Aldo Marigny: male human rogue (deceased) (Dave)
Cutrer de Guerre: male human paladin (Baz)
Farhang: male halfling rogue (Brett)
Fjolnir Forsgren: male dwarf fighter/dwarven defender (Sam)
Gilles Pommery, a.k.a. Chamakomo, male human beguiler (Dave)
Kalervo: male human druid (John)
Yrjo Lohikaarminen: male half-orc (formerly elf) sorcerer (Goran)
Falin M'Or: male elf ranger (Shawn)
J. R.: male human fighter/copper dragon shaman (Paul)

A dying hybsil, a servant of the Grand Druid, gets an urgent message to Falin M'Or: Falin is to journey to the Zone of Contagion, an uninhabited zone in central Soucy, and find and destroy the mad druid Tuomas Four Claws.  The party is to get a reward for joining Falin on this quest.

However, General Noël's forces are approaching Charron, and the Langevists have responded by press-ganging every available citizen into the militia and preventing anyone from leaving the city.  The party is approached by Sigurd Forsgren with a possible way out, through the sewer tunnels under the city.

When they reach a safe house on the city's east side, they find themselves in an ambush: "Sigurd" is really the rakshasa Prabhakaran, and his henchmen are there waiting for the party.  A well-placed web spell traps the rakshasa, and he is finally slain by the party.

The party make their way south to Narbonne, avoiding Noël's armies, and charter a vessel to take them across the Mer des Veuves to Soucy.  The Zone is a vast unspoiled wilderness tainted with the disease Death's Embrace, which claims the life of nearly everyone who contracts it.  The party is thus stunned to discover a town inhabited by humans, whose language they cannot understand and whose customs are utterly unfamiliar.  These people are the Mbanta, migrants from a distant land they call Nyambe-tanda.  They are masters of herbal and culinary magic, and have found a means of defeating Death's Embrace which they share with party, but not before they extract a promise that the party never reveal their presence in Teravide.

Using clues provided by the Mbanta, the party tracks down Tuomas Four Claws deep in the wilderness, where he and his allies (an awakened dire boar and a trio of mad satyrs) are working to harness Death's Embrace as a weapon against humanoids.  An epic battle ensues.  Four Claws, a massive wood elf-tiger tauric creature, impales Farhang with his spear, and appears certain to escape in the form of an eagle before he is in turn cut down in midair by Falin's arrow.  The party returns to Mpulu, the Mbanta town, having accomplished their mission, but a man down.

3 April 513
Immediately after the party arrives at Mpulu, a huge, scarred green dragon appears and waits in the town commons to receive tribute and greet the town's elder, Dumisai.  She takes a great interest in the party's presence in Mpulu, and directs special attention to Yrjo, whose history and background she seems to divine with a flick of her tongue.  She also seems to have some knowledge of the Grand Druid, and remarks to Falin that she will give Nicholas his regards the next time she attends a Commonwealth council.  After warning Dumisai that the party is not to cause trouble for either the Mbanta or herself, she leaves with her tribute.

Dumisai explains that the green dragon Striftaris is the ancestor of the line of chiefs of Mpulu, who struck a bargain with her many years ago after the Mbanta fled Nyambe-tanda and came to New Nyambe (the Zone of Contagion).  Dumisai also takes note of Farhang's condition, and offers to have Vusimzi, the town's n'anga priest, raise the halfling.  He cautions that the orisha do not always grant success in this endeavor.  Dumisai invites the party to stay in an unused hut in his family compound until Farhang can be raised, and to wait until they can attend the final ceremony in the wedding of his niece, Japera.  The ceremony is in six days' time.

That night, the party is awakened by the sounds of intruders in their hut.  An undead warrior barges in, and attacks the party with her greatsword.  Simultaneously, an invisible human enters through a window, in an attempt to steal Farhang's corpse.  The party destroys the undead warrior and captures the human.  After he is interrogated by Dumisai, the party learns that he is Rudo, a seemingly ordinary man who secretly venerates the fiendish orisha known as Zombi, master of undeath and serpents.  Rudo serves a Zombi cultist named Mabhoko.  Mabhoko was once a resident of Mpulu, but fled after he was accused of murder and graverobbing.  He was presumed drowned, but apparently survived.  The undead warrior is another of Mabhoko's servitors, a true zombi named Mahlangu.  Dumisai explains that true zombis are undead thralls with memories of their former lifetimes, and thus are more powerful than the "northern" zombies that the party may have already encountered.  True zombis heal quickly, he says, but are vulnerable to salt.  Zombi cultists are very dangerous, and often possess magic powders which can kill a man and raise him as a true zombi immediately thereafter.

The party searches Rudo's home in his family compound, and discovers a map directing them to a crypt where Mabhoko is hiding out.  They agree to find and destroy Mabhoko and then return to Mpulu for the marriage ceremony.

4 April 513
Using the five diamonds given to the party by the Grand Druid, Vusimzi successfully raises Farhang.

5 April 513
As the party descends the gorge where the crypt is located, a pair of figures materialize from thin air: first, a tall humanoid with bluish skin and fiery eyes; then an apparently human male with coppery, scaly skin and a spiked chain.  The two immediately begin fighting.  Cutrer determines that the taller one is evil, and the party attacks him.  The creature -- identified by Falin using Knowledge (the planes) as a madrir -- has a number of tricks up his sleeve, and magically induces a shout spell from Yrjo that damages only the rest of the party.  Eventually, the madrir realizes that he is in grave danger, and teleports away.

The party and the other figure come to blows as well before Yrjo webs him.  He gives his name only as J.R., and claims to have been exploring ruins in eastern Soucy when he encountered the madrir and some gnolls.  The madrir entered a black circle on the floor and disappeared.  J.R. followed, and they both ended up here in the Zone of Contagion.  J.R., however, does not have an easy way back.  He agrees to join the party.

6 April 513
The party discovers the crypt.  Kobo, Yrjo's familiar, suspects that this may have belonged to the extinct race known as the Wanderers.  The party is unable to read the etchings at the entrance, but they take note of the image on the keystone above.  J.R. remarks that the image was also present in the ruins that he was exploring in eastern Soucy.

Entering cautiously, the party quickly discovers a large central chamber, where the floor is covered with snakes.  Worse yet, the place is guarded by a zombie mature adult bronze dragon, who uses his repulsion breath weapon to send most of the party fleeing.  Kalervo, one of the few party members unaffected, summons three brown bears, who cut the zombie dragon to ribbons.

The party proceeds through a catacomb, where they discover a pair of ogre skeletons and a gnoll warrior (apparently undead).  The gnoll stands ten feet from a bell...

XP awarded: 1058 each for Aldo, Cutrer, Falin, Kalervo and Yrjo; 900 each for Farhang and J.R.

6 April 513, continued
Cutrer and J.R. rush to engage the skeletons, but are unable to stop the gnoll true zombi from ringing the warning bell.  Moments later, a bizarre horned creature with fangs in the palms of his hands (an ngojama demon) appears and sickens much of the party with unholy blight.  With the party thus occupied, a masked Mabhoko then appears on the scene, and casts righteous might, making himself a hulking brute.   Falin and Farhang pin down the ngojama while Heikki and Kalervo (unable to summon aid, for some reason) eventually defeat Mabhoko.

The party searches the rest of the lower level, and discovers a shrine to Zombi, Mabhoko's laboratory, and his living quarters.  They find a strange wood carving, depicting a scene wherein a masked, serpent-eyed figure strikes a younger couple while an older couple presents them with a ceremonial apron.  J.R. destroys all the evil paraphernalia with his breath weapon.

Heading back upstairs, the party finds a secret chamber containing a stone sarcophagus.  Unlike the rest of the complex, this area does not appear to be water-damaged.  However, it is guarded by a pair of elder eidolon deinonychuses (constructs), whose maddening aura, fast repair, and damage reduction make them brutal opponents.  The party barely survives the encounter.  Falin opens the sarcophagus (triggering a small flash of light with no apparent effect), and discovers a masked mummy clutching a flask (poison, Yrjo determines) and a tarnished silver key, which appears to be magic.  The party heads back to Mpulu to attend the marriage ceremony for Japera.

9 April 513
The marriage ceremony involves a procession from the Moyo family compound (Dumisai's clan) to the Dhlomu compound, where the groom's family lives.  The party are invited to march along with the Moyo family.  When they arrive at the gate, Falin has a sudden revelation: the wood carving in Mabhoko's lair depicted this very scene.  He rushes to interpose himself between nearby trees and the wedding party.  The assassin, an invisible true zombi, manages to strike Chinouyazue, the groom, with a poisoned spear tip.  Falin quickly cuts down the assassin, while Cutrer uses his wand of delay poison to stave off the man's death.

10 April 513
Dumisai approaches the party to tell them of an omen that he has just witnessed.  He leads them to the ancestral shrine in the village, and shows them seven golden birds perched in the sacred willow tree.  The birds, he explains, signify the party; the tree, the home of the ancestors (Nyambe-tanda); and the color gold, wealth and glory.  He tells the party that this is a sign that they should be the first people from Teravide to visit the faraway continent.  Dumisai takes them back to his home, and produces a tattered cloth map of Nyambe, showing it to be 3700 miles southeast of Teravide.

XP awarded: 2443 each.

12 April 513
The party charters a ship from Becton to take them as close as possible to Kuusamo, the stronghold of the Grand Druid.  Nicholas Hynynen-Kenworthy still owes most of the party members for their assistance in defeating Tuomas Four Claws.  From there, they will begin to investigate means of reaching Nyambe-tanda.

4 May 513
The party arrives at a hidden, fog-enshrouded vale some 30 miles southwest of the ruins of Waterbury.  Falin gives the appropriate passphrase to an awakened deer, who leads the party to the druid's lair.  Kuusamo is a fortress of sorts, composed entirely of living plants, guarded by elves, centaurs, fey, animals, and even a group of shambling mounds.

Nicholas, an unassuming half-elf, is debriefed by the party regarding Tuomas Four Claws, and pays them what they are owed.  When he asks how they fared against Death's Embrace, they provide conflicting answers, although Yrjo's lie appears to be convincing.  The party asks him about Striftaris.  He remarks that she is an unnerving presence in the wood, but that she has allied with him in the past to defeat the Drouinistes.  He does not know if she will remain an ally for long.

At the party's request, Nicholas instructs a colleague to proceed to Storhamar to retrieve their erstwhile companion, Fjolnir Forsgren.  The colleague and Fjolnir transport via plants back to Kuusamo two days later.

6 May 513
After some debate, the party heads to Thiffault to try to charter a vessel to Nyambe-tanda.

13 May 513
The party arrives at Thiffault.  They learn of two major shippers in town, Lloyd Crickhowell and Albert Jellicoe.  They arrange a meeting with Crickhowell and present him with a proposal for a voyage of exploration, destination unknown.  He is unmoved, and will only offer to sell them a vessel and arrange a crew.  The total cost will probably be in excess of 20,000 gp, which the party cannot afford.

The party then extensively debates the relative merits of trying to bargain further with Crickhowell, or proceeding on to Crozet, where Falin knows a shipbuilder named Audric Décagny, or asking Nicholas for an elven ship.  Nicholas had seemed intrigued by the idea of an exploratory voyage, but Farhang and others are leery of involving him, so as not to betray their oath to the Mbanta.  Eventually, Kalervo, Yrjo, Falin, and Aldo head back to Kuusamo, while the rest of the party remains in Thiffault.

20 May 513
Kalervo et al arrive in Kuusamo, and ask Nicholas about a vessel he can provide (The Ampiainen) while trying not to reveal too much.  Nicholas seems willing to fund an expedition if the party can provide some kind of proof of the existence of Nyambe.  Kalervo shows Nicholas the tattered and weathered map provided by Dumisai, claiming that they found it in the Zone.  Nicholas is satisfied, and tells the party that it will take about three months to provision the Ampiainen.

The party also learns that back on 12 April, General Sebastien Noël was murdered by some of his officers right before the planned attack on Charron.  The coup d'etat was led by loyal Langevists.  Instead of attacking Charron, Noël's army offered itself to Empress Katerina and the high priest Dietrich von Arx.  The result is a reborn Empire Nordique, stretching from Charron to just east of Cossete.

3 Jun 513
The party reassembles at Kuusamo.  Nicholas explains that the Ampiainen will need some refitting and repair for the voyage, and asks the party to travel to the cabin of John Salo, a master shipwright.  They are to escort Salo to the elven shipyards on Lake Sari.

12 Jun 513
Salo lives in an isolated cabin near the shores of Lake Sari.  The party knocks, but there is no answer.  After some investigation, they decide to enter.  They are quickly accosted by Salo, who is nearly deaf and apparently hostile.  With Sense Motive and Spellcraft checks, Yrjo determines that Salo's mad chattering is the result of mind control.

Salo tries to break free from the party and head down a secret stairway, but he is pinned and tied down.  Kalervo asks Heikki to guard Salo while the party explores downstairs.

Below Salo's house there is a dungeon, complete with cells and chains.  Pressing on into the natural caverns beyond, most of the party is surprised by a group of skum barbarians.  The party makes short work of the skum, capped by an impressive critical hit by Cutrer with his scythe...

XP awarded: 843 each.

12 Jun 513, continued
The party continues to explore the cave network underneath Salo's cabin.  Probing deeper, they find a large flooded cavern.  Hiding there in the darkness is what appears to be a sea hag.  The party chases her to the east, but she disappears.  Moments later, an aboleth appears behind them.  It tries and fails to enslave Fjolnir, but Yrjo realizes that it is simply a manifestation of a project image spell.  The real aboleth is behind an illusory wall to the south.  The party corners it and slays it with minimal damage.

The party continues exploring the complex.  Farhang climbs down to a shallow pool where a portion of the water appears to be glowing with the brightness of daylight.  He quickly realizes that the glowing water is really a dangerous creature (a goldencrest), and the rest of the party joins the fight.  The party's warriors and rogues deal massive amounts of damage to the ooze, but it seems to regenerate before their very eyes.  Only magic and energy damage seem to cause it any real pain.  The party eventually manages to disable it and then finish it off, but not before it tramples J.R. twice, nearly killing him with its positive energy attack.

In the course of the combat, Falin finds himself unable to act.  He realizes that he is still under the effect of a curse bestowed upon him when he opened the sarcophagus in the Wanderer crypt.  Cutrer solves the problem with a scroll of remove curse.

Back in the cabin, Salo has come to his senses, and thanks the party for freeing him from the aboleth's domination.  The party brings Salo to the harbor where the Ampiainen is being refitted, and then returns to Kuusamo.

14 Jun 513
Nicholas apologizes to the party for unwittingly putting them in harm's way.  With nearly eight weeks before the Ampiainen is due to set sail, he suggests that the party equip themselves in Thiffault and sell off any unwanted items.

21 Jun 513
Arriving in Thiffault, Yrjo learns that there is an official broker for buying and selling magical items in Thiffault: Miles McRae, an urbane and rakish halfling.  McRae quickly puts them in touch with Arthur Hutton, a novice wizard who will help identify the items they've acquired in the last several adventures.  McRae will also find buyers, sellers, and crafters for the party, for a 5% commission.

XP awarded: 900 each.

14 Aug 513
The party returns to Kuusamo, having heard from Lytti Jaateenmaki, ambassador to Thiffault from the Great Lakes Commonwealth, that the Ampiainen is ready.  Nicholas appoints Falin, Kalervo and Yrjo as his ambassadors to Nyambe-tanda.

16 Aug 513
The party travels to the harbor at Lake Sari, and is greeted by Captain Juhantalo.  The Ampiainen departs, heading northwest across the lake, towards the open sea.

19 Aug 513
Three days into their voyage, a vessel flying the tattered flag of the old Aubrien kingdom emerges suddenly from a sheltered cove, heading straight toward the Ampiainen.  Warning signals from the elven crew are ignored by the "Aubrien" vessel.  Kalervo takes the form of a seagull, and flies toward the vessel for a better view.  He discovers that it is manned by orc pirates.  Kalervo summons a pair of brown bears right on the deck of the pirate vessel, and they proceed to wreak havoc on the crew.  Meanwhile, the rest of the party leads the Ampiainen's crew in repelling the pirate assault with ballistae, a hail of arrows, and a fireball from Yrjo.  After the Ampiainen successfully resists a boarding attempt from the orcs, J.R. leaps thirty feet onto the enemy ship.  The rest of the party and crew of the Ampiainen then successfully board the pirate ship, and make quick work of the few pirate leaders not already destroyed by Kalervo's summoned bears.  The remaining orcs surrender, and are forced to walk the plank.  Whether any make it to shore, in rough waters several hundred yards away, is anyone's guess.  The party scuttles the pirate ship and continues on their journey.

22 Sep 513
"Land, ho!"  At dawn, the lookout spies a rolling, golden grassland.  Soon thereafter, the party notices a plume of black smoke, rising from behind a hill several hundred yards inland.  They decide to investigate, while the crew of the Ampiainen remains.

Kalervo, in the form of an eagle this time, performs aerial reconnaissance.  He sees a band of lion-centaurs (which the party later learns are known as entare) who have apparently defeated a group of humans and stolen their cattle.  Most of the humans are dead, and many are being burned in a pyre.  The party approaches cautiously.

When they reach the summit of the hill, Fjolnir calls out to the entare in Kordo.  They do not appear to understand, and reply in Sylvan.  They seem quite suspicious of the party, and Falin's attempt at diplomacy does little to impress them.  Fjolnir tries to call the entares' attention to a human still alive in their midst; Aldo takes this opportunity to attack.  In the ensuing combat, Heikki is targeted by an entare spellcaster (a dembe) with a hold animal spell.  Another entare performs a coup de grace on the helpless animal, but is himself killed by J.R.'s draconic aura of energy shield.  The dembe tries to flee by using a gris-gris of tree stride, but is slain before he can reach the nearest tree.

The party comes to aid of the wounded human, whose name is Idriis.  Idriis explains that he is a Shombe warrior from the village (kraal) of Namanga, about a day's walk from here.

Cutrer opts to remain with the Ampiainen.  Henceforth, he will be the party's liaison on board the ship.

XP awarded: 2103 for Fjolnir; 1537 each for all other PCs.

22 Sep 513, continued
Idriis leads the party to Namanga, where they are gawked at by the Shombe villagers.  The scarred Shombe chief, Aza, is grateful to the party for saving Idriis, the cattle, and the engargiya pack animals, and invites them to stay in the village for a welcoming feast.  The revelry features some friendly contests, including the drinking of palm wine (mastered by Fjolnir and J.R.), a spear-throwing competition (in which Aza edges out J.R.), and a long-jump competition (won by the Shombe champion).  A good time is had by all.

