Death Masks, by Mark Kung
Fiego | Bourdekin | Drips | Bryseis | Rhogar
Called back into service by the Chultan wizard, Wakanga, our heroes found themselves once again transported to that far southern country. Landing in the bustling metropolis of Port Nyanzaru the brilliant researcher, Bryseis, the sewer dwelling Drips, and the dashing young noble, Fiego, were met by the masked doctor, Bourdekin, and the primal dragonborn hunter, Rhogar.
Before getting down to business, Wakanga showed our heroes around the city and its attractions by taking them to the Red Market and the Dinosaur Races, where our heroes lost some gold in the entertainment. The Wizard then invited our heroes to dine with him at his estate. Prince Na and Princess Mwaxanare joined them for the evening and they feasted on spicy giant centipede, a dish that was new and pleasing to the Waterdhavians. Conversation was mostly light, centering around Wakanga’s research, but when Princess Mwaxanare and Bourdekin started to get heated about the role of the Mezro royalty in the protection of Chult, Fiego cut the tension with some music.
After dinner, Wakanga revealed the task for which he had requested their assistance. The masks that the heroes had previously ‘recovered’ from the palace of Ras N’si were his current object of study. When he donned one Wakanga found himself transported into the past! He discovered that he was in the ancient city of Mezro, once the center of Chultan civilization. He wasn’t in the past very long before he took a slight injury and was returned to the present time, bringing the injury with him. With the dangers clear to him, he turned to the trusty members of the Rolling Stone Trading Company to assist him with his experimentation. Wakanga asked that they don the masks and travel to the past not only to discover how the magic worked, but also to learn what they could from that ancient time.
Our heroes agreed, but both Rhogar and Fiego were puzzled as to the nature of traveling through time as they had never thought of time in that way before. Bryseis, ever the academic, tried to explain the concept to them, but to mixed results as Rhogar simply decided that time was yet another maze to be traversed with faith in his god, Ubtao, and Fiego shrugged and left the matter to the more learned.
Early the next morning, our heroes prepared themselves to journey into the past. Wakanga had prepared a room where they could don the masks in safety. Not sure if their animal companions would be transported with them, Bryseis spoke softly with her mouse familiars and Fiego patted his hounds, Rufus and Regina, affectionately.
With everything out of the way, our heroes donned the masks.
In that moment they found themselves in the middle of a plaza in a well appointed city, animal companions included, but maskless. The buildings were built of shining white stone and were trimmed in gold, the city looking clean and orderly, everything adorned with the sacred labyrinth symbol of Ubtao. Our heroes were seated by the fountain in the middle of the plaza, a tea service arranged with a cup for each of them, and as they took stock of their situation the citizens of the city started appearing around them, first as ghostly images, but soon solidifying into a bustling midday crowd. Everyone had the dark skin of Chultans and were dressed in their typical attire, if an ancient version of it, but seemed to take no notice of the strange dress of the foreigners in their midst.
Fiego queried a passerby of the news of the day was and the person was puzzled, “Why, Lord Mastodon, you and the other Five Winds just returned victorious from the war with Omu.”
With a few more surreptitious questions, he found out that everyone seemed to perceive the group as a heroic band called the Five Winds, as well as directions to a library that seemed to be a good source of further information. On their way there, the paladin Rhogar stopped into the Temple of Ubtao and enlisted the aid of a priest. Claiming to be suffering from amnesia, the group asked the priest to tell them who they were and he named them as the Five Winds, consisting of Lord Mastodon, Lord Sabertooth, Lord Triceratops, Lady Tyrannosaurus, and Lady Pterodactyl. They were heroes of Mezro who recently helped win a victory against the enemy city of Omu, capital of the half elven Esho people. They swore the priest of Ubtao to secrecy and decided that their next move would be to use their reputation as heroes to contact the King of Mezro, Osa.
When they entered the grand palace in the northwest quadrant of the city, our heroes were ushered into the throne room, a lavishly decorated with richly woven hanging drapes that gave an air of privacy and intimacy. Upon the throne was presumably King Osa and the handsome young man at his side was likely Prince Kwalu, figures from history that Wakanga had mentioned previously. With them were two others, an inhuman figure shrouded in robes and dripping water, whom Bryseis surmised was the fabled Queen of Rivers, and a small girl who seemed out of place.
Fiego, in his seeming of Lord Mastodon, greeted the King and graciously requested a more private audience for their report. This met with hissed objections from beneath the cowl of the Queen of Rivers, but the King eventually acquiesced and soon our heroes were alone with the King of ancient Mezro. With but a few words, the King impressed Fiego with his prescient knowledge and the bard decided to reveal the full truth, that they were not in fact the Five Winds, but were instead travelers from the future, a future in which Mezro no longer existed, destroyed in a mysterious cataclysm, but not before the Ras N’si, Osa’s brother, somehow eradicated the entirety of the Esho people. The king grew somber at this news, but did not seem surprised, as he had long foreseen a darkness looming over his kingdom. He informed them that there was currently a tenuous peace between Mezro and Omu, but that there were many who would see a return to war, chief among those was a faction among the Esho people of Omu called The Lidless Eye. King Osa suggested that our heroes go to Omu and find out if The Lidless Eye was fomenting war as well as seek knowledge from the Esho about their magics, since the masks were of Esho make, and perhaps find a way home. He would take care of his brother the Ras. As they finished their conversation, a horrible crackling sound heralded the appearance of a colossal eye appearing in the sky above the whole of Mezro. King Osa commanded they make all haste to Omu, that they might find a way to reverse the doom of Mezro.
