Episode #3: Reptiles and New Allies

First Day on the Isle, Continued

Gruff is well named. Apparently there’d been some dispute earlier in the day about Elody giving him unwanted healing. I just smiled and nodded. Around that time we saw two more survivors walking along the beach to the west, coming toward us. Elody cried out; one of them had the hat she'd lost.

Our two groups approached slowly, not yet knowing if we were friends or foes. Some of us almost missed the rustling from the jungle. When we heard it, we stopped. I looked across the beach at the newcomers and pointed to the trees. It seemed they had heard the sound, too. Four green man-sized creatures sprang out from the jungle, vaguely dragon-shaped but also wingless, led by a larger red one. The halfling and I fought the red one and two of the green ones. Our new companions to the west fought two of the green ones. Ed, Elody, and Gruff provided support from afar. The battle was over in short order.

Our new companions, a human in full plate armor and a tiefling in priestly vestments, said they’d sailed aboard the Sea Scepter and had also set out from Ierendi like us.

The human introduced himself as Sir Ecaris, a knight of the Thyatian Empire. Strong but a bit haughty, he looked the part. He told us the Emperor of Thyatis himself had sent him here on the same mission we were sent.

The tiefling said her name was Penitence, and that she was an avenger of the Raven Queen—goddess of death. When Bartholomew told her about the orb he’d taken from the undead, she immediately wanted to see it. She didn’t have much to say about it though, and Bartholomew was eager to have it back.

So, putting our plans to investigate the giant stone head on hold, we followed the shore eastward, skirting the jungle’s edge. Eventually we entered the jungle, making our way towards the smoke. Those of us who could be stealthy—Bartholomew, Penitence, Gruff, and I—moved ahead and kept an eye out for trouble. Those who could not—Elody, Ecaris, and Ed—trailed behind where they could avoid attracting attention. Some ways in, we had no idea whether or not we were heading where the little simian had directed us. I decided the best bet was to stick my head above the trees for a quick look around, so I climbed up the tallest tree I could find and took a look. A couple hundred feet to the northeast, I saw an almost conical mass of rock rising above the canopy. Several hundred feet beyond that was the pillar of smoke we’d seen earlier. I told my companions what lay ahead, and we decided to approach the stone and see what it was.

A few minutes later, we came upon that stone, standing alone in a clearing. This close, it was clearly meant to resemble the fang of some animal, though gigantic in proportion. Its southwest face (facing us) bore mystical writing of some kind, but I couldn’t make heads or tails of it. Penitence said it was probably a warding stone, meant to keep something in—or something out. Looking about, we could see other, similarly shaped stones spread through the jungle, as if to trace out a circle. When we saw the long-necked behemoth, or one of his kind, reaching his neck overhead, but refusing to move his bulk closer, we thought the stones might be there to repel such beasts. There was a brief debate over what to call the creature. From now on I will refer to him as Bill.

Putting aside all thoughts of warding stones and of Bill, we carried on. After several hundred feet, we came to a broad clearing in the jungle. Here we found a wide circle of earth, with four little circles around its perimeter. Where you might expect a fifth to be, a mudslide seemed to have wiped out whatever had been there.  At the center of the circle sat a ziggurat from which issued the smoke we’d been following. Each little circle appeared to contain a cluster of buildings, apparently each its own village. As we approached, we began to see bodies scattered about the ground, almost skeletons really. They were blackened, not with soot but with some acrid chemical residue. Approaching as we did from the west, we came upon that circle first, and found it filled with nothing but burial mounds. We’d had our fill of the dead today, and so moved on to the circle immediately south of us.

There we found the remains of one of the villages, composed of little huts on stilts, all but destroyed, as if a band of savages had ridden through breaking things just for the sake of breaking things. More of those blackened skeletons littered the ground, and the earth was covered in booted footprints. At the center of the village was a large statue of a sea turtle, carved of some hardwood I couldn’t identify. Our companions searched for food among the wreckage, but everything had spoiled, as if by the same force that had afflicted the dead villagers. Elody and I investigated the largest hut we could find, reasoning it might be a meeting hall or chief’s house, and thus more likely to contain some clue as to what had happened. We found the body of a woman—blackened skeleton really—pinned to the floor with a spear. Her headdress marked her as chieftain or some similar office. Elody wished to grant all these dead a proper burial, but lacked the sacramental materials. She offered prayers alone. I wondered who’d done such a thing, and wished I’d have a chance to meet him.

That was when we noticed the man, or what looked like a man, watching us from the ziggurat. He was accompanied by a group of other humanoids with spears. They seemed spoiling for a fight.