Tomb of Annihilation - Session 34
General Summary
As Ixtli emerges from I'jin's shrine with the cube, the adventurers hear a mighty roar from somewhere to the north echoing off the building walls. Ignoring the menacing sound, they set out northwards towards Wongo's shrine. Although they try to keep quiet, at one point Dolan's cloak catches on a loose board on the side of a building, and part of the wall collapses with a loud clatter. But there is no sign of any threat.
Their route passes through a large building with a long central hall, now open to the sky but in the past seemingly covered by a fabric overhang. Tatters of red cloth still hang from the arches that span the gap overhead. The interior is overgrown with vegetation, but seems once to have been divided into many market stands and stalls, reminding Chibuzo of the Grand Souk in Port Nyanzaru.
They split up to explore the building, finding nothing of use or value. But when Yollotl pokes his head into a storage room, he is suddenly overcome with a coughing fit. "There's some kind of weird blue mist in this room," he reports as he backs away, still coughing. Holding his breath, Ixtli takes a look, and sees a thin blue mist along the floor.
Wielding the Sceptre of the Honored Voice, Dolan learns that Yollotl has been infected with Mad Monkey Fever, which causes uncontrollable tremors and tics at first but ends in madness. He cures the lizardman with a scroll of Lesser Restoration.
They leave the market hall through a doorway on the far side from where they entered, passing through a cluster of palm trees beyond which are the obelisks bracketing the entrance to Wongo's shrine. From within the compound's walls, they hear hushed voices that seem to be speaking Aldani. Then the voices suddenly stop.
"Caprakan?", Yollotl calls out in draconic. "We come in peace."
After a moment, a voice responds: "How do you know that name?"
"We come from Tal'mayu," Yollotl answers, "where we spoke to Koya."
After a moment, three Aldani come out of the gate. Two are large and muscular males in mottled green and dark brown, carrying spears and shields edged with dinosaur teeth. The third is a female with black scales, wearing a necklace of feathers. She asks why the party has come to this place, but expresses doubt at Yollotl's explanation that they have come to end the Death Curse. Nonetheless she tells them to come inside the walls before the snakemen see them. "Don't mind the noises," she says.
The obelisks at the shrine entrance are carved with monkeys hanging from their tails. As they pass between the pillars, each of them hears internally the sound of monkeys screeching. When Dolan first hears the sound, he backs away with a start before forcing himself to enter. Inside the walls are a courtyard and a stone building, where five archways open into the shrine's interior. Carved above the centre arch is an inscription in Old Marakuran: "Better to be Wongo's friend than his enemy."
A fourth Aldani is also waiting inside the walls, another female with blood-red scales and a blowgun. She lowers her weapon while they converse. The black-scaled female introduces herself as Anku, a shaman from Tal'mayu who followed Caprakan to this place with the others. Caprakan himself, she says, is resting. He spends much of his time conversing with the spirit they came here to find.
"Taloc," Ixtli says grimly.
"You know of him?" Anku asks.
He is no benevolent spirit, Ixtli responds. The adventurers describe Nayarak's betrayal of the village, and his attempt to kill Kurat. Anku listens closely. Before they left Tal'mayu on their mission to free Taloc, she says, Nayarak gave Caprakan a pendant of black stone that he wears constantly. Since then he has changed, becoming angry and aggressive, but claiming that the pendant lets him speak to the Master of the Hidden Waters. Some of the Aldani believe him, others do not. In order to enter the Tomb and free Taloc, Caprakan commanded them to find the puzzle cubes, and their group has already secured one of them.
The party explains that they too are searching for the cubes—but for the purpose of ending the Death Curse. They describe its strengthening effects, and their understanding of its causes. Anku seems persuaded by their words, and offers to take them back to the Aldani camp after obtaining the cube from this shrine.
The adventurers examine the five archways leading into the shrine. Other than the central arch, each one has a portcullis raised overhead. Taking the middle path, Chibuzo finds himself in a large central room dominated by a statue in the middle: a ten foot tall, evil-looking monkey balancing on its tail, with cupped hands and feet splayed outwards. At the base of the statue is another inscription: "Wongo's friend knows where to pour the water." On the back wall, a sculpted relief shows a monkey-like creature tearing into a giant snake with its teeth and claws: Wongo in battle with Moa.
Four carved stone masks protrude from the walls of the central chamber: on the left wall, a lion; on the right, a vulture; on the back wall at left, a boar; and on the back wall at right, a zebra. Exploring the other archways, the adventurers determine that the corridors through each of them lead to one of the masks.
