Wandering Nisus

Whilst on watch, Nisus is left alone. Croak wakes up in the morning and notices that there are only four other people asleep. Croak and Bjorn should have been on second watch. But Nisus is not there. Croak wakes us up ‘oh no oh no you’ve got a sleep walker’.   I tell Croak, he recalls he has seen a waterfall in his visions before. There’s also a temple there.   Yesne casts sending. ‘Nisus, where on earth are you. Please stop walking. PLEASE. Love you’   Nisus just screams back   We go through the door and see a tunnel below us. In the tunnel is a winch system which Bjorn lowers Yesne from.   Yesne sees some sort of arcanists room, it’s all smashed and broken. In the centre of the room is a stone arch (upside down as we are stood on the, and in it is a shimmering and oscillating blue energy portal. Blocking the light, are shadows which are life and Nisus is standing by the portal.   Yesne recognises them as undead, something similar to a wraith.   Kailyn makes his way down up and enters the room, followed by Croak and Fang.   After disposing of the big baddies, Croak manages to heal the fallen Bjorn. Living shadows drain strength and life force. Unk knows it comes back through natural means if they rest.   Croak throws a piece of wood through the ceiling of the tower, he hears nothing back….. They are pulled back up to the floor below as the ground begins to crumble away.   As we are looking around we see a winch system leading to the portal – it’s of grung design (could it have been Croak?).   Yesne is winched up with her book, she knows it is a two way portal, specific to the native plane. It is not a plane jumping portal. And only takes you to one place. She also knows it is locked.   Kailyn floats up to have a look at the portal and sees a carving on the floor. She works out that in order to get through they have to throw ‘rot’. She tests this theory with some skin from Kailyn, it works and so Kailyn floats through and Yesne quickly jumps after him. The rest of the party follow suit.   When we pass through, we are disorientated. We find ourselves in a cavern. It is on a slope, 30 degrees or so. Behind, where the portal is, there is carved stone and then some sort of internal cave in has clearly happened and made the room smaller than it was. Around 80ft ahead of us, we can see there is a crack in the stone and through it we can see daylight. In between us and the crack is a creature. It is huge in size. It sits on it’s side, unmoving, tentacles lolling and looking rotten. It’s eyes are milky and glazed over. It is sitting in a pile of mucus. All around the floor are signs of dead algae and aquatic plants.   Kailyn hovers over to the creature, removes his eyeball from Bjorns backpack and drops it in the goo. It does nothing. Kailyn scoops some up into a vial. Some of it gets on him and he feels a tingling feeling like a shape changing thing.   There is another carving on the floor identical to the one on the other side. Yesne also sees more metallic gouges on the floor.   Croak begins to lay rocks in the goo to make a path towards the crack. Whilst he does this he notices piton marks in the ground – they’ve sat on Vorn to pull themselves through the goo.   Croak makes his way to the crack on the stepping stones, he peeks his head out and sees a jungle, he can hear a waterfall. He sticks his head and sees a waterfall, leading down to a large basin. At the bottom is a form of plantation. There is a structure in the base of this that he can see.   On inspection, Fang realises this creature, anatomically, shouldn’t work on this planet – or plane!   Yesne knows this is an Abolyth. Before the coming of the gods, they lurked in primordial oceans and lakes. They had mind seizing control powers. Their dominance made them almost god like. The true gods appeared, smashed the Abolyths down and released their slaves. If it was alive it would be a vile threat. Their mucus if touched, transforms those who touch it to only breathe in water. They have telepathic abilities, can control people, even powerful minds. They are incredibly paranoid, evil and arrogant.   After much debate, the party figures out on the map where it is we are and we start heading down the waterfall. As we do, Croak starts to disappear. Kailyn asks how his people know ‘friends’… through showing strength and power.   We make it down the cliff face, through the forest to the structure. It turns in to swamp land, is very boggy. As we approach we see a naturally grown and cultivated wall of plants and foliage. Behind this, a massive wall covered in thorns and horrible looking plants. It is a substantial wall. Inside a large structure / statue. It looks like some elements are made of stone and some straw and clay. Kailyn can see it was a stone statue that has been moulded or added too to look like a giant grinning grung sat squat like. Protruding from the grungs back, are snakes. It is a temple that you can go inside. It is an old temple to Shagambi which has been converted to Nang Nang. Directly ahead of us there is an opening to the wall.   Yesne goes to ask Nisus how he feels, just as she turns she sees that Nisus has jumped off the ledge and splashed into the water. Bjorn jumps after him, whilst in the water as he reaches Nisus something nips at the back of his leg, then a bite. Fang dives into the water behind Bjorn before realising there is something dangerous in there. She manages to swim to the shoreline. Yesne and Kailyn clamber down the cliff. Although we try to fight the undead the numbers are too vast so the party makes a somewhat shambolic retreat in the direction of the temple (around 500m away). With Nisus’ help, he and Yesne are at super speed and make hast towards the temple. Around 2 thirds of the way to the temple we come to see a very formal looking hedge in the distance, this is nothing like what we have seen in Chult before. The hedge is around 20ft high and is curving around at about 300ft wide.   Kailyn notices that there is a path, relatively new but broken by something heavy (possibly the autonotom).   Kailyn is a way behind us so in order to find the party casts message and repeatedly calls for Yesne, Fang shouts for Kailyn, Kailyn hears but so does a dinosaur in the distance. A few minutes pass until Kailyn meets both Fang and Bjorn.   After a few seconds of immobility, Yesne and Nisus realise they are back to their normal speed. The party collects one another just short of the hedge.   Upon inspection Fang sees a cut archway in the hedge.   Fang finds some reasonably comfortable ground to sleep on for the evening and the party makes camp. Whilst setting up camp, Kailyn catches a sudden movement from the corner of his eye, a green skinned grung, it slipped forward and quickly scrambled off into the canopy. Kailyn casts to Fang that there are grungs in the tree where Fang has chosen to sleep. Fang removes herself from the trees and retreats to the dome. Upon closer inspection, Kailyn spots five green grungs and one orange grung.   Grungs are slightly sadistic, leaning towards the evil side of things, but they aren’t all evil. Not necessarily the most intelligent. They have a very strong cast system where whatever colour you are is what you become. In any tribe there is a gold grung, who would be the leader. If a leader is overtaken then the pigment of the skin would change. The rest of the society doesn’t. Red – spell casters as they are shamans, they are quite bureaucratic as a race. The lowest are the greens, hunters as it were.   The orange grung seems to signal and one of the green grungs starts to creep forwards, it is within 40ft of the dome. Kailyn rolls out a ball bearing – if it is touched it will utter the words ‘if you let go of this you will die’. It goes about 15ft out of the dome. The grung pauses and sinks to the floor, it make it very difficult to spot them. After a while, it begins to move towards the ball bearing and holds it. The grung acts defensive, licks the ball and throws it away. Bjorn deduces it doesn’t speak common. Kailyn throws another ball bearing at the grung which makes a dinosaur roar sound. The grung flattens itself and we see the other green grungs get agitated. The grung throws its spear at the dome, which just bounces off it. The green ones all disappear. But the orange one appears to be more obvious.   Kailyn leaves the dome at the opposite side and casts message ‘we aren’t worth investigating, enjoy the evening, leave us be’. ‘King Groak will want to see you yesssss, are you tough enough. We find out’. The grung drops from the branch and retreats to the foliage.