And so our heroes left ancient Mezro mounted on hadrosaurs, through the jungle road south toward Omu. As Mezro fell behind them, they witnessed red lightning falling from the gigantic evil eye and raking the city of Mezro. They could do little but spur their mounts on faster, hoping to learn something, anything useful in Omu.
On the first night of their journey, they were awakened by a titanic roar in the nearby jungle. The strobing light of the ever present thunderstorm revealed the massive form of a hunting Tyrannosaurus. That was all the warning our heroes got before the beast lunged to attack. Luckily, in preparing the campsite Drips had drawn on his druidic power to blanket the area in overgrown plants and the carnivore had to fight its way through them, slowing its attack enough for our heroes to find their footing. Bryseis opened fire upon the Tyrannosaur with a fireball, flames momentarily brightening the darkened jungle. Fiego leapt eagerly to his feet with his rapier drawn and his excitement for the hunt sharp, Rufus and Regina snarling at his side. Rhogar, grim from the memories of losing his family to the teeth of one such beast, charged to the fore and shouted for his companions to escape on the hadrosaurs. Bourdekin cast protective spells upon the group and, muttering about insane dragonborn with a death wish, retreated toward their spooked mounts. Drips, in a moment of insight, summoned an entire herd of hadrosaurs between the camp and the massive beast to act as defense, offense, and possible food bribe.
Fiego leapt lightly from back to back of the newly summoned herbivores in an attempt to surmount the Tyrannosaur, while Rhogar approached on foot to stab at the beast with his spear, but after it slew one summoned hadrosaur it dragged it off to consume, satisfied. Bryseis and Fiego were eager to hunt a strange new beast, but the other three were more practical and decided to move on before the thing came back. The King of Dinosaurs was surprised an hour later when the summoned hadrosaur flesh it had eaten disappeared back to the Feywild.
Finishing the rest of their journey with no further incidents, our heroes came upon the city of Omu, situated in what seemed to be a crater or perhaps the caldera of an old volcano. They would have to scale down hundreds of feet of sheer cliff face in order to enter, but luckily they were greeted by city guards and taken down the steep switchback trails into Omu proper. There they were greeted by a half elven woman in elegant robes, who introduced herself as Regent Potentate Ololzu, one of the dual rulers of Omu.
When they revealed the presence of a plot to reignite the war between Omu and Mezro, the Regent knew exactly who would have the means and motive to do such a thing. She explained that Omu was traditionally ruled by a pair of rulers and that the other Regent, Mehi Pahano, was behind it and led our heroes to him.
They found him in a sacred shrine to the lost Twin Kings of Omu, praying before the Throne Shrine that held the bones of the last Twin Kings, a skeleton of twins conjoined at the hips and sharing a lower body. When confronted by our heroes and his Twin Regent, Mehi Pahano shouted that Omu would never be enslaved by Mezro, then uttered a blasphemous spell to animate the skeleton of the Twin Kings, which drew four swords and rose to attack. Bryseis noticed that Mehi Pahano was carrying a bag of scrolls and shouted for the group to grab them in case they held the secret to reversing the summoning of the Great Lidless Eye. Battle was then joined.
Rhogar, Fiego, and Rufus and Regina all rushed up to engage the sorcerous Regent and his skeletal servitor. Bourdekin unleashed radiant holy energy against the undead abomination. Drips spun up a magical web to entrap them and Ulolzu threw a blast of lightning at her twin and the blasphemous skeleton, but Rufus was caught in the blast and died instantly. Fiego screamed in despair and rage. Rhogar’s divinely inspired strike against the skeleton caused the ground to sprout thorny, entangling vines. Mehi Pahano then unleashed a scream that stunned both Rhogar and Drips, causing both of their restraining spells to disappear. He began to retreat, but Drips again caused the plant life to grow unnaturally fast, cutting off any easy exit, while Fiego chased him down and slashed the bag of scrolls form him. Ulolzu ran up to claim the scrolls and Fiego seriously considered attacking her for killing his dog. She had only begun to peruse the scrolls when everyone’s attention was drawn to the sky, where a giant lidless eye appeared and intoned in a booming voice that it had failed in the mission it had been summoned for and now the summoners would pay the price. Inky black tentacles sprouted from the ground and snuffed the life out of everyone and everything in Omu, including our heroes ….
… who awoke to find themselves once again in the central plaza in Mezro, the city empty save for the figure of King Osa. After a moment to catch their breaths, Osa explained to them that what they just witnessed was a recording of the last moments of Omu, stored in the masks by the real King Osa. The group questioned the vision, but it had limited information, being only a psychic recording left there by the King. It then released them to the waking world.
Gasping and actually awake this time, our heroes, including a very much alive Rufus, had much to tell Wakanga, including the last known whereabouts of scrolls that could hold the information to seal away the Lidless Eye that threatened present day Chult.