The Shombe are the not the only people who live in Namanga, however.  Farhang is approached by a small, furry humanoid with prominent claws.  The creature addresses him in Halfling, and they are both surprised to learn that they are kin of a sort.  The creature is an "agogwe" named Dingonek, and he is the leader of a clan of Nyamban halflings who often accompany the Shombe on their travels from kraal to kraal.  Although Farhang quickly alienates Dingonek with his brusque and condescending manner, the latter still comes to the party for help with a problem: over the last several weeks, many agogwe have been captured by the degenerate orc race known as the ingogo.  The ingogo are the baboon-like, dung-throwing hooligan remnants of the once-dominant race of Kosan orcs who enslaved all of Nyambe centuries ago.  This band of ingogo is powerful, and they are led by a powerful mchawi wizard named Murathi.  The agogwe cannot defeat them alone, and the Shombe are unable and unwilling to assist, as they are occupied with fighting the entare.  If the party will defeat the ingogo and rescue the captured agogwe, Dingonek will give them a trophy: the scales of a giant crocodile that he slew singlehandedly.  The scales have been magically enhanced by Nyuni, the Shombe n'anga, to provide luck to anyone who affixes the scales to his shield.  The party accepts.

23 Sep 513
Before they depart for the abandoned Shombe kraal where the ingogo are based, Kalervo performs the ritual to summon a new animal companion to replace his beloved Heikki.  After a day in the nearby savannah, he is approached by a blue-furred dire lion, whom he dubs Kato.  The Shombe explain that dire lions are sacred animals in Nyambe-tanda, and often appear in strange colors bearing portents.  Blue is the color of loyalty, they explain.

24 Sep 513
The party sets out toward the abandoned kraal, following the directions given to them by Dingonek.  They encounter many strange wild animals, including a herd of rhinos which they steer well clear of.

25 Sep 513
Late in their second day of travel, the party spies the kraal from a distance.  Kalervo assumes the form of a vulture to reconnoiter. As he approaches the kraal, though, he is battered by some unseen force.  He retreats back to the party to report.

Moments later, the invisible force is upon them, slamming J.R. for extensive damage.  Falin and Aldo aim blindly in an attempt to locate the creature, but find nothing.  Thinking quickly, Yrjo drops a glitterdust in the space ahead of J.R., and the outline of a huge, vaguely humanoid creature is revealed.  The invisible stalker manages to disarm Fjolnir, but is eventually brought down by bears summoned by Kalervo.

Guessing that the alarm has been raised, the party chooses to press on as quickly as possible.  The summoned bears, Kato, and J.R. rush towards the gate of the kraal, with the party following.  The mchawi suddenly appears, floating high above the boma (the thorny fence surrounding the kraal), and drops a blistering fireball on the charging animals.  They are undeterred, though, and crash through the boma and the gate just as the summoning spell wears off.  J.R. is quickly surrounded by ingogo and is sneak attacked by a nanala rogue.  However, he unleashes a shockingly powerful whirlwind attack, mowing down nearly a dozen ingogo in a spray of blood and fur with his spiked chain.

As the rest of the party charges forward, Aldo's arrows simply bounce off Murathi's stoneskin, and the latter seems to shake off much of the damage from Kalervo's flame strike.  Kato comes bounding through the smashed gate, and cuts down many more ingogo.  The rank and file flee, while Murathi and the nanala fight on.  Murathi counterspells a magic missile from Yrjo, inflicts a fleshshiver on Kalervo, and a wrack on J.R. before a lightning bolt from Yrjo causes him to flee.  The nanala is finally brought down.

Searching the kraal, the party finds a giant pit in its center, where a half-dozen emaciated, bedraggled, and hideously deformed agogwe are unearthing a small structure.  The agogwe explain that exposure to the structure, an ancient Kosan tomb, is the cause of their affliction, and warns the party not to proceed closer.  The party tends to the agogwe as best they can, searches the ingogo and the village huts for treasure, and decides to return to Namanga to regroup.

28 Sep 513
The party returns with the agogwe in tow.  The Shombe, seeing their deformities, refuse to allow them into the village.  Nyuni, the Shombe n'anga, comes out to try to care for them, but quickly determines that they are beyond his help.  They will need restoration magic which he cannot provide.  Dingonek will try to find a more powerful n'anga to help them, but in the meantime, he is grateful for the party's aid, and he gives them the crocodile scales as promised.  The party resolves to finish unearthing the Kosan tomb themselves.

XP awarded: 2170 for Fjolnir; 1607 each for all other PCs.

30 Sep 513
Returning to the abandoned kraal, the party discovers that someone (presumably Murathi) has finished unearthing the tomb in their absence.  The party enters the pit to investigate, and Aldo is stricken by the curse afflicting the area, suffering 1 point of Constitution and Charisma drain.  The other party members save successfully.  However, Aldo detects a faint rumbling from the earth, and a purple worm suddenly emerges!  The worm swallows Kato, and nearly swallows Falin, before it is cut down by a massive critical hit from Fjolnir.  The party retrieves Kato from the monster's gullet, and J.R. is able to stabilize him.

Searching the tomb itself, Aldo notices that a trap in the doorway has already been disabled.  The tomb has been thoroughly looted, much to the party's chagrin, and there is no indication where the looters may have gone.  What's more, the tomb seems to be haunted: strange whispers are heard, the walls begin to bleed, and the party is confronted by a horrific apparition, all of which are revealed to be illusions.  The party heads back to Namanga to decide on a further course of action.

1 Oct 513
Fjolnir is keeping watch over the party's camp on the open savannah, when a trio of figures suddenly appears, as if from nowhere: two ingogo (one of whom is masked) and an ogre.  The masked ingogo growls something Fjolnir cannot understand, and then the three attack.  The ogre misses Fjolnir with a flying kick, while the two ingogo cast spells.  As the rest of the party awakens, they find that a very young red dragon has joined the fray.  The masked ingogo casts Evard's black tentacles, and Farhang and J.R. are grabbed and held fast.  Fjolnir battles the ogre (an engolo monk) alone, while the others focus on the spellcasters and the dragon.  After a fierce battle in which Aldo deals multiple sneak attacks, the dragon, ogre and masked ingogo are slain (just as the latter is preparing to teleport away), and the other ingogo surrenders.  Falin knocks him out with a punch, and he is bound and gagged.

2 Oct 513
The party drags their captive back to Namanga, where J.R. intimidates him into talking.  He is Njururi, a n'anga of N!ok the All-Seeing Eye, and a henchman of Murathi.  Njururi reveals that Murathi recovered certain kosan artifacts in the tomb, and had sent the three assailants to punish the party for their assault on the kraal.  He claims that Murathi can be found in a camp about 80 miles southeast of Namanga with several dozen other ingogo.  After briefly considering getting back on the Ampiainen, the party decides to pursue Murathi instead.

XP awarded: 1857 each.

6 Oct 513
En route to the ingogo lair, the party encounters a band of Mbanta nomads.  Kalervo wins them over with a Diplomacy check, and they invite the party to take a meal with them.  The Mbanta are headed from Taumau to Dogar, a town on a massive plateau.  They know nothing of the ingogo camp, and the party does not question them on any other matters.

8 Oct 513
At the end of the day, the party sights the rocky hillside where the ingogo are said to make their camp.  Kalervo performs reconnaissance in vulture form, spotting a pair of lookouts atop the hill, and four very large flightless birds (dire ostriches, or axebeaks), guarding the camp's boma.  The party spends the next several hours plotting strategy.

9 Oct 513
At dawn, the party attacks.  Kalervo summons a bear to distract the axebeaks from the south, while the rest of the party approaches quickly and quietly from the east.  The ostriches make quick work of the bear, but do not detect the party until they have all reached the outskirts of the camp.  The ingogo lookouts then spot the party, and sound a general alert.

Yrjo, coming around the hillside, launches a fireball at the ostriches, which also sets fire to the boma.  Unfortunately, Yrjo is now exposed, and the nearest ostrich pounces upon him, dealing severe damage and grappling him in the process.  Meanwhile, J.R. spider climbs up the hillside to attack another axebeak from above.

Yrjo gets off a shout spell while still in the ostrich's grasp, and then Aldo and Fjolnir finish off the bird.  However, during this time, the ingogo in the camp have massed into a deadly mob.  The mob rushes past the burning boma towards the still-prone Yrjo.  He is bludgeoned to death, along with Kobo.  The rest of the party dispatches the ostriches, and the ingogo mob, before it can trample Fjolnir and Aldo.  The group enters the camp.

Once inside, they are immediately set upon by a demon, identified by Falin as a hezrou.  The creature has a powerful stench which nauseates Falin and Aldo, and it uses unholy blight to sicken most of the rest of the party.  J.R. trips it, Kalervo sears it with a flame strike, Kato pounces, and Fjolnir deals a critical hit, but the hezrou teleports away before the killing blow is landed.  The party suspects he has teleported into the cave, and decides to pursue him immediately...

XP awarded: 1714 each.

9 Oct 513, continued
The party presses on into the cave.  Behind a stout iron door, they find a massive snail-like creature (a mulilo) with a powerful bite and a sticky mucus breath weapon.  As the party engages the mulilo, a coruscating ray strikes J.R.  It is an empowered ray of enfeeblement -- Murathi is lurking in the shadows at the back of the chamber.  Murathi targets Falin with a fleshshiver and paralyzes Fjolnir with a hold monster.  Falin is dropped by a massive critical hit from the mulilo, but makes a key Fortitude save to keep the fleshshiver from finishing him off.  Meanwhile, Kalervo summons a brown bear which slays the mulilo.  The bear then turns his attention to Murathi, and grapples him.  Murathi, however, has a contingent balor nimbus which activates when he is grappled, wreathing him in flames and burning the attacking bear.  Murathi then uses baleful transposition to switch places with Aldo, leaving him in the bear's grasp.  However, Farhang and Fjolnir, freed from the hold monster by Kalervo's dispel magic, finally cut down Murathi.  Among Murathi's possessions is a quarterstaff, inscribed in Daka-kosa (Orc) with the name "Spirit Crusher" and a warning: "I shall break your will."

Continuing on, the party rounds a corner to find themselves facing a pair of shadowy feline-like creatures (mpisimbi), the hezrou, and, in the back of what appears to be a guest chamber, a gnoll.  The hezrou issues a blasphemy, weakening and dazing most of the party, before he teleports away.  The mpisimbi pounce on the party, and one of them successfully trips Farhang.  Meanwhile, the gnoll drinks from a gourd and disappears.  The party soon defeats the mpisimbi, though, and a dire wolf summoned by Kalervo sniffs out the location of the invisible gnoll, who then surrenders.

J.R. intimidates her into talking.  She is Masani, an ambassador from MbUi-land.  She reveals that she is here to discuss the location of a kosan artifact with Murathi.  The artifact is divided into two parts.  The first is called the Ruby Eye, and it is located in the dungeons below an ancient pyramid in Taumau-Boha, a kingdom to the east of Shombe-land.  The pyramid was constructed by the extinct race known as the Water People.  The other part of the artifact is Murathi's quarterstaff, Spirit Crusher, which he found in the tomb unearthed by the agogwe in the abandoned kraal.

Searching Masani's belongings, the party finds a block of sandstone from the pyramid inscribed with a constellation symbol.  The party quickly realizes that they have seen this symbol before: at the Wanderer tomb in the Zone of Contagion, and in the ruins J.R. was exploring before he and the madrir teleported to the Zone.  The party frees Masani with a warning to not cause any trouble.

The party locates Murathi's private bedchamber.  Aldo and Farhang hastily inspect a chest, and finding nothing, proceed to open it.  However, both of them have failed to find an acid fog trap, which injures the entire party, kills the cowering ingogo females of Murathi's harem, and worst of all, destroys a portion of the treasure contained in the chest, including a wand and a magic arrow.  After the fog dissipates, the party sheepishly returns to gather up the surviving items, and quits the ingogo camp.

11 Oct 513
En route to Namanga, the party realizes that they forgot to search the huts in the ingogo camp for treasure.  However, they do not have time to return, as Kalervo intends to reincarnate Yrjo, and must gather expensive components and perform the ritual within a week of Yrjo's death.  The party decides to split up: Falin, Fjolnir and Aldo head back to the camp, while the rest press on to Namanga.

12 Oct 513
A pack of six howlers descends upon Falin et al on the savannah.  The three adventurers get off several missile attacks and drop one of their foes before the others are upon them.  Aldo is nearly slain, but Fjolnir cleaves through a pair of howlers and the remainder flee.

13 Oct 513
Falin et al reach the ingogo camp, where they find that vultures and hyenas have already picked the corpses clean.  Scouring the huts and lean-tos, they uncover a modest treasure and head back to Namanga.

14 Oct 513
Kalervo et al reach Namanga.  Consulting with Nyuni, Kalervo learns of an mganga witchdoctor named Msiba who likely has the rare oils and unguents needed for reincarnate.  She lives alone about 30 miles west of Namanga.  Kalervo assumes the form of an eagle, and is able to fly there in half a day.

Msiba is a middle-aged woman with prematurely white hair.  She is an mchawi-hunter, and is gratified to learn that the party has dispatched Murathi.  However, she explains that mchawi do not fear death, as they reincarnate in animal form as barozi.  Barozi remember their former lives and possess their old abilities.  As they gain power, they can speak, and can eventually assume humanoid form.  Ultimately, if they succeed in finding a mate, they are reborn.  Murathi has already assumed the form of a predatory animal, she warns, but she does not know which kind.  Kalervo purchases the components from her and returns to Namanga.

15 Oct 513
Kalervo reincarnates Yrjo in the form of a half-orc.

18 Oct 513
Falin et al rejoin the rest of the party at Namanga.

19 Oct 513
The party, along with a delegation of Shombe and agogwe, return to the Ampiainen, to prepare to set sail for Taumau-Boha.  One of the agogwe, a girl named Ninki-nanka, asks to join the expedition.  She wishes to see Nyambe-tanda, and especially Teravide.  The party agrees.

20 Oct 513
The party makes a stop at Msiba's hut, to have her identify the various magic items they've acquired since leaving Teravide.  Msiba warns the party that like most ancient kosan items, Spirit Crusher probably contains a powerful curse that will wreak havoc on any non-orc who tries to wield it.  Yrjo, now a half-orc, may very well be exempt.

21 Oct 513
The Ampiainen weighs anchor.

XP awarded: 2167 each for Farhang, J.R., and Kalervo; 2667 each for Aldo, Falin, and Fjolnir.

23 Oct 513
An alert Kalervo spots something massive in the water, directly in the path of the Ampiainen.  Captain Juhantalo quickly orders the sails to be raised and a hard turn to starboard.  Moments later, an anarchic dragon turtle surfaces, and makes a beeline for the ship.  The crew fires ballistae at it, but their shots ricochet off the creature's tough carapace.  The dragon turtle then attacks the hull of the ship, doing very heavy damage.  Falin and others fire missile weapons at the creature, Yrjo uses a magic missile, Kalervo begins summoning help, and Aldo uses his water elemental gem.  The creature breathes a cloud of scalding steam and greatly weakens the party, even those who ducked for cover behind the ship's gunwales.  However, Kalervo's summoning spell completes, and an elasmosaurus appears adjacent to the dragon turtle.  An animal growth spell makes it a Gargantuan elasmosaurus.  The dinosaur and the water elemental flank the dragon turtle, and deal it massive damage.  Aldo's wand of snake's swiftness gives the elasmosaurus another immediate, devastating attack.  The creature is slain as it tries to escape.

The damage to the ship is reparable even at normal speed, but two of the elven crew have been lost.

1 Nov 513
The ship hugs the coast of Nyambe-tanda en route to Taumau.  The party and crew can hear faint drumming from the shore, which has changed from savannah to rolling farmlands.

Yrjo spots a dolphin and its mate cavorting in the water near the ship.  Moments later, a shark descends upon the dolphin, and it is torn to pieces.  The party wonders if this is an omen.

3 Nov 513
The lookout spots the city, a sprawling mass of mud-brick structures on a series of islands at the mouth of a mighty river.  Soon, a small boat rows out to the Ampiainen.  The harbormaster waves to the ship, addresses them in Kordo, and directs them to a deepwater dock on the city's northwest side.

The party and Captain Juhantalo disembark, and are greeted by Djal, the grand vizier, and Menetnashte, the city master.  Djal invites the party and entire crew to the court of Faouzi, the mwanamutapa of the United Kingdoms of Taumau and Boha.  He remarks that the ship's arrival has been expected; the ship was spotted along the coast days ago, and the word spread through "talking drums."  The party accepts the offer, but the crew of the Ampiainen remains behind.  At the last moment, the party thinks to bring gifts for the mwanamutapa.

Djal leads the party and Juhantalo to the island palace of Faouzi.  It is a magnificent place, filled with gardens, statues, frescoes, and colorful birds.  The party are given comfortable accommodations.

4 Nov 513
The next morning, a steward brings the party to Faouzi's throne room.  He is a fortyish, heavy-set man, with a jagged scar on his eye and a deep voice.  He appears genuinely honored to meet the party, and is keen to hear of the nations they represent.  Aldo claims that he is an ambassador of the Empire Nordique, a nation roughly on par with Taumau-Boha.  Faouzi seems duly impressed.  A seemingly careless remark by Fjolnir about the Shombe turns out to be great stroke of luck as well: it appears that the Azzazza (the dominant ethnic group in Taumau-Boha) look down upon the Shombe as ignorant and backwards.

Faouzi indicates that he will treat with the party, and especially Aldo, at a later date.  He leaves them in the care of his court diviner, Okanlawon, a somewhat sinister-looking Tembu from the city of Shomo.  The party is curious to learn more about the pyramids, the Water People, and especially the sandstone brick they found with Masani, the gnoll ambassador back at the ingogo camp.  Okanlawon casts a legend lore spell, and learns that the brick comes from Maure Pyramid, an ancient structure hidden in the bIda Rainforest some 400 miles upriver.  The pyramid was sacked and thoroughly looted centuries ago, but there are legends of hidden dungeons filled with alien power and strange artifacts.  He reports also that the dungeon entrance is protected by a pair of unopenable doors.

Okanlawon recommends that the party try to hire an experienced guide by the name of Teharis, a graying, lame Azzazza who lives on the city's east side.

The party ventures to the address given to them, but no one appears to be home.  After some investigation, the party enters, and finds evidence of a struggle, including a few drops of blood.  Underneath an upturned mancala board, Aldo finds a small wooden disc engraved with the image of a peacock.

The party splits up.  Yrjo and Fjolnir try to gather information about Teharis and what may have happened to him, while the rest of the party heads back to meet with Okanlawon and ask about the peacock token.

Okanlawon is distressed to hear that Teharis may be in danger, but he blushes and chuckles a little when shown the disc.  It is a token for service with the Children of Easafa, a fertility cult of ritual prostitutes who serve Easafa the River, the orisha of love, birds, and rivers.  He surmises that Teharis may have been visiting a ritual prostitute to "refocus his energies" and thereby impregnate his young wife.  Okanlawon provides the location of the Shrine of Easafa (on the southwest side, along the Kalimara River).  Meanwhile, Yrjo and Fjolnir have struck out, so the party decides to visit the Children the next day.

5 Nov 513
The party locates the open-air shrine, crowded with peacocks and decorated with somewhat garish symbols of fertility.  At the adjacent cult headquarters, they meet Emuishere, a comely woman who confirms the significance of the token.  However, she is unwilling to discuss any information related to her clientele.  Kalervo impresses upon her the importance of the matter, and she relents.  Teharis' ritual prostitute is Kifi, a young woman who lives quite close to Teharis.  Reflecting on the matter, Emuishere recalls that the last time she saw Kifi, the girl was acting strangely and seemingly not herself.

