Tomb of Annihilation - Session 31
General Summary
A full moon—Elru, the black moon—is still visible through scattered clouds as the next day dawns. A light wind blows onto the beach from Shilku Bay to the south.
The templars and crew of the Masked Fortune return to the ship until only a single rowboat remains on shore. Mokomoko bids the adventurers a final farewell, shaking each of their hands in turn, thanking them for what they have done for him and his brother, and telling Chibuzo that he plans to join Gero's expedition to Mbala. "We will see each other again," Chibuzo tells him. Nera Blacktyde also offers her thanks, promising to make a full report to High Templar Whitehill and swearing that the templars shall return. Yoral tells Dunch that he appreciates the trust the captain has shown him, and vows to return the Masked Fortune to its rightful owner.
After watching the ship raise anchor, Chibuzo, Dolan, Dunch, Ixtli, and Yollotl turn and head north through the jungle. There is no path to speak of, and the adventurers are forced to hack vines and undergrowth out of their way, but the insects are thankfully less prevalent than in the swamps of the Aldani Basin. After half a day, they start travelling uphill, towards the mountain ridge they will need to cross to enter the Valley of Lost Honour. As during their journey to Tal'Mayu, Dunch invokes the power of the elk spirit to guide the group at a fast pace.
In the morning of the second day of their journey, Dunch estimates that they are getting close to the ridge, where a dragon's lair is said to be located. Ixtli climbs a tree to scout the area. He sees the terrain ahead climb towards the ridgetop in the distance, and is trying to gauge the travel time—one or two hours, perhaps—when a shadow passes overhead. Above him a red dragon hovers high in the sky, turning slowly as it surveys its domain. Ixtli hugs the tree and remains motionless. Two or three minutes pass. Intuiting that Ixtli has spotted some danger, the other adventurers seek cover, but Dunch's armour sends a loud clanking sound through the jungle, punctuated by the snapping sound of a tree branch when Chibuzo sets a foot wrong. Ixtli quickly abandons his perch and drops 50 feet to the ground to join the others, where Chibuzo casts the spell Pass Without Trace. Darkness and silence surround the party, and they slowly move away under the canopy. The dragon swoops down to circle overhead for a time, but eventually it flies away eastwards, and they reach the top of the ridge without incident.
From this vantage point, they can see that the land drops to a lava field that stretches the length of the valley from east to west. After Chibuzo casts his spell again, they start their descent. There is no sign of the dragon, but the temperatures rise as they lose elevation. After a few hours, they look for a concealed spot to rest for the night, but the only place they find has some steam vents nearby. Pressing onwards, they travel past nightfall but finally give up, and camp on the next relatively flat space they can find.
The next day is cloudless and hot. They notice more flowering plants and vines here than in the Aldani Basin or the jungles to the north. Ixtli keeps an eye out for yuan-ti tracks but sees none, and they speculate that the yuan-ti who attacked Camp Forbearance travelled via the tree near Shilku that Sisava mentioned.
On the fourth day of their journey, after about six hours of marching, they hear the sound of a geyser in the distance. Investigating, they come upon a true paradise: a clearing filled with various flowering plants, where animals drink from mineral pools surrounding a fissure from which a geyser erupts every half hour. Floating in some of the turquoise pools are strange flowers that radiate magic: bright lilies enclosed in bubbles.
Chibuzo casts the spell Speak With Animals to converse with a camposaurus, interrupting it as it stalks a toucan. The dinosaur tells him that the strange flowers are "bubble lilies" that only grow here, and that the pools are watched over by the chwingas, "tiny human-like things that spend time in the pools." It's surprised that the chwingas aren't present; maybe the adventurers startled them? By the time their conversation ends, the toucan has flown away; Chibuzo offers the disappointed creature a piece of salt pork, which it consumes with relish. He relates the conversation to the others. Dolan has heard of the chwingas: shy, mostly harmless minor elementals, about six inches tall, wearing masks covered with abstract designs and symbols.
The adventurers decide to set up camp for the night, trying not to disturb the environment too much. As an offering to the chwingas, Dolan uses Acid Splash to carve some arcane symbols into a stone, but the elementals don't show themselves. Yollotl is fascinated by the variety of flowers, and wanders through the glade with Ixtli examining and smelling them. When a pair of camposaurs try to get into Ixtli's pack, Chibuzo shoos them away, finds some rope, and slings their gear over a branch to protect it. Chibuzo and Dunch gather some fresh fruit; when Dunch finds some ripe monkey fruit, he offers one to Yollotl, explaining the fruit's hallucinogenic effects. Yollotl thinks for a moment, then hands it back: "I spent most of my existence not being in control of what I could see or hear. I don't wish to return to that state."
The glade is a very relaxing place. As the sun sets, Dunch brings out the elven mead that they took from the Dragonfang, though it turns out to be not to his taste. Chibuzo finds it delightful. It gives Yollotl a case of the hiccups.
The otherwise quiet night is interrupted when Yollotl suddenly bolts upright, grabbing his chest and hyperventilating. He wakes Ixtli, telling him that "he was in my head. I heard him—the Elsecaller." This is the first time that Yollotl has heard Glyh'rul directly; before Yollotl was changed by the grace of Bahamut, he could only sense its presence when the aboleth spoke to Ixtli. Glyh'rul knows that the party is getting close to Omu, Yollotl relates, and said that if the party still plans on stopping the Soulmonger, they will need to find Nayarak's apprentice and his companions, who are trying to open the Tomb of the Nine Gods where the Soulmonger resides. The Aldani are somewhere in Omu, being hunted by the yuan-ti. Glyh'rul's last message, Yollotl says, was that though the two of them have rejected Gol-goroth, their bond to the heart of the void will not be broken so easily.
