S09E22 - Papazotl's Shrine

We start the session with a flashback to Krariak, one of the two strangers who showed up in the last episode.

The young adult goliath Krariak is near the peak of a snowy mountain surrounded by his goliath tribe’s elders. The eldest elder, Vhanka, challenges him to a coming-of-age trial. Krariak gets two trial choices and picks hunting the frost-marked ram. Over the ensuing hours, the young goliath tracks the ram down, but the ram gored him and escapes, leaving a curved scar on Krariak’s ribs.

We fast forward three years and meet an older Krariak who is hunting alone in the valleys. He comes across a tiger and tries to tame it. He fails at that and gets a nasty bite on his left forearm but escapes alive.

We finally fast-forward three more years. Krariak is now a nineteen-year-old soldier. His commander, Voss, wants to secretly test his loyalty and asks him to spy on one of the other soldiers. Krariak questions the suspicious orders and uncovers the commander’s test which earns him a special forces position and no scars.

We now get back to the part in the present. The heroes intend to continue fighting against the more than twenty yuan-ti despite Carnivore going down seconds ago. Salida, now on the yuan-ti side, offers the heroes to stop fighting and get on with their soulmonger search. The heroes insist on meeting the yuan-ti’s boss without dropping their weapons but Salida, again, refuses. The two groups decide to split but Salida demands the heroes to leave Carnivore with her until they find the Soulmonger, in part as a deposit for killing two yuan-ti moments ago, and in part to ensure the heroes don’t mess with the yuan-ti. With little bargaining power, the heroes agree to that.

Right before leaving, Sophi asks the yuan-ti about Ada and the snake people tell her that she’s still alive and working for the yuan-ti. The party demands Ada as part of the deal in exchange for finding the Soulmonger and getting rid of the curse and Salida agrees, and after that, the yuan-ti leave.

The two people who helped our heroes fight the yuan-ti then present themselves as Krariak the ranger, and Silas the barbarian. They reveal few details about their past or mission other than they are also after the evil that lurks deep within Omu, which is enough for the party to accept them as their new members.

To break the ice, the traumatized half-blind Fionghan tells a joke that makes the party laugh, and then, taken by surprise, he points at the nearest building across the flooded area in front of the party and gets very agitated. Naturally, the heroes decide to go there leaving Fionghan with the group’s pets in one of the buildings on this side of the lake.

Minutes later, after wading through the muddy lake, the heroes arrive, perfectly stealthy, at the back of what looks like a shrine where a giant crocodile lurks. The crocodile swims around them but the “Pass without trace” spell that Silas had cast on them is too strong for the amphibian creature who eventually leaves.

Sophi then misty steps onto the rooftop and shouts “It’s clear over here!” which alerts the giant crocodile and a fight ensues. Krariak throws Avilos to the shrine’s rooftop, then he climbs to the top, followed by Ellie who transforms into a giant spider, grabs Chos, and climbs to the nearest shrine wall. The rest of the heroes shoot arrows and ranged spells at the crocodile while Krariak lassos Chos but is unable to pull him and Ellie over from the wall to the rooftop leaving them hanging in the air. Sophi and Silas, already at the top of the shrine, spot four additional crocodiles approaching the back of the building. Luckily, on her next turn, Ellie climbs to the rooftop carrying Chos with her. The rest of the party pummels the now defenseless crocodile with Avilos obliterating it with a fireball. Ellie is pissed off but the heroes had issues in the past leaving hungry crocodiles in their rear when they entered Rupert’s lair. Krariak manages to intimidate the smaller crocodiles that had just arrived leaving the party free to explore the shrine.

Chos and Ellie then descend over the front face of the building and inspect the entrance where two large eblis statues stand. The rest of the party follows them and they all carefully enter the building.

In the first room, they find a mosaic floor depicting an eblis pinning down a froghemoth. Avilos translates the old Omuan writing on the walls where the heroes learn of the legend of Papazotl, one of the nine trickster gods that took over Omu after Ubtao abandoned the city, and its enmity with another trickster god, Kubazan, the froghemoth god.

While the group ponders on the legend, Silas tries to persuade them to rest. Ellie, still annoyed with the crocodile situation and a bit bored, transforms into an ant, crawls through the heavy stone doors in the room that Krariak failed to open, and transforms back to her own shape before exploring the new area. The room has six statues on wall recesses with a different animal head each, like a jaguar and a toucan. There’s also a pedestal with a hatch in the middle and another inscription in Old Omuan which she can’t read. Unable to wild shape again, Ellie waits until the rest of the party realizes that the doors just need two or more people to be opened.

With more light and more eyes, the party continues searching the new room for hints. Avilos translates the inscription beneath the pedestal which sounds like a riddle and gives Chos the idea of casting shadows on the statues. They very carefully do so until they cast a shadow on the statue of a bat revealing a hidden narrow corridor behind it.

Chos, Ellie, and Avilos explore it and find a smaller room a few meters into the corridor with a grid on the floor as its sole feature. The party then spends two hours trying to fit the pieces they have together and open the hatch in the second room. Eventually, the heroes discover a hidden message in the hidden corridor’s floor using the second room’s riddle that reads “Cover eyes.” They first cover their eyes but nothing happens. They then cover the eyes of all the statues at the same time which makes hidden gears move beneath the hatch unlocking it and revealing a small, dark, and heavy cube with the eblis god Papazotl’s silhouette on its faces.

The episode ends with the heroes shouting “Hooray!” in unison.