Kifi's home is dark, and the windows are covered with a thick black cloth.  Farhang tries the door, but finds it impossible to open.  J.R. spider climbs up the side of the building to enter through the chimney.  He moves fairly quietly, but when he pokes his head out to investigate, he is immediately struck by an invisible assailant, alerted by Farhang's fiddling with the door.  Soon, J.R. is set upon by another invisible attacker, and the two of them deal devastating blows to the dragon shaman.

Aldo and Farhang dive through the windows, while Fjolnir bashes the door down with his axe (it was barred, it turns out).  Inside, they see a badly weakened J.R., along with a horrifying sight: a woman with no skin, who moves to attack.  Yrjo casts a glitterdust, outlining the invisible attackers and blinding them, as well as the unfortunate J.R.  The attackers appear to be humanoid in form, with strangely crocodilian heads.  The party rogues, Fjolnir, and a summoned arrowhawk take down one of the blinded creatures, while Yrjo works on the other.  Eventually, he surrenders, and his dust of disappearance wears off.  Fjolnir manacles him.

His name is Setep; he and his brother are werecrocodiles in the service of Semara, whom he describes as a terkow, or skinwalker, a creature that drains blood and wears the skin of its victims.  The skinless true zombi, cut down by Falin, was Kifi, and Semara is now in her skin.  The party will force Setep to lead them to her lair, an abandoned soapmaker's near the waterfront.

XP awarded: 1414 each for Aldo and Falin; 1929 each for Farhang, Fjolnir, Kalervo, and J.R.; 2314 for Yrjo.

5 Nov 513, continued
Setep leads the party to the northwest side of town, where Semara's lair is located. En route, he nearly succeeds at breaking free of the manacles, but is spotted in the attempt.  The party forces him to reveal more about the terkow's lair, including the nature of the guards: a massive cat known as a mngwa, and several true zombis.

When they arrive, Setep offers to trade one last piece of information to the party in exchange for his freedom.  After some debate, the party decides simply to knock him out instead.  (He is later found slain, mysteriously).

They enter the building through an attached shed, and find that the side door, like the front door, appears to be boarded up.  However, on closer inspection by Falin, it seems that the boards on the side door are merely a ruse; the door is in fact openable.  Aldo searches the door for traps, and finds an elaborate mechanism of some kind.  However, his attempt to disable it is clumsy, and he is struck by a massive stone block which springs up from the floor.  Worse yet, the block is coated with a contact poison, which severely injures the rogue.  The party begins pushing into the room as quickly as possible.

Semara's guards are of course by now alerted to the intruders.  An overgrown fiendish mngwa bites J.R. and causes additional smite damage, while true zombis rush him (as much as it is possible for them to do so).  Now surrounded, J.R. unleashes a Whirlwind Attack on the zombis.

Semara then enters the fray.  She is a powerfully built warrior, wielding a warhammer.  She rushes over and strikes Kalervo while the druid is in hawk form.  Aldo, flying through the use of Murathi's old wand, lands on the other side of the terkow, in hopes of flanking and sneak attacking her.  As it happens, Semara is undead (a terkow is a Nyamban vampire), and she has very strong damage reduction and energy resistance, so Aldo's strikes come to naught.  What's more, she has drunk a potion of magic circle against good, so Kalervo's summoned bears cannot even approach her.  Semara drops Aldo with a powerful hammer blow, Cleaves through to strike Kalervo (now in wolf form), dropping him as well, and then Great Cleaves to strike J.R.  The dragon shaman is hurt, but not dropped.  He raises his vigor aura to stabilize the fallen party members, and counterattacks by tripping Semara.   The others, who have dispatched the mngwa and zombis, move in to attack.

Yrjo fires a lightning bolt at the terkow (and a hapless summoned bear), singeing her slightly, but also burning off the borrowed skin she had been wearing.  His magic missile does no damage to her at all, as she is wearing a brooch of shielding.  Semara tries to sunder Fjolnir's shield, but the dwarf parries her blow.  Eventually, he, Kato, and Yrjo (courtesy of a scorching ray) are able to destroy the vampire.

Falin locates Teharis and his wife in a storeroom.  Semara has been feeding on them, and they are very weak.  The party takes them to the temple of Ramaranda, the celestial orisha of divination and oracles, on the northeast side of town.  The n'anga there restore the couple to health.

The party explains why they sought Teharis in the first place.  He is grateful for their aid, but he is a poor man, and asks for a fee of 1500 gp to guide the party to Maure Pyramid.  The party declines, as Kalervo is now able to cast find the path and should be able to find the pyramid himself.  Still, Teharis advises the party that the Ampiainen will be too large to navigate the Kalimara that far upriver; they will need a small boat, such as a jato outrigger.  He also provides them with the location of a landmark so that they will know where to take out: a small waterfall where a feeder stream joins the Kalimara.

6 Nov 513
The party requests and gains an audience with Okanlawon, the court diviner.  He points them to where they might find an outfitter and crew.  He also indicates that the mwanamutapa wishes to speak to Aldo privately.  The king and the rogue confer for a few moments on an unknown subject.

After discussing their plans with Captain Juhantalo, the latter proposes taking the Ampiainen to the city of D'ok, the capital of Bashar'ka, while the party heads to the interior.  They agree to meet at Taumau in two months' time.

XP awarded: 1768 each for Aldo, Falin, Farhang, Kalervo and J.R.; 2143 for Fjolnir; 2983 for Yrjo.

7 Nov 513
The party obtains a jato and heads upriver with a small Azzazza crew.

13 Nov 513
One of the crew spots a ninki-nanka (also known as a mokele m'bembe) on the opposite riverbank.  The party wisely decides to steer well clear of it.

15 Nov 513
The jato reaches the waterfall as described by Teharis, and the crew anchors the boat.  The party agrees to communicate with the crew every two days via animal messenger.  The Azzazza do not seem to be eager to stay here any longer than they have to.

The party follows a trail south into the rainforest.  After about three miles, they hear a rustling sound up ahead.  Kalervo assumes hawk form to reconnoiter.  Only a couple dozen yards ahead, he spies a red sundew just off the trail, motionless, and apparently trying to hide.  After the party spends a few minutes debating a course of action, the red sundew grows tired of waiting and charges in to attack.  With it is a small creature hiding in the underbrush, vaguely resembling a goblin, with bright green skin.  The small creature (a ronga, a Nyamban fey) taunts the party with a silent image of a morbidly obese, drooling Aldo, while the red sundew slams Fjolnir, coating him with a sticky acid.

J.R. raises his resistance draconic aura, defeating the red sundew's acid, and possibly saving Fjolnir's axe, which is coated with the stuff.  Kalervo summons a group of brown bears, and Falin uses diminish plants to clear a path to the ronga.  Between Fjolnir, the bears, Farhang and Kato, the red sundew is brought down without too much further damage.  The ronga, though, simply vanishes from the field.  The various animals cannot pick up his scent, and every attempt to pinpoint the ronga's square ends in frustration.  The mystery is solved when Kalervo eats his spirit sight cake, which reveals the ronga on the Ethereal plane.  The ronga rematerializes, but before he can plane shift away, he is finally cut down by Falin with his cold iron dagger and a sneak attack from Aldo.

The party guesses that they may now be close enough to have Kalervo use find the path to find the Unopenable Doors.  The spell leads them to a clearing about a mile south-southwest, where an enormous girallon and eight dire apes are foraging.  The creatures feel threatened and move in to attack, but Kalervo and Falin use wild empathy to defuse the conflict.  The apes watch the party suspiciously, but stay clear.

With the help of find the path, the party locates a hidden tunnel heading east into darkness.  After several minutes, they hit a bend in the tunnel where they find a strange platform with nine silver circles painted upon it, and a panel with a key and a slot for a small object.  Farhang recalls that he saw this same arrangement a few years ago, but the details are hazy.

Pressing on, the party reaches a massive set of doors, presumably of the unopenable kind.  Falin finds gnoll and human tracks moving in and out of the doorway, indicating that they must be openable after all.  Even with his best effort, though, Farhang is unable to pick the lock, when then Yrjo remembers something: they have seen these doors before, inscribed in the underside of the lid of the sarcophagus back in the Zone of Contagion.  Fishing around in his pack, he realizes that he still has the tarnished silver key found in the mummy's grip from that tomb.  Sure enough, the doors swing slowly inward.

As they explore, the party finds a wall of strange construction, marked with runes of warning, blocking entry to a room with small depressions in the floor; they choose to ignore it, at least for now.  They also find a circular chamber, with frescoes of armored warriors on each door, and four lit candles.  As the candles go out (one at a time, as it happens), the warriors come to life, and menace the party with their razor swords.  However, they are slow to act, and the party rogues catch them flat-footed time and again.  The warriors drop under withering sneak attacks, and melt into pools of paint.

The party soon discovers an absolutely enormous chamber, the limits of which their light sources do not even begin to illuminate.  They can, however, see a glowing chalice resting on a pedestal in a circular pool.  They take note of it, but choose to skirt the edges of the chamber first.  They find a room with a half-dozen rugs, five of which Farhang thinks are quite valuable.  The party tucks them into Aldo's bag of holding.  The sixth one is a little different, though: it is pierced by a golden pin and has the word "Aelem" embroidered onto it in Kordo.  A little experimentation by Kalervo reveals it to be a carpet of flying!

As they exit this room, a door a little further down opens at the same time, and the party is greeted by a bizarre and sickening sight: a man who appears to be cut in half, lengthwise.  The floating creature (a mangabangabana, a Nyamban aberration) has a nauseating gaze attack which affects Kalervo.  The creature traps J.R. in Otiluke's resilient sphere and speeds away to gain a little distance from the party.  He attempts to disintegrate Falin but misses, nauseates Farhang, casts fire shield from a gris-gris, evokes Bigby's interposing hand to fend off Fjolnir, and strikes Farhang and Fjolnir with a chain lightning.  Yrjo eventually dispels the resilient sphere holding J.R., while Falin fills his favored enemy with arrows.  Just as the mangabangabana is about to dimension door away to safety, Yrjo hits him with a magic missile that penetrates his spell resistance and kills him.

XP awarded: 2857 each for Aldo, Falin, Farhang, Fjolnir, Kalervo, and J.R.; 4057 for Yrjo.

15 Nov 513, continued
The party probes a bit deeper into the dungeon, peering back beyond a heavy black curtain that divides the massive central chamber of the complex.  There, they see a series of ivory pillars, carved to resemble human figures; a pair of unoccupied viewing stands, to the west and east; and at the south end of the chamber, a raised area with three statues.  Two of the figures appear human -- a wizard with a dagger and a fighter with a longsword.  The central figure, higher up, is more massive, with a crystal sword in one hand and a whip of feathers in the other.  The whole area glows from an unknown source.

Farhang clambers onto the raised area, and the whole complex seems to come to life.  The viewing stands fill with ghostly images, some angelic, some demonic, some in-between; the ivory pillars begin talking (in an unknown language) and gesturing; and most importantly, the central figure rises up to fight the party.  Yrjo identifies it as an iron golem, but knows little else about it.

The golem opens its maw and belches forth a cone of flame that singes J.R.  Kalervo summons a trio of brown bears who being clawing at the construct, but they cannot penetrate its incredibly durable exterior.  The golem counterattacks, striking again and again with its crystal sword, doing terrible damage and poisoning the bears.  He cuts down the summoned animals very quickly.  Yrjo's magic missile does nothing to the creature, nor do any melee attacks from the rest of the party.  The more sinister "spectators" jeer at the party's impotence.

Realizing that they are in a hopeless situation, the party elects to flee.  They easily outrun the golem (who actually flies to pursue them), and pass back through the Unopenable Doors to rest and recuperate.

16 Nov 513
Disaster strikes the party.  They return to the Unopenable Doors, healed and ready for the challenge ahead, they hope.  When they approach the Doors, they find the golem waiting for them.  He is passive for the moment, and the party springs into action with their plan.

Yrjo casts shout at the creature, hoping to sunder its sword.  There is apparently no effect.  Kalervo casts rusting grasp and shares it with Kato.  He also summons a brown bear and augments it with animal growth.  The rest of the party leaps into the fray as best they can.  The golem strikes at Aldo on an attack of opportunity, nearly killing the rogue outright with his poison.  Kalervo and Kato each get in a rusting grasp attack, doing significant damage to the golem.  J.R.'s breath weapon also seems to have an effect, and he raises his energy shield draconic aura so that the golem will suffer acid damage with every successful strike against the party.

However, the golem's offense is unstoppable.  He targets Kalervo, striking him repeatedly, including a critical hit, until the druid is slain.  Falin then moves into position, and feels the wrath of the golem's sword.  The ranger is first weakened by poison, and then cleaved in twain.  The golem petrifies Kato with his feathered whip, and then cuts down Farhang, petrifying him as well.  However, J.R.'s breath weapon and energy shield have been weakening the golem, slowly but surely.  When at last it takes down the summoned bear, it crumples from the accumulated acid damage.  Yrjo uses his stone salve to restore Farhang.  However, Aldo, still feeling the effects of the poison, dies.  The survivors gather up the dead (except Kato, too heavy and cumbersome to move), and head back to the river.

XP awarded: 3429 for Yrjo; 2829 each for all others.

16 Nov 513, continued
The party, down half their number, makes their way back to the jato.  The crew are only too happy to head back to Taumau.  Acting on Aldo's last wishes, the party buries him by the river after taking his bag of holding, his notes and maps, and a mysterious sealed note from Faouzi.

21 Nov 513
The jato arrives at Taumau.  J.R. gathers information, and learns that Bes, the local high priestess of Ramaranda the Diviner, may be able to bring Kalervo and Falin back to life.  The party has been at her temple before, when they restored Teharis to health.

Bes is a stern but good-hearted woman, and she agrees to attempt to raise the fallen party members.  She will take their bodies to Ancestor Island in Taumau Bay, the city's graveyard, where she will bury them and cover their graves with ashes.  She cautions the party that the ritual may not be successful, repeating the story of the frog and the bat that the party heard once before, from Vusimzi back in Mpulu.

When the party returns to the temple with the required diamonds (having sold all the expensive carpets they found in Maure Pyramid), they are met by a dark-skinned man in a colorful dashiki, emblematic of the mysterious Mbanta people.  He introduces himself as Chamakomo, and he seeks adventure with the party as a means of gaining passage to the north.  He has been in Dogar of late, and heard of the party's exploration of Nyambe from the Mbanta nomads that the party encountered in the tUbi grasslands.  He practices dimba (arcane magic) by trade, but does not reveal any more than that.  The party agrees to accept him, as he appears to be very knowledgeable about Nyambe-tanda.

22 Nov 513
Bes is successful in raising Falin and Kalervo.  The party quickly re-hires the crew of the jato, and heads back upriver to see if they can restore Kato, left petrified in the foyer of Maure Pyramid, back to flesh.

30 Nov 513
The party arrives at the take-out point, and heads back to the Unopenable Doors.  En route, Kalervo hears sounds of a possible battle to the east, on a trail the party has not explored before.  Kalervo assumes bird form and performs reconnaissance.  A couple of hundred yards away, he spies a group of humanoid figures.  Moving in closer, he sees that they are vaguely reptilian.  A Knowledge (nature) check reveals them to be yuan-ti purebloods.  There are five of them, one a female with a bow, and they are standing over the corpse of a dead colleague pierced by a barbed spear.

Kalervo returns, and the party decides to plan an ambush for the yuan-ti.  They get in position, but the yuan-ti never arrive.  The party continues to the tunnel.

The party passes once again through the Unopenable Doors.  To their surprise and dismay, Kato is nowhere to be found.  Falin searches the area carefully, and finds several tracks: a few prints belonging to sandal-wearing humanoids, but also some from a dire lion.  The tracks lead northeast into the massive chamber that the party has not yet explored.

Chamakomo uses dancing lights to probe the edges of the chamber.  He illuminates a series of doors to the north and south, and dozens of small niches along the west wall.  J.R. determines that the niches contain nothing of value.  However, the party notices that the silver chalice on the pedestal in the pool of the center of the chamber has been changing colors.  What's more, each party member sees a different color.  They move in closer to examine it.

The water in the pool is amber-colored, and is slightly roiled, as if by some tidal force.  The chalice radiates faint evocation magic.   Chamakomo dips his spear in the water, and suddenly the pool begins to froth and steam.  Yrjo spots several fish in the pool, glowing red-hot; he identifies them as dangerous hetfish.  The party decides to leave well enough alone for now.

The lion's tracks lead northeast through a door into an empty chamber.  Searching carefully, Farhang finds a secret trapdoor leading to a passage 10 feet below this one.  The party descends and follows the passage to another trap door leading up.  This room is also empty, but there is a door to the north in an alcove.  The tracks lead through the door.

Farhang searches the door, and discovers a trap.  He tries to disable it, but just as he is about to disarm the mechanism, his grip slips, and he triggers it instead.  Poisoned spears shoot out from the opposite wall.  Most of the party make their initial saving throws except for Yrjo, who suffers mild Constitution damage.  Chamakomo and Yrjo drink antitoxin, but even with that boost, Yrjo fails his second saving throw as well, and suffers more substantial Constitution damage.  He drinks two potions of lesser restoration and is able to proceed with only minimal damage.  Behind the door is a set of stairs leading down into darkness.

The party heads down cautiously.  As they approach the bottom of the stairs, Falin hears the gentle padding of a large quadruped to the south.  The party springs out from behind the stairwell, unsure of what they are about to find.  It is not Kato, unfortunately.  Instead, it is a Huge hybrid of lion and hyena (a mwaanda).  The party gains the initiative, and moves in quickly to strike.  Yrjo tosses a fireball into its lair, Chamakomo slows it, and Kalervo flame strikes it.  The mwaanda then lets loose an impossibly loud laugh which stuns Falin and J.R., causing them to drop their weapons.  As the party moves in to melee the creature, a patrol of armed guards appears from behind a corner, firing crossbows.  They strike several party members, but they do not pack a powerful punch.  Yrjo blocks the guards with a wall of fire while the party gets to work on the mwaanda.

Some of the guards pass through the wall of fire to melee.  Chamakomo makes Farhang invisible, and the rogue successfully sneak attacks one of the guards, nearly dropping him.  J.R. unleashes a whirlwind attack, Chamakomo whelms a guard, knocking him out, and Fjolnir great cleaves through the mwaanda and the rest of the meleeing guards.  The last two guards, still behind the wall of fire, decide to make a break for it.  As they run, Yrjo unleashes another fireball on them, but it is weak, and they are still standing.  Falin drops one of them with an arrow, his favored enemy bonus making the difference.  But the last one makes it to a large tapestry on the south wall of the corridor.  Before he is finally cut down, he pulls down the tapestry, revealing a glowing symbol of weakness behind it.  Chamakomo drops to the floor, unable to move.