Above each mask is an inscription. The inscription at the boar mask tells them, "the vulture is lucky to be alive"; the zebra mask says, "my only friend starved to death"; the lion mask, "I ate one of the boar's friends", and the vulture mask, "one of the others has no friends." Each of the mask has eyeholes that look into the central room.
They conclude that the vulture is Wongo's friend, and Ixtli looks through the eyes of the vulture mask. He sees a ray of blue light falling on the statue's left hand.
Dunch hoists himself up on the statue to reach, and pours some water into the cupped hand. A stone cube appears on the top of the statue's head, and Dunch hears a voice in his own skull: "Take the prize and curse your friends. Or fight my children to claim it."
The others see him pause after pouring the water, then declare aloud, "I will not curse my friends." He drops to the ground and draws his maul as four monkey-like creatures with glowing red eyes appear, clinging to the statue.
The su-monsters screech and their red eyes glow; the adventurers feel intense pain but manage to resist the psychic attack. Ixtli kills one of them with the Blood Spear and his jaws, while Yollotl and Dunch attack with fist and maul. Chibuzo leaps up and grabs one of the statue's arms, then kicks one of the su-monsters in the chest. But when he attempts a second kick, he loses his grip and crashes into the wall of the shrine, falling prone. Angered, he climbs back to his feet, jumps, grabs the monster by the torso, and pile-drives it into the ground. Finally Dolan finishes one with a firebolt in the face, and another with a magic missile, while Ixtli kills the one still being held by Chibuzo by kicking its head clean off.
In the aftermath, Dunch climbs back up the statue and seizes the cube. As he stashes it in his Bag of Holding with the others, they hear a quick burst of whistles from outside. To Ixtli, they sound urgent, like a warning.
They turn to exit the shrine, but as they start to pass down the central corridor, Dolan sees five yuan-ti at the entrance to the shrine compound. Two are snake-headed, two have snake hands, and one is snake-bodied. None of them look familiar, and they bear blue triangle tattoos. Spotting the adventurers immediately, the snake-bodied one yells to the others, and they move forward to attack.
Dolan fires back a lightning bolt that strikes two of the yuan-ti, then retreats back inside the shrine. The two snakeheads draw short bows, firing poisoned arrows into Dunch before themselves moving out of sight behind the walls of the shrine compound. The snake-bodied yuan-ti raises its arms to cast an incantation, and Ixtli—still inside the shrine—falls into a magical sleep. Yollotl and Dunch move forward to attack the snakeheads with Bahamut's Fury and the Maul of Disruption respectively.
The Aldani join the battle, the scout firing her blowgun from the roof and the warriors fighting alongside Dunch. One of them kills a snake-headed yuan-ti. Anku also appears from around the corner, casting a spell so that grasping weeds and vines sprout up around three of the yuan-ti. Inside the shrine, Dolan rouses Ixtli from his magical sleep.
After casting Protection from Poison on himself, Chibuzo moves like the wind, hammering a snakehead and then stabbing one of the snake-handed yuan-ti twice with Atsu's Lance. His poison resistance proves useful when he is bitten by the creature's snake hands. Anku summons a mote of flame to her hand and casts it at the remaining snakehead, immolating it. While Yollotl and the Aldani warriors continue to battle the snake-handed yuan-ti, their snake-bodied foe paralyzes Dunch with a spell, before Ixtli dashes out of the shrine and cures the paralysis with his Physician's Touch.
Then the snake-bodied yuan-ti casts a spell and disappears, while one of the snake-handed yuan-ti disengages and retreats around the corner of the shrine. Dunch and Ixtli swiftly kill the other snake-handed enemy.
Thinking the snake-bodied yuan-ti may have turned invisible, Yollotl scans for it using his natural abilities, and Dolan using the Sceptre of the Honored Voice, but they find no sign of it. Chibuzo pursues the snake-handed yuan-ti, only to find it gone when he rounds the corner. Checking for its tracks as he advances, he spots a snake in the grass, and stabs it; it transforms back to its snake-handed humanoid form, and he swiftly kills it.
Checking the corpses for any sign of movement, Dunch and Dolan see a black stain spreading like necrosis from the death wound of the first-killed snake-handed yuan-ti. It reminds Dunch of the blemish he saw on their former companion Sophia back in Port Nyanzaru. In a moment, the yuan-ti rises as undead and attacks Dunch. Its zombie snake hands gnaw on Nyemba's Might, leaving a trail of viscous black drool. But the adventurers swiftly bring down the monster with yklwa, warhammer, spear, and blasts of radiant energy. Yollotl's fists strike the final blows.