Neither of them are able to fall back asleep, and spend the rest of the night meditating by the pools of the glade.
When the next morning dawns, Yollotl relates his experience to the others. They conclude that Nayarak's "apprentice" must be Caprakan, Koya's son, who was dispatched to Omu with a group of warriors from Tal'mayu as an advance party. This was supposedly to free a captive loa from beneath the city, Taloc, Master of the Hidden Waters, though Ixtli believes this is just another name for Glyh'rul. Kurat told them to send Caprakan and the other Aldani back to Tal'mayu.
The other adventurers receive this news with equanimity. Dunch concludes that it doesn't change their mission: the destruction of the Soulmonger.
Leaving the glade behind, they head further east. Little of interest happens over the next three days. Dunch has bound Waka's totem to his arm, and feels its pull towards Omu strengthen as they near the city.
When the eighth day dawns since they left the ruins of Camp Forbearance, they estimate they must be within 10 miles of the city, and decide to circle through the jungle so as to approach from the north side of the city. After an hour, they come upon a gap in the trees: some 25 feet wide north to south, but stretching east and west out of sight, as if a pathway had been carved through the jungle at some point. Examining the terrain more closely, Chibuzo confirms that just under the soil and plant growth are the remnants of a road.
They find no evidence that the corridor has been traversed recently. Looking in the direction of Omu, they spot something unusual, and Dunch zooms in with the crystal lenses of Nyemba's Might. It proves to be a human skull set atop a post in the middle of the path. A blue triangle has been carved in its forehead, and green flames flicker in its eyes.
The party resumes its trip through the jungle. After a couple of hours, the trees start to thin out, and Chibuzo casts Pass Without Trace again. Shrouded in darkness and silence, they approach the edge of the cliff, and look down on the ruins of Omu, its stone buildings overgrown with vegetation. The raised stone causeways that stretch across the city seem deserted. In addition to the faint sound of the waterfall that plummets down the cliff a few hundred yards to their left, they hear a load, eerily familiar roar from the ruined amphitheatre below. After a moment they realize what it reminds them of: the roar of Iskawari.
Fifty feet to their right at the top of the cliff, Ixtli spots something: the stone figure of a winged gargoyle, covered in vines and moss, with a devil's face and a mouth agape in a silent scream. Looking beyond it and to their left, they spot more of the gargoyles, spaced out every hundred or two hundred feet, ringing the city.
The time is just after high sun. They decide to make their way further east before attempting to descend into the city, and head a short distance into the jungle for cover.
Suddenly a flock of birds rises out of the trees and into the sky, some seventy feet ahead of them. "Something startled them," Chibuzo says, "and it wasn't us." They advance cautiously until they hear sibilant voices. A troop of fifteen yuan-ti come into view through the jungle: three of them are snake-headed, two of them have serpentine lower bodies, and the remainder are "purebloods": humanoid save for a forked tongue, scales, or some other hint of their true nature. Chibuzo hears one call out in words something like Old Marakuran: "There's something ahead in the bushes!"
The battle is joined. Ixtli dashes forward on the left, closing to melee range with a group of humanoid yuan-ti. A raging Dunch charges the centre, striking two devastating blows on a snake-headed yuan-ti, followed by Yollotl. Chibuzo flanks to the right, firing the Circlet of Blasting, as Dolan summons a Wall of Fire across the battlefield that burns three of the yuan-ti. But their enemies outnumber them three to one, and swarm around Dunch and Ixtli, stabbing and slashing with their scimitars. A serpentine yuan-ti fires a poisoned arrow into Dolan; the sorcerer loses his concentration on his spell, and the magical flames disperse.
Surrounded by foes, Ixtli crushes the yellow gem his companions looted from the captain of the guard at Fort Tajar some six weeks ago, summoning an earth elemental to his aid. As their foes rain blows upon them, Dunch finishes a snake-headed yuan-ti, while Chibuzo kills another with a violent stab and a bolt of lightning from Atsu's Lance. The host of enemy archers continue to snipe at them, striking Dolan again.
The battle intensifies as Ixtli and the elemental each dispatch one of the humanoid yuan-ti. Dunch's maul slays another, while Yollotl summons Bahamut's Fury, incinerating a yuan-ti with his fists of flame. But Dolan is struck by another poisoned arrow and collapses, unconscious and dying.
Seeing one of their number fall, the remaining adventurers intensify their attacks. One yuan-ti after another falls to the Blood Spear, the Maul of Disruption, and Atsu's Lance. An arc of lightning from Nyemba's Might kills the last snake-headed enemy, while a blow from the earth elemental kills a serpentine yuan-ti.
By now the jungle floor is littered with yuan-ti corpses, and only four foes remain. Chibuzo moves to aid the unconscious Dolan, taking a poisoned arrow in the process, while Dunch engages two of the enemy archers and is shot in turn. When one of the bowmen targets Ixtli, the monk catches the arrow and hurls it back, striking his foe. He and Yollotl battle the remaining serpentine yuan-ti until Ixtli finishes it with the Blood Spear.
Chibuzo reaches Dolan, casting a healing spell, and the sorcerer quickly finds cover. After Yollotl kills an archer, the surviving pair retreat from Dunch's wrath, firing arrows as they go and scoring a last hit on Chibuzo. In answer the ranger hurls Atsu's Lance with such force that it blows his target off its feet. When the yuan-ti falls dead to the jungle floor, and the last archer turns to flee, Dolan cuts him down with a volley of magic missiles, and peace returns to the jungle.