J.R. offers a potion of lesser restoration, his last, to Chamakomo, who is now able to stand, but is still too weighed down by his gear to move.  The rest of the party awakens the guard knocked out by Chamakomo.  J.R. intimidates him into revealing that he is a member of an organization known as the Seekers, who are pursuing ancient arcane knowledge in Maure Pyramid.  Their symbol is a silver sunburst, seen by the party in an empty chamber on the upper level.  The captive knows little about his group's mission, as he is only a guard, but he does provide several useful pieces of information.  Kato was restored to flesh by Yejide, the "prophetess."  She herself is not a Seeker, but arrived here with the Seekers several months ago.  Kato was tamed by Maisha, a dembe (ranger), and is being kept somewhere to the east, not far from this location.  The guard also indicates that there are dangerous traps to the south and southeast.  Finally, he reveals that he has been instructed not to touch the chalice on the upper level.

Having seemingly exhausted the guard's knowledge, the party must decide what to do with him...

XP awarded: 2986 each for Chamakomo, Falin, Kalervo and Yrjo; 2242 for Farhang, Fjolnir, and J.R.

30 Nov 513, continued
The party, unable to move past or dispel the symbol of weakness, (it was placed by at least a 17th level caster), decides to take their hostage up to the first level, where they will wait for the symbol to deactivate.  As they are departing, J.R. hears what he thinks is the taunting voice of an old acquaintance, calling him by his full first name (Joshua).  Something about the voice is off, however.

Once the party dispatches the Seeker guards, they begin to rush down the hall to deal with the two leaders.  Both of the latter flee, and in different directions.  The party elects not to pursue.

After the fight, J.R. explains to the party that he knows the northerner: it is "Slick" Stanley Cutting, a rogue, at least when J.R. knew him.  J.R. and Cutting were members of a party who set out to rob a copper dragon's lair in the Burnt Hills of Teravide.  In the midst of this botched attempt, J.R. found himself more sympathetic to the dragon than his compatriots, and turned against them.  Only Cutting escaped with his life.  Why he is in Nyambe-tanda, and how he got here, is a complete mystery to J.R.  It is clear, though, that Cutting bears a powerful grudge.

Still wanting to find Kato as quickly as possible, the party presses on into the dungeon.  They discover a series of chambers, some linked by secret doors, all painted silver.  Finding nothing of interest there, they press eastwards, finding another secret door at the end of the corridor; this secret door leads to stairs down to the third level.  The party doubles back around a bend to find a pool filled with an acrid liquid.  A bubble of acid spits forth from the pool, splattering all over Fjolnir and J.R.; the latter is completely immune, of course, and raises his Resistance draconic aura to shield the rest of the party.

Probing more rooms in the northeast section of the level, the party stumbles across Kato, alive and well, and apparently very happy to see Kalervo!  The druid also detects sounds coming from a chamber opposite this one.  The party bursts in to find a pair of mwaanda, smaller than the one in the level entryway; a Huge dire ape; and a furred, tailed humanoid brandishing barbed spears -- a wakyambi elf.  Two more mwaanda lurk behind her past an open door. The wakyambi calls to the party to not come any closer, or she will loose the creatures to attack.

The party agrees to parley with her, and she herds the mwaanda into a closed room.  She offers to tell all she knows in exchange for her life and the life of her dire ape animal companion, Baya.  She is Maisha, the dembe of whom the party has already heard, and originally of the village of Ntchouo, to the northwest of here.  She fell in with the Seekers, but is here in Maure Pyramid mainly to train the mwaanda, which she considers an excellent challenge for her skills.  She claims that the Seekers are not an evil organization, but they are led by someone very untrustworthy: Ialu Tomo, a spellcaster of great power and wickedness.  It was Tomo who first opened the Unopenable Doors, and who placed the symbol of weakness behind the tapestry.  Tomo is somewhere below this level, working on unknown projects of great importance that involve demons, among other things.

Maisha confirms that the northern human is indeed Stanley Cutting, and she identifies him as a blue dragon shaman, as J.R. had suspected.  The Amazon is Folami, the commander of the guards on this level.  She is quite cruel and cunning.  Maisha also provides the party the locations of Cutting's quarters, Yejide's quarters, and a trap in a corridor to the southwest of the tapestry.  She is not sure what the trap is, exactly, only that no one is to use that corridor.  When the party presses her about additional hazards, she also warns them not to sleep in the silver rooms, as their dreams may be very disturbing.

XP awarded: 1929 for Chamakomo; 1179 for Falin, Fjolnir, Kalervo and Yrjo; 900 for Farhang and J.R.

30 Nov 513, continued
The party escorts Maisha and Baya through the Unopenable Doors.  As they re-enter the dungeon, they hear a strange shuffling coming from around the corner to the east.  What emerges is a shocking sight: a headless corpse with enormous razor-sharp claws, and, clutched in one of those claws, a pair of writhing heads.  The creature (an unholy chorus) sings an eerie doomwail that paralyzes Farhang, Chamakomo and Fjolnir.  Kalervo flame strikes the creature, and Yrjo attacks with magic missiles.  Farhang and Fjolnir shake off their paralysis, and join the fray.  The unholy chorus tries to Power Attack J.R., but just barely misses.  The rest of the party surrounds the undead creature, and makes short work of him.

The party, wounded and low on spells, decides to hole up outside the dungeon.  Not long after they make camp, they are set upon by a pack of eight large, ravenous baboon-like creatures with doglike muzzles (gambols).  One of the gambols lets loose a terrifying howl which panics Yrjo and Falin.  As the others close in on the party, Farhang sneaks attacks one of them, and Chamakomo casts incite riot.   Three of the onrushing creatures turn on one another.   The remainder, however, inflict heavy damage on the PCs with their bites and claws, including critical hits on J.R. and Kato.  The gambols are also supernaturally quick, gaining an extra attack or move each round, and are able to dodge J.R.'s spiked chain.  Chamakomo uses friend to foe to again set the gambols at each others' throats.  Another gambol howls, sending Farhang fleeing, but Fjolnir, J.R. and Kalervo are able to mop up most of the remaining beasts.  Chamakomo paralyzes the last gambol with hold monster, and Kato finishes him off with a coup de grace.  The party regroups, and is able to spend the rest of the night in peace.

1 Dec 513
Using the intelligence provided to them by Maisha, the party heads quickly downstairs to find Stanley Cutting.  Farhang locates a secret door, and behind that, a normal door.  Fjolnir bursts through it, and is immediately met by a crossbow bolt which glances harmlessly off his armor.  He, Farhang and J.R. enter the room.  Cutting uses his lightning breath weapon on Farhang, to no avail, and tumbles away towards a corner to make a stand.  Cutting's energy aura damages Fjolnir when the latter hacks at him with his axe, but the rogue/dragon shaman is quickly surrounded, and he realizes his situation is hopeless.

He drops his crossbow, and is quickly manacled by Fjolnir.  Under interrogation, he reveals that Tomo is likely two levels below this one.  He also knows that Tomo has been recently raised from the dead.  In fact, Tomo was apparently here in Maure Pyramid before, many centuries ago!

Cutting also explains how and why he is here in Nyambe-tanda.  After the incident with the copper dragon, he was embittered, and sought revenge against J.R.  He followed J.R. to some ancient Wanderer ruins in the southeast of Soucy, an area rife with gnolls and other evil creatures.  Cutting inadvertently stepped on a teleportation circle which brought him here to Maure Pyramid.  Cutting impressed Tomo with his unique skills, and has worked here as a mercenary ever since.

Cutting is still eager to hurt J.R., and relays to the party his version of the events in the copper dragon lair.  He is especially bitter about J.R.'s decision to side with the dragon, rather than simply remain neutral.  For his part, J.R. seems in a forgiving mood, and he and the party agree to free Cutting, and even provide him some means of defending himself, on condition that they never see him again.  Cutting passes through the Unopenable Doors.

The party now seeks out Yejide, the "Prophetess," a dangerous and mysterious force still roaming the second level.  They locate her chamber and prepare to attack.  She hears the party coming, and ducks behind a folding screen, but is too slow to react to their quick entry.  Yrjo hastes the party, and they quickly surround her.  She is a huge, imposing gnoll, covered with bits of rotting meat, and wielding a triple flail.  Yejide suffers several damaging attacks from Falin, J.R., and Fjolnir before she can even act.  When she finally does, she simply speaks a word, vanishing to points unknown...

XP awarded: 5877 for Chamakomo; 4573 for Falin, Fjolnir, Kalervo and Yrjo; 3526 for Farhang and J.R.

1 Dec 513, continued
The party searches Yejide's lair, and discovers a pair of greater glyphs of warding, as well as a secret door.  Bypassing the traps, the party enters a disused tunnel ending in a shallow pit with a tight passageway heading west.  Farhang scouts ahead invisibly and silently through the crawlspace and emerges in an abandoned chamber which features a pair of chests and an ancient, crumbling skeleton.  He reports back, and the party decides to explore further, leaving Kalervo and Kato back as guards.  Soon after they climb out of the pit on the opposite end of the passage, though, an acid-scarred, vengeful ghost manifests before them.  Yrjo is stricken by the creature's horrific appearance, and Falin and J.R. fall prey to its frightening moan, fleeing at top speed.  However, Fjolnir shakes off a phantasmal killer directed at him, and with the help of the rest of the party, eventually destroys the ghost.

Soon afterwards, Fjolnir realizes that he is being watched.  Although he cannot see it, he is convinced that an invisible sensor is following him, suggesting that someone is scrying the party.  Neither Kalervo nor Yrjo is able to dispel the sensor, so the party decides to simply provide a good show to whoever is watching.

Pressing onward, the party locates a chamber guarded by a statue of a hezrou.  When Farhang moves in to investigate, the statue, perhaps unsurprisingly, animates.  Yrjo recognizes it as a stone golem.  The golem quickly grapples Farhang, but is surrounded seconds later by the hasted party.  Before the golem can drag Farhang into an adjoining chamber, J.R. trips him, Yrjo greases the floor underneath him, and Kalervo summons an earth elemental.  Falin, Fjolnir, J.R., and the elemental make quick work of the golem.  When the party explores the adjoining chamber, they discover the golem's intent: there is a deep, red-hot fire pit, apparently the complex's garbage disposal.

Towards the south end of the second level, the party discovers a pair of circular chambers, the larger of which is protected by a nearly impossible lock (knocked by Chamakomo).  Within, the party finds all manner of arcana, including rare spell components, an atlas of Nyambe-tanda, and a huge carpet depicting an alien landscape.  When Farhang moves to investigate the carpet, it animates (again, perhaps unsurprisingly), and forms a dozen toothy maws along its frilled edges.  Kalervo flame strikes the carpet, and Kato and Fjolnir hack it to pieces before any real harm is done.

Both this chamber and the smaller one have openings leading to a network of tiny tunnels.  The party also discovers a tiny bed in the smaller chamber, and Falin finds tracks belonging to a very small humanoid-like creature.  But after a quick peek into the warrens, the party moves on.

At the south end of the level, the party finds a room with a single chest in its center.  It is a rather obvious trap.  Farhang probes the area around the chest carefully, and discovers a pressure plate.  He is able to disable the trap so skillfully that he extracts its active ingredient: three swamp lotus petals which might fetch a very high price back in Taumau.  The chest itself, however, is empty.

In the adjoining chamber, the party stumbles at last across its object of desire: the Ruby Eye of N!ok.  The Eye is grasped by a statue of a kosan orc on the opposite end of the room.  However, the chamber contains a number of details which lead the party to proceed cautiously.  There are inanimate orcish skeletons and a pile of fine dust not far from the entryway; ten mirrors mounted along the walls of the hall leading to the statue; and a pair of bas-relief eyes with red irises facing one another, between the entryway and the statue.

Chamakomo searches the skeletons, and finds a tattered, smudged note in Daka-kosa (Orcish).  Using comprehend languages, he is able to translate: "Break not the gaze of the guardians, or awaken the wrath of the Eye Tyrant."  Falin recognizes this last bit as a possible reference to a beholder, which would explain the pile of fine dust.  The party devises a plan to retrieve the artifact...

XP awarded: 2279 for Chamakomo, Falin, Kalervo and Yrjo; 1714 for Farhang, Fjolnir and J.R.

1 Dec 513, continued
The party believes that magic may be the safest option to retrieve the Ruby Eye.  Yrjo teleports himself, Farhang and J.R. past the bas-relief eyes against the far eastern wall of the chamber.  To their relief, a beholder does not suddenly appear.  Examining the statue more closely, Farhang notices that the Ruby Eye has a circular hole at its base.  Yrjo places Spirit Crusher into the hole, and the statue animates, presenting the assembled Scepter of N!ok.  Yrjo grabs it, knowing that he alone, thanks to his half-orcish reincarnation, can safely handle it.

The party, still being scried, decides to exit Maure Pyramid as quickly as possible.  However, they are almost immediately set upon by an armed party of Seekers and gnoll warriors, led by Folami the Amazon and Yejide.  The attackers come from several directions, and the party splits up to deal with them.  An invisible Farhang (thanks to Chamakomo) heads south, where he finds and evades a pair of gnolls.  To the north, Kato confronts another pair of gnolls, as well as two Seekers.  Dead ahead to the west are the rest of the cultists, including Folami and Yejide.

Yejide speaks a word of chaos which has less effect than she might have hoped, as so many of the party are chaotic in alignment.  Still, Farhang, Kalervo, Kato and Fjolnir are stunned and deafened, and Kalervo's summon nature's ally spell is ruined.  Falin leaps into the fray, while J.R. spider climbs onto the ceiling and uses his breath weapon, to which Yejide is evidently immune.  The Seeker crossbowmen hit Kato several times, and the gnolls make devastating attacks with their dire flails.  Kato is dropped.  On the other side of the battle, Farhang steps on a creaky flagstone, alerting the gnolls to his presence, but he manages to evade their attacks and press on towards Yejide.   The latter places a blade barrier right where Chamakomo and Fjolnir are standing.  Chamakomo makes his save, and is heavily wounded; Fjolnir fails his, and is grievously hurt.  Worse yet, the barrier blocks Yrjo from assisting Kato with a fireball.

The party counterattacks.  Kalervo uses spontaneous rejuvenation to heal his fallen animal companion and the rest of the party, and Yrjo hastes them.  Falin strikes Folami when the latter tries to cast true strike, and then he and Fjolnir cut her to ribbons.  J.R. makes his way back to the rest of the party to heal Fjolnir with his touch of vitality.  Chamakomo casts friend to foe to sow confusion in the massed ranks of Seekers and gnolls, and they hurt one another significantly before the spell wears off.

Farhang eventually reaches Yejide and sneak attacks her.  The halfling is now visible, and in great jeopardy, as he is alone at the rear of the battle, with a pair of gnolls heading his way and Yejide right in front of him.  A motivated Fjolnir clears a path to help him by hacking through three gnolls and Seekers.  Falin and J.R. rush to assist, and ruin Yejide's spell.  Chamakomo casts inevitable defeat to inflict some nonlethal damage on the gnoll priestess.

Meanwhile, Kalervo and a rejuvenated Kato focus on the northern threat.  Kalervo manages to cast flame strike despite his deafness, and Kato cuts down the remaining enemy foot soldiers.

Eventually, Yejide is surrounded.  She strikes at Farhang with her rod of flailing, but it is not enough.  The party attacks her en masse, weakening her.  Finally, J.R. trips her, follows up with a strike from his spiked chain, and she succumbs to the nonlethal damage.  The party finishes her off, and captures a pair of gnolls and a Seeker who attempted to flee.

The party gathers their loot (an impressive haul), and debates their next move.  After considering teleporting directly to Taumau, they decide to contact the boatmen at their river landing, to whom they feel a sense of obligation.  Chamakomo reports no luck in reaching them via a sending spell, indicating that the boatmen may well be dead.  The party realizes they must investigate, but they are too weak to continue much further.  They pass once again through the Unopenable Doors and make camp in the nearby forest.

2 Dec 513
The party heads back to the Kalimara.  As they near the landing point, they spot (and are spotted by) a band of yuan-ti, the same ones Kalervo saw when he scouted the path to the east.  With them is an unwelcome guest, Stanley Cutting, stripped of his gear by the party and evidently wanting it back.

One of the yuan-ti, a female pureblood, places a powerful curse on Fjolnir, weakening his attacks, saves and skills.  An imposing yuan-ti abomination casts a spell at the party, identified by Chamakomo as know greatest enemy; he is sizing the group up.  Chamkomo uses incite riot on a massed group of purebloods and Stanley, but only the latter is actually affected.   Kalervo then drops a flame strike on the purebloods (not including the female), killing all of them instantly.  Yrjo hastes the group once more.

The female, a hexblade, casts blindness on Fjolnir, who succumbs to its effects only because of the curse she had placed on him earlier.  Falin rushes to attack the abomination, but he is incredibly tough.  He strikes at Falin again and again with his unholy surge greatsword, and mercilessly cuts down the elf.  However, an invisible Farhang has crept into range, and sneak attacks the yuan-ti for heavy damage.  The yuan-ti retaliates by baleful polymorphing the halfling into a harmless snake.

Meanwhile, J.R. heals Falin back to his feet while Kalervo completes his summon nature's ally VI, which brings two augmented, animal growthed dire bears to the rear of the battle where the hexblade is firing arrows with deadly accuracy.  The party, including a blind but still dangerous Fjolnir, surrounds the abomination blackguard and the hexblade, and eventually slays the former.  Cutting, bitter to the last, fights until he is dead, and the hexblade surrenders.  The party is no mood to take prisoners, and slays her, but not before she accuses the party of being in league with the wakyambi, their mortal enemies.  After the battle, Chamakomo restores Farhang and Fjolnir using break enchantment.

With no other means of returning to Taumau, Yrjo is forced to teleport back and forth five times before all are safely back in the city.

XP awarded: 6386 each for Farhang, Fjolnir and J.R.; 8368 each for Chamakomo, Falin, Kalervo, and Yrjo.

3 Dec 513
The party, back in Taumau, spends the better part of the day identifying, sorting, and dividing the loot taken from Maure Pyramid.  They also visit the shrine of Ramaranda on the northeast side of town, seeking information about the Scepter of N!ok.  Bes has heard of the item, but does not have any details at hand.  The party will check back with her once she has had a chance to do some research.

4 Dec 513
Faouzi requests to see the party after their sojourn in Maure Pyramid.  Before the scheduled meeting, Farhang recalls that Aldo had a sealed letter on him when he died.  The party decides to read it before seeing Faouzi.  The letter contains a proposal from Faouzi to Empress Katerina to divide and settle Shombe-land, which he claims as his own sovereign territory.

Faouzi is saddened to learn of Aldo's death.  He does indeed ask about the letter, and when told that it had been burned with all of Aldo's possessions, offers to draft another one.  He also asks that the party accept an Azzazza ambassador with them on board the Ampiainen.  The party agrees to pick up the ambassador, Peharu, before returning to Teravide.

11 Dec 513
The party returns to the Temple of Ramaranda, where Bes has learned a fair amount about the scepter.  The scepter was created millennia ago, by Kanoro, the first n'anga of N!ok the All-Seeing Eye.  Kanoro used the scepter to unify rival kosan factions and lead an army to crush the humans and wakyambi of Nyambe-tanda.  The scepter was passed from n'anga to n'anga over the centuries of kosan rule, until, during the Rebelling Time, it was sundered by the razor sword of Amazonia herself.  The two pieces, Spirit Crusher and the Ruby Eye, were separated and presumed lost.