"You are quite skilled," Anku tells them. "I can see why the matriarch sent you to find us." After they confirm that the yuan-ti were carrying nothing of value, she invites the adventurers back to the Aldani camp to speak to the others. The red-scaled Aldani scout, Kuri, leads them back south along the causeway next to the market hall. The Aldani warriors, Takiri and Yanay, bring up the rear.
Kuri brings them to a set of stairs overtop the causeway and, after confirming the coast is clear, motions for them to follow. Then she leads them west towards a walled compound containing a two-story building. Along the way, they come upon an overturned wagon, with a bees' nest in one of the wheels. Freshly cut jungle flowers have been draped over the wagon's tongue. "We offer thanks to the creature that guards this place," Anku tells them. She kneels before the wagon, and Ixtli and Yollotl join her. "Look," she tells them, "but be quiet and respectful." They see a tiny creature with a mask-like face perched on the wagon: a chwinga. On sighting it, Dolan bows as well, and Anku thanks it for allowing them to stay near its home.
After a few moments, they continue to the walled compound. A sentry behind the gate converses briefly with Anku in Aldani, but the conversation shortly devolves into stern commands barked back and forth. In frustration she tells Yollotl and the others, "they're not going to let you in. Give me a moment." She passes through the gate and it closes behind her. Ixtli senses that Takiri and Yanay are not happy with what they've been told.
After ten minutes or so, Anku returns, accompanied by another Aldani bearing similar decorations to her own—probably another shaman. "I was not permitted to see Caprakan," she tells them, "but we should go inside out of sight." The adventurers are escorted inside the compound and then into the main building, where a balcony surrounds the central hall. A staircase leads to the second floor, and an Aldani can be seen standing guard at a closed door on the balcony. "Caprakan's up there," Anku tells them quietly.
She introduces the other shaman as Rawa. "I've told her of what we've accomplished," she says, "but Rawa needs proof of your claims." In answer the adventurers display the gourds of insect repellent they received from Oklo, and the teeth that they took from the corpse of Iskawari. When they tell the tale of their battle against the undead tyrannosaur and the Aldani they rescued, they learn that Oklo is Rawa's uncle, while Hala is Anku's sister. One of the guards points to the Blood Spear. "Caprakan told us this would come," he says.
The adventurers relate the events that transpired at Tal'mayu and the temple of Val'Kurat, including Nayarak's troll allies and the enlargement and transformation of some of his followers. "Kurat commanded you to return to Tal'mayu," Ixtli concludes.
Rawa tells them Caprakan normally only allows herself and the guard to enter his quarters, but she will bring Ixtli and one other to speak to him. Ixtli chooses Dunch to accompany him. Flanked by Anku and Rawa, they ascend the stairs, which creak and grown under Dunch's weight. Rawa speaks to the guard, who escorts the monk, the barbarian, and the shaman into the room.
This seems to have once been a bedroom, but blankets have been strung up to divide it into sections. Rawa speaks in Aldani to someone behind the curtain, and a raspy, hoarse voice answers—first in Aldani, then in Marakuran.
A young-looking lizardman comes into view. Caprakan is white-scaled like his mother, with blood-red eyes and dressed in warpaint. Around his neck, he wears a leather thong with a pendant of black stone, and constantly reaches up to touch it. "So the failure has arrived," he says to Ixtli contemptuously.
"To fail your so-called 'master' is to succeed in life," Ixtli responds.
A short but unfruitful conversation follows. Caprakan speaks glowingly of the power that Taloc offers, and how it will elevate their tribe to rule over all others in this land. He dismisses the threat of Ras Nsi, saying that all he needs to defeat him is the power of the Master of the Hidden Waters. When Dunch points out that two cubes are in shrines close to the palace, and may already be in Ras Nsi's possession, Caprakan answers that "he may have two. But I have seven."
"That's interesting," Dunch responds, "so do we."
In a last effort, Ixtli tells him of Kurat's command to return, and warns him to remove the stone pendant that he wears. Caprakan scornfully dismisses this advice. "If that's all you have to say, leave the cubes and the weapon and go." Dunch laughs aloud at this. Then Caprakan issues a command in Aldani, and the guard reaches for Dunch.