S09E21 - Omu and New Friends

The session starts with a flashback to a small village in the Shadowfell that is under attack by death cultists. A child shadar-kay and future ranger called Silas is hiding outside of his home terrified to see his parents get killed by the cultists. He runs away into the chaos of the burning village and the screams and stumbles on a group of other kids and a village female elder who is leading them to safety. Right before they reach the forest, a cultist stops them but the female elder gives her life, and the kids and Silas escape.

We now fast forward to a few years later where an adult Silas is wandering around the jungle of Na Pali, continents away from his childhood village. He meets another quiet, dark, and menacing ranger, Jan Wyk, and they spend a few hours together. Silas gets valuable directions and information about Omu and the undead monsters who swarm the island and he also gets the impression that Jan is way, way older than he looks.

Back to the present, the heroes have just crossed the dimensional portal from the elemental plane of chaos back to the jungle bringing the recently rescued druid Fionghan with them. They’re surrounded by blue mist that they have already inhaled so they ignore it.

After studying the wreckage of the flying ship, the group wonders how they could take the pieces they think made the ship fly back to the Heart of Ubtao, which they affectionately refer to as “their flying fortress,” and upgrade it. In the end, they decide it’s too much work and unlikely to work.

They then move to the problem of what to do with the dangerous portal itself. Salida figures out what may have created it but doesn’t say anything and observes Avilos who, independently, tries to fix the problem by rotating one of the three light beam emitters that were converging on a single point behind the portal. They start hearing an increasingly loud humming sound coming from the rotated device which moments later explodes. Seconds later, the other two devices, which had started humming but more faintly also explode. The group ends up heavily damaged but when the explosion dissipates, the portal is gone.

Salida then heads away to take a break to rest outside of the shipwreck area with its gravitational anomalies and the sickly blue mist covering it all while Ellie talks to Fionghan to try to get more information. The druid, mostly blind, gives curt responses and is clearly traumatized from a recent event that he can’t describe.

The party decides to follow Salida’s lead and rest before continuing their journey to the faraway mountains and Omu.

While the party rests, Sophi explores the surrounding area to find more loot but ends up falling on the ground after stumbling over a dead tentacled body and hurting herself with glass. While that’s going on, Carnivore crafts a druid staff out of a wooden branch and hands it to Fionghan but he doesn’t get fooled and throws it away. Carnivore takes hints from Fionghan’s comments about why the previous staff was fake and the dwarf starts carving another staff (rolling two 20s). The rest of the group finds Fionghan’s actual staff somewhere in the wrecked ship and hands it to Fionghan, but when Carnivore hands the druid his second fake, the druid is confused because the new staff feels more real than his true staff except that it looks to him that it’s sleeping or shut down.

As they’re finishing resting, the blue mist effects start kicking in: Salida becomes unconscious, Carnivore starts hallucinating that velociraptors are eating Sophi away, Sophi feels repulsive towards Ellie, and Avilos feels the urge to touch everything around him.

Despite the limiting conditions, the party doesn’t want to waste more wing time and takes off towards the distant smoking mountains carrying the unconscious guide, their pets, and Fionghan.

A few hours later, in the middle of the night, the heroes notice the wings are becoming lighter and fading away and they land near the first hills of the mountain range ahead of them. They set up camp, summon Avilo’s Tiny Hut, and have dinner. Ellie continues interrogating Fionghan who, after skillfully seasoning the dried meat they give him with aromatic herbs he seemingly grabs from around him, gives the party a very fragmented account of what brought him here: an omen of an undeath menace that he detected in the Singing Forest. He tracked it through many lands until he reached Na Pali. After gathering information in Port Nyanzaru and its surroundings he headed South and then, Fionghan stops talking. During this recounting Fionghan keeps referring to Ellie as Seoirse, a female druid the group assumes was a crush from the Singing Forest.

The next morning Chos heals those still affected by the mad monkey fever curse and they all decide to continue their journey on foot instead of trying to attract flying dinosaurs with Sophi’s magic whistle.

Two days later, Salida suddenly stumbles upon Azionna who is on her knees collecting some herbs. Salida believes she sees a skeletal hand grabbing the plants, but dismisses the sight as too implausible. Salida gives a short update to Azionna and she shares back her goal of finding the Soulmonger and her intentions of entering Omu and infiltrating the yuan-ti clan to gather more info. Azionna answers evasively to Salida’s questions about the yuan-ti and, after refusing an invitation to join the party, departs in the direction of Omu.

Sophi starts tracking her, and Ellie transforms into a monkey and starts following Sophi at a distance, with the rest of the party following Ellie.

A couple of hours later, Azionna discovers Sophi and relaxedly casts a fireball at her making the rogue and, soon after that, Ellie, run back to the main group. The party realizes that Azionna doesn’t like being followed and that it’s better to leave her alone and continue their journey. As the party passes by the spot where Azionna stood and threw the fireball, they notice a circle of rot and dead vegetation.

Four days later, and, according to Salida, very close to Omu, Chos has an ecstatic experience with his goddess, Beory, during his morning meditation. The goddess tries to comfort his devotee and makes his necrotic curse retrace back a bit from his chest and upper limbs, giving him a few more days to live.

The next day the heroes arrive at Omu. They’ve approached the forbidden ruined city through its northern edge, next to a waterfall. The city is partially flooded, vegetation has grown back and engulfed much of what’s in sight, and there are only signs of wildlife.

The party camps on top of the tall cliffs that surround the city, monitor it until dinner and, the next morning, they carefully descend the cliffs and enter it.

As they are considering which direction to start exploring the ruins, the party finds itself surrounded by a large group of yuan-ti. Salida takes the initiative in this Mexican standoff, reveals that she’s also a yuan-ti, and tries to persuade them to give away their weapons and peacefully follow them to talk with the yuan-ti leader, Ras-Nsi.

While the party is debating what to do next, two figures who were hiding in nearby ruined buildings, start shooting arrows and handaxes at the yuan-ti.

Ellie, next to act, follows the strangers’s lead and also attacks the snake people and full combat ensues.

The party fights skillfully but in a matter of seconds, Carnivore is already unconscious and dying.