The assembled scepter is a melee weapon of great power.  It also grants the wielder extraordinary influence over orcs, and amazing powers of sight, extending over great distances and into the spirit world.  Like other kosan artifacts, the scepter contains a powerful curse that makes it impossible to wield by non-orcs.

Bes is skeptical of the party's claims that they do not actually have the scepter, but Chamakomo, using a stilled glibness spell, lies convincingly that they have only Spirit Crusher, and the possible location of the Ruby Eye.  Bes advises them to keep Spirit Crusher safe in the meantime.

17 Dec 513
The Ampiainen returns to Taumau, three weeks ahead of schedule.  Captain Juhantalo explains that the ship never made it to D'ok.  They waited in port for nearly two weeks for favorable winds, and then when they finally got underway, they struck a reef while hugging the coast near Shombe-land.  The damage to the ship was fairly minor, but Juhantalo thought it best to return rather than risk stranding the party.

18 Dec 513
Djal informs the party that they have visitors: a trio of fire priests from the theocracy of Bashar'ka, of which D'ok is the capital.  The group is led by Uzumlo, whose dark red skin and bright red hair mark him as something other than human.  Uzumlo explains that word of the Ampiainen reached D'ok, even if the ship itself did not.  Queen Nyathera has invited the party and crew to Mekhe, the great temple of the fire orisha, located about 80 miles south of D'ok.  Yrjo gathers information about Bashar'ka, and decides that the invitation is not a trap.  They accept.  When they are ready to depart Taumau, Uzumlo will help them navigate to their destination.

The party meets with Bes one more time, to ask her an allegedly hypothetical question.  If they were to find the Ruby Eye and assemble the scepter, would she and the other n'anga of Ramaranda purchase the artifact from them, and then destroy it?  Bes finds this attitude mercenary, and expresses her disapproval to Chamakomo in a language unknown to the rest of the group.  However, she offers that the n'anga would pay up to 20,000 gp for the item, a price she admits is paltry and unworthy of such a powerful artifact, but it is all they can afford.  She still seems skeptical of the party's story and motives, and asks Chamakomo point-blank if they already have the artifact.  His denial seems to satisfy her, for now.  The party thanks her for her time, and moves on.

19 Dec 513
While selling their unwanted loot on the city's ramshackle northwest side, the party passes through a narrow alleyway.  Coming towards them in the opposite direction is a band of utuchekulu -- Nyamban dwarves.  They have coal-black skin, wild stringy hair, and most notably, blood-red teeth.  Their overweight leader, smelling of palm wine, throws a shoulder at Farhang, and curses him in Dwarven.  Farhang responds in kind, and the two sides decide to settle the matter with their fists.  At least most of them do.

Farhang and Fjolnir throw punches at the utuchekulu opposite them; Falin throws a tanglefoot bag.  J.R. trips his opponent, Yrjo hits one with touch of fatigue, and Chamakomo uses friend to foe to get most of the dwarves fighting and grappling one another.  The leader, however, strikes at Farhang with his club.  He's aiming to knock out the halfling, rather than kill him, but he hits with terrific force, and Farhang is not happy.  He fights back with his sword, doing lethal damage.

The other utuchekulu realize that the fight has turned bloody, and begin swinging their axes at the party.  But Kalervo baleful polymorphs one of them into a mouse and captures him, while Chamakomo mass whelms the others, knocking several out.  Falin and Fjolnir keep punching and kicking their opponents, while J.R. unsuccessfully attempts to disarm the leader.

The leader appears to draw upon the power of the earth, and delivers a pair of mighty blows on Farhang.  The rogue strikes back, though, while J.R. uses his breath weapon and Yrjo casts magic missile.  Another mass whelm from Chamakomo drops most of the remaining utuchekulu, before J.R. trips and knocks out the leader while the latter is invoking another earth-related power.

The party can hear the city guard approaching...

XP awarded: 999 each for Farhang, Fjolnir and J.R.; 1286 each for Chamakomo, Falin, Kalervo, and Yrjo.

19 Dec 513, continued
The city guard is only moments away.  As Farhang hurriedly rifles through the utuchekulu leader's pockets, and J.R. climbs to the rooftops to escape, Chamakomo comes up with a plan.  He casts veil on the party to make them all appear as common Azzazza, and they head out of the alleyway, milling about nonchalantly.  When the guard arrives, he creates a major image of monkeys armed with clubs, hooting and climbing the walls of the alleyway.  The monkeys soon disappear from view, with the guards on their tail.

As they quit the scene, the party feels a strong wind kick up suddenly.  It tears a red banner away from a nearby shop, and carries it away.  Falin is convinced this is an omen.

25 Dec 513
The Ampiainen is ready to depart Taumau.  Before the party leaves, Bes pays them a visit.  She informs them that she has communed with Ramaranda to learn more about the Scepter of N!ok, and learned the truth about its present location.  She registers her extreme disappointment with the party for lying to her, and tells them that they are no longer welcome at the Temple.  Chamakomo apologizes and attempts to explain the reasons for the party's deception, and offers to atone when the party returns to Taumau.  Bes's reply is noncommittal.

The Ampiainen sets sail for Bashar'ka, with Uzumlo -- whom Falin has identified as a fire genasi, with an efreeti somewhere in his ancestry -- and the other two Xon'mo fire priests aboard.

23 Jan 514
After a choppy and unpleasant month at sea, the ship arrives off the coast of Baye, a small fishing village about 80 miles south of D'ok.  Uzumlo explains that Mekhe (where Nyathera is meeting the party) is about seven miles inland from here.  The party, Captain Juhantalo, and his first mate board skiffs and row out to meet the excited villagers.  Uzumlo procures camels for the party and crew, and they begin the trek to Mekhe.

In the midst of their journey, a violent sandstorm kicks up suddenly.  Fortunately, Falin was able to spot a small cave nearby before the storm hit.  The travelers cram into the cave, but are forced to leave the mounts outside.

Uzumlo explains that sandstorms are not common at this time of year, especially at this level of intensity.  And more importantly, he has never seen one appear so suddenly.  Normally, one can see them on the horizon for hours before they arrive.  The party suspects that the storm may somehow be related to their possession of the Scepter of N!ok.

Falin thinks he can hear words in the howling of the sandstorm.  The rest of the party listens carefully, and it is clear that there is a moaning voice in the wind.  Chamakomo drinks a potion of tongues, and is able to translate: "Scour them!  Bury them!  Drive them to the sea!"  As the group ponders their next move, Kalervo suddenly feels a presence in the cave seeking to speak through him.  Although the presence does not seem hostile, he declines.  J.R. is next, and he agrees.  His eyes turn yellow and sands swirl about him as he becomes a farasi ("horse") for the orisha of the D'okan desert.  The orisha explains that it is under attack by "air's fury," and pleads with the party to find the source of the storm and stop it.  The party surmises that for some reason, the air orisha are warring with the desert.  They briefly consider summoning an air elemental to interview, but decide instead to wait until the next morning, when Kalervo can prepare commune with nature to get a better idea of what is happening.

24 Jan 514
Kalervo casts commune with nature, and discovers that 1) there are calm spots in the sandstorm a few miles east of the cave (Mekhe, presumably) and also about 12 miles south-southeast; and 2) there are powerful undead creatures about six miles to the south.  The party decides to proceed to Mekhe first, after waiting an additional day for Kalervo to prepare appropriate spells to try to calm the sandstorm.

25 Jan 514
Kalervo succeeds in calming the sandstorm locally with control winds, but he can feel the storm "pushing" against him, and struggles to maintain the control.  The northerners and Uzumlo head east towards Mekhe, finding the shrine after a few hours in the windswept desert.  They are ushered in to meet Queen Nyathera.  After hurried diplomatic niceties and gift-giving, Nyathera explains that she has used control weather to temporarily stave off the storm in the immediate vicinity.  She is grateful to hear that the party intends to search out the source of the storm, as her men are limited in number and needed here.

26 Jan 514
The party departs Mekhe, searching for the calm spot twelve miles south.  En route, they pass through the small village of Atiako, shuttered against the scouring sands.  At the village's center, they notice several of the huts' door coverings have been torn asunder.  Falin uses detect favored enemy to try to locate any humans that are still alive; he finds some in a nearby house.  When the party approaches, however, they are met by a group of ravenous undead, unaffected by the storm: four mohrgs, and a walking corpse covered in spiders and cobwebs (a corpsespun gamba).

Falin and Fjolinir quickly charge ahead, while Kalervo places a flaming sphere on top of a mohrg.  The corpsespun emerges from the doorway of a house, gets within range of Falin, and unleashes a spray of spiders from its mouth.  Falin dodges away.  Then the mohrgs advance, lining up two each against the ranger and dwarven defender, and lashing out with their paralytic tongues.  The PCs make their saves and counterattack.

J.R. breathes a line of acid at the corpsespun and a pair of mohrgs, dealing heavy damage.  Yrjo follows with a chain lightning that affects all the undead, and nearly destroys the corpsespun outright.  One of the remaining mohrgs makes a beeline for the unprotected Yrjo, taking attacks of opportunity from Kato and Falin on the way, and strikes the half-orc with his tongue.  Yrjo saves successfully.

Up at the front line, a mohrg paralyzes Farhang, but Fjolnir cleaves through the undead horror and severely damages another one.  Yrjo throws a maximized magic missile at the corpsespun, and Fjolnir, Falin, J.R. and Kato mop up.  The Xon'mo villagers in the nearby hut were unaware that they were even being preyed upon by the undead, so loud were the howling winds.

XP awarded: 650 each for Farhang, Fjolnir and J.R.; 857 each for Falin, Kalervo, and Yrjo; 1157 for Chamakomo.

27 Jan 514
The party is still in Atiako, having spent the night.  Using commune with nature, Kalervo gathers a few facts about the surrounding area and the "calm spot" to the south: 1) there is one powerful unnatural creature near the center of the calm spot; 2) there is one person there as well; and 3) there are a few large baobab trees scattered about, including one in the calm spot and one about a mile north of it.  The party formulates a plan to get to the calm spot as quickly as possible.  Kalervo, Kato, Yrjo, and Fjolnir transport via plants to the baobab north of the calm spot.  Yrjo teleports back to Atiako, gathers the rest of the party, and teleports once again to the baobab.  Fortunately, even with Yrjo's limited knowledge of these destinations, everyone arrives safely.  Falin then uses Survival to lead the party through the sandstorm in the correct direction and taking only minimal damage.

The party emerges from the howling sandstorm into the calm zone.  Inside, it is utterly quiet, as if the storm were not even occurring a few feet away.  The line separating the storm from the quiet is marked with a braid pattern dug into the sand.  The party is unable to determine what sort of magic might be involved here, and decides to leave it alone.

Kalervo assumes the form of a bird and performs reconnaissance invisibly, thanks to Chamakomo.  A few hundred yards south of the party's position, he spies a giant atop a rocky crag.  Using Knowledge (nature), the druid identifies him as a sun giant, an aggressive desert nomad with immunity to fire.  Heading further south, he notes a wide crevasse with a pillar of rock at its center.  On the pillar is another sun giant, along with an ogre-sized winged biped with the legs of a horse.  There is also something burning atop the pillar, but Kalervo is not certain what it is.  South of the crevasse are a few tents, clearly oversized; to the west of them, a herd of oxen, tended by another sun giant; and to the northeast, an enormous baobab tree, atop which is perched a titanic vulture.  Kalervo returns to the party with this information.

The party plans carefully for battle, using a wand of enlarge person to give Fjolnir and J.R. additional reach and strength; barkskin and shield of faith for better protection; haste and longstrider for speed in closing with the giant lookout; mass bull's strength and cat's grace for an extra edge; and invisibility for Farhang and Chamakomo.  The party approaches quickly, and they are spotted by the giant when they crest a small hill 290 feet away.  The giant sounds a huge horn as a warning to his comrades.  The battle is joined.

As the party rushes the sun giant lookout, Kalervo uses call lightning to try to soften him up.  The giant saves, and is only lightly singed.  When the party reaches the crag, they find that they are not adequately prepared to climb it.  Farhang tries to clamber atop it, but loses his footing almost immediately, and slides down to the bottom.  J.R. activates his spider climb ability and takes a flying leap onto the crag, but discovers that the sun giant has cast spike stones on the rock, hobbling him.  Yrjo quickly dispels the spike stones, allowing J.R., Kato and Falin to ascend and melee the lookout.  The massive shadow of the vulture approaches from the southeast, and drums beat to the southwest.

As the party engages the giant guard, the vulture swoops in.  Chamakomo casts charm monster on it, breaking his own invisibility, but it saves easily.  It then grabs him in its enormous beak, doing terrible damage, and flies away with him still in its maw.  Kalervo attempts a charm animal, to no avail.  Nearby, Falin, Kato and Farhang (who delivers a sneak attack) bring down the giant, but more are on the way.

The vulture shakes off Yrjo's scroll of baleful polymorph and crushes Chamakomo for yet more damage, and then flings him into the dust.  As the vulture turns around for another run, though, Chamakomo casts mislead, creating an image of himself crawling away.  The vulture is fooled, and swoops after the illusion.

Meanwhile, the drums have gotten louder.  Two sun giants approach from the southwest, and another one from the southeast.  Accompanying the latter is a reptilian humanoid of some kind, performing a ritual dance and beating on a hand drum.  In response, Kalervo summons four augmented, animal growth-ed brown bears to engage the giants.  Farhang (still invisible) and J.R. clamber down the crag to join the attack, while Falin uses his longbow.

Yrjo shocks the vulture and a pair of giants with chain lightning, while the bears tear into them.  Although the giants deal devastating damage with their longspears (augmented by the reptilian ngoma bard's inspire courage ability), they are no match for the combined powers of the bears, J.R., and Kalervo's flame strikes.  Farhang closes on the ngoma, dealing a sneak attack.  The latter is quickly brought down.

Now, however, reinforcements are arriving, in the form of the sun giant leader and the winged creature (a buraka devil).  The leader calls for the vulture to regroup, and then hurls a massive stone at J.R., battering the dragon shaman.  As the other giants are being cut down by the summoned bears, he launches another huge rock at Kalervo, but misses.  Falin and Yrjo continue to work on the vulture with ranged attacks and spells.

The vulture swoops in yet again, and tramples Fjolnir and one of the summoned bears.  It then performs a wingover, and snatches up Fjolnir in its beak.  Chamakomo uses mass whelm to weaken the creature, but it also deals nonlethal damage to the dwarf.  The giant bird crushes the dwarf in its jaws for more damage, knocking him unconscious, and then flings him sixty feet towards the party.  Fjolnir lays motionless on the ground.

Meanwhile, the rest of the party squares off against the leader (a hulking hurler) and the buraka devil.  The devil lands devastating blows on a summoned bear with his flaming greatclub, shrugs off a +1 shock arrow from Falin and a lightning bolt from Yrjo, and has damage reduction that the party cannot overcome.  But he cannot stand up to the summoned animals, and is quickly slain.  As the party rushes towards the leader, the latter growls at them in Kordo, claiming that he is the last of his kind, and that he will take as many with him as possible.  He conjures a wall of stone to protect himself.  The cover aids him somewhat, and he is able to slay a bear with a Power Attack, but a maximized magic missile from Yrjo and a sneak attack from Farhang bring him down.

J.R. uses his touch of vitality to bring Fjolnir (not dead after all) to his feet, and the rest of the party concentrates their firepower on the outsized vulture.  The bird is eventually rendered unconscious with a whelm from Chamakomo, and is slain by the party.

XP awarded: 4086 each for Farhang, Fjolnir and J.R.; 5657 each for Chamakomo, Falin, Kalervo, and Yrjo.

27 Jan 514, continued
The party explores the sun giant camp, taking everything of value.  Atop the pillar of rock in the fissure, they find a strange crystal, marked with indigo spirals on each face, mystically hovering over open coals.  Spellcraft checks and detect magic from Yrjo and Chamakomo reveal the crystal to have a powerful enchantment aura.  The party guesses that it is somehow responsible for whipping the air orisha into a frenzy and creating the sandstorm.  J.R. uses his breath weapon to melt away the crystal, and eventually, it disintegrates.  The howling winds suddenly cease.

The party returns to Mekhe to a heroes' welcome.  After bathing and changing clothes, they are ushered in to meet Queen Nyathera once again.  She nurses her infant son in her lap.  Nyathera is of course eternally grateful to the party for saving her kingdom, and offers them a clay jar filled with ashes as a reward.  This is the word of the frog, which contains the secret to true resurrection.  Nyathera also owes a debt to the party's patron, Nicholas, whom she refers to as the King of the Bangu of the North.  When Falin confims that Nicholas is unmarried, she offers herself as his bride, and waives the usual bride-price.  The party agrees to take her offer back to Teravide.  In the meantime, the Xon'mo will hold a feast in their honor in two days' time.

29 Jan 514
At the feast, Uzumlo introduces the party to Akil, the ambassador from the Caliphate of Boroko, and his assistant Omir.  Akil appears excited to meet the party, and extends an invitation for them to visit the great capital city of T'ombo, and especially its world-renowned university.  The party agrees to visit at some unspecified date.

They also encounter someone far stranger at the feast: a man on stilts, with an enormous fake phallus, strolling among the crowd, making jokes, and generally behaving in a rude and crass manner.  The party talks to him briefly, but it is not altogether clear that he is talking to them.  The PCs ask Uzumlo for clarification, and he wearily explains that the man is Chuku the Fool, a stilt-walker.  Stilt-walkers are fire priests of a sort.  They hear the whispers of the fire orisha, and the orisha seem to smile upon them, so they are begrudgingly tolerated at Mekhe.

30 Jan 514
J.R. awakens to the sound of a muffled scream.  He rousts Falin, and together they track the sound to a nearby storage hut, where they find a Xon'mo guard bound, gagged, and badly bruised.  The guard explains that he was protecting the royal nursery when he was attacked by Akil, the ambassador.  J.R. and Falin notify the rest of the Xon'mo, and moments later, they realize that the Queen's son has been kidnapped!

Falin quickly finds tracks indicating that the guard was dragged from the nursery to the storage hut, and then finds additional tracks leading out of the temple compound, west toward the sea.  The party heads off in hot pursuit of Akil, but they are stopped by the guards on the way out.  Omir has been arrested, and he is pleading to speak with the party.  Chamakomo agrees to remain behind, while the rest of the party continues west, with Kalervo overhead in avian form.

Omir is clearly distraught, and he proclaims his innocence, as well as Akil's.  He is sure that the ambassador could not have committed this crime.  At Chamakomo's urging, he provides some critical background information.  Queen Nyathera has been claiming that Caliph Ragheb is the father of her son, and the rightful heir of Boroko.  The Caliph has publicly denied this on many occasions, and the Queen has threatened war.  The truth, Omir explains, is that Ragheb coerced Nyathera into his bed last year, and he is indeed the boy's father.  What's more, Ragheb is willing to recognize the child given time, but he must first placate the Borokan nobles.  Akil and Omir are here in Mekhe to try to assuage the Queen and buy more time.  With Akil missing and the child kidnapped, war between Boroko and Bashar'ka seems inevitable.   Omir begs Chamakomo to find out the truth, and offers him and the party, land, cattle and wives (or husbands) as a reward.  Chamakomo defers the question of compensation.

