (druid shapechanged into a bird, the diviner/thief used her slippers of spider climbing, the rogue just climbed and jumped his way there) The Cleric stayed close to Maavu, and the Fighter was in the crowd, but both survived, with aid from the characters above, and the druid, who dismissed the reduce animal on his dire wolf (that's how he keeps her with him while inside the city), then followed up with an enlarge animal - no movement penalties for that dire wolf.
It was a good scene - they all decided to use nonlethal damage and/or spells that didn't do damage to pacify the mob, rather than killing it. They dispersed it mostly by inflicing negative levels by taking down individuals in the mob. It didn't last long.
The text is a hold over from the original magazine. Something that wasn't fully converted when the HC was made. Riots and herds are a new template didn't exist when the magazines were first released.
The way I played it is that the mob just swarmed over Skylar and the guards, quickly and effectively grappling them. After that they did automatic damage each round on their turn. The PC's routed the mob by using scare tactics: fireballs over their heads and evards black tentacles to occupy the mob. Although it was pretty effective, it didn't do their reputation much good.
b.t.w. casting spells while in the mob is almost a certain way to get swarmed, as my pc's soon learned. }:-)