S10E01 - Orvex and Kubazan's shrine

Season 10 starts where we left at the end of season 9, at Papazotl’s shrine in the ancient city of Omu.

After solving the shrine’s puzzle, the heroes carefully pick up the strange-looking cube from the main room’s altar. The cube has an eblis silhouette on all sides, but other than that, the heroes don’t know what it is for.

While the heroes are discussing where to go next, Thorn arrives, and Ellie and the rest of the party follow him back to the ruined house where they left Fionghan. When they arrive, they see the old druid having a panic attack, crouched in a corner of the best-lit room in the building. After showing him the cube they just got, the panic attack intensifies. He reveals that it’s needed to enter the tomb and makes it clear he wants nothing to do with it. The party manages to get the rough locations of the other eight shrines out of him, as well as the general location of the tomb itself. While all of this is happening Chos, who was looking out of a window, sees something big as a tree, moving beneath the canopy far in the distance. Avilos climbs to the top of a nearby building to see better, but he only spots an open area beyond the trees and what looks like the top part of an amphitheatre.

After the conversation with Fionghan is over, Sophi, also distractedly looking out of a window, has a vision as her eyes fall on the Northern waterfall that welcomed them to the city. In the vision, Omu is shining, bustling with color, life, and energy, but after a few seconds, screams, fires, and a sphere of darkness engulf the city. Sophi finds the experience curious, and when she sees that she was the only one to experience it, she finds it even more curious and a bit unsettling.

After a short break, the party, confident that they can enter the tomb, heads to the Northern cliff. Fionghan, after much cajoling from the group, agrees to go with them, but ends up stopping before reaching the cliff, waiting with Falkor and Thorn at a nearby bazaar.

The rest of the party then arrives to the tomb’s entrance where they find a black obelisk covered with moss and vines, and behind it, two caves that delve into the cliffs.

Sophi clears the obelisk’s moss with his mage hand and uncovers a cryptic message:

After a few moments of deliberation and no clear insight, the party gets back into action and enters the cave nearer to the obelisk. The cave goes into the mountain for a few meters, but then ends on a stone slab wall. The slab has eight cavities arranged in a circle on its center, and then surrounded by a liberal dose of skulls. The heroes insert the cube they have into one of the cavities, but nothing happens.

The group then tries to decipher the meaning of the obelisk’s message and, while they paired antagonist trickster gods together using the legend fragments they had found so far, Silas gets bored and decides to explore the Eastern cave. There, the ranger finds nine niches, each with a Trickster God statue holding a basin full of oil.

When Chos, who was carrying Papazotl’s cube, joins Silas in the second cave, Papazotl’s oil basin starts burning by itself. The heroes conclude that they’re going to need the other eight cubes.

In that moment Falkor howls, which was the signal they had convened with Fionghan to alert them of danger. They rush back to the bazaar but there’s no danger: the druid made them come because he was starting to feel lonely.

After compiling their “cube shopping list”, the heroes head to the nearby amphiteather to find out what was so big that could budge trees. Silas casts pass without trace on the whol egroup and, all in perfect stealth, arrive into the ruined amphiteater to find a huge t-rex sleeping placidly. Ellie gets agitated after some some group members suggest shooting first and asking questions later, but her shouting very luckily, doesn’t wake up the dinosaur. The party then leaves to explore the Southern part of the city and scout the shrines that lie there.

At one point during the exploratin, they reach a walled compound covered with piles of burning corpses and wild dogs having a feast with some of them. Sophi and Silas explore the compound and find, besides the piles of human corpses, a pile of yuan-ti (half-men half-snake) creatures. They also hear a man asking for help beneath the rubble. When they free him, he presents himself as Orvex, a scribe part of the Red Wizard expedition that got massacred by the yuan-ti. The expedition was looking for the tomb of the lich Acererak, but got attacked before they could find it. Orvex offers his services in exchange for gold. The party, scanty on gold, refuses to pay him, but offers him to tag along. Orvex, offended by an offer he finds lacking, tries to leave and gets knocked unconscious by the wild dogs. Ellie and Silas scare them away, and once Chos heals him, Orvex changes his mind and agrees to join them.

Sophi, though is suspicious of him and asks him for a proof that he’s worthy of joining the party. Orvex shares with her his most proud and recent research piece, a compilation of the legend of the Nine Trickster Gods. Sophi is impressed and agrees to let him join them.

After rescuing Orvex, the heroes check out the location of two more shrines and then camp at an abandoned building near one of the shrines.

Sophi does the first watch, where she spots, far in the distance, a group of plant-like humanoids throwing a tied-up grung into the colossal lava pit that lies in the Southern part of the ancient city. A detached Sophi takes mental note of another curious event.

Meanwhile, Krariak, who misses putting his wilderness survival skills to use and is currently at odds with Ellie, the party’s cook (goodberries), goes out to hunt his dinner. He explores four buildings where he finds a total of two chests. Out of precaution from the stories he heard as a kid about mimics, he destroys the first chest along with the valuable art piece inside. He’s less cautious with the second chest and is rewarded with gold and gems. In the fourth building he explores, he stumbles on an assassin vine that grabs him and starts to embrace him to death. The barbarian manages to free himself up, and runs back to the camp.

After Sophi’s watch ends, she goes into her nightly elven trance, but, instead of peaceful meditation, she finds herself in the middle of the ruined Omu facing a far away skeletal figure that is getting closer to her. The short vision ends with the figure closer to her, but still far to distinguish much from it.

The next morning, the party heads to the nearest shrine, Kubazan’s. When they arrive, they see a large and muddy pool with a large froghemoth statue and, beyond it, a vine-covered shrine.

Krariak leads the way and starts to skirt the pool, but suddenly, a colossal froghemoth emerges from the pool. Krariak runs towards the shrine’s entrance but the monster’s quick reflexes and extremely long tongue grab him. Luckily, Ellie is next and she casts a spell that polymorphs the terrifying monster into a pretty confused lamb.

The episode ends with the party relaxedly tying the polymorphed froghemoth-lamb to one of the obelisks that guard the entrance to the shrine compound.

Fionghan’s joke of the day

“Why don’t dragons tell jokes? Because they always drag on too long!”