Meanwhile, the party has tracked the kidnapper all the way to the sea, where they find a half-buried baby blanket on the beach.  Inquiries at Baye and the Ampiainen come to naught, so Kalervo decides to explore the possibility that the kidnapper and baby escaped by water.  He spies some whales sounding off shore, and wildshapes into their form to question them.  The whales report that they did in fact see a "fish-man" taking a baby underwater.  They lead him to a structure a few hundred yards offshore which is protected by a wall of force.  He thanks them and rejoins the party.

Back in Mekhe, Chamakomo is performing some detective work.  With the Xon'mos' permission, he searches Akil's room, and finds a pair of black scales that might belong to a fish or other aquatic creature.  The ambassador also appears to have left in a hurry, as he seemed to take none of his belongings with him.  While Chamakomo is searching, Chuku the Fool appears, muttering in a strange tongue, with a few bits of Kordo mixed in.  Chamakomo confronts him, and the Fool blurts out that "the serving girl is a fish."  Asked to elaborate, the Fool says: "the marakely is a girl, the girl is a marakely.  You can see her gills."  A marakely is a cichlid (fish) native to Nyambe-tandan coastal waters.  Chamakomo interviews Xeseri, the palace staff matron, and learns that a girl named Dikeledi is missing this morning.  Xeseri seems to be in a bit of a fog about Dikeledi, and is not sure why she hired her in the first place.  It just seemed like a good idea at the time.

Armed with this information, Chamakomo takes off on his flying carpet for Baye.  Before he leaves, Uzumlo explains that Nyathera and the other fire priests have been trying to scry Akil and the infant, with no success.

The party is reunited aboard the Ampiainen.  They agree to head to the underwater structure in the morning.  Captain Juhantalo offers them a pair of potions of water breathing to supplement Kalervo's spells.

31 Jan 514
With water breathing spells and a scroll of freedom of movement for Fjolnir, the party heads under the waves.  As they approach the strange structure, they are set upon by a pair of giant turtles.  There is something clearly off about the turtles, however: they are covered with tentacles, eyes, and other bizarre deformities.

As the turtles approach, Chamakomo casts friend to foe upon them, fooling them into attacking one another.  The turtles shrug off Yrjo's chain lightning, but Kalervo, in shark form, summons a giant squid behind them.  The squid lashes out at a turtle with his tentacles, grappling and holding him.  The grappled turtle eventually succumbs to the squid's attacks.  The other one looks to put some distance between himself and the squid, and bites J.R. with a critical hit.  Fjolnir rushes into melee, but the turtle gets an attack of opportunity, and pushes the dwarf back out of reach before the latter can attack.  Yrjo, J.R., and the squid wear down the remaining turtle, and Farhang finishes him off with a sneak attack.

The wall of force protecting the underwater structure seems to be tied to a strange three-fingered handprint on the adjacent wall.  Farhang is unable to disable it, so Yrjo simply disintegrates the wall of force, and the party enters.

There is very little inside the structure, except for a basalt ring, inscribed with runes, set into the north wall.  With Knowledge (arcana), Spellcraft, and comprehend languages, the party determines that the ring is some sort of portal, tied to astronomical phenomena.  Boldly, they enter.

They reappear in an underwater obsidian fortress at some unknown depth.  Heading northwest, they quickly stumble upon an observation area, and beyond that, they spy a trio of hostile figures.  Falin, Kalervo and J.R. identify them as sea devils, a.k.a. sahuagin, a.k.a. silwane-manzi.  But there is something abnormal about these sahuagin, as they have patches of smooth silvery skin.  One of the sahuagin taps his trident on the wall, perhaps sounding an alert, and the battle is joined.

The sahuagin have many melee attacks, but Chamakomo's slow spell reduces them to just one each.  Kalervo then summons a Huge water elemental, whose vortex ability sweeps up the sahuagin and prevents them from escaping.  Fjolnir, Falin, J.R. and Farhang deal massive amounts of damage to the trapped sea devils, nearly dismembering them, but in their frenzy they do not quit fighting.  They unleash a powerful electrical discharge that shocks the PCs, but fortunately, they are mostly contained by the vortex, and pose little additional threat.

Meanwhile, another group of sahuagin appears from the southeast.  Kalervo baleful polymorphs one of them into a minnow, but the others fight on, still in a frenzy.  They nearly kill Kato before the cat is healed by Chamakomo and J.R.  Soon, this group of sahuagin is in the same state as the other: cut to ribbons, but still fighting.

Eventually, though, their frenzy wears off.  And when it does, they all simply disintegrate.

XP awarded: 929 each.

31 Jan 514, continued
The party probes ahead in the complex, and finds a portcullis blocking a passage to the north.  Farhang sneaks up to it.  He spies the opening mechanism beyond arm's reach on the other side of the gate, and a number of figures milling about in a huge chamber.  Seeking more detailed intelligence, Kalervo assumes the form of a (hopefully inconspicuous) fish and enters the chamber, hoping to stay hidden.  He is quickly spotted, but the sahuagin do not pay him much mind.  He counts nearly 30 silwane-manzi inside.

The party formulates a plan: Yrjo casts silent portal on the portcullis, and Chamakomo casts swift etherealness on Fjolnir, allowing the latter to pass through the gate and open it silently.  Chamakomo follows with a silent image of the gate still lowered, to delay discovery of the assault for a few extra moments.  Finally, the party is buffed with haste and mass bull's strength.

Most of the party manages to rush into the chamber before they are spotted.  The sahuagin fall back into uneven ranks, while a pair of four-armed, draconic-looking leaders emerge from alcoves and step up.  Immediately, though, Chamakomo hits them with friend to foe, affecting one of the leaders and many of the rank-and-file.  Yrjo follows up with a chain lightning that seriously thins out their ranks.  Fjolnir, Farhang and J.R. rush into melee on the left side of the battlefield, and Kato, Kalervo and Falin on the right.

Kato grapples his half-dragon mutant opponent.  The other flails futilely at Fjolnir with his four vicious talons, managing only a pair of feeble rakes.  Fjolnir returns with a devastating full attack that slays the half-dragon.  On the other side of the battlefield, the remaining half-dragon, still grappled, uses his breath weapon, a cone of force, and Kato takes its full effect.  However, Farhang sneak attacks him, Kalervo finishes him off, and Falin kills seven sahuagin with seven attacks.

As the party mops up the remainder of the sahuagin, another one enters from northeast, and is shocked to witness the scene of carnage before him.  Fjolnir charges ahead, but finds that he cannot approach this sahuagin; some magical energy (an antilife shell) is hedging him out.  As the rest of the party moves to surround the enemy spellcaster, Yrjo dispels the effect.  The sahuagin retaliates with a blood to water spell that catches Falin, Fjolnir, Farhang, Kalervo and Kato.  They all suffer heavy Constitution damage, but Falin gets the worst of it, taking 10 points.  He drops to the ground, stone dead.  The sahuagin flees to the east.

Kalervo and Kato pursue him to a supernaturally dark chamber, and soon flank him.  The silwane-manzi n'anga casts defensively, and touches Kalervo with a talon brimming with negative energy.  The druid is dropped to 1 hit point from the harm spell.  The sahuagin continues to flee east, shrugging off a feeblemind from Chamakomo and evading grapple attempts from both Kalervo and Kato.

He reaches a chamber with another portcullis, but is again quickly surrounded by the party, and grappled by Kato.  He tries to cast greater command, but fails his Concentration check.  Still, he resists Chamakomo's charm monster and a second feeblemind.  But eventually J.R. cuts him down.

The party searches the various chambers they've just passed through.  The supernaturally dark room appears to be a shrine of some sort.  There's an obsidian statue in the center of the room, depicting a cross-legged humanoid -- possibly a human -- with an oversized jaw.  It radiates strong transmutation magic.  Farhang searches the statue, and finds a catch to release its jaw.  The mouth opens, revealing an utterly dark interior.  Chamakomo and J.R. perform various tests which establish that anything placed in the mouth seems to disappear, or be destroyed.  They opt to leave it alone.

In the n'anga's private chamber (with the portcullis), they find his treasure, including a strange gray baton, as well as a large, viscous greasy bubble.  The interior of the bubble is hazy and difficult to see, but there appears to be a contented, sleeping human baby inside.  Beyond the portcullis is a large holding pen with several dire sharks inside.  Kalervo fails at an attempt to use wild empathy on the sharks.  The party grabs the bubble, loots the bodies of the fallen sahuagin, grabs Falin's corpse, and heads back to the surface world.

They return to Mekhe, and are immediately ushered into Nyathera's court.  The queen, unsure of what she is dealing with, casts a greater dispel magic on the bubble and hopes for the best.   Something is dispelled, but the bubble remains intact and the baby unchanged.  She grabs a dagger and carefully cuts open the bubble.  Liquid oozes out, and she produces the baby, only to discover that it is nothing more than a realistic-looking doll!  She throws the doll to the floor in disgust and storms away.  Uzumlo explains that Nyathera is not angry at the party, but simply angry.  He advises them to stay away in the meantime, and assists the party with some lesser restoration spells to heal their Constitution damage.  The party buries Falin, in preparation for using the word of the frog tomorrow.

1 Feb 514
The party resurrects Falin with the word of the frog and prepares to return to the silwane-manzi garrison.  Nyathera meets with them, having calmed down.  From the party's description of the dark shrine, she guesses that it is dedicated to Gamal the Dark One, a fiendish orisha.  She had not previously known of an association between the silwane-manzi and Gamal, but neither does she find it surprising.  She is surprised that there may be silwane-manzi nearby, however, as they are known to infest the Northern Ocean.

2 Feb 514
The party returns to the portal and the sahuagin garrison.  They map out the unexplored sections of the complex, tracing the limits of the shark pen (and spotting an additional, hitherto unseen portcullis), and finding a storage area with a watertight brass case and unknown magical contents.  Back in the n'anga's chamber, Falin notices a secret door...

XP awarded: 1463 each.

2 Feb 514, continued
The secret passage from the n'anga's chamber heads northeast (and up, Fjolnir notes).  After about five hundred yards, Falin spies a large crack in the ceiling of the tunnel.  Farhang clambers up and discovers a large pocket of air.  The party takes note and moves on.

After another five hundred yards or so, the passageway ends in a slick, grayish membrane, something no one in the party has seen before.  Farhang pokes at it with a sword, triggering an audible greater alarm spell.  The party decides to try to enter the chamber as quickly as possible.  The membrane stretches, but does not yield.  Chamakomo tries knock to no avail, and Fjolnir takes a mighty swing with his axe, but causes only a tiny amount of damage.  The party then remembers the gray baton they retrieved from the silwane-manzi n'anga.  Chamakomo touches the baton to the membrane, and it becomes permeable.  The party rushes in.

The vast chamber beyond is bizarre, carved from rippling obsidian, with strange protuberances here and there, and tiny luminescent jellyfish flitting about.  Unfortunately, the alarm has given the inhabitants time to prepare.  There to greet the party are four cichlid-like aberrations -- one with a staff, one with a spear, the other two unarmed -- along with a pair of large watery boars, with bits of coral for eyes, and massive, razor-sharp tusks.

The enemies gain the initiative.  The staff-bearer completes an arcane incantation, unleashing a powerful burst of cold centered right on the party.  Contained within the burst is a terrifying image of death.  The image leaves most of the party shaken.  Worse yet, the burst seems to have done extra damage to the humans in the party.  Several PCs are already near death.

Along with the watery razor boars, the remaining aberrations, one a nanala rogue, the other two engolo monks, move in to melee the party, summarily killing Kalervo, Kato and Chamakomo.  A now-unprotected Yrjo tries to smite them with chain lightning, but the nanala and engolo have improved evasion, and take no damage.

Falin, Fjolnir, Farhang and J.R. fight on, but are doing little damage to the enemy because of the latter's impressively tough scaly skin.  Worse yet, the razor boars have fast healing, so what little damage the party does is quickly erased.  The enemy sei sorcerer lobs an empowered orb of electricity at Fjolnir, zapping the dwarf.  J.R. breathes on the sei in return, weakening but not killing him.

One of the engolo monks moves to melee Yrjo, and drops him with a well-placed kick.  J.R. raises his fast healing aura to try to stabilize the party, and succeeds at bringing Yrjo around, but the dragon shaman is soon gored and slain by the razor boars, as are Falin and Farhang.

A desperate Yrjo tries to disintegrate the engolo near him, but misses badly.  The enemy sorcerer then feebleminds Yrjo, rendering him completely powerless.  Fjolnir is surrounded and eventually stunned by one of the engolo.  Although he fights valiantly, he too is slain.  A barely-sentient Yrjo tries to crawl back out through the membrane, but the nanala catches him and finishes him off.

Everything fades to black...

XP awarded: 0 each.

Date Unknown
The party's spirits begin their departure for other realms, when they feel a powerful force drawing them back.  Appearing before them is an image of a strange wooden statue.  It is a twisted human figure, a pained expression on its face, its limbs tied with heavy ropes, with many nails driven into it, and holes for yet more nails.  A large crack in the figure reveals red clay flecked with diamond dust.

The figure exerts some sort of mystical pull; their spirits cannot escape it.  They are drawn into it, into the clay, hurtling through a maelstrom of tortured human visages, the stars, and unknown vistas.

After a few moments, it stops.  The PCs are somewhere, seemingly outside, at twilight.  Everything is vague and indistinct, as if viewed through warped glass, or underwater.  After about 60 feet, everything seems to fade into mist.  There is a dull rumbling sound emanating seemingly from everywhere.

The party start to try to figure out what and where they are.  They find that their bodies are translucent, and seem to lack substance, but they are able to touch one another.  They can fly, and can pass through the earth, albeit blindly.  As they float about, their horizon moves with them, but the mists still close in after about 60 feet.

J.R. concentrates as hard as he can on touching a nearby plant.  When he does so, he is suddenly able to see and hear clearly, as if he had stepped through the warped glass.  The dull rumbling is now loud, and he can tell that the entire earth is trembling.  He is on a hillside; to the west, the hill slopes rapidly down to a shore, and down below, he can see several dozen tiny figures scrambling into the water, a few in small fishing boats, many simply grabbing on to pieces of flotsam or swimming for their lives.  Rocks and earth slide down the hill, raining on the terrified people.  He quickly flies down to the shore, but the victims pay him no attention, so he returns.

J.R. realizes that even as he is viewing all this, he is still "behind" the warped glass as well.  It seems that he and the party can manifest themselves in the real world, while maintaining their existence in the mists.  The party soon surmises that they are ghosts, incorporeal on the Material Plane, and tied somehow to the Ethereal.  Each of them also has newfound special abilities, like a gaze attack or frightful moan.

Once they have all manifested and can see the Material Plane clearly, Falin spots a battle occurring nearby.  An unarmed human woman is trying to escape from a grayish hulking brute with a wicked elephant axe, and one of the cichlid-aberrations, which has a third arm -- seemingly human -- holding a buckler.  The party makes a quick decision to intervene on the side of the woman.

Falin and J.R. rush forward to melee, but the aberration unleashes a wave of negative energy and rebukes them.  They immediately halt and cower before him.  Chamakomo attempts to feeblemind him, but he makes his save easily.  Yrjo then strikes the brute, whose eyes and mouth are sewn shut with blue thread, with a magic missile.

The brute steps forward to attack the party.  Kalervo begins casting summon nature's ally VII, but the hulking undead -- a deathbringer -- has a readied greater dispel magic, and counters him, ruining the spell.  Fjolnir swings his axe at the deathbringer, but finds his incorporeality a serious hindrance, as some of his blows simply pass through the enemy.  Even the ones that connect do much less damage than he is used to dealing, as he has no strength to put behind them.  With her assailants now occupied, the woman takes the opportunity to vanish from the field.

Yrjo continues peppering the deathbringer with magic missiles, while Chamakomo uses a shadow evocation to create a partly-real ice storm.  The aberration, a dread necromancer, saves easily, taking only a trivial amount of damage.  The deathbringer trades blows with Farhang, Fjolnir, and Kato, but his corporeal blade simply passes through the ghosts a great majority of the time, to his evident frustration.  Kato, unable to even touch the undead with his nonmagical claws and teeth, is encouraged by Kalervo to use his incorporeal corrupting touch attack, but to little effect.

Chamakomo rushes up to grab the dread necromancer with his draining touch ability, sapping away the villain's Constitution.  The latter strikes back with his ghost touch longsword, wounding Chamakomo.  At the other end of the battlefield, Fjolnir begins connecting regularly on the deathbringer, doing solid if unspectacular damage.  Kalervo then completes a summon nature's ally VI, bringing forth a horde of brown bears, most of them animal growth-ed, to clean up the battlefield.

Between Chamakomo, still draining Constitution, and the bears, the dread necromancer is battered to within inches of his life.  He turns invisible to escape.  Kato uses his scent ability to track down his general location, and tries to signal the rest of the party, but they are too occupied with the deathbringer to pay him any mind.  Even as Fjolnir cuts down the brute, the dread necromancer reappears, and casts command undead on Kato, making him his thrall.  Kato pounces on Chamakomo, tearing at him with his claws and teeth.  Kalervo immediately dispels the effect, though, and Fjolnir and the remaining bears destroy the aberration.

The woman reappears, and addresses the party as if they were ancestor orisha of the Mbanta people.  As she does so, she suddenly changes form, into one of the cichlid-aberrations!  She introduces herself as Kefilwe, and asks the party why Mbanta ancestor orisha are saving a nommo -- evidently the name of her race -- while their own people face imminent destruction.  The Isle of Mbanta has begun crumbling into the sea, she explains, and there is no time to spare.  The party, unsure of what exactly she is talking about or where the Isle of Mbanta is, agree nonetheless to follow her to the nearby village of Mphaki, where she was headed to try to save some of the inhabitants.

The earthquake grows more intense as the party arrives at Mphaki.  Much of the village seems to have slid down the hillside, including the huts belonging to the chief and his family.  Even the trail itself has collapsed away, leaving what's left of the village stranded on an isolated outcropping of rock, separated from the party by a twenty-foot wide, seventy-foot deep chasm.

The largest remaining structure, a mud-brick building with a wooden roof, is under attack by a pair of Gargantuan monstrous centipedes.  One is on the roof, tearing at it, while the other is trying to bash his way through the doorway, which is blocked by some furniture.  Falin charges ahead to attack them.  As he does, strange creatures seem to emerge from the centipedes, as if they were spirits exiting a host.  They are djok demons, with the heads of lions, the arms of apes, and the hindquarters of zebras.  More interestingly, they seem to be on the Ethereal Plane with the party.  They address the party in Kordo, and ask them to join in finishing off a group of humans holed up inside the shrine.  The party opts not to take this offer.

Chamakomo casts confusion on one of the djok, while Falin, Farhang, J.R., Fjolnir and Kato move in to melee.  Meanwhile, the centipedes, now free of the demons' control, rush towards the only available prey: Kefilwe, still on the other side of the chasm.  They suffer several attacks of opportunity along the way, and then try to leap the chasm.  One makes the jump, and the other fails miserably, falling but not quite dying.  Yrjo attempts to disintegrate the successful centipede, but it makes a very lucky save, and fights on.  Kefilwe, for her part, turns invisible once more.

