S09E21 - Omu and New Friends

Flash-back to Silas, a shadar-kay ranger in his childhood, where he witnesses cultists killing her parents, and barely escapes thanks to the effort of an elder woman who gives her life to protect them from one of the cultists. The flash-back then moves to a more adult Silas who has been helped by someone called Jan Wyk, a strange human ranger who appears to have been alive for way too long.

Back to the present, where the heroes just exited the dimensional portal after rescuing Fionghan and defeating the woe strider. They first discuss whether they could rearrange them to make their flying fortress, aka the Heart of Ubtao, fly, but decide that the plan probably won’t work.

Salida figures out what happened with the beams and the portal but doesn’t tell Avilos who is about to manipulate them because she doesn’t care either way. Avilos rotates the beam emitter in the direction that he thinks is right to fix it, but after a few seconds the device overheats and explodes hurting the party. A few seconds later, without the beams energy converging into a stable configuration, the other two emitters explode dealing more damage to the party. The upside is that they managed to close the portal.

Salida then heads away from the blue misty shipwreck group while Ellie then talks to Fionghan who gives curt responses and is clearly traumatized from something but doesn’t talk much.

The party then discusses where to head next and eventually settle on taking a short rest with Salida and then heading towards the mountains and Omu. As the party is resting, Sophi explores the surrounding area, hurting herself on the glass on the floor. Carnivore tries to make Fionghan happy by handing him a branch as his staff, but he doesn’t get fooled and throws it away. Carnivore then tries to carve another piece of wood to make it look like the idea he has of what Fionghan’s staff looked like (and rolls two 20s). Meanwhile the party finds Fionghan’s staff, but Carnivore gives his carved staff to Fionghan who gets very confused: the staff his attuned to, the real one, is clearly his, but the replica feels more real.

Eventually the party finishes resting as the effects from the mad monkey fever take hold taking Salida unconscious, making Carnivore constantly hallucinate with velociraptors eating Sophi away, Sophi feels repulsive towards Ellie, and Avilos feeling the intense desire to touch everything around him.

The party though doesn’t want to waste more fly time from their wings, they carry the unconscious, their pets and Fionghan, and take off towards the distant smoking mountains.

A few hours later, in the middle of the night, the heroes notice the wings becoming lighter and lighter, and they land on the jungle, near the first hills of the mountain range ahead from them, and take shelter on Avilos’s Tiny Hut. While they’re having dinner, Ellie talks to Fionghan again whom, after pouring aromatic herbs he easily grabs from around him, and heats the dry meat they offer him, talks a bit more and gives them a very fragmented account of what brought him here: an omen of undeath first discovered in the Singing Forest, and tracking it brought him through many lands up until he reached Napali. Half-way through the story, though, he stops talking, tired. Fionghan is suspicious of everybody except Ellie, whom she keeps calling Seoirse. He also asks for his staff which he doesn’t remember where he lost.

Nothing happens during that night. The next morning some of the heroes are still affected by the mad monkey disease and Chos casts minor restoration healing them. The party considers climbing the mountain to use Sophi’s whistle to attract flying dinosaurs and get to Omu faster, but they eventually ditch the day and decide to walk there instead.

Two days of travel later, Salida suddenly stumbles upon Azionna who is collected some herbs. Salida believes she sees a skeletal hand but dismisses the sight as very unlikely. Salida tells her where they’re coming from and where they’re heading, and Azionna shares her intentions of entering Omu and infiltrating the yuan-ti clan in search of the Soulmonger. Salida asks her questions about the yuan-ti but Azionna gives mostly evasive answers. Salida offers her to join them but she politely declines and, as she leaves, makes a pointed remark about how much Salida seems to know about the yuan-ti and comments about shedding old habits.

Sophi is convinced they should stalk her and does so with Ellie in monkey form, following close-by, and then the rest of the party following Ellie. A couple of hours later, Azionna discovers Sophi, shoots a fireball at her and makes her go back to the party at full speed. Ellie, who had noticed the fireball explode between the foliage follows her back to the main group. Salida scouts outside of the main area while the party decides what to do, but Azionna doesn’t seem to be coming back and everybody agrees that Azionna seems to be a dangerous foe and decide to continue their journey towards Omu without trying to track her or stalk her. As the party passes over the spot where she stood while she cast a fireball on Sophi, they all notice the rotten and dead vegetation around the area.

Four days of travel later, and very close to Omu, Chos has a divine interaction with Beory who comforts the healer and does all she can to make the curse retreat from covering everything but Chos’s head, to reaching only up to his ribcage. Chos got a few more days to hopefully find the soulmonger and live.

The next day the heroes continue their journey and some time after lunch, Salida announces their arrival. The party has reached Omu through its northern edge, right next to a waterfall. The party decides to camp on top of the tall cliffs that surround the city and carefully enter the city in the morning.

The next morning the heroes decide to climb down next to the waterfall instead of entering through the main gate, and they do so without any accidents. As they are considering which direction to go first given the various enemies they expect in the city, the group gets surrounded by various types of yuan-ti and Salida reveals her true yuan-ti nature.

Salida asks them to drop their weapons and peacefully talk to Ras Nsi. Avilos raises his weapon in a non-threatening sign, but before the party can decide what to do next, two figures come out from hiding and start attacking the yuan-ti. Ellie, the next to act, unofficially responds to Salida and the rest of the yuan-ti by attacking them as well.

The party takes out their big weapons from the get-go, but after the yuan-ti first round, Carnivore is already unconscious.