One of the djok attempts to cast unholy blight, but is foiled in the attempt by Farhang.  The other, suffering from the confusion spell, is attacked by J.R. and Fjolnir, and is eventually slain by that pair.  The other is grappled by Kato, and then sneak attacked by Farhang.  It, too, is destroyed.  Yrjo tries another disintegrate on the nearest centipede, this time successfully, and the vermin is turned into fine dust.  Falin returns to strike the other centipede, which has climbed up out of the fissure, and succeeds in driving it off.

J.R. rushes into the mud-brick shrine, as the earthquake grows more intense.  Inside, he finds a group of ten young Mbanta.  Most are huddled together, clinging to one another and crying, but one is seated apart from them, with a gris-gris laid out on the mat in front of him.  He is trying to concentrate, but is clearly having trouble doing so with the earthquake and the monsters battering at the door.  He repeats "I wish that all of us here were aboard a big ship, sailing safely away," to no apparent effect.  The others shout at him, "Moyo!  Moyo!  Try again!  Focus harder!".

J.R. uses his malevolence ability to inhabit Moyo's body, and announces to the Mbanta that it is time for them to leave.  The Mbanta recognize him (and Kalervo, who has also arrived), as ancestor orisha, but they ask for guidance on where and how they can go, as they are trapped on this outcropping of rock, and there is little time left before the whole island crumbles.  J.R. releases Moyo, and the party hurriedly considers their options: Could Falin use telekinesis to lift all the Mbanta across the chasm?  Could Yrjo teleport them?  How many tries would it take?  As they debate, the island is breaking apart, and all is nearly lost.  Finally, Chamakomo recommends that Yrjo try to use Moyo's gris-gris.  Yrjo concentrates, activates the gris-gris, and invokes Moyo's wish.

Instantly, the party, the Mbanta, and Kefilwe find themselves aboard a sailing ship, with the Isle of Mbanta crashing into the sea behind them.  The Mbanta offer prayers of thanks to the ancestor orisha, and Moyo points to an unusually bright star which has appeared in the northern sky.  He tells the Mbanta that they will set sail for Mademba, but that they will not stay there; instead, they will follow this northern star to their destiny.

With that, the party again sees the image of the pained wooden statue.  They hear a whisper: "The circle is complete.  Now make whole what was broken."  The party find themselves back in their bodies, hale and whole, standing at the gray membrane, with a greater alarm spell going off.

2 Feb 514
Knowing now what they have to do to pass the membrane, they enter the nommo fortress before the enemy have had much time to muster.  Only the two engolo monks and the nanala rogue are waiting when they arrive.  The nanala rushes up and sneak attacks Farhang, while one of the engolo tries to stun Fjolnir, but he fails in the attempt.  Chamakomo retaliates with a hold monster on the other engolo.  The nommo shakes off the enchantment after a few seconds, but Yrjo hits him with a disintegrate spell, badly injuring but not quite killing him.  Kato leaps forward and attacks the other engolo, but the latter is very slippery and a trained wrestler, and easily escapes the lion's grapple attempt.

The sei and the boars now approach from the north, while many other nommos gawk from a distance.  The sei lobs an orb of electricity at Fjolnir, dealing heavy damage.  Something about the orb has a frightening appearance as well, and causes the dwarf to become shaken.  The boars then charge Farhang.  The halfling is struck, but fights on.

Chamakomo attempts to feeblemind the enemy spellcaster, but fails to penetrate the latter's spell resistance.  The enemy then feebleminds Chamakomo, leaving him a gibbering fool and unable to cast spells.

Kalervo completes his summon nature's ally VII, and a giant squid appears behind the enemy sei sorcerer.  The squid tears the sei apart in a single round, and lashes out at one of the water element razor boars as well.  Fjolnir dispatches the engolo he is fighting, and Kato and Yrjo take care of the other.  The nanala, tumbling around the battlefield to make sneak attacks on Chamakomo and Farhang, is hurt badly by Falin and J.R., and attempts to flee.  Yrjo slays her with chain lightning.

The razor boars, now fighting alone, try to trample the party.  The first is eviscerated in the attempt by attacks of opportunity from J.R., Falin, and Farhang.  The second does manage to trample a number of party members, but is eventually slain by the combined efforts of J.R. and the giant squid.  The other nommos observing the combat from a distance panic at the sight of their most powerful members being killed, and flee to the north and west.  The party opts not to pursue.

They search the bodies of the fallen nommos and find, among other things, a black baton on the leader, and red batons on the engolos and nanala.  Given Chamakomo's condition, however, they decide to retreat to the Ampiainen and heal.

3 Feb 514
Kalervo restores Chamakomo's faculties with a heal spell, and once again the party journeys beneath the waves to the nommo fortress.  This time, they find it utterly abandoned.

Past the entryway where their two great melees took place, they find four statues of nommos.  Farhang searches them carefully, and discovers a hidden panel in one of them, containing another black baton.  The party moves on to a chamber protected by another membrane.  Unlocking it with the black baton, they find a variety of odd items, including crushed shells coated with a sort of a mucus, as well as a locked, seemingly watertight trunk.  Inside is a wide variety of humanoid clothing.  The party deduces that they are costumes used by the shapeshifting nommos.  There is nothing of value here.

To the northwest is a truly massive chamber, filled with rows of large gray pods, each about the size of a man.  These might be the sleeping chambers of the nommos.  In a narrow passage outside this chamber, Falin spots a secret door.  Beyond it is the open sea.  The nommo fortress is apparently located in a coral reef, about 90 feet down.  The water color and temperature are different from the cove near Baye.

The central chamber of the nommo fortress is domed, and has a ring of long coral benches.  Oddly, the night sky is clearly visible in the dome, but it is not a window.  The party opts not to investigate further.

In the north of the fortress there is a walled-off space that the party can circle, but with no apparent entrance.  Falin searches it carefully, and finds a secret door.  Behind it is another membrane.  This one seems to be watertight, since the area beyond is dry with breathable air.  There, on a pedestal, is the very wooden statue that the party saw in their mind's eyes after they were slaughtered by the nommos.  Interestingly as well, they find their possessions seem to have lost all their magical properties.  And what's more, Chamakomo seems to be gone, having been replaced by a northerner wearing a mask!

Chamakomo admits that he is really Gilles Pommery, a northerner exiled here as a practical joke by the green dragon Striftaris, after she caught him burgling her hoard.  He quickly learned Kordo and posed as an Mbanta for many years while trying to discover a means of returning home.  When he heard of the Ampiainen, he rushed to Taumau to meet up with the party.  The rest of the party is puzzled at his elaborate and ongoing deception, but leaves the issue for now.

Pressing on, the party finds another "locked" membrane.  Again using the black baton, they stumble upon what appears to be the leader's quarters.  His treasure is still intact, as is a greasy, gray bubble with a human baby figure visible inside.  The party brings it along, but is wary of another trick.

When they bring the bubble into the antimagic chamber, it collapses, leaving behind an apparently healthy infant.  Kalervo casts water breathing on the child, and Gilles agrees to carry him.

Before they return with the infant, they pause to examine one last chamber.  The interior of this room is dry as well, and is guarded by a pair of creatures that resemble stalagmites.  Gilles immediately identifies them as ropers, and warns the party about their sticky strands.  The party gains the initiative.  Fjolnir dashes into the room to engage the first one, and hacks it in half with a full attack.  Kalervo flame strikes the other, and discovers that it appears to be quite vulnerable to fire.  The roper lashes out with a number of strands on J.R., but he is undamaged.  Falin, though, feels his strength draining away.  Yrjo finishes off the roper with a magic missile before any more damage can be done.  Afterwards, J.R. uses his touch of vitality to restore Falin's strength.

There are three more membranes inside this chamber.  Scanning the floor carefully, Falin notes that there are nommo tracks leading back and forth from the westernmost one.  Gilles uses clairvoyance to scan the area beyond, and spies an old human man, sitting in a cramped cell.  The party "unlocks" the membrane, and the man emerges, thanking them for rescuing him.  He introduces himself as Tebogo, and transforms into his true shape: a nommo with white scales.  At the party's prodding, he explains that there is a conflict among the nommos, and that he has been held captive here by the enemy faction for many years.

The nommos, he explains, are a race of amphibious creatures with great knowledge of astrology, who for years advised and tutored the Mbanta people.  With that, he trails off, and becomes reticent.  Gilles tries diplomacy to get Tebogo to continue, and he does.  He reveals that the nommos are to blame for the destruction of the Mbanta homeland.  Most nommos were benevolent towards the Mbanta, but a secret evil faction sought to establish themselves as absolute rulers, and created a powerful artifact, an nkisi (statue), in which they bound the spirits of the Mbanta people and their land.  When this was discovered, the two nommo factions clashed.  A good nommo prince named Qinisela, not quite knowing what he was doing, cracked the nkisi with his axe.  The people were freed, but the land was sundered, and the Isle of Mbanta sank beneath the waves in a great earthquake.

Tebogo believes that the nkisi can be repaired, but to do so will require an impossible sacrifice: the blood of the Mbanta's ruler.  As the Mbanta are nomadic and travel only in small groups, they have no ruler, as far as he knows.  But he does believe that the nkisi is somewhere in this fortress.

Tebogo accompanies them back to the antimagic chamber, where they retrieve the nkisi.  To their relief, the antimagic seems to be a function of the room, not the nkisi.  However, they are starting to feel some ill effects from their bout with oblivion...

XP awarded: 4521 each.

3 Feb 514, continued
With the nkisi and the infant in hand, the party decides to leave the nommo fortress as quickly as possible.  Yrjo has a sudden panic attack at the thought of being underwater, but is able to compose himself and press on.

Passing back through the silwane-manzi garrison, they note that the portcullis to the shark pen has been raised.  They round a corner to find four hungry dire sharks heading straight for them.  J.R., shaking off a case of the jitters, smites the nearest one with his spiked chain, and Gilles casts hold monster, paralyzing another.  Yrjo distracts a shark with slapping hand, allowing Fjolnir to take an attack of opportunity.  The dwarf and Falin make full attacks, and begin to carve up the fish methodically.  Strangely, Farhang finds the entire situation hysterical, and simply laughs while the others fight.

As Fjolnir slays one shark and cleaves into another, Kalervo completes his summon nature's ally VII spell.  A giant squid enters the fray.  It kills one shark, grapples another, and the combat is soon over.  Kalervo unctuously praises his colleagues' melee prowess.

Upon reaching the portal chambers, Tebogo and the PCs part ways.  Tebogo explains to them that they are in the Northern Ocean, several thousand miles from where they thought they were.  He takes a portal leading to the Southern Ocean, where the white-scaled nommos have their palace.  The party returns via the portal which brought them, and are soon on dry land.  Farhang feels the need to spend an inordinate amount of time preening and straightening himself before they can proceed further, to Falin's evident annoyance.

They return to Mekhe, and are quickly ushered into Nyathera's presence.  She recognizes the screaming, hungry infant as her own, and falls to her knees in joy.  When the party explains the nommo plot to her, she orders Omir to be freed.

That night, the Xon'mo again hold a feast in the party's honor.  Nyathera presents each of them with a bogolanfini cloth, dyed with her clan's pattern, as well as a gold-capped baobab-wood staff which marks them as favored of the fire orisha.  They are each given the honorary title of chief.  Omir's gratitude takes the form of a document granting the party 400 head of cattle from his family's herd.  The PCs are not sure that they can ever collect, but they accept the gift graciously.  Omir also promises to find them wealthy and beautiful spouses in Boroko, but they politely demur (although Yrjo is tempted).

As a last point of business, the party inquires with Queen Nyathera about selling the Scepter of N!ok.  She informs them that the Firewalker society, of which Uzumlo is a member, may be able to help.  Uzumlo explains that the Firewalkers keep a vault in the town of D'ok, where they may safely keep the scepter.  He then proposes a trade: the scepter for a kosan ring of three wishes, two of which remain.  Like the scepter, the ring can only be used safely by an orc, meaning Yrjo.  The party agrees, and heads to D'ok to make the trade.  Yrjo again has to fight his fear before boarding the Ampiainen, and spends all his time below decks.

5 Feb 514
The party arrives at D'ok and makes the exchange.  They now face the question of what to do next.  The party recalls the Mbanta nkisi's plea: Now make whole what was broken.  To repair the statue and raise the Isle of Mbanta, they will need a blood sacrifice from the Mbanta's ruler.  Although the Mbanta of Nyambe-tanda have no ruler, the Mbanta of Teravide do.  Falin and Kalervo formulate a plan to return to the Zone of Contagion and use Dumisai's blood -- not necessarily by killing him, of course -- to heal the nkisi.  But they remember their oath to Dumisai not to reveal Mpulu's existence to outsiders, which includes Gilles and Fjolnir.  They eventually decide that it is unavoidable, and discuss their proposal with the others.  The party, homesick for their native land, agrees to complete their mission to Nyambe-tanda and head for Kuusamo.

9 Mar 514
The party arrives at Taumau to provision the ship for the long journey and to pick up Ambassador Peharu of Taumau-Boha.

XP awarded: 557 each for Falin, Gilles, Kalervo and Yrjo; 400 each for Farhang, Fjolnir and J.R.

7 Apr 514
The Ampiainen gets ready to depart Taumau and Nyambe-tanda.  The hydrophobic Yrjo refuses to come aboard, so Gilles overwhelms him with the spell of the same name.  The party drags the half-orc below decks and binds him until they're safely away.  Ambassador Peharu and his aides also embark with the crew, and immediately become seasick.

Unfavorable winds make the return voyage a long one.  During the voyage, J.R. teaches Peharu the Common tongue, but as a prank, deliberately substitutes a few words.

23 May 514
A few days south of the Thiffault isthmus, the crew spots another vessel in the distance.  It appears to have run aground.  Kalervo assumes the form of a gull to get a closer look.

The other vessel is the James, and it appears to have hit a submerged reef.  Its rudder is also missing.  A few members of the crew are milling about on deck, but they do not seem to be working to free the ship.

As Kalervo gets closer, he notices that the James is surrounded by humanoid-type creatures with finned legs, astride a school of porpoises.  He returns to the Ampiainen, and reports back.  Based on the description provided, Falin guesses that they are tritons, creatures once native to the Elemental Plane of Water but who now reside in our world.  They are generally benevolent.

The tritons notice the Ampiainen, and assume a defensive posture around the James.  Kalervo now assumes porpoise form, and swims over to converse with the porpoises.  The porpoises, with their limited horizons, explain that the humans on the ship have been hunting them, along with whales, but can offer little else.

Kalervo then decides to get the human side of the story.  Back in gull form, he flies to the James's deck and assumes human form.  He is quickly introduced to Captain Donald Sheldon, a shifty-eyed old sailor chewing on a stubby wet cigar.  Sheldon admits that his men have killed a few porpoises, and probably a few tritons, while on their whaling voyages.  He does not seem particularly apologetic about it, and he asks for the Ampiainen's aid in dispersing or killing the tritons, who are blockading his vessel.

Armed with this information, the party attempts to intercede to resolve the standoff.  Gilles addresses the tritons, and is granted permission to speak with their leader, the exceedingly lovely Nahlah.  Gilles tries to broker a deal to allow the humans to leave peacefully, but Nahlah is unmoved by his treaties, and refuses to budge.  The party gives up and moves on.  The fate of the James is unknown.

26 May 514
The Ampiainen's lookout spots the southwest coast of Soucy.

2 Jun 514
The Ampiainen tacks around the Soucy coast and heads upriver to the elven marina at Lake Sari.  The party, Captain Juhantalo, Peharu, and the agogwe adventurer Ninki-nanka head southwest on foot toward Kuusamo.  The Nyambans are amazed at the vast temperate forest filled with strange creatures.

4 Jun 514
The group reaches the fog-bound vale of Kuusamo.  After receiving the password from Falin, an awakened boar leads them to the verdant castle.  Grand Druid Nicholas is shocked and gladdened to see them after so long a voyage, although he is dismayed to hear of the loss of Aldo and several members of the Ampiainen crew, and to see that Yrjo is now a half-orc.  The party introduces Gilles, Peharu and Ninki-nanka to Nicholas, and relays their adventures in Nyambe-tanda, including the proposal of marriage by Queen Nyathera.  Nicholas does not dismiss the idea out of hand.

The party asks him about events in Teravide since their departure.  He explains that after General Noel was betrayed by his officers, the South Gervais Republic merged with the Empire Nordique, forming a powerful and potentially threatening state.  In the north, the goblinoids of Anavatan have begun to expand their territory on the steppe.  The Järven Commonwealth has had some success in wresting more of the Great Lakes region from the Mulvennan humans, but its position is still somewhat tenuous.  (This explains his potential interest in a union with Bashar'ka).

Nicholas invites the party and the Nyambans for a week of feasting, celebration, and recuperation at Kuusamo.  After that, he will arrange for passage for Peharu to Thiffault, and from there, to Charron and the court of Empress Katerina.

10 Jun 514
The party quits Kuusamo.  Yrjo teleports them (in two groups) to Mpulu.

Their reception in New Nyambe is much like the one in Kuusamo.  Dumisai, Vusimzi, and the other Mbanta turn out to greet them, and are overjoyed.  Dumisai seems dumbfounded by the party's tale of meeting Moyo in the distant past, but accepts their story as a miracle from the orisha.

The party then raises the purpose of their visit: to obtain the blood of the Mbanta's ruler to repair the nkisi and raise the Isle of Mbanta.  Dumisai seems nervous at first, but then laughs.  He reminds the party that he is not the Mbanta's ruler.  As they well know, he pays fealty to his ancestor: Striftaris.  It is her blood that the party needs, and she is not likely to give it voluntarily.

The party toys with the idea of using a wish from their kosan ring to obtain the blood, but they fear the consequences of attempting it, so they resolve instead to slay the dragon.  Gilles, of course, knows the location of her lair: behind Thiffault Falls, not far from the city of the same name.  They plan to teleport to Thiffault the next day, to prepare and equip for the battle and gather information about Striftaris.  Dumisai suggests to them that if they are successful in retrieving her blood, they may need to return to Mpulu to repair the nkisi, since nkisi usually must be dedicated at shrines honoring the orisha.  The party agrees.  The evening is spent feasting and celebrating.

11 Jun 514
The party teleports to Thiffault.  Yrjo and others begin inquiring about town for information about Striftaris, but they are unsuccessful.  At the same time, J.R. makes contact with Miles McRae, the halfling broker who monopolizes the magic and rare items trade in the city.  He places an order for several items, including +1 dragonbane arrows.

12 Jun 514
J.R. awakens in a weakened state -- down 1 point of Constitution -- having been tormented by nightmares all night.  He locates a Fisetan priest at a waterfront temple, Warren Lindsay, in hopes of a restoration.  Lindsay agrees, but only if the dragon shaman will pledge himself thereafter to Fiset (the worship of Fiset is in decline throughout Teravide, and Lindsay badly wants converts).  J.R. bluffs the priest and receives the benison.  Meanwhile, the party's attempts to gather intelligence on Striftaris are once again unsuccessful.

14 Jun 514
J.R's dreams are still haunted, and his Constitution continues to drain away.  He recalls seeing the distorted face of a young woman, and then an old crone, but that is all.  Deacon Lindsay is of no help in interpreting the dreams or their effects, so J.R. attempts to track down a wizard or sage who might be able to help.   He eventually locates Eve York, an occultist holed up in a tower on the edge of town.  York's butler displays little interest in assisting J.R., but he is eventually persuaded, by promise of payment, to set up an appointment for the next day.

The party's efforts to gather information eventually yield fruit in the form of Taavi Seppala, a half-elf bard, who has some interesting lore on Striftaris.  He sings the party the tale of Percival and Geoffroy, would-be slayers of the dragon.  In the song, Percival and Geoffroy find a secret entrance to her lair in the hills above the falls; they defeat her minions (unspecified in the song), but find her lair warded with powerful magics (a forbiddance spell, if Geoffroy's later writings are accurate); Percival is ultimately torn to pieces by Striftaris's claws, while Geoffroy is allowed to escape, so that he might report her greatness to others.  The party is very grateful for this information.

15 Jun 514
J.R. meets with York, who explains that the dragon shaman is being visited by a night hag.  York accepts her payment, and without another word, bids him good day.  J.R. turns to Falin for more information.  Falin recalls that night hags visit the dreams of their victims, and ride them all night.  The only way to be rid of her is to confront her on the Ethereal Plane.  Unfortunately, no one in the party is capable of entering the Ethereal for more than a few seconds, so J.R. once again calls upon Miles McRae, who squeezes him in for an afternoon appointment.  McRae promises to obtain a scroll of etherealness for him as soon as possible.

Seeking more information on Striftaris and green dragons generally, Falin, Kalervo, Farhang and Yrjo teleport to Kuusamo.  Nicholas raises an eyebrow at their plan to kill Striftaris, but has little useful information to offer.  He reminds the party that she was an ally during the Drouiniste War, but also recognizes that she is quite untrustworthy and has not been especially helpful in her dealings with the Commonwealth.  He offers the party a pair of potions of protection from energy (acid).  The travelers return to Thiffault.

21 Jun 514
McRae finally comes through for J.R., and the party formulates a plan.  That night, while J.R. sleeps, the party waits a short distance away.  When they hear his tortured screams, Yrjo activates the scroll, and the rest -- minus Kato -- find themselves on the Ethereal Plane.  They can see the night hag attacking J.R., and with her, a huge black horse with flaming hooves: her cauchemar (nightmare) mount.

The cauchemar charges forward and kicks Falin with a flaming hoof.  Smoke from the nightmare's nostrils chokes and blinds the party.  Fjolnir swings his axe through the cloud of smoke, and deals mighty blows to the fiendish horse.  Yrjo steps out of the cloud, and places a fireball where it can hit both the night hag and the nightmare.  The nightmare is wounded; the night hag simply laughs off the blast.

On her turn, the night hag hits Fjolnir with a ray of enfeeblement, sapping the dwarf's strength.  But Gilles counters with friend to foe, sending the nightmare after its ally.  Falin gets in a full attack on the cauchemar before it charges back towards the night hag, and Fjolnir follows up with attacks of his own.  The cauchemar is slain.

The hag, now fighting alone, uses an item to produce a wall of force to block the party's assault.  At that moment, however, Kalervo completes summon nature's ally VII, and a tyrannosaurus appears behind the hag.  It grapples her, and is ready to swallow her whole.  Farhang sneak attacks her while she is grappled, overcoming her tough damage reduction.  The hag then dismisses her etherealness effect, and lands back on the Material Plane, a few rooms away from J.R. in the inn.

After some confusion in the party, and attempts to "manifest" in the Material like ghosts, Yrjo dismisses his spell as well, and the party find themselves scattered about the inn, while the T-Rex remains behind.  Falin, Fjolnir and Farhang rush to attack her, while Kalervo wakes J.R., and Yrjo disintegrates the wall of force.  The night hag is affected by Falin's distracting attack, allowing Farhang another sneak attack.  She bites furiously at her assailants, but to only minor effect.  Now surrounded, she decides to take her chances back on the Ethereal.

As soon as she arrives, though, she is grabbed by the tyrannosaurus.  He swallows her whole, and begins to digest her.  She has no choice but to again dismiss the spell and return to the Material Plane.  Gilles is waiting for her, though, and feebleminds her. Kalervo steps us and strikes her with his magic cold iron sickle, which completely bypasses her damage reduction.  She bites him in return.  Farhang gets in yet another sneak attack, and Fjolnir finishes her off with a blow from his axe.

XP awarded: 1114 each for Falin, Gilles, Kalervo and Yrjo; 800 each for Farhang, Fjolnir and J.R.

23 Jun 514
A day after the midnight battle with the night hag and cauchemar, Kalervo awakens with a raging fever and feels very weak.  The bite wound inflicted by the hag is oozing and pustulent.  J.R. uses his touch of vitality to cure the druid of the demon fever.  Kalervo then heads to the waterfront temple of Fiset, and gets Deacon Warren Lindsay to restore his drained Constitution in exchange for a donation and a promise to perform acts of mercy in reverence to Fiset.

In the course of their daily routines, the party picks up on a rumor racing about town: a distant foreign continent has been discovered, and representatives from that continent are here in Thiffault!  The party is not shocked.

Later that afternoon, an elven messenger appears at the inn where the party is staying.  The party is being summoned to appear before Lytti Jaatteenmaki, the ambassador for the Järven Commonwealth in Thiffault.  At the embassy, Jaatteenmaki and Ambassador Peharu greet them.  They do not look pleased.  Indeed, Jaatteenmaki relays a message of censure from Grand Druid Nicholas.  In their conversations over the last several weeks, Nicholas and Peharu discovered that Peharu's knowledge of the Common tongue, while mostly very good, was strangely lacking and confused when it came to certain commonly-used words.  They soon surmised that Peharu's language instructor had, as a prank, deliberately misled him on his vocabulary.  As a result, Nicholas has decreed that J.R. is not to represent him in any capacity henceforward.  Peharu also demands an apology from the dragon shaman.  J.R. complies.

28 Jun 514
Kalervo assumes the form of an eagle to perform reconnaissance on Striftaris's lair.  He heads to the location mentioned by Taavi Seppala where a secret entrance is alleged to exist.  With some careful scanning, he eventually finds it: a cave concealed with brush, a few dozen yards from Thiffault Falls.  He perches at the entrance, but can see virtually nothing in the darkness before him.

He then heads to the more well-known main entrance behind the falls.  This is a wide cave, partly covered with stringy vines, about 150 feet down the cliffside.  Perched at the very edge at the cave, where only a small creature could fit without being washed away, he notes a slippery floor leading in, and many scratches, presumably made by wicked talons.  There are also a number of smooth grooves in the cave floor, but he does not know what they represent.  He returns to Thiffault with this information.

The party spends an hour or two weighing strategies, and settles on the idea of entering the lair via the falls entrance, which is presumably less heavily guarded.  Yrjo's hydrophobia will complicate this, but they will address that problem when they arrive.  The party heads out of town.

About six miles away, several party members hear a faint scream, coming from around a bend ahead of them on their trail.  Kalervo takes wolf form, and probes ahead, scouting from the concealment provided by the woods adjacent to the trail.  About 350 feet away from their original position, he spies a smashed and broken wagon, its wheels still spinning.  There is a harness, but no horse.  He takes eagle form and flies overhead for a better look.  He now sees a twenty-foot wide hole in the ground past the cart, filled with loose earth.  He returns to the party, and they decide to examine it more closely, if only to see what loot might be waiting in the wagon.

J.R. approaches the wagon, when suddenly, a massive creature emerges from the earth!  It bites J.R. with viselike jaws, and holds him fast.  Yrjo identifies the creature as a bulette, a fearless subterranean predator, but this is much, much larger than any bulette he has ever heard of or read about.

Falin, Farhang and Fjolnir head in to melee the creature, while Gilles hastes the party, and Kalervo bathes the enemy in faerie fire.  Yrjo attempts a slapping hand, but the bulette ignores the distraction and continues to clamp down on the severly injured J.R.

When Kato rushes in to fight the bulette, Gilles, in a moment of temporary insanity, attacks him with his dagger!  The cat is not badly injured, but Kalervo is forced to spend time calming down his animal companion to keep him from killing the beguiler.

The bulette deals a critical hit to Farhang, but Fjolnir then hefts his axe and deals a massive, 99-hit point critical hit in return, followed by still more iterative attacks.  The beast is slain shortly thereafter.  Its most recent victims, including the horse, are visible in its perforated gut.  The wagon contains nothing of value.  The party chooses to return to Thiffault rather than face Striftaris at less than full strength.

29 Jun 514
The party heads out once again.  They approach the secret entrance en route to the cliffside, where they notice a pair of creatures lurking nearby: a dryad and a treant.  When the dryad spies the party, she begins to concentrate on something.  J.R., not wanting to take any chances, steps up and uses his breath weapon on both of them.  The dryad mostly shakes off the acid, but the treant is clearly harmed.  Kalervo follows with an entangle spell that snags the treant, and distracts the dryad enough to break her concentration.

Yrjo drops a fireball behind the enemies.  The treant is clearly vulnerable to fire, and is heavily damaged; but the dryad, again, seems to shake off most of its effects.  Gilles attempts a hold monster spell on her, but that, too, has no effect.

On its turn, the treant begins animating trees right in the party's midst.  The dryad, sporting strange, shadowy wings, flies off to escape the entangling vines, and fires a blast of eldritch energy at Fjolnir.  The party now splits up to deal with the animating trees, and begins to hack away at them, learning quickly that spiked chains, arrows and short swords are of little use in penetrating their bark.  The dryad once again fires an eldritch blast at Fjolnir, and he is not only damaged, but he is now blinded as well.

The party eventually fells the animated trees, and Kalervo dismisses the entangle effect so that the melee fighters can move in to attack the treant.  Yrjo hits both enemies with a chain lightning, to fairly good effect.

Fjolnir regains his sight, and deals solid damage to the treant, who strikes him in turn.  The dryad launches yet another eldritch blast, this time at Kalervo, blinding him.  She is punctured by arrows from Farhang and Falin, but they do virtually nothing: she appears to have damage reduction that they cannot overcome.

Nearing death, the treant tries to trample the party members.  Fjolnir chooses to stand his ground and take an attack of opportunity.  He, Gilles and Falin are all trampled anyway, but they fight on.  The treant is slain shortly thereafter.

The dryad, who had briefly landed, is surrounded by Falin, Fjolnir, Kato and Kalervo before she has a chance to escape.  Clearly weakened, she offers her surrender...

XP awarded: 2507 each for Falin, Gilles, and Kalervo; 1440 each for Farhang, Fjolnir, J.R. and Yrjo.

29 Jun 514, continued
The party interrogates the dryad, whose name is Amarantha.  Fjolnir asks her if she is in league with Striftaris, and she denies it.  When asked why she lives so close to the lair of a mighty dragon, she notes that she cannot actually leave; she is bound to an oak tree nearby and cannot stray far from it.  Kalervo and Falin confirm this detail of dryad physiology.  The party apologizes to her, and they heal her wounds.  Kalervo also offers to reincarnate her treant ally as soon as he can prepare the spell.

With Amarantha still present, the party probes the secret entrance to Striftaris' lair.  They discover a glyph of warding near the entrance and disable it; they also detect a weak abjuration aura, which they guess is an alarm spell.  As they prepare to dispel it, Amarantha seems to cower in fear, as if about to be attacked from the air.  When the party wheels around to deal with the incoming menace, she darts away, hides (not altogether successfully), and somehow magically transports herself into the secret entrance, right where the presumed alarm spell is.  Farhang, sensing something must be wrong, threatens her, but she teleports again to an unknown location.

Yrjo uses a wish from his cursed kosan ring to remove any forbiddance effect that Striftaris may still have in place on her lair.  Nothing untoward seems to happen, which is as much as the party can hope for.  Although they have planned extensively to approach her lair from the waterfall entrance, they elect to simply go through the secret entrance instead.

The tunnel slopes down and to the southeast for a couple of hundred feet before ending abruptly.  Falin notices a secret door there, to no one's surprise.  Farhang checks for traps; finding none, Fjolnir opens it.  Waiting for them right beyond the doorway is beholder!  The creature strikes at Fjolnir, J.R. and Gilles with his eye rays while leaving his central eye closed.  Fjolnir and J.R. are both hit, but they shake off the effects.  Gilles is hit as well, and is thrown violently back up against a wall.  At the same time, a shimmering, sword-like plane of force (a Mordenkainen's sword, by Yrjo's reckoning) appears and attacks Fjolnir, doing significant damage.

After this surprise round, the party gains the initiative and counterattacks.  Fjolnir and Falin rush forward, and drop the beholder before it can attack again.  As soon as they do, however, they hear a muttering from nearby, although no one seems to be there.  An Otiluke's freezing sphere then strikes the group.  The Mordenkainen's sword continues to hack at Fjolnir.

J.R. activates his goggles of draconic vision to gain blindsense, and is able to pinpoint the invisible attacker.  Following his instructions, and with a little luck, Kalervo (in bear form) is able to grapple it, and Yrjo dispels the invisibility effect.  The creature -- a female -- has yellowish-gray skin, ornate and baroque jewelry, a shimmering silver greatsword, and a topknot.  Falin recognizes her as a githyanki, a fierce warrior-mage from the Astral Plane.  The githyanki tries to escape the grapple using dimension door, but is slain by a sneak attack from Farhang in the attempt.

The party's victory is short-lived.  Striftaris appears from around a corner to the northeast, and with a wicked grin and an arcane gesture, lets loose a cone of acidic gas right where Fjolnir, Falin, J.R., Farhang, Kalervo and Kato are standing.  The breath weapon is laced with magic, and as a result, Fjolnir is stunned, as well as wounded.  Farhang avoids all injury thanks to improved evasion, and J.R. is immune to acid, but Kalervo and Kato are unconscious and dying.  Striftaris is quite surprised and very gleeful that the party has seemingly not prepared for her breath weapon.

Yrjo immediately casts hide from dragons on most of the party, rendering them completely undetectable by Striftaris.  Taking this opportunity, Gilles uses his wand of cure moderate wounds to help Kalervo, while Falin casts fell the greatest foe on Fjolnir.  Moments later, though, J.R. strikes the dragon with a greataxe, ending the hide from dragons spell for everyone.

Worse yet, Amarantha appears from the tunnel behind the party, and blasts Kalervo with eldritch energy, knocking him unconscious again.  Gilles tries to feeblemind the dryad, recalling only afterwards that she appears to be immune to mind-affecting effects.

Yrjo casts hide from dragons once more, except on J.R and Farhang, who have moved up to melee the dragon.  Striftaris full attacks J.R., connecting with six hits, very nearly dropping him.  The dragon shaman uses his touch of vitality to restore himself to health.

Falin fires an arrow at Amarantha, which hits her, but has absolutely no effect.  The rest of the party continues to buff and heal themselves while they are undetectable by Striftaris.  The dragon swings wildly at Farhang, boasting that she will take out the halfling in a single round, but he is too nimble for her.  She connects only with a single critical hit, that while very serious, does not kill the rogue.

Meanwhile, Amarantha continues to direct eldritch blasts at the party, and uses a wand of displacement to grant herself concealment.  Yrjo fireballs her in return, doing significant damage.

Kalervo, prone but conscious, summons an augmented tyrannosaurus to battle the dryad.  She uses her flee the scene ability to escape, materializing southwest of the party.  Scaling back her swings, Striftaris drops Farhang with another full attack.   But the party is finally ready to face her without the benefit of hide from dragons, and Fjolnir attacks her with his waraxe, hacking through her tough hide and into her flesh.

Striftaris responds with a quickened breath weapon which kills Farhang and wounds the others, retreats into her sleeping chamber, and casts cure critical wounds on herself.  In the process, she suffers an attack of opportunity from Fjolnir which more or less negates the healing magic.

The tyrannosaurus catches up with Amarantha, and grabs her.  Moments later, he swallows her whole, and she is not heard from again.  Kalervo begins summoning another tyrannosaurus to fight Striftaris.

Gilles tries to feeblemind Striftaris, and she just barely manages to fight off the effects of the spell.  The second tyrannosaurus appears, approaches her from behind, but cannot strike her; she has some sort of abjuration protecting her.

Fjolnir and J.R. (now nearly dead) continue to melee the dragon, while Falin shoots magic dragonbane arrows at her, which simply bounce off her tough scales.  Gilles, however, succeeds in dispelling her protection from good spell, allowing the summoned creatures to attack her.  She is badly weakened, and in desperation tries to sunder Fjolnir's axe, but only deals it moderate damage.  As she retreats to a pool of acid in her sleeping chamber, Fjolnir, J.R. and the dinosaurs finally slay the mighty dragon.

The party loots her hoard, and discovers a pair of eggs in a mound of leaves.  They decide to take the eggs, but are not sure what they will do with them.  Falin carefully carves off sections of her hide, and fills several small vials with her blood, to restore the nkisi.  Yrjo uses the second and final wish from the kosan ring to restore Farhang to life.  The ring reverts to a rusty iron band.

Their goal now reached, the party chooses to explore the rest of the lair.  They loot the githyanki's corpse, and find her well-appointed bedchamber, and take some of the valuable items there.  Heading south, they find the waterfall entrance, and also the lair of the beholder, decorated with many strange carvings on the walls and a number of horribly deformed humanoid statues.  Searching the statues carefully, they find hidden treasure underneath one of them.

They double back to explore one last side passage.  As they round a bend in a narrow hallway, they spy a brass plaque on the wall about twenty feet ahead of them, with writing they cannot read at this distance.  Sensing danger, Farhang probes the area carefully, and locates and disables a fireball trap.  The plaque is little more than a practical joke, and when they approach it, the tunnel behind them seals up with an earth lock spell.  Yrjo dispels the effect.  The party decides to rest and heal in the lair overnight.

30 Jun 514
Striftaris' blood now in hand, Kalervo uses a pair of wind walk spells to transport the party to Mpulu.  The entire town turns out to greet them as liberators, and they all head to the ancestral shrine.

Falin gives the dragon's blood and nkisi to Vusimzi, who intones a few words in Daka-kara, and sprinkles the blood on the statue.  Its features are transformed.  The "ropes" and pained expression vanish; and instead of kneeling, the figure is now seated serenely.

The PCs feel the orisha attempting to inhabit their bodies, as had happened in the D'okan desert.  All but Farhang allow them to do so.  Their own spirits are then suddenly transported thousands of miles over the ocean.  They hear a great rumbling, and the Isle of Mbanta rises up from the depths!  The orisha then depart, returning the PCs' spirits to their bodies.  They feel a great weight lifted from them, and their strange mental afflictions disappear.

Dumisai is possessed by the spirit of Moyo, who proclaims to the assembled Mbanta that their homeland is now restored.  The party's quest is ended.

XP awarded: 7313 for Gilles; 5350 for Falin, Farhang, Fjolnir, Kalervo, J.R., and